LOGAN, Utah
In the winter of 1969, I wrote about my high school basketball team for the Logan Herald-Journal. It was my first newspaper job, at $10 a game, and I ignored just about every rule in the journalism book.
Fair and objective? That wasn’t any fun.
My team, Logan High School, was ranked No. 1 in the state, blessed by 6-foot-7-inch Bob Lauriski, who would become Utah’s Mr. Basketball. On my old Olympia typewriter, I hunt-and-pecked Lauriski into local sainthood.
I nicknamed him “Vulture” because he blocked so many shots. The editors looked the other way. I mean, how many No. 1-ranked teams are there in Logan, Utah? The Vulture and my Grizzlies were untouchable. Game after game I stayed up late typing gushy adjectives.
Lauriski this. Lauriski that. He became one of my closest friends.
A day or so before our Big Game, against rival Sky View High School, I asked our coach, Rod Tueller, if the hated Bobcats were any good. I expected him to laugh it off.
“They’ve got Lex Baer’s kid,” he said. “That’s a good start.”
It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear.
I grew up watching Lex Baer play fastpitch softball at Logan’s Crimson Field. He was a left-hander with a nasty disposition and a rise-ball that no one could touch. I had never seen anyone as intimidating as Lex Baer. How intimidating? He didn’t use a baseball mitt.
He fielded with his bare hands, made tough from long days on his dad’s alfalfa farm, and later, from his job as a welder. He ultimately was elected into the Utah Sports Hall of Fame.
Lex Baer’s kid? This could be trouble.
A day later, hours before tipoff with all 6,500 seats at Utah State’s Nelson Fieldhouse full, Kent Baer started the junior varsity game as Sky View beat my Grizzlies. It seemed like he scored 100 points.
But that was just the JV game. He would be powerless against the Vulture and the varsity.
When Sky View predictably fell behind that night, everything changed. Bobcats coach Ivan Christensen sent Baer into the game. He hit a jumper. Then he stole the ball and made a layup. Play after play, the kid from the JV team took my team apart.
On Wednesday, I asked Baer, now the defensive coordinator at Colorado, if he remembered the score.
“It wasn’t close,” he said with a laugh. “I think I scored 20 points. I played both games that night. Packed house. Great memory.”
Sky View won 77-60. As I sat at the typewriter, I couldn’t bring myself to type the hurtful words onto the blank 8x11 piece of paper. Lex Baer’s kid had shattered my dreams.
Kent Baer has been the defensive coordinator for five Pac-12 teams and at Notre Dame; I’m not sure there’s a coach anywhere in college football whose résumé requires more space on 8x11 pieces of paper.
When the Buffaloes play at Arizona Stadium on Saturday, it will be the 19th time Baer has coached against Arizona. He has been in college football for so long, at so many wonderful schools, that he said it would be impossible for him to rank the rivalries in which he has coached.
“I’d have to write a book to include them all,” he said.
He coached Notre Dame against Michigan. “They hated us,” he said.
He coached Washington in the Apple Cup against Wazzu. “The whole state was buzzing about it.”
He coached Stanford against Cal in the Big Game, and vice-versa. “There wasn’t a hatred,” he said. “It was fun.”
He coached Arizona State in the Territorial Cup against Arizona. “For the lack of a better term, it was an I-hate-you game,” he said.
And he coached his alma mater, Utah State, in the Old Wagon Wheel game against dreaded BYU. “No love lost there,” he said. “I remember every time we beat them, as a player and as a coach.”
The Logan-Sky View rivalry no longer carries the punch it did in 1969. A three-sport star, the top athlete of my boyhood generation, the most-feared player from my rival high school, Baer became college teammates with many of Logan’s top players at USU.
I asked him about his relationship with the Vulture, Bob Lauriski.
He paused. He knew what was coming next.
“My sister sent me a text telling me that Bob died over the weekend,” he said. “I had great respect for him. It’s tough. He was too young.”
Bob Lauriski became a star at Utah State, helping the Aggies soar as high as No. 9 in the 1970-71 AP basketball poll. He died of a heart attack Sunday.
On the way to Lauriski’s funeral today, as I drive to my mom’s house, I will pass Lex Baer’s old welding shop. After all these years, my mother and Kent’s father live within a block of one another. Life has blurred all the old rivalries.
I have lost an old friend and gained another.
