The Case of The Disappearing Quarterback

Steve gets up from his chair and looks out the hospital window. He’s thinking. He’s not sure how to handle the next question. He doesn’t want to hurt Mike’s feelings. He slowly and reluctantly asks the following. “Mike I don’t want to sound critical of you because I think the world of you. But I don’t understand why you never went back to Stanford? The people loved you there. You were very famous and well thought by everyone. Why didn’t you go back?’ Mike doesn’t say anything. He is very quiet. He puts his hand over his eyes. Finally, he quietly and slowly says, “It really hurt Steve. It hurt a lot. Every time I tried to go back, the Lord would turn me into a pillar of salt, and I couldn’t move. I didn’t go back for forty-five years. The Lord told me not to go back until my forty-fifth Stanford reunion. He finally released me to go back to Stanford three years ago. I just loved it. It was a magical healing time. Everyone was so happy to see me, and I was such a huge celebrity. The week before the reunion, the San Jose Mercury, which is the newspaper that everyone reads at Stanford and in Silicon Valley, released a huge newspaper article about me. It was a long article with tons of pictures of me.” “At the big reunion party at the Old Stanford Union at night, people were lined up to get their pictures taken with me. Everyone knew about The Disappearing Quarterback. Everyone was so nice. They never asked me why I never came back. Because I didn’t know why the Lord never wanted me to go back. They were just glad to see me. The reunion party was absolutely incredible. A friend of mine named Butch never left Stanford and lives half a mile from campus. He told me that Craig McCaw, who’s one of the richest men in the world and who is one of our classmates and a friend of his, spent five hundred thousand dollars of his own money on the party to honor our class, the class of seventy-three. Wow, I’ve never seen anything like it before. Three bands, including the Stanford Band who played our football song “All Right Now” with the cheerleaders dancing with pompoms. Professional actors doing comedy skits. Full bar, waiters and waitresses dressed in tuxedos walking around with trays of champagne. Plates of Beluga caviar and appetizers carried around by waiters.” “On Craig’s sixtieth birthday, he flew Butch and his wife to Istanbul, Turkey where Craig’s helicopter picked them up and flew them to Craig’s two hundred and fifty foot yacht with helicopter landing pad to spend a week with Craig and his wife to celebrate his birthday. Craig invented a satellite phone system and sold it for sixteen billion dollars and now is the owner of Nextel. Since I was the celebrity at the party, Butch asked me if I would go thank Craig on behalf of our class for this magnificent party, which truly made us feel like we were movie stars. At first, I was reluctant because I didn’t know him, but then I thought why not? Maybe I can get Annie and me on his list for his seventieth birthday party off the coast of the South of France where he keeps his yacht.” “I wrote a small speech and went up to Craig. There was a crowd of people shaking his hand. Finally after everyone left I went up to Craig, held out my hand, and said, ‘Hi Craig, my name is Mike Boryla.’ As soon as I said my name, he got this big smile on his face and screamed ‘Mike Boryla!’ He threw his arm around my shoulder and he said, ‘Mike, I’m Craig your football equipment manager for two years.’ I was so stunned I literally couldn’t talk. I was completely and totally speechless. I was shocked. After a few seconds, he said ‘Ah you don’t remember me.’ And then he said, ‘That’s okay. You were the original nice guy.’ I had never heard the phrase the ‘original nice guy’ before. As soon as I heard it, I remembered Craig. We had these two big first-round draft pick defensive linemen on that team. They were mean guys. That’s why they are defensive linemen. And they were picking on Craig and I saw it. But I couldn’t go up to them and tell them to knock it off. They were scary guys. They would probably knock my head off if I did. So I decided to be as nice as possible to Craig. I would ask him about what classes he was taking, how were his grades. And he remembered it. He talked to me for five minutes. The whole time he had this big smile on his face and his arm around me.” “Today I tell young people that whenever you go off to college, be nice to people. You never know what they are going to accomplish.”