December 8, 2006
Le Moyne will miss Rockwell's class
by Bud Poliquin
Syracuse Post-Standard
columnist
Direct link to article: http://www.syracuse.com/poliquin/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/116557171852010.xml&coll=1
A fellow can accomplish an awful lot in 65 years, and Dick
Rockwell, whose resume could be used as a booster seat in a
barbershop, has.
Once, he was a catcher, and he's got the sometimes-rickety walk to prove it.
Then he became a baseball coach at a small, cold-weather college
in the dreary North and beat the likes of Arkansas and Arizona
State en route to nearly 800 wins. Then, he became an athletic
director at that school and watched the teams on his watch earn 20
NCAA Tournament berths and two national championships.
Catcher . . . coach . . . administrator. At each rung, Rockwell
moved people to . . . move.
The Boston Red Sox thought he was a good enough catcher to sign him out of Ithaca College and the Philadelphia Phillies agreed by later trading for him. Le Moyne thought he was a good enough coach to name its baseball field after him. The fine citizens of Omaha, Neb., where he used to oversee the College World Series, thought he was a good enough administrator to present him with the key to their city.
He has been inducted into four halls of fame. He shooed 34 of his players into professional baseball and watched one of them, Tom Browning, pitch a perfect game for the Cincinnati Reds. He oversees a staff there at Le Moyne that is made up of folks who'd happily affix Rockwell figurines to their dashboards.
Get the picture here? Dick Rockwell, who has announced his retirement effective in the spring, has done some things along the way, which is remarkable enough. But the style with which he's accomplished those things - the honest banter . . . the booted feet propped upon his office desk . . . the unapologetic mix of loyalty, toughness and mirth - has made him endearing. Enduring, too.
If it's true that one of the telltale signs of class is the ability to walk with kings while keeping the common touch, it can be indisputably submitted that Dick Rockwell, 40 years at Le Moyne, is a man of class . . . so long, that is, as those kings don't mind a bit of colorful language from time to time.
Today, of course, he is even more. He's a birthday boy. He's 65, born as he was on Dec. 8, 1941, in the happy burg of Sayre, Pa. And at least for the moment, that makes Rock a bit more special than usual, if indeed that's possible.
Bud Poliquin's "To The Point" observations, and his column, appear regularly in The Post-Standard. Telephone: 315-470-2213; e-mail: bpoliquin@syracuse.com .
