Games became sanctuary for grieving coach

ATHENS , Greece - It is about them, Mike Candrea forever said. The kids, the players, the young women in his life who pitched, hit and fielded a softball like no team ever had.

The female Yankees. The real Dream Team. The most overwhelming athletes this country has sent to the Summer Games since Michael, Magic and Bird hit Barcelona.

Yeah, it is about them. Always about them.

So when Lisa Fernandez hurled her glove in the air, Jesse Orosco high, and her teammates raced in to form a delirious gold-medal pile, Candrea held back. He embraced his assistants. He gave his players their space, their stage, their time to bask in a fading Athenian sun.

``His enjoyment is watching us,'' said Leah O'Brien-Amico.

But Candrea wasn't getting away that easily on this day, the greatest day in the history of women's softball. The United States had just secured its 79th straight victory and its third straight Olympic gold medal, beating Australia, 5-1, in the only U.S. game the entire tournament that saw a non-American player cross home plate.

The women pulled Candrea into their scrum of hugging, kissing and crying. They lifted him on their shoulders, and gave him a ride that he called ``the greatest moment of my life.''

He was recovering from the worst moment of his life and, for once, the players had to make it about him. They wouldn't take no for an answer, not after his wife of 28 years didn't make the trip.

The Candreas were supposed to celebrate their wedding anniversary and then go for the gold. The Americans took first place without Sue Candrea to see it, and they would've gladly taken last if it meant having her around for a dose of perspective, not to mention a good laugh.

``I had a dream last night,'' Mike Candrea would say, before adding that he doesn't often have dreams.

``Sue walked in the room and told me to chill out. That was Sue.''

That was Sue until the day she collapsed last month in the Stevens Point, Wis., airport, where she was preparing to fly with her husband's team to an exhibition game in Connecticut. Sue had given up her accounting job to take the long, blissful road to Athens. A brain aneurysm killed her instead, hitting Mike, he said, ``like a bolt of lightning out of the sky.''The game became his sanctuary, his place to hide from the pain. He spent Monday's game rubbing his wedding ring and the card in his back pocket, the one with a picture of Sue and the words, ``Team USA gold. I can fly higher than an eagle, because you're the wind beneath my wings.''

Candrea handed it out to his players, who were already proud to wear their ``SC'' decals. But the coach pleaded with his kids to win for themselves and their country, not for a widowed man with two grown children. He didn't want to be a distraction. He didn't want to be anyone's cause.

But human nature is human nature. Lisa Fernandez, the pitcher Candrea called ``our Tiger Woods,'' said she prayed to God that she'd play the game of her life to promote her coach's healing. ``This was the only way that I felt like I could help him get through it,'' said Fernandez, choking back the tears in a news conference while Candrea buried his face in his hands and cried right beside her. ``To at least bring home a gold for him and his wife.''

O'Brien-Amico, who played for Candrea at Arizona, said she ``spent the whole sixth and seventh innings with tears in my eyes.'' Crystl Bustos smacked two home runs and talked of her entire team playing inspired, a truth never more evident than in the third inning, when Bustos busted a homer that nearly landed on the hills carrying patriot missile launching pads a country mile beyond the outfield wall.

``This team is the best ever,'' Fernandez said.

Only that wasn't on the pitcher's mind when the flag was raised and the anthem was played on the stadium speakers. Olympic coaches aren't awarded medals, and as Fernandez looked toward the dugout and found Candrea, she realized that tradition never seemed more absurd.

``I wished I could've switched places with him,'' Fernandez said, her voice quaking one more time, ``because he truly deserved to be on that podium.''

Candrea would've never taken that stand. It was too precious watching his kids, his players, duck their heads forward in acceptance of their gold medals.

``Today proved to me how very special they are,'' he said.

They were in a league of their own.

The coach said his players gave him courage, gave him a reason to go on. Candrea talked of feeling like a proud father. The players, he said, taught him as much as he taught them. ``I didn't want them to feel like they had to look over me,'' Candrea said.

But look after him they did. Candrea had lost his father a couple of years back, and his marriage to Sue practically started with the loss of their two-week-old child. The sudden loss of his wife was the hardest hit of all.

``You don't realize how special the game is,'' Candrea said. ``As coaches, sometimes you're driven to win, but your wife puts things in perspective. One time I came home after finishing second in the College World Series, and I was very upset. Sue said, `Mike, I want you to do me a favor. Walk around the neighborhood and knock on everyone's door and ask them if they really care what happened to you.' ``

Candrea hasn't knocked on a single door yet, but so many people care so much about what happened to him. Taeko Utsugi, coach of Japan's bronze medalists, ``broke my heart,'' Candrea said. ``She came in and said she wanted to send me flowers, and she hands me money, which I did not want to take. But the most important thing was the hug that she gave me, and there was no language barrier there.''

Pain is a language all its own.

Candrea said he would rise today thinking about 2008, before heading home and meeting with his Arizona Wildcats on Monday, getting them ready to play for a seventh national title.

He'll make it about the players, of course, because that's the way it has to be. But Candrea should always savor this day, this exception, this ride of a lifetime with the greatest softball team there ever was.

Even Sue wouldn't tell him to chill out about that.