8701150400
DETROIT FREE PRESS
870327
Friday, March 27, 1987
METRO FINAL CHASER
1D
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1987, Detroit Free Press
THE PITINOS' QUIET TRAGEDY HAS PASSED HUMAN INTEREST
NEW ORLEANS -- Fifty million viewers. Five hundred reporters. One tragic
story. No way you win with odds like that. They'll come after Rick Pitino like
flies to food.
Pitino is a sort of hero this week, a handsome, 34-year-old coach in his
first visit to college basketball's Final Four. But he didn't bargain for the
attention. Not this kind. Until the state troopers stopped his team bus on a
highway a few weeks ago, everything had been great, super, his Providence
Friars had just finished the Big East tournament and were about to be invited
to the NCAA tournament and were headed home to a party.
Then the bus halted and the doors opened and Pitino and his wife, Joanne,
learned the horrible news: their infant son, Daniel, who had been sickly since
birth, had died earlier that day. And it was fitting that their ride to the
hospital was in a speeding patrol car, lights flashing, because there has been
little time for quiet grief since.
Nearly three weeks have passed. The thump of the basketball has grown
louder with each Providence victory, and so has the bubble in which it echoes.
Now the Friars are center stage in the Final Four, and the whole country
wants to know Pitino's sad story.
We call it human interest, human drama, a dimension that thickens the man
we see on TV, gives him flesh, feelings, makes us care. No story like a
heartbreaking story. So we ask how Pitino is coping, and how his wife -- who
sits quietly in the stands and waves after each win -- is holding up. What do
the players think? What is the mood? This we want to know.
So much kindness
And yet your throat tightens when you ask. For there are two losses at
work here. The loss of a child, and the loss of the privilege to mourn in
private. Thousands of well-wishers have sent cards and letters to the Pitinos,
and that is kind. Yet anyone who ever has gone through something like this
knows reminders are always bittersweet, however well-intentioned.
"They're all so touching," Pitino told a reporter Wednesday, "but you cry
2,000 times with every letter.
"It's been very hard. It's been especially tough for my wife. For 5 1/2
months she drove back and forth to Boston trying to nurse the baby back to
health . . . It's just really, really sad . . .
"When this is all over, it's something I will have to live with. . . . It's
a cross we'll have to bear. But it has nothing to do with the present time."
And while that last statement is more brave than true, the Providence
circle is out to stick by it. Athletic director Lou Lamoriello, who reportedly
broke the news in the patrol car that awful day, doesn't even want to
acknowledge the memory now. "Let's just leave it alone," he said Thursday.
"We've agreed none of us will comment.
"It's a private thing. No matter how much attention it gets, the grief
still belongs to the family. It's always with the family. If you have
children, you understand this. . . .
"You answer one question, it leads to another. If you give one detail you
are asked for another one. I know this is a human interest story now. But if
it wasn't for basketball, it wouldn't be a human interest story. It would just
be a tragedy."
And he is correct.
Courage at its finest
It is a modern invention, this national sports media business, full-time
cable TV, headlines coast to coast. Fifty years ago, coaches didn't worry
about the whole country knowing their private sorrows. But that was then.
So Providence kept its practice a secret Thursday, and Pitino was
unavailable to almost all of the press. Yet when he walked through the
Marriott hotel there were the inevitable stares, the occasional words, mixed
with admiration and sympathy, and wherever he goes it is the same now.
No story like a heartbreaking story. A coach can work his whole life to
reach something like the Final Four. And yet, Pitino's little band could win
this crazy tournament and he'd be weeping afterwards and you would never know
what for, sadness or joy?
There is a picture in the Providence media guide of the Pitinos and their
other children -- three boys, ages 7, 6, and 3. But the paragraph above the
picture, written months ago, reads: "Rick and his wife and their four
children live in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. . . . " How sad. How real. The
world doesn't stop for baskets or printing deadlines. No matter how big.
"What does all this mean now?" someone asked Joanne Pitino last Saturday,
after Providence's victory over Georgetown put the school into the Final Four
for only the second time ever.
"It's a distraction," she said blankly.
Yes. A distraction. On a nationwide stage. Sometime on Saturday the TV
announcers will mention this week's heartbreaking story, and they will speak
in quiet tones, and the cameras will focus in on Rick Pitino as we shake our
heads and marvel at the courage it takes to endure in front of 50 million
viewers.
We have no idea.
RICK PITINO;DEATH;INFANT;REACTION;COLUMN;BASKETBALL