It’s not the first time Tom Walter has done right
I gotta be honest. I wasn't always a Tom Walter fan.
The former New Orleans Privateers coach had a team in 2007 that had a bunch of guys with a chip on their shoulder.
But they were good....T. J. Baxter and John Giovatella could play. They had good pitching. They could swing it. They had pop. But they also didn't have a lot of discipline and Walter just didn't seem like the type to reign that team in.
Yet, after they beat the Cajuns to win the 2007 Sun Belt Conference Tournament, I sent him a congratulatory email. Walter had always been gracious in our "In the other dugout" segment of baseball broadcasts and I wished him luck in the NCAA regionals. He responded with a thank you email.
The next year, UNO was good again, and got an at large bid to the NCAA Tournament after their runnerup finish in the Sun Belt Tournament in Lafayette. Again, I sent him a congratulatory email. Again, he responded with his thanks.
But in 2009, things looked bleak for the Privateers.
I was getting ready to take a road trip to East Carolina. I had a strange connection: New Orleans/Miami/Raleigh. That morning I spoke to Rob Broussard, then-UNO sports information director. The UNO student body had just voted down a student fee for athletics, putting the entire UNO department in jeopardy. As fate would have it, I would be on the same flight as the UNO baseball team, which was headed to South Florida for a conference series.
By the time I saw Walter, he was putting on a brave face. He said he thought there would be a chance that UNO athletics would survive past 2009. And, at the same time, he had to be honest with his players.
Instead of telling them to stay the course and that all was well, Walter shot straight. He told his team there were no guarantees. He released them all from their commitment to him and were free to make their own arrangments to transfer so their careers could continue. He went as far to say that he'd help them in the transfer process if that's what they needed.
His team cried that day. Then they went out and won their series that weekend. And, none of them left.
"Tom was always a straight shooter," Mike Waggenheim, former UNO play-by-play man told me. "And he was going to be honest with the guys and he was going to be there for him. The whole time I worked with him he was like that. He's one of the best human beings I've ever known."
I spoke with Walter on Bird's Eye View before the series between the Privateers and Cajuns. He talked about that meeting and the decision he made. He said simply that, for him, being a coach was about being a teacher and a mentor. He said he was willing to let all of his players leave because it would have been selfish to ask them to stay. He simply said that standing by them and putting them first was the right thing to do.
I interviewed Walter for our pregame show all three days of the season ending series. He was upbeat as always. But the Cajuns swept the series and eliminated UNO from the eight team field for the conference tournament. After game three he wished me and the Cajuns the best in the tournament.
Yesterday, Tom Walter once again put a player before himself.....in a much more powerful way.
And, somehow, I'm not surprised.
espn.com has the stories, below
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