Mike Krzyzewski had something on his mind last summer, something more important than basketball.
He called his family together in the living room. He cleared his throat.
And he started singing.
Lemme hear ya! A one, a two, a three . . .
He had been asked to perform “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field, shrine to the heroes of his childhood on the Northwest Side. For two weeks before his appearance, the Duke coach serenaded his wife, daughters and Labrador retrievers.
“He’d say, `Tell me how this sounds. Does this sound right?’ ” Krzyzewski’s wife, Mickie, recalled. “He watched tapes of Harry Caray singing it. He wanted to get it just right.
“It was the biggest event in his life in the last 10 years.”
Krzyzewski’s love for his hometown is legend around Durham, N.C., where his actual home is situated on 11 1/2 acres of prime land next to the Duke Forest.
“He’s so proud of being from Chicago,” former Duke point guard Steve Wojciechowski said. “Everything that’s who he is was shaped in the city. I’d say his love for Chicago is second only to his love for Duke.”
Chicago seemed far from Krzyzewski’s thoughts last week as he guided top-ranked Duke to the Final Four for the eighth time in his career. But he beamed when someone asked him about his Wrigley Field warble.
“I found out that the organist is Polish,” Krzyzewski, 52, said, his smile stretching from one elongated ear to the other. “I said, `I wonder if he can play it like a polka?’
“I absolutely loved doing that. It was truly an honor. I felt like a kid.”
The Cubs invited dozens of celebrities to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” last year. It’s difficult to believe any spent as much preparation time as did Krzyzewski, who approached the task with the same purpose and passion he devotes to preparing for a showdown against North Carolina.
Purpose and passion: It’s a potent mix. It drove Krzyzewski to the pinnacle of his profession. Then it nearly wrecked him.
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As Duke rolled through this season, annihilating its opponents by frightening scores, it seemed inevitable that the Blue Devils would return to the Final Four after a five-year absence–inevitable to everyone but Krzyzewski. Four years ago Krzyzewski didn’t know if he would ever coach again.
In April 1994 he led Duke to its seventh Final Four in nine years, a run of success known only to a fellow named Wooden. But six months later Krzyzewski experienced something close to a physical and emotional meltdown.
The physical problems began with preseason surgery to repair a herniated disc. Krzyzewski’s doctors told him he needed weeks to recuperate. But two days after he left the hospital, he called a staff meeting at his house, and a week later he was back at practice.
This did not come as a great shock to anyone who knew the hard-working family that had dwelled in a humble two-flat at Cortez and Damen. Krzyzewski’s father, William Sr., had been an elevator operator in a Loop office tower, while his mother, Emily, scrubbed floors in another building.
“In our family, we always worked,” said Mike’s brother, Bill Krzyzewski Jr., 56. “Even when he was a kid, he was always the guy that organized all the baseball teams in the neighborhood. He was the guy in charge. People always followed his lead.”
That was also true in the Army, where Krzyzewski rose to captain.
But in the 1994-95 season, Krzyzewski put leadership ahead of his health and his family. The Blue Devils won nine of their first 12 games, a promising start. But Krzyzewski had grown distant to Mickie and distracted in the eyes of their three daughters, Debbie, now 28, Lindy, 21, and Jamie, 17. And he was in almost constant pain because he’d rushed his recovery.
One day in January 1995 Mickie told him she had made a doctor’s appointment for him. Krzyzewski shook his head and said he was going to practice.
Mickie responded with a basketball-or-us ultimatum. It penetrated the walls that Krzyzewski had built around himself.
He saw the doctor. The diagnosis: fatigue.
Krzyzewski was immediately hospitalized and subjected to further tests. For a while he feared the same fate as his friend Jim Valvano, the former North Carolina State coach who died of cancer in 1993. But all Krzyzewski needed was rest.
When he returned to work the next autumn, it became obvious that he was the motor that drove the Duke machine. The Blue Devils had gone 13-18 and finished last in the Atlantic Coast Conference in his absence. The year he returned they improved to 18-13, then 24-9. Last year’s team went 32-4 and made the regional finals. This year Duke is 36-1 and counting.
But soon after Krzyzewski resumed coaching, he received another shock: His mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Krzyzewski responded as he had after his back surgery, throwing himself into his work.
“I think he just didn’t want to acknowledge it, thinking it would go away,” said Bill Krzyzewski, a Chicago Fire Department captain. “I called him one time to see if he could come up and he said, `I’m really busy.’ I said, `I don’t care. She’s dying.’ “
Krzyzewski spent the last week of his mother’s life at her bedside. He was able to say some of the things he hadn’t been able to say to his father, who died of a heart attack while Krzyzewski was finishing his last year at West Point.
Krzyzewski’s mother was his main anchor to Chicago. No matter how far his basketball travels took him, he always knew where home was.
“Not only did he not let go of the neighborhood, they didn’t let go of him,” Mickie Krzyzewski said.
It has been 2 1/2 years since Emily Krzyzewski died, but her baby boy still mourns. Krzyzewski used to call his mom from the locker room after every game. Even after she died, he’d instinctively reach for the telephone before catching himself.
His mother must have looked forward to those calls. After she died, a notepad was found among her belongings. It contained a handwritten list of every game Krzyzewski had coached, starting with his Army debut in 1975.
Each line had the name of the opponent and the score, followed by a “W” or an “L.” She never told her son she was keeping tabs on him.
“When Mike found it, he just sat there and wept,” Mickie said.
A child may get used to losing a parent. But he never gets over it.
“Not having her, now I know what it’s like not to have somebody,” Krzyzewski recently told the Charlotte Observer. “For almost 50 years of my life, I had somebody who was always there. I know she loved me more than anything.”
Krzyzewski had always prided himself on his toughness, but the double blows of back surgery and the death of his mother forced him to re-evaluate his life. Like most successful major-college coaches, he’s a bit of a control freak. But he reluctantly relinquished some of the day-to-day details of running the program to his staff.
“I’ve allowed them to do their jobs better than I did four years ago,” Krzyzewski said.
But that doesn’t mean Krzyzewski has taken a hands-off approach.
He has increased his participation in recruiting, which had suffered when he spread himself too thin before the back surgery. Duke still signed blue-chips, but because Krzyzewski wasn’t spending as much time getting to know the recruits, there were some poor fits, such as the oft-tattooed Greg Newton.
Krzyzewski now spends as much time as the NCAA allows getting to know recruits and their families. Instead of casting a wide net, he targets a select few. That’s how he was able to assemble a team many say belongs among the best in NCAA history.
“It was a pretty mind-blowing experience for me,” said forward Shane Battier, a product of Birmingham, Mich. “Growing up, you see him on TV all the time. He’s Coach K. He has a video game named after him, and he wants you to play for him. You’re almost in awe of him.”
But Krzyzewski doesn’t want to be on a pedestal. He has been known to cry in front of his players. A press conference rarely passes without Krzyzewski blurting, “I love my team.” Krzyzewski doesn’t try to hammer his players into a predetermined system, preferring to coach by feel.
Though he played for Bob Knight at Army and coached under him at Indiana, he has adopted a much different approach to coaching.
“Kids want discipline,” said Wojciechowski, a Blue Devils radio analyst who is likely headed for Krzyzewski’s staff. “Kids want to be loved. And he loves them.”
Krzyzewski’s reordered priorities also meant more time with his family. He still puts in long hours. But before Duke opened the ACC tournament this month, Krzyzewski broke away from practice to watch Jamie play for Durham Academy in the state tournament.
His wife said that wouldn’t have happened four years ago, when the pressures of coaching nearly drove him out of the profession.
“If those changes hadn’t come about, I don’t think he’d still be coaching,” Mickie Krzyzewski said.
It’s hard to imagine Duke without Krzyzewski, who is 468-154 in 19 years at the school. But it’s not hard to imagine Krzyzewski without Duke. Mickie said he’ll never coach at another school, though he could be tempted by NBA offers, which he has resisted in the past. Krzyzewski also might want to pursue other interests, such as broadcasting.
For now, Krzyzewski has a short to-do list:
– Win his third national title.
– Have his left hip replaced April 5.
Krzyzewski is planning to attend only two events after his operation–the team’s senior dinner and Lindy’s graduation from Wake Forest.
No staff meetings the day after he comes home from the hospital.
“He’s approaching it with the knowledge that he isn’t bulletproof,” his wife said. “He didn’t have that knowledge before.”
But if the recovery goes smoothly, don’t be surprised if Krzyzewski participates in a third event–an encore performance of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at Wrigley Field this summer.
The thought of it might make Krzyzewski leap out of bed.
“What can I say?” Bill Krzyzewski said. “He’s a Chicago guy.”
