When the Game Stands Tall, Special Movie Edition

by Neil Hayes

  “They are so good at halftime adjustments that as a coach you have to have something for the second half that they didn’t see in the first half,” Milo said. “You have to do something different.”

  Pittsburg’s new offense, which was quickly dubbed “Pirate,” was only half the equation, however. The Pirates had to keep the game close for it to work. They not only had to stop the veer, but pre-season All-American receiver Amani Toomer, who would go on to star at the University of Michigan and for the NFL’s New York Giants.

  Toomer had the speed and athleticism that made it obvious he was destined to eventually play in the NFL. He was in his third year as a varsity starter and was being recruited by virtually every major college. At six-foot-two, 180 pounds, he was the fastest man on the field and equally dangerous as a receiver and kick returner.

  He was the best athlete to ever come through the school, such a force that Ladouceur predicted he would be a major college star as a sophomore. His game-breaking ability prompted Ladouceur to incorporate the passing game into his offense more than ever before.

  “Defenses were so focused on Amani that sometimes there wasn’t a cornerback or even a weak-side safety on my side,” said Tyler Scott, who lined up opposite Toomer during his senior year.

  The Pirates wore their black jerseys with orange numbers and black helmets with an orange “P” on the side. They went through their pre-game drills under threatening skies on a damp, chilly late afternoon in Oakland. They were convinced they could win, their confidence bolstered by the new offense.

  The Spartans wore white and performed their pregame routine as if this game was more of an obligation than an opportunity.

  “We went into that game hoping we’d win and not confident we would win, and that’s very unlike De La Salle,” Ladouceur recalls.

  Pittsburg scored first, on a 25-yard reverse to lightning-quick Eric Alston. It was the first time De La Salle had trailed all season.

  The De La Salle offense featured two prototypical veer backs in senior Damian Vallis and junior Patrick Walsh. They both were compact, strong, quick runners who were perfectly suited for the offense.

  De La Salle tied the score early in the second quarter when junior quarterback Alli Abrew sprinted to his right and threw back to Walsh running down the left sideline. Walsh had hesitated for a moment, pretending to block, losing himself in the scrum near the line, before releasing into the pattern.

  Ladouceur installed the play earlier in the week and it worked just like he had drawn it up. Walsh caught the ball on the Pittsburg 35-yard line and outran the secondary to the end zone.

  The score was 21-all at the break, which meant that the Pirates had accomplished their first goal. They kept the game close.

  Now they could unleash “Pirate” in the third quarter.

  “They were tired but I had never seen a team more alert at halftime,” Pardi says. “They were so into it. They were ready to go back on the field. They couldn’t wait for the second half.”

  The Spartans’ body language told a tale of impending defeat. It was as if they couldn’t wait for the game to be over. They trudged back to the huddle with slumped shoulders and an almost robotic glaze in their eyes. Nobody can explain the Spartans’ lack of enthusiasm that night, even all these years later.

  “We had a horrible meeting the night before,” Abrew recalls. “People wouldn’t say anything. Nobody was committing. Lad wanted to hear the seniors, and those guys weren’t talking. It was silent.”

  Pittsburg players, meanwhile, were bursting with energy.

  Pittsburg unveiled “Pirate” early in the third quarter. The offense lined up in its usual split-back formation with three receivers on the left. Then running back Derrick Huffman went into motion and lined up as a receiver on the far right. Fellow running back Percy McGee slid over behind Chris Shipe.

  The confusion was immediate. De La Salle players were pointing and shouting. After two plays, Eidson called a time-out.

  “I could see there was concern over there,” Pardi said of the De La Salle sideline. “It was kind of a stunned look. They were back on their heels and the excitement was building on our sideline.”

  “They didn’t know what to do,” Huffman said. “As disciplined and well-coached as that team was they were very, very confused.”

  This game has been elevated to mythical proportions in Pittsburg, where the details become more blurred with every retelling. One common misconception is that the “Pirate” formation allowed the Pittsburg offense to roll over the Spartans’ defense in the second half.

  Not true. Eidson did an excellent job of getting players in the proper positions during the time-out. The mismatches that Aliotti and Pardi had hoped would result in receivers running free up the seam never materialized. There were no game-breaking plays, no passes to wide-open receivers streaking down the sideline.

  The “Pirate” formation wasn’t a turbocharged version of Pittsburg’s already potent attack. What it did was allow Pittsburg to put together a methodical 82-yard drive that gave it a 28–21 lead midway through the third quarter and milked 6:24 off the clock.

  “They surprised us,” Ladouceur said. “It was nothing fancy but it forced us to spread out the second-level guys, and when we did that we were vulnerable to the trap. We couldn’t take everybody off the field to make an adjustment, and you can’t do it during a time-out.”

  There was still a lot of football to be played, and it wasn’t as if De La Salle had been unable to move the ball. Not only were Walsh and Damian Vallis picking up steady yards on the ground, but Ladouceur identified a weakness in the Pirates’ defense and began exploiting it. Their stunting, five-man defensive front was vulnerable to play-action passes over the middle, especially on first and second down. Tight end Andrew Freeman already had caught passes for 12 and 17 yards when he was hauled down from behind after a 47-yard gain as the third quarter expired.

  Another Freeman reception set up Walsh’s 2-yard TD run. The extra point sailed wide left. With 9:35 remaining in the fourth quarter, the Spartans trailed 28–27.

  Percy McGee played defense only sparingly during his senior year because of nagging back and ankle injuries. Haflich knew he had to contain Andrew Freeman if Pittsburg were to cling to its lead. He grabbed McGee on the sideline.

  “I told him he had to stop the tight end over the middle,” Haflich said. “He had to make sure that guy didn’t get open. I needed somebody to make a play. That’s why I picked Percy McGee.”

  The Spartans were driving for the potential game-winning field goal or touchdown late in the fourth quarter when Abrew rolled to his left after an early snap led to confusion along both lines.

  Abrew was waiting for the whistle. He didn’t know if the play was live or if an illegal motion penalty would be called when he made an awkward fake to Vallis. On the De La Salle sideline, Ladouceur could see the play falling apart.

  “Don’t throw the ball!” he shouted. “Don’t throw the ball!”

  A Pittsburg defender was closing quickly on Abrew when he spotted Freeman. McGee stepped in front of him and made the interception at the 21-yard line. Abrew threw himself at McGee but couldn’t make the tackle. Walsh missed him, too.

  “I can still feel his legs ripping out of my arms,” Walsh says.

  McGee returned the interception 79 yards, prompting a big pileup in the end zone as Pirates’ players jumped on one another in celebration. The Pittsburg sideline was in hysterics. De La Salle players lay where they had fallen, exhausted.

  “As soon as I scored I knew we had won the game,” McGee said.

  A celebration that would last for several months, with parades and community dinners in the team’s honor, spilled onto the field when the game ended. Long-time Pitt athletic director Al Bonnano kissed Pardi’s bearded cheek when the clock finally expired. Pittsburg players celebrated while De La Salle players wandered around the field dazed and disbelieving.

  Ladouceur took an emotional inventory when he f
inally got to the locker room. Many of his players were in tears. He remembers thinking that it was more emotion than he had seen out of his seniors all season. Juniors Abrew and Walsh seemed to be taking it hardest.

  Ladouceur’s program is based on the belief that if you do everything precisely right, if you make a commitment to your coaches and teammates and sweat through all the grueling workouts, if you bond with your teammates and play for them and not for yourself, winning just happens. But in the end the byproduct isn’t as important as what you learned about yourself along the way.

  They knew that the celebrating Pittsburg players had attended to the details better than they had. The Pirates had out–De La Salled De La Salle. They had been a tighter, more disciplined group that played as a team while De La Salle relied too much on Toomer.

  They hadn’t bonded the way previous Spartans teams had. Deep down they knew why they had lost, and the truth stung.

  “I can look back now and say it was just a high school football game,” Abrew says. “But that’s why we win. We win because we all know it’s about much more than just a high school football game.”

  Ladouceur told them that sometimes you can do all the right things and still lose a football game.

  Tyler Scott raised his head and looked into Ladouceur’s eyes when he heard those words. You don’t mean that, he thought to himself.

  20

  HOMECOMING

  Rusty boxcars rattle down the track beyond the vine-covered fence that separates the Pittsburg High School practice field from the railroad siding. Electrical poles lean over the tracks.

  The steel mill and chemical plant that have employed generations of football players dominate the horizon, a reminder of what the future holds for young men in this blue-collar town.

  A rusty backstop stands silent vigil over a neglected baseball diamond. A dirt pile sits on the edge of the parking lot, a remnant of a long-forgotten improvement project.

  Potato chip bags cartwheel across the practice field, more visual reminders of the difference between a public high school in a tough town and a private high school in the white-collar suburbs.

  A baby-faced youth pushes a baby stroller across the rutted ground as first-year Pittsburg High football coach Vic Galli arrives wearing sweats and a golf shirt. Being from Pittsburg carries a special connotation, an attitude that says: “Don’t mess with me. I’m from Pittsburg.” Vic Galli is Pittsburg to the core. His coal-black hair is slicked straight back and he wears a streetwise smirk.

  “I have a lot of pride in being from Pittsburg,” Galli says as he unlocks the sturdy padlock and pulls the thick silver chain that secures the door. “I’ll never live anywhere else.”

  Pittsburg is unique in a region filled with nondescript bedroom communities and sprawling suburbs. It is a town of nearly 60,000 that sits on the banks of the San Joaquin–Sacramento River Delta. It has remained insular despite the insurgence of commuters drawn by low-income housing, and defiantly proud despite blight and crime rates more often found in inner cities.

  This is one high school town where football has been king since before John Henry Johnson wore the orange and black, then went on to a future that included professional fame as a member of the San Francisco 49ers’ “Million Dollar Backfield.” This is a town where for generations the high school football coach has been considered keeper of the third most important job in town, behind the mayor and the police chief. If a player is talented enough, he might even be inducted into the Pittsburg High School Football Hall of Fame.

  “Football has always been the heart of Pittsburg and it still is,” says former Pirates coach Larry Rodriguez. “That’s this town’s glory. Players may not find glory anywhere else, but they can find it on the football field in front of the hometown fans on a Friday night.”

  For generations being from Pittsburg was synonymous with being Italian. But the city is now one of the most ethnically diverse communities in the entire East Bay. Many of the city’s most historic family surnames still end in a vowel, however. The Galli name reaches deep into Pittsburg’s high school football history.

  Vic Galli’s father and uncles played here. His great-uncle George Galli was a star for the Pirates before going on to play in the Rose Bowl for USC. George returned home, like most Pittsburg natives do, and coached the Pirates in the 1960s and ’70s. Another great-uncle, Charles, is the unofficial historian of Pirate football.

  Vic grew up longing to spend his Friday nights on the field inside Pirate Stadium but never realized his dream of wearing the black and orange. His mother was determined to send him to the last place he wanted to go—De La Salle.

  He didn’t want to attend the Catholic private school “over the hill” in Concord. He wanted to stay in Pittsburg with his friends. But he had attended a Catholic grammar school in Pittsburg and his mother insisted he continue his education at a parochial high school.

  She sat in the De La Salle principal’s office and cried when her son wasn’t admitted initially. Finally, the principal relented.

  Twenty years later Galli still has mixed feelings.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get to play here, but I still had all my friends here,” he says between spoonfuls of Cocoa Krispies in the coaches’ office. “I remember going to the Pittsburg games and wishing I could be out there playing with my friends, but you know something? I got to be on the foundation of one of the greatest stories of all time. I played for De La Salle’s first championship team and got to play for Coach Lad. I scored a touchdown on an interception at the Oakland Coliseum and they actually showed it on the news. It was a great experience. Now, as much as I love Pittsburg, I’m glad I went where I did. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.”

  He is a native of Pittsburg and a product of De La Salle. He always has been suspended somewhere in between. He still finds himself defending De La Salle to his Pittsburg friends and defending Pittsburg to his De La Salle friends.

  His two worlds are about to collide. The Spartans host Vic Galli’s 2002 Pittsburg Pirates on Friday night at Owen Owens Field.

  “People hate De La Salle and they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Galli says. “I don’t hate De La Salle. I don’t have anything bad to say about De La Salle, but people want me to say those things.”

  Every game against De La Salle is a big game if you’re the head coach at Pittsburg High. But this is more than that. No other school or community has been impacted by the Spartans’ rise to dominance as much as Pittsburg has, because no other community’s identity is as directly linked to the success of its only high school football program.

  The Pirates were a regional power before De La Salle came along. They ended De La Salle’s 34-game winning streak with a 35–27 victory in the 1991 North Coast Section championship game. The celebration lasted several months. In many ways, it has never stopped.

  The team bus took a victory lap around town that night, people waving and whistling and cheering wherever it went. Proclamations were presented, and various civic groups organized dinners in their honor. Congratulatory messages, telegrams, flowers, and even a banner flowed in from schools all over Northern California. For that one night, it seemed, Pittsburg represented every public school that had ever lost to De La Salle.

  It was a big win then and it gets bigger every year. They root for De La Salle in Pittsburg now. The town that ended the Spartans’ last streak doesn’t want the current streak to end. Every win that’s tacked onto The Streak makes what Pittsburg accomplished in 1991 more significant.

  It has become the program’s claim to fame, even if the Pirates have been outscored by the Spartans 430–89 in fifteen games since.

  “You find yourself hoping Poly doesn’t beat them and St. Louis doesn’t beat them because who would ever talk about Pitt?” said Pittsburg junior varsity coach Aaron Alatorre, a wide receiver on the 1991 team. “When someone else beats them, we’ll be forgotten.”

  In other ways that victory has turned into a cruel jo
ke. No one knew it at the time, but that game represented Pittsburg football at its absolute peak. De La Salle has built the nation’s longest winning streak in the eleven years since while competing against some of the most powerful teams in the nation in some of the biggest games in the history of high school athletics. The Pirates have been on a long, slow downhill slide since that night, but Galli is convinced the program is on the rise.

  The community’s commitment is evident by the transformation of the old girls’ gym into a football-only facility. It’s not much to look at now, with a hot-water heater sitting where the weight benches will eventually be and stepladders leaning against unfinished walls, but you can glimpse Galli’s vision for the future of Pirate football.

  Two-thirds of the old girls’ gym will be a state-of-the art weight room. The remaining third will serve as a team room for film review and study halls. The assistant coaches’ office is three times the size of the office at De La Salle. Galli’s office will eventually have a window overlooking the new weight room.

  “I’m getting letters in the mail from people I don’t even know on ways to beat them,” Galli says. “I don’t know if everybody gets those letters. Everybody is waiting for The Streak to end.”

  Galli is trying to take what Ladouceur taught him and apply it to his family’s legacy. It will take time and there will be challenges, no question. These kids aren’t De La Salle kids, most of whom come from well-to-do families who have the time to devote to year-round football training.

  Many of Galli’s players come from single-family homes and have more pressing concerns than football, like working in order to make enough money to feed themselves, or babysitting a brother or sister until their mother gets home from work.

  “They’re not dealing with all the same issues we’re dealing with here,” Galli says of his former school. “They have kids with family problems over there, too, but they’re isolated issues. We have massive issues.”