Mike Leach, R.I.P.
Sloan Bashinsky
From late 2000 through 2018, I mostly hung out in Key West and on Little Torch Key about 28 miles up US 1 from Mile Marker Zero in the self-proclaimed Conch Republic, which once seceded from America until the city officials realized they had seceded from FEMA and hurricane disaster relief.
During that time, I never heard anyone speak of Mike Leach. Prominent Key West men I ate lunch with many Fridays at Salute Ristorante on Higgs Beach, some were armchair college quarterbacks, never mentioned Mike Leach. After reading several fabulous articles and memorials about Mike sent to me by friends since his passing at age 61, I wondered if I had lived in an alternate reality?
It certainly appears Mike was a well known, respected and beloved member of Key West’s self-proclaimed ONE HUMAN FAMILY - if you weren’t homeless, which I was many moons in Key West before I inherited some money. After going through that windfall, I spent many more moons homeless in Key West, until more money came my way from my father’s estate.
A self-made man, Mike indeed was. Not me. Yet homeless, or not, I attended and spoke from out of the box, or from an alternate reality, at hundreds of city and county commission meetings. I ran for mayor of Key West six times, county commission three times, and school board once, and splendidly succeeded in never coming remotely close to winning. I published thousands of against the common grain pages on my blogs, goodmorningkeywest.com, goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which died and went to somewhere, and afoolsworkneverends.blogspolt.com, which mostly became dormant.
The second inheritance led to my visiting Tuscaloosa, Alabama a few times in 2017, and also Starkville, Mississippi, to see my older daughter and her husband. He was State’s Assistant Athletic Director (AD), after being its head baseball coach for many years. I was given a cowbell with my name on it, which I rang during an Egg Bowl (Mississippi State v. Mississippi) game in Starkville. I sometimes rang the cowbell when I watched Mississippi State football games in Jack Flats sports bar and grill on Duval Street in Key West.
In late 2018, I moved to Birmingham, Alabama, my hometown, which led to my making lots of trips to Starkville. I fell in love with the city, which still seemed to have its soul, which, I told some locals at the Starkville Cafe, Tuscaloosa had not managed to do. I ate quite a few meals at the cafe's communal table, behind which on a wall hung a sign saying, Danger Men Thinking.
By and by, Mississippi State’s AD and head football coach were hired by the University of Florida. My son-in-law became State’s AD and it fell on his shoulders to find State a new football coach. His first choice didn’t work out, but his second pick, Mike Leach, was a blue ribbon prize winner.
I learned of Mike's hiring via a text from my daughter in a bathing suit with the ocean in the background. They were in Key West and had hired Mike to coach the Mississippi State Bulldogs. Not long after that, I was in Starkville and attended a private party where I met Mike and his coaches. Our conversations were brief and would be my only interaction with any of them.
Now Mike is gone to regale and challenge God, angels, heaven and other departed souls allowed in there. While 80-year-old loser by capitalism standards me wonders why the Lord has not taken me already? I told my daughter, if I get as sick as Mike got, then she lets that be publicly known. She knows I have executed a living will- if my doctors think I’m a goner, they pull the plug. No heroic attempt to keep me alive.
I relish the thought of a sudden departure and cheating the medical profession, hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities out of my father’s money, which can be used for something more important. Perhaps law school graduate Mike Leach also chuckles over my making everything I have payable on death to people I love, which snatches lawyers' cherished windfall$ out of the jaws of victory. I smile knowing the mortuary will get paid only for burning my body into ashes, to be spread where my last will and testament directs - a beautiful city park in Birmingham.
As for Mike …
I heard on the grapevine that Mike had a heart murmur for a very long time. I read online that Mike contracted pneumonia this fall and had not shaken it by the time of this year’s Egg Bowl, played in Oxford Mississippi on a cold, wet Thanksgiving night. I heard on the grapevine that Mike suffered two strokes at home, followed by a massive heart attack, which deprived his brain of oxygen for too long. There was nothing the doctors could do to bring him back.
I contracted a respiratory infection a little over two weeks ago. The coughing quickly became rough. I tested negative for covid at a walk-in clinic and asked for an antibiotic prescription, because I was historically prone to colds and flus going into pneumonia. I laid low for a week, and took it very easy for another week, and I’m still not over it.
I can’t imagine what it was like for Mike. His coaches, team and the Mississippi State community needed him. He gave them everything he had. Now, he’s in heaven. Is that a good thing? I don't know. I know his wife and children and his coaches and players and his many friends miss him terribly.
College football is really important in the South, and elsewhere. But it is not the most important thing. Not even close.
Sloan Bashinsky
16 December 2022
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