This is an opinion column.
_____________________
JT Weisberg is the son of Birmingham-Southern baseball coach Jan Weisberg.
A junior outfielder on the team, JT’s appreciation for Birmingham-Southern College may run deeper than that of anyone in the school’s history. Birmingham-Southern is all JT Weisberg has ever known.
I don’t mean that figuratively either.
With his family’s physical residence located on campus, JT grew up at Birmingham-Southern College on Arkadelphia Road.
The Hilltop was and still is his home. The baseball field is his backyard. Father Jan Weisberg coached at Birmingham-Southern for the last 17 years of the school’s existence, meaning that the cocoon that was Birmingham-Southern College was the complete and utter essence of JT Weisberg’s development as a person.
Birmingham-Southern closed for good last Friday and the baseball team played its final Division III Baseball World Series game on Sunday here at Classic Park in Eastlake, Ohio. The Birmingham-Southern baseball story — the team without a school — captured national attention last week and shined a national spotlight on the school’s plight. It was JT Weisberg, the coach’s son, a campus kid, who gave me a perspective on his school’s history that will stay with me forever.
After growing up in Birmingham-Southern, after knowing Birmingham-Southern like family, after experiencing the pain of the last two years and the joy of the last three weeks, JT Weisberg gave a testimony that will stay with you forever.
The Birmingham-Southern baseball team was eliminated from the D-III Baseball World Series on Sunday by Wisconsin-Whitewater. The ending of the game couldn’t have been more heartbreaking. Wisconsin-Whitewater won 11-10 on a home run. The first pitch of the bottom of the ninth inning cleared the fence.
Birmingham-Southern College suffered a resounding defeat, but for JT Weisberg, it wasn’t about the outcome at the end of the game. It was about being with family and friends one more day.
“I think for most of us, when the game got close tonight, I wasn’t worried about winning or losing,” JT Weisberg said. “I just wanted one more night so I could hang out with everyone. And I think the journey we’ve had over the last three weeks has been better than winning a national championship for me.
“I mean, anyway, if we won everything, we’d still go back to campus the next day and we’d all have to move out and say goodbye to your friends. So, I would say it’s the relationships that last longer than anything we’ve won in this race, or anything we could win. And I hope what people learned from this is the power of righteous people coming together in love.
It was beautiful. That was the power of sport. This was baseball in its purest form. It was love for the sake of loving something one last time.
The Birmingham-Southern baseball team captured the hearts of the nation and gave its players and fans one last moment in the sun. The school is closed. The games are over. The love that radiated from Birmingham-Southern will endure and continue to help warm the world.
They came out like champions, and they were heroes of a school and its town.
In a poignant scene, the Birmingham-Southern baseball team and alumni of the baseball program raised their caps to fans before leaving the field, arm in arm and hand in hand.
They were together until the end.
Coach Jan Weisberg then led his men off the field and into history.
Former players included members of Weisberg’s first recruiting class. These are the players who took a chance at Birmingham-Southern when the school didn’t even have a team. Much of the curious history of Birmingham-Southern athletics is that the school competed in Division I from 2001 to 2007. Birmingham-Southern athletics’ most notable alumnus during this period is current Samford basketball coach Bucky McMillan.
For Birmingham South graduates like McMillan, this perspective is important to understand and has been missed by the national media that has covered the Birmingham South baseball team in recent days. In a move that will always remain controversial among alumni and former faculty members, Birmingham-Southern chose a different path in 2007.
In 2008, with the school’s transition to Division III and the addition of football, Birmingham-Southern did not have a baseball team. That’s when Weisberg took over the program and made it his own.
Weisberg reignited a fallen torch and eventually helped carry it to the school’s funeral pyre.
Having his former players at the World Series was a symbolic moment for the coach. They helped build a new foundation, and then they were there at the end, on their sport’s biggest stage.
It was a full circle event for Weisberg and his players and a metaphorical illustration of the influence collegiate athletics can have on a school of higher learning.
A question asked of Coach Weisberg after his final game made him pause and compose himself for 25 long seconds. I asked him what the final message would be for Birmingham-Southern. With his son at his side, Weisberg had already offered the world his personal response. Then, for the last time, he spoke on behalf of the school that helped him raise his family.
“What a beautiful place it is…it was,” Weisberg said, correcting himself mid-sentence then stopping to hold back tears.
“Shoot,” he said. “It’s the “it was” that attracts me.
“I know a lot of people are proud of their school, as they should be, and that there are a lot of great institutions out there. We’re no different than anyone else, but it’s one of the…the institution is such a beautiful place.
“Physically, it’s such a beautiful place. We had the best sunsets in the world. I’ve lived there for 17 years…but the message from Birmingham-Southern is that it has changed lives. It was a place where people arrived as young men and women and left as mature men and women. They moved from dependence to independence.
“I would like the message of this program to be that what this nation has seen over these last three weeks and the joy that we have brought is exactly what this program is about. It’s hardness. It’s the baseball championship. They are wonderful young men.
“And I love that Birmingham-Southern’s final chapter could have easily ended as the sun set, and few people outside of the graduates and even the Birmingham community would have known it, but now the nation does. knows there are some pretty special things that happened here.
BE HEARD
Do you have a question for Joe? Want to get something off your chest? Send Joe an email about what you think of the mailbag. Let your voice be heard. Ask him anything.
Joseph Goodman is the leading sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We want Bama: a season of hope and the creation of Nick Saban’s ultimate team.”