The Week of USAs: July 3, 2023

Photo of Old Hayward Field and ‘Reimagined’ Hayward, both taken by Howard Lao. Part of Flash Gallery 2021

The Eugene Thing

Words by Jeff Merrill

Mickey Mantle, the precocious son of a zinc miner from Commerce, Oklahoma ‘steps to the plate’. The term is used ubiquitously in baseball as is ‘toeing the line’ in track. The phrases elicit eye rolls and excitement simultaneously for the overuse as well as the nostalgic weight of the words put together in that order and said in a certain low-toned anticipatory way. There aren’t adequate substitutes.

Mantle has become the archetype for the small-town kid who goes to the big city to become a star. A trope that predates his personal story and will remain relevant for as long as one-horse, single stoplight towns exist even if only in the fabric of the American imagination. The switch-hitting rube was scouted and plucked by the Yankees and dropped into the center of the universe to headline the line-up for the most famous franchise in sports.

That’s how the legend usually goes, a small-town kid migrating eagerly or with trepidation toward the bright lights to become a star. It’s a story of individual achievement and overcoming odds. Hollywood and Bill Murray love a Cinderella story. But what about the town?

Bill Bowerman rallied people in his community around the college track team he coached. People of Eugene supported in different ways, from officiating meets to hiring athletes to local jobs to supplying lumber to build grandstands. It was almost a civic duty. It was a shared experience- something we all seek, and something fueled by determined individuals that built on each other’s legacies and inspired generations.

The population of Eugene in 1948, the year Bowerman took over as head track coach was less than 35,000. That was 3 years before the birth of Steve Prefontaine. It would be 14 years until Oregon’s first NCAA team title under the legendary coach and 21 years before Pre stepped on campus as a college freshman. Any legend that existed around the athletic programs or the region in general aside from stories of the Oregon Trail likely did not travel much further than the edges of the Willamette Valley.

Stories, 75 years later known the world over now border on myth and make the man and accompanying individuals appear larger than life, but the stories came from real seeds, and this TrackTown thing didn’t just spring overnight from a glistening marketing strategy as much as some might lead you to believe. As powerful as the shoe company that spawned from the culture has become, Nike is a product of the thing, the thing is not a product of Nike. Phil Knight was a soft-spoken, bespeckled middle of the pack athlete inspired by his inventive and gregarious track coach and the environment in which he inhabited to create the world’s most successful sporting goods company. Bill Bowerman was inspired by his coach, Bill Hayward. It is difficult to distill the impact of each of these individuals, had they not influenced each other and built on each other’s work as well as the work of the community at large. Without Pre or Phil Knight, there might simply be stories and a plaque in a trophy case paying homage to Bowerman, the successful track coach of a bygone era who coached Olympians. Those plaques in trophy cases exist in cities and towns across the country. My grandpa tells the story of a 6 foot 5 walnut farmer from the California central valley that won Olympic gold in the javelin. The thing that Pre’s teammates said about him gathered around at The Pad, the unassuming watering hole where he once tended bar, on the 40th anniversary of his death was that he was, a guy, a friend of theirs, and that, as much as the extraordinary things he did is important to remember. Many people who don’t have shoes or buildings named after them rolled Eugene forward. The grand story of it all only written after. Rarely do people know at the time the impact of the things they devote themselves to. The story told by someone else about what you were doing may not fully encapsulate what actually happened, and likely doesn’t show all the footprints. We can only hold onto a few names in our minds for stories that get older and older, and new ones come to take their place. That tends to lead us to idolize a few when it took many to lift those few in the first place.

What happened in Eugene happened over generations and can happen again. It is happening all the time in communities all over. Most places outside of Commerce, Oklahoma aren’t starting from scratch, they’ve got stories, legends and frameworks of their own to build on. If you’re reading this, you’re probably doing a lot of the work (Hey there, friend, keep going!). The work provides the opportunity for a spark to ignite a larger flame that catches and holds. There are legends in every town and more to grow.

This kind of environment is not built solely by leading. Supporting what others do in your community is key. Some would argue that mutual support is the key ingredient to a community. Showing up and working together. Many hands make light work, and for those who don’t want less work, it allows for the ability to push into new areas and make great new things happen. Magical things happen when people show up. Cities all over the country do it. Brooklyn to Pittsburgh to Atlanta, Memphis, Austin, Los Angeles. Portland. They could use your help.

Be generous, be welcoming, be collaborative, passionate, and creative. Lean into what makes your community unique and then welcome all to it.

It doesn’t matter if the event you put on is USA’s this year or ever. It doesn’t matter that what you do is not a Diamond League event. Doesn’t matter if the team you’re supporting or coaching isn’t full of pros. A single moment carries weight and sends ripples. Many of those moments sustained over time builds momentum and attachment and codifies a collective story. You can build around story. New generations still want to be part of Eugene and leave their mark. That comes with treating the thing with respect, holding it to a high standard and sharing it. The combination of dedication and passion is a compounding phenomenon.

You will get discouraged now and then, but don’t get so discouraged that you let it sink you. It’s hard to build a thing without fixating on the obstacles or looking to whatever might be its competitor and wishing energy away from it. But that’s a bitter outlook and a fragile spirit, and a fully defined idea of what the end result might be will only take away from the thing that it could be.

The plaque on Bill Hayward’s desk said: “Live everyday so that you can look a man in the eye and tell him to go straight to hell.” Let your actions do the talking and be kind.

It’s a whole lot easier to tear down than it is to build. We are not competitors in the exercise of shaping the sport.

And even in competition, as Scott Faubs said that Teddy Roosevelt said: comparison is the thief of joy.

Build and support.

It’s all in the name of the sport we love. In service to the communities of which we are a part. A society grows when old women and men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit, or on the wood board bleachers that those trees become. Bill Hayward will never sit in the sun-split pleather seats of the reimagined stadium that bears his name, but Bill Dellinger has, and so have people from around the world.

There was no grand plan by powerful men from the beginning to establish a track mecca in the grass seed capital of the world 110 miles from the nearest international airport. It just happened. Over lifetimes. Regular people doing things small and big that stacked up to something extraordinary.

You can want USA’s to be somewhere else. That doesn’t make you a naysayer or truth-teller. The truth is that somewhere else probably needs work and people to do that work. You will not need to create an environment for a Fortune 500 company to grow from to have an impact…. but who the hell knows what might happen.

There is a statue of Mickey Mantle in Commerce, Oklahoma and baseball fans who travel to the town can tour the house that he grew up in. There are plans to restore it to the way it looked when the ‘Commerce Comet’ was a boy. There might be a wooden sign on the side of the highway driving into town that says something like: ‘Home of the great Mickey Mantle’. Folks from neighboring towns might sneer at it as they drive by, having heard all too much about it, but when they travel out of the region, they tell people they’re from near the place where the greatest switch-hitter of all time grew up. They say it in a performatively casual manner, as if it is nothing important, that their proximity to greatness is normal to them. The outward pride of the people of Commerce affords them this luxury.

The real magic of Eugene is not just that mercurial performances have occurred there for decades when athletes toe the line, it is that the magic is possible, and that it can happen anywhere.

Where are all the rockstar track cities?

Enjoy the races.

Championship racing is the real game and a gift to watch.