Finding Perspective

Winning or losing finds its proper perspective when tragedy strikes on Opening Day. The Reds lost to Arizona 4-2, on a day that UK Head Basketball Coach Billy Gillispie called "one of the saddest days of his life", for reasons that had nothing to do with the scoreboard.

The equipment manager for the UK Basketball Team, Bill Keightley, was on a trip to Great American Ballpark to watch his favorite team. His biography on the Wildcats website bills the 81-year-old as an "avid" Reds fan. But yesterday Keightley suffered a fall. Evidently he started bleeding internally from an undiagnosed tumor on his spine. The same guy who made sure guys like Dan Issel, Jack Givens, Kenny Walker, Rex Chapman and Ron Mercer had all the equipment they needed...died at University Hospital last night. On a day that was supposed to be so much fun, Coach Gillispie drove up to Cincinnati to say goodbye to a man he called one of his best friends.

I can't even imagine dedicating my life to a university, and to a particular job, like Keightley did. Nicknamed "Mr. Wildcat", Keightley had been on the sidelines for nearly fifty years, dating back to the Adolph Rupp years in Lexington. Through National Championships, and leaner years, you could always see the guy in the blue sportcoat with the gray hair, sitting in the first seat on the bench. The stories he had would have made for fantastic conversations over a beer or two.