An Unlikely Hero

This was an incredible longshot. Longer than the '69 Mets. Longer than Jimmy Carter in '74. Longer than Bucky Dent.

Bill Roberts--the senior manager of the Harvard tennis team who had never played in a varsity match, hell, never even come close--had his dream come true Sunday when coach Dave Fish paired him with Andy Chaikovsky at third doubles during the season finale at Cornell.

Not only that, he won, fighting off seven match points and putting away an incredible overhead at four-all in a third-set tiebreaker to drive his teammates into a season-capping fit of delirium.

The match didn't mean a heckuva lot, really. Harvard had already won the team competition to secure a second-place league finish (behind Princeton) by the time Roberts and Chaikovsky took the court. By the time they left the court, though, the Crimson racquetmen were hugging and screaming as if they had just won the seventh game of the World Series.

"I really was pumped for it," Roberts said yesterday. "I'd been sitting on the sidelines for a while, and this was the shot. Winning it was even better than getting into medical school."

From the outset, though, we have to get a little conflict of interest out of the way. Bill Roberts is my roommate. For the better part of four years the two of us have watched from the sidelines as three other roommates, captain Kevin Shaw, two-man Andy Chaikovsky, and reserve Dick Arnos, have shared the Harvard tennis spotlight.

To his credit, though, Roberts has never stopped trying to get a little ink for himself, pleading time and time again over the years to put his name in the paper as the team's number one fan, or to quote him as manager. He became very familiar with the response, "Fat chance."

Not that he couldn't play the game. The number two player and captain at Westchester County's Hackley School--a minor tennis factory that has produced the likes of Dick Stockton and ex-Harvard star Danny Waldman--Roberts played on the '76 freshman team, probably the finest freshman team in Harvard history.

His career took a turn for the worse, though, when the frosh traveled to Andover one day and Roberts played poorly, losing a straight-setter to Kris Kinney. Kris, as in Kristin, as in female. As in nonstop razzing from the chauvinistic males on Harvard's tennis team (who ignored the fact that Kinney went on to become one of the top players in the East at Princeton).

Things went downhill from there, as Roberts barely weaseled his way into a couple J.V. matches sophomore year, then volunteered for the manager's spot as a junior. Not realizing his moderate ability, freshmen and sophomores coming on the team occasionally refused even to hit balls with him.

Hope sprung eternal for the ever-optimistic Roberts, though. He pestered coach Dave Fish--who has the best team depth of any college in New England--again and again to plug him in at third doubles in meaningless matches.

Preoccupied with a thesis, he did not even practice this winter, but he nonetheless went to UHS for the physical required of all varsity players. "I'm ready to play," he said one day, grinning from ear to ear and waving the green slip after the physical. "Fish is gonna HAVE to put me in at third doubles on the California trip."

Instead of playing, Roberts missed several of the matches in California, as he was designated to repair the team van and do the squad's laundry. Bill Roberts' Harvard tennis career had come down to washing other people's jockstraps in a La Jolla laundromat.

The last weekend of the season--and the last weekend in the fine careers of seniors Shaw, Chaikovsky and Scott Walker--finally came with the dreaded trip to Army and Cornell.

The call to the bullpen came at West Point Saturday. Roberts would play seventh singles, an exhibition match. The Fates were not willing, though, as rain cancelled all but the top six singles matches (which Harvard won easily).

The last chance would come at Ithaca Sunday. Singles victories rolled in like dominoes for the Crimson, and with the score 6-0 Fish gave the nod to Roberts. He would play at number three with roommate Chaikovsky, an NCAA doubles qualifier last season.

Playing against Scott Walker (Cornell's, not Harvard's) and a player described only as a "bearded lefty with a big serve," Roberts and Chaikovsky snatched the first set 6-4, before dropping the second, 7-5.

The match stayed on serve throughout the third set until, with Roberts serving at 5-6, Cornell took three straight points and needed but one of the next four to win the match.

The other two doubles matches had resulted in easy Harvard wins, so the whole Crimson squad gathered around the court now in a huddled silence. Roberts served and after an extended rally hit a desperation lob high into the lights. "There's no way you can see the ball in those lights," Chaikovsky said. "The guy hit it off the top of his racquet, and the ball landed about four courts down."

The Crimson then knotted the game at 3-all on a backpedaling putaway overhead by Chaikovsky ("It was the craziest shot") and a putaway volley by Roberts.

On the fourth consecutive match point, Roberts followed his second serve with a deep backhand volley and a fully-extended overhead winner that Shaw called "very close" and Chaikovsky called "very out."

"It was about a foot out," Chaikovsky said, only half-kidding, "but Kirsch and Horne (a pair of exuberant Harvard players) were right there, and they started going berserk before the call was made. Bill and I turned around and walked back, so Cornell couldn't really call it out."

Three more match points ensued when the Crimson dropped four of the first six tiebreaker points. At 2-4, Chaikovsky served, then hit four straight volleys, the last of which caught the net and hung in the air for the "bearded lefty." "He whaled on it, and it hit like the back screen," Chaikovsky said. At 3-4, Cornell missed the return, and the tension-filled match boiled down to one final, glorious, gut-wrenching point (is that one adjective too many?).

With Roberts "frozen" according to Shaw, Chaikovsky became the Bionic Volleyer, playing eight straight balls but putting none away. Finally, the Big Red launched a deep lob to Roberts' side, hit an overhead smash that neither Cornell player had a chance for.

Shadow Dance

Roberts and Chaikovsky, the roommates and highly improbable doubles partners, dropped their racquets and embraced. The entire team mobbed them in a made, impromptu dance. The Cornell players, unaware of the circumstances (and nobody was going to tell them, either) shook their heads in supreme puzzlement.

In the middle of the eight-hour ride back, coach Dave Fish--a teetotaler--surprised the team by reversing the van's direction at one point, backtracking about a half-mile, and pulling into a little bar.

The season-ending match, Fish figured, was cause for a celebration drink. They hadn't beaten powerhouse Princeton, and they hadn't won the league. But they had done pretty well, everyone thought. And, besides, the manager had helped the boys sweep Cornell.

Now that called for a toast.