More than an average baseball fan

By Tom Schreier

Bill Henzi is the biggest San Francisco Giants fan I know.

His New Year's Resolution is to utter the words "The World Champion San Francisco Giants" every day.

From 1968 to 1972 he traveled with the Giants on their road trips. The first game he attended in a visitor's ballpark was at Dodgers Stadium the Saturday before Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.

The first home game he attended was on May 2, 1958 at Seals Stadium during the team's first season in the Bay Area.

Needless to say, Henzi was ecstatic when his team won the World Series last year.

"I get emotional thinking about it," he said as his eyes became glossy. Choked up, he had to take a few seconds to gather himself.

A single tear filled the crevice between his cheek and his nose.

"I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it," he muttered. "I had my scorebook by my bed so when I woke up, a thousand times during the night..."

Tears began to surface again as he struggled through the sentence.

"I looked at my scorebook to make sure it was true," he said, still seemingly in disbelief as the words rolled off his tongue. "I looked at those words — Giants, World Champions — and I'll never forget it."

"I always said that I'd be satisfied with one," he told me. "Well scratch that. I want as many as possible."

Henzi, 66, retired in 2007; two days after his last day of employment he went to a Friday night game on Mission Campus.

"I always wanted to retire and go to baseball immediately," he said. "I didn't want to retire after the baseball season. I didn't want to waste my retirement."

Since 2008, Henzi has attended every Santa Clara baseball game. He sits behind the backstop at Stephen Schott Stadium, to the right of home plate.

He knows every player by name. He knows which ones are Giants enthusiasts and works hard to forgive the Dodgers aficionados.

Last year, sophomore Stephen Takahashi and redshirt freshman Kenny Treadwell told him that they were supporting any team that San Francisco played in the postseason.

"That may have bothered me a little bit," he uttered, visibly irked.

"[Kenny] needs a haircut, terribly."

Freshman infielder Kyle DeMerritt, a Bellarmine Prep product, earned a special place in Henzi's heart on the first day they met. Since then, they always meet to pound knuckles and say the same enchanted words:

The World Champion San Francisco Giants.

One night DeMerritt left without going through the ritual.

Just as Henzi was about to leave the park he saw the diminutive infielder out of the corner of his eye.

"Kyle what are you doing back?"

"I forgot to tell you something."

"What?"

"The World Champion San Francisco Giants."

"He won a lot of points with me on that one," said Henzi, beaming.

DeMerritt posed a challenging question for Henzi in their most recent encounter. The 5'8", 185 infielder asked him what he would rather see: another World Championship for the Giants or a College World Series Championship for the Broncos.

Seeing that Henzi was perplexed by his inquiry, the infielder told him that he could answer when they next met.

Since that day, the team has traveled to South Carolina to take on the defending College World Series Champion Gamecocks.

Their travel down south was more interesting than the series, where the Broncos were swept (12-5, 2-1, 6-0) by the defending champs.

Last Wednesday they stopped in Phoenix on their way to Columbia, S.C. and had a two-hour layover.

The second flight was curtailed by an emergency landing in Kansas. A passenger with no Santa Clara affiliation fell ill and the plane was delayed two hours.

Santa Clara was delayed again coming back on Tuesday; but Henzi was still prepared to reveal his answer to DeMerritt when we spoke on Sunday.

"Do you know what my answer is going to be?" he asked me.

But before I could even respond he blurted out his answer: "Santa Clara."

"Because I know them. I know them," he says, his voice rising with every word. "I don't know any Giant, but I know every one of these guys."

It's because sophomore Justin Viele gave him a ride home after practice on a cold, pitch dark night.

It's because freshman Greg Harisis walked to the bus stop with him on a night when his legs were not cooperating with him.

"I thought that was beyond the call of duty," said Henzi. "He had a hot date."

It's because in the beginning of the year when he missed practice for the first three weeks, he received a call from a friend, Bobby, who told him that Bronco skipper Mark O'Brien was concerned about his well being.

The first day back, O'Brien, who is entering his tenth year as the manager of the Broncos, approached Henzi and told him that he was worried about his most ardent fan.

"I know," said Henzi. "I heard about that."

"We need you," the coach told him, "and I think the boys need you too. Because they know they can accomplish anything when you're here."

O'Brien, a San Jose State graduate who has had stints with Stanford and Cal Poly before joining the Broncos in 2001, is skating on thin ice this year.

Even Henzi acknowledges it.

"You want the truth?" he asked, reluctantly. "He's gonna have to win. The time has come, it's been ten years."

The skipper will be relying on two returning superstars from last year's team.

A 6'4", 215 pound athlete who was drafted in the seventh round by Oakland out of Rocklin High School, sophomore Pat Stover has the potential to make an impact at both this level and in The Show.

But Stover had trouble hitting the slider last season and the coaching staff was not able to correct his deficiency mid-season last year.

Junior J.R. Graham, a right-handed pitcher listed generously at 6'0", 175 pounds, is a lights-out closer that was drafted out of high school after being named East Bay Athlete of the Year following his senior season at Livermore High School.

But the team needs to be competitive in order to give the closer an opportunity to close out games. Last year he only had four saves despite pitching 27.1 innings in relief.

All this really doesn't matter to Henzi, who always sees the positives in players.

"I will never, ever talk negative," he says. "If a kid goes [one-for-five] and struck out four times and he got a base hit the fifth time, that's all I'll talk about.

"I want them to feel that they always have someone in the stands pulling for them."

Bill Henzi is the biggest Santa Clara Broncos fan I know.

Contact Tom Schreier at tschreier@scu.edu or (408) 551-1819.