Mizzou's Baggett takes his miss like a man -- and vows to bounce back
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Andrew Baggett has been here before.
It's the fall of 2010, a breezy slugfest of an evening, and Lee's
Summit North coach Ty Kohl calls on Baggett, his star leg, to attempt a
52-yarder.
No dice.
"But the kid
came back, he had the game-winner against St. Joseph Central for us,"
Kohl said. "Kicked a 47-yarder in the mud and rain. So he can do
it."
It's a different world, a different kind of
focus, a different kind of zen. Placekickers need a short memory and a
thick skin.
Oh, and brownies. Brownies help.
Fortunately, Baggett, now a redshirt sophomore
at Missouri, has plenty of all three. The last one, the chocolate
one, came courtesy of his mother, who brought them for her son late
Saturday night after his field-goal miss from 24 yards off the left
upright at Faurot Field -- The Doink Heard 'Round The World -- failed to
force a third overtime and sealed a 27-24 loss to South
Carolina.
"They still love me," Baggett said as he
greeted reporters Monday at the Mizzou Athletics Training Complex. "They
do what parents do. When you fall down to your lowest, they pick you up
and, you know, they make you feel better. She gave me some treats after
the game, my mom did, trying to fatten me up
again."
Although, truth be told, it's his ego that
could use the feeding. In the real-time, reactionary world of the 21st
century, there's nowhere to run, no place to hide; the bigger the
moment, the bigger the stage, the wider (and more visceral) the
reaction. In the minutes immediately following that doink shot that
ended the game, the Lee's Summit native was absolutely eviscerated on
social media:
@ABaggett99 U go to school 4
free 4 something U are horrible at. Ps I hate
U
And that was one of the, ahem,
kinder sentiments.
"I read some
stuff and I've heard some stuff, and I guarantee you, I'll be the first
one just to (say), 'Watch your mouth,'" center Evan Boehm said. "Because
not only is that a teammate, that's a brother, and you don't want to
hear somebody talk about your brother like that.
"And
yeah, you know, it hurts. But you don't know how bad it hurts until
you're that kid."
When nobody counts to "10" before
they hit the "send" button on Twitter, well, this is what happens.
Instant gratification, instant reaction, instant assassination.
"It's perfectly fair," said Baggett, who went from
the king of CoMo -- he'd kicked a school-record five field goals the
previous week in a rout of Florida -- to the campus goat in a span of a
week. "I mean, a couple of coaches have said of a lot of things, and one
of the coaches said, 'Hey, (there were) a lot of plays that were left out
there. Yours happened to be the last one.'
"That's
the life of a kicker. And if I thought it would be smooth sailing, I
wouldn't be a kicker. I'd be at home watching TV or
something."
Of course, the louder the reaction, the
louder the counter-reaction, and once Baggett turned his phone back on
Sunday morning, he found support from hurting Mizzou fans to be
"twentyfold more positive" than the haters.
The love
came from expected circles, such as former Mizzou star T.J. Moe ("He
missed it, so what? Should've never come to that," the ex-Tiger wideout
said) and from some highly unexpected ones, such as "Jackass" stars
Preston Lacy and Jason "Wee Man" Acuna ("Don't sweat those haters
Andrew. @iamweeman and I got your back," Lacy
wrote).
"I mean, I watched all four of (the "Jackass"
movies), they're funny guys," Baggett said of the social media
shout-out. "Crazy stuff. It's cool, but I kind of wish it was under
better circumstances."
Know this, too: Mizzou
officials gave Baggett the choice whether to attend the team's
weekly player availability session, the choice of whether to face
the inevitable round of questions about the lowest moment of his
collegiate career.
A kid hides. A man takes it, owns
it, and moves on.
Was it a bad snap,
Andrew? Replays showed that the laces were in
...
"Nope. I just missed it," Baggett said,
refusing to drag teammates under the bus with
him.
"It doesn't matter what those other things are.
I've got to make that kick. If the ball's lying on the ground,
horizontal, I have to make that kick. And so, I didn't, and that's on
me."
Saturday stunk ("Looked up, it wasn't good,
stomach dropped," Baggett recalled). Sunday wasn't much
better.
"I don't even really know if I slept or not,"
he said. "It (was) kind of one of those (moments of), 'Well, am I
dreaming?' 'Well, am I awake?' Instead, I just kind of went home, I saw
my parents after the game, (then) just kind of sat down and just thought
about everything."
Did you feel that you
let your teammates down?
"Oh yeah. It's
just -- that's my job, is to make that kick. And, you know, I didn't do
it. So I didn't do my job. Do I want it back? Absolutely. Am I going to
dwell on it? No."
A kid dwells. A man takes it, owns
it, and moves on.
"I don't know if that was the
normal holder that they had in there," Kohl said. "I can tell you this:
There is no one who feels lower than Andrew Baggett. He knows what his
job is. He knows what he's capable of. He's a kid that is mentally
tough, and he's physically tough, too.
"He'll bounce
back. And he'll be great. And we'll see him in a game like he (had)
versus Florida, where he hit five field goals. We all know what he's
capable of."
Tigers coach Gary Pinkel, most of all.
Time heals. But nothing heals a broken psyche quite like getting back on
that horse, the tenor of a season resting on your leg, the weight of
the world on your back.
"Of course I do," Pinkel said
when asked if he worried about Baggett's mojo. "But that's our job.
We've got his back."
Got his heart,
too.
You can follow Sean Keeler on
Twitter @seankeeler or email him at
seanmkeeler@gmail.com.
