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It was after this home run that myself, OT, Stafford, Estrada, and Fiddler met up with the current head coach of Bryant’s alma mater, Bonanza high school, Mike O’Rourke. Stafford has moved on to become the Assistant Principal at Las Vegas High School, Fiddler is coaching at Green Valley High School, and Estrada is still on O’Rourke’s staff at Bonanza so all these guys are chock full of stories about Bryant’s time playing in Vegas.
We were standing watching the game when O’Rourke launched into a story that really put Bryant’s “living legend” status into complete perspective. O’Rourke was laughing and telling us that the morning of the game (Saturday) he had to go to Bonanza to do some field prep and when he was out tending to the grass on the field, he saw about 5-10 people in blue shirts walking up to the gates of the field.
He hopped off his cart and walked over to the people to see what they needed.
“Oh we don’t need anything. We’re Cubs fans and We just wanted to see where Kris Bryant played baseball at.”
While it’s not all that uncommon for fans to do that, O’Rourke said he was getting visitors at the field as early as Thursday of that week from fans that just wanted to LOOK at the field.
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When you have people showing up just to LOOK at your high school field, that makes you a damn legend in my book.
A few fans flagged him down and just wanted to speak to him because he coached Bryant. It was hilarious listening to ALL of his former coaches talk about Kris because even though every Cubs fan sees him as a legend for what he’s accomplished in his short career, his high school coaches still see Bryant as just a kid.
