ISU has seen its fair share of great coaches. Certainly Johnny Orr, Tim Floyd and Bill Fennelly come immediately to mind. Johnny Majors and Earl Bruce were very respected football men.

Dr. Al Murdoch, Cyclone hockey coach, is no stranger to success — his troops won the national championship this year. John Cooper, coach of the perennially successful Ohio State Buckeyes, is an ISU graduate. And did you know that Jimmy Johnson was an ISU assistant?

But quite possibly the greatest coach to ever grace the halls of this beautiful campus is Dr. George Knaphus, professor of botany and softball coach.

Affectionately known as Dr. K, he has compiled 495 wins, all after his 60th birthday. He is also an ace pitcher on his team. Professor James Ruebel, whom you will hear about later in this column, describes his pitching as “nasty stuff. He throws nothing but strikes.”

Though Dr. K won’t record his 500th victory, since his team has only 4 games left, he will record it in the near future.

Dr. K is a vibrant, energetic, and, by all accounts, wonderful professor. He has been at ISU for as long as anyone can remember.

He is involved in many, many extracurricular activites; he is the advisor to the LAS council; he is the advisor to Lampos, the LAS honorary.

He is also one of the best storytellers ever — sometimes fact and sometimes fiction but always funny, yet touching.

And of course, he is a softball coach.

And while Dr. K is quite possibly the greatest softball coach to grace ISU (with the exception, I need hardly add, of ISU women’s softball coach Ruth Crowe), the greatest ISU faculty softball player ever, is the aforementioned Dr. Ruebel.

I didn’t know that my Latin prof was a ballplayer until last Sunday, when his former teammate, Dr. Neal Bowers, distinguished professor of English, asked me whether I knew that “Jim Ruebel was a hell of a ballplayer?”

“Yeah, he was a shortstop and third baseman,” Dr. Bowers continued. “Any ball that was hit to him didn’t get past him.” When I asked if the Derek Jeter of beer-league softball was an accurate description, Dr. Bowers agreed heartily.

And Dr. Ruebel was no all-glove, no-stick middle infielder. Dr. Bowers described him as swinging a “Rod Carew-like bat. He was very good at hitting the ball onto the outfield grass, just over the infielders. He always put the ball in play.”

Currently, he is Dr. K’s rival in the coaching ranks. He retired from playing about five years ago. As he says, “the better part of valor is to know when it’s time.”

Prior to his retirement, he played in the City Men’s League, on a team called Poets and Critics. “We had mostly old guys, and we played against the fraternities and Hy-Vee baggers — and beat them,” Ruebel said. “We threw to the right base, hit little singles while they swung for the fences. Before you knew it, it was 11-10, and we won.”

Ruebel has passed on his diamond skills to his son, Matt. While Matt was born in Cincinnati, he grew up in Ames, and is one of the more famous alumni of my early alma mater, Sawyer Elementary School.

A left-handed starter/long reliever, Matt made his Major League debut with the Pirates, picking up his first win in Colorado in 1996.

Currently with the Pacific Coast League’s Tucson Sidewinders, the AAA affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Ruebel is making a strong bid to return to the majors.

In his last two appearances, he has pitched 9 1/3 innings of relief, picking up one win and giving up only two earned runs.

This is probably just a small cross-section of athletically inclined ISU faculty. Who knows; maybe one of your professors has hidden skills.

Maybe a perfect golf swing, or a tight, 15-yard spiral or perhaps a hidden talent for throwing fastballs. Why, they might have the impossible to defend “old-guy” hook. Or a hard slapshot from the blue line. They could have an Agassi-like forehand. The possibilities are endless…

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Javadev Athreya is a senior in mathematics from Ames.