Giardi Departs Harvard Having Given His All

Mike Giardi's greatest moment this season was his greatest defeat.

It was the final moments of The Game last fall, Harvard's annual battle with Yale. After being down by 16, Giardi had led a furious Crimson comeback which had brought the team to within two, 33-31, but that seemed to be about as far as the team would go.

With 1:04 left, Yale recovered an onside kick, and, after four Bulldog turns at running out the time, the clock read: 00. Yale fans rushed to the field, Harvard fans rushed to the gates and most of Harvard's football team started for the lockerroom.

But not Giardi.

Immediately, he ran toward the field and began pleading with the referee. Yale's last play, a run by quarterback Steve Mills, had ended with one second left, and NCAA rules say that the clock immediately stops after a fourth down. There was once chance left, and Giardi was going to fight like hell to save it.

The ref put the second back on the clock, the Yale fans were called off the field, and Harvard ran its play--a roll-out left in which Giardi was hit as he released the ball, resulting in an incomplete pass and the end of the Crimson's season.

It was a disappointing end to a disappointing season, and the beginning of a disappointing year team-wise for Giardi, who would later suffer a disappointing inury as the star of Harvard's disappointing baseball team. But no on could ever blame either football or baseball misfortunes on a lack of Giardi's will.

"Mike Giardi showed this season why he is one of the best athletes I've ever coached," head coach Joe Restic would later say. "He wants it as much or more than anyone else out there. In college athletics, that goes an awfully long way."

That, of course, is not to say that Giardi was not talented. He came in gifted--a star high school quarterback out of Salem, M.A., and a baseball recruit at the University of North Carolina--and stayed gifted.

In football, he became one of the best quarterbacks in Harvard history, running Restic's complicated multiflex offense as no other before him, and becoming the all-time rushing touchdown leader.

And in baseball, he established himself as one of the top Harvard players of the last decade, winning the Ivy League Baseball Player-of-the-Year award and leading the league with a.435 batting average, despite a season-ending injury with three weeks left in the season.

But those accomplishments can only be seen in the larger context of Giardi's will. Success at Harvard in any major sport implies a certain mind-numbing determination. First, you usually have to put up with lossing. Second, you have to keep up with a rugged courseload. And third, you have to it all a minimal amount of respect from your peers.

But Giardi bore those burdens with few, if any, complaints, and established a level of excellence in two major sports that is rare in this school's recent history.

From trying to salvage that one second on the clock to running out all his groundouts on the baseball team, Giardi wanted it bad, as bad as a drowning man wants a breath, and that will be his legacy at Harvard.