Coaching Great McPherson Rebuilds Life
LAS VEGAS, NV – Steve McPherson is leaning back in his new office chair, drinking a Pepsi, and reminiscing about what can only be described as an unbelievable life. Staring out the window, he says “a lot has changed in the past 20 years.”
McPherson is a walking, talking burst of positive energy. An amazing athlete, even at his age, you'd never know his heart is filled with the ache of a shattered past.
Back in the day, when he didn’t have a care in the world, McPherson was destined for stardom. At the age of 12, he struck out all 18 hitters in a Little League All-Star game. The catcher on that team was former Baltimore Oriole Tom Dodd. By 20, McPherson had competed against some of the best golfers in the world, including Fred Couples, Corey Pavin, and the like. When he reached 30, he was a high school head baseball coach, had international coaching experience, and even raced thoroughbred horses at the top racetracks in America. By the time he was 40, the coaching legend had coached two #1-ranked high school baseball teams, he had a radio show on ESPN, and in his only year as a college head coach, won a Northern Division championship at Olympic College. Then, in what only can be described as a one-time dream turned nightmare, by the age of 50, the multifaceted McPherson had been to prison – twice. Amazingly so, it is that last fact that makes him the poster boy for what is wrong with the criminal justice system, and makes his life – by his own admission – so difficult to understand.
Now 52, the former coach is a self-professed rebel. He is clearly the polar-opposite of what a coach is supposed to be; more gunslinger than guru. Today, he wears his hat backwards, dresses like a surfer boy, and states, matter of fact, that he “doesn’t really care what anyone thinks of that.” He is athletic looking, has the body of a 20-year-old, and readily admits, “I sometimes still act like one.” His face is tan, trim, and he has salt-and-pepper hair cut short, with a fade. He talks about regrets, mistakes that were made, and he painfully admits his closest friends from coaching are “long gone”. Yet, beneath his guarded, self-effacing exterior, lies one of the most engaging, literate, gifted coaches of our time. Steve McPherson is – arguably – the greatest coach you have never heard of.
He lives in Las Vegas to be close to his 8-year-old daughter, McKinley. He has three other children; a stepdaughter Devin, a five-year-old daughter Baylee, and a three-year-old son, Jake. He hasn’t seen his younger kids in a long time because his ex-wife, Angela Tatem, as he sees it “doesn’t have to try very hard to be the biggest asshole on the planet.” He works as a sportswriter, and when asked if he misses coaching, he replies with a smirk, “That’s a stupid question.”
Ironically, McPherson didn’t play college baseball, even though he clearly was good enough. Instead, he chose to play golf in college, where he was a two-time Player of the Year at Oregon State. He stumbled on to coaching his junior year in college, when he changed majors from Pre-Med to Education. His first taste of coaching came when he worked as a student teacher at near-by Corvallis High School. “After that,” he said, “I was hooked.”
He jokes that he “knew I wasn’t going to be a doctor the first time I climbed out a sorority house window at 4 am”. Years later, he would develop a reputation as a coach who turned beleaguered programs into champions. Before his career was over, he would become a legend, or notorious, depending on whom you asked.
Growing Up
Steven Michael McPherson grew up in Portland, Oregon, the middle child of five. His mom, Cis, worked as a billing supervisor at Good Samaritan hospital; his dad, Mac, was in sales at United Grocers, one of the countries’ top providers of commercial produce. They lived at the base of the upscale Alameda district, but were considered middle-class.
At the encouragement of his father, he and his brothers spent all their extra time playing sports, and there was never any question that Steve was a great athlete from a family of outstanding athletes. “Steve was a phenomenal athlete at a very young age,” said Jon Johnson, who played youth football and baseball with McPherson. “His brothers were great too.” All of the McPherson boys went on to be college sports stars.
The family was Catholic, so the kids ended up in private school. In high school, he played at Central Catholic, where he was, amongst other things, a standout quarterback on the football team. He played for Bill Dressel, one of Oregon’s all-time great coaches. McPherson looked up to Dressel, and later would be hired to coach with his one-time mentor. “Steve really admired Coach Dressel,” recalled McPherson's mom, Cis. “I think Bill was a big reason Steve became a coach.” In addition to Dressel, Central Catholic had guys like John Harrington on their coaching staff. Harrington, a former quarterback at the University of Oregon, would later become a very successful high school football coach himself. “That was as good a coaching staff as you’ll ever see assembled in high school,” remembers McPherson.
While he was a fine athlete, the truth is McPherson never felt comfortable in his private school surroundings. Predominantly upper-class, he preferred the more diverse dynamics of the Grant district, where he grew up. Plus, most of his friends went to Grant.
Typically, private schools are built on great tradition, and families usually have multiple generations attend school there. Central Catholic in Portland was no different. Over time, a pecking order gets established and expectations are high – academically, athletically, and socially. McPherson was the first of his family to attend private-school, so naturally, the “in crowd” didn’t know his family. As such, he never felt fully accepted. “It was typical high school stuff,” remembers the former quarterback. “It was never really any good for me at Central. There is no question things were a lot easier there for my two younger brothers.”
As high school was coming to a close, there came a time when he wasn’t sure where he fit. He always believed he was capable of playing big-time college sports, but he lacked the size to play major college football. He wasn’t sure, either, if his game was strong enough to play top-level collegiate golf. By the end of his senior year, there were a lot of questions to be answered. Then, lightning struck – literally.
McPherson, whose golf game was rapidly improving, was playing in an amateur event on his home course, Rose City Golf Club. As an 18-year-old, he held a one-shot lead as he was preparing to hit his shot to the third hole, a long par-3. Just as he struck his ball, a lightning bolt hit the top of a large fir tree, 20-yards from his playing group. The lightning ran down the trunk of the tree, jumped the street that runs through the center of the course, and exploded a bench next to the third tee-box. The blast jolted McPherson and his playing partners, knocking them to the ground. In a stunning sidebar, the shot he hit went into the hole. Dazed and confused, he missed one of golf’s great traditions – the celebration of his first hole-in-one. After an extended weather delay, he went on to win the tournament. “The results were unimportant after something like that,” laughed McPherson. “Nobody cared about the tournament, but they sure as hell cared about that lightning strike. It was amazing. The bark still doesn’t grow on the side of that tree.”
Later that summer, playing with confidence and a new-found sense of purpose, he decided to enter the prestigious Western Junior, a tournament that annually brings together the best junior golfers in the world. After two days of qualifying, he played well enough to reach the elite field of 32. Though, in match play, he lost to Bobby Heath, who won the National Junior College Championship while at McClennon JC in Texas, it wasn’t long before Arizona, Wake Forest, Nebraska, and USC were calling to recruit him. He says it was especially flattering when Jessie Haddock, Wake Forest’s legendary coach, called. But, deep down, McPherson still didn’t think he was ready to compete at the highest level of collegiate golf. “I was honest with myself,” he recalls. “I was a late bloomer, but at the time I wasn’t good enough to play at those schools. The funny thing about it is they didn’t know it. None of those coaches actually saw me play in person.” True enough, all those schools were recruiting him off of the results in the Western Junior.
After thoughtful discussions with his father, McPherson decided to take his game to Arizona. Early in his first semester, he broke his wrist in a pick-up game with some of Arizona’s basketball players. When he finally got healthy, his golf was far from sharp. So, after much debate, he redshirted, which meant he would not lose a year of eligibility. By the end of his freshman year, he was miserable.
That summer, he decided to leave Arizona. The day he was scheduled to fly to Nebraska to sign with Coach Larry Romjue, Perry Overstreet, the new coach at Oregon State, called to offer the only full scholarship the rebuilding Beavers had to offer. Overstreet’s pitch was that he wanted to build OSU’s program around McPherson. The next day, he signed his letter-of-intent to play in Corvallis. Looking back, he laughs when thinking about Overstreet. “He was bigger than life,” the former star fondly remembers. “He was all about big cars, big cigars, and big money. But, one thing I will tell you about Perry is he got the job done.”
Talking to him, you can tell McPherson takes great pride in being the first scholarship player that led to the resurgence of Oregon State golf. While that team is all but forgotten, he remembers them like it was yesterday. Originally, it was him and Billy Patton as the only legitimate talent on a young team. His senior year, when the Beavers added Sean Arey and Dan Hixson, they turned the corner. “I remember we used to get our brains beat out, and it was very frustrating for Bill and me,” said McPherson. “Then, my last year there, Sean won the Pacific Northwest Intercollegiate, and we won the team title. It was the first time in years OSU had won anything in golf.” McPherson was named Player of the Year in 1980 and 1981. Today, Oregon State is a perennial top-25 team, Arey is the golf pro at Oregon State's Trysting Tree Golf Club, and Hixson is an up-and-coming golf course designer.
The summer of 1981, McPherson spent working and training at Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, CA. Ron Rhoads, the head golf professional at Riviera, was also the golf coach at USC. Though McPherson didn’t sign with the Trojans, in a chance meeting that winter, Rhoads invited him to train at Riviera. Under Rhoads' guidance, Oregon State’s best player got good in a hurry. Soon after, Rhoads convinced McPherson he was ready to turn professional. “I remember the day Ron told Steve he was ready to go play for real,” said Jay Dobson, who played Riviera almost every day that summer. “Coach Rhoads looked him in the eye and told him he had a money- making machine, now go out and make some money.”
That September, McPherson returned to Oregon State to honor a promise he made to his mom – graduate from school. He was looking forward to graduating, then going home to tell his Dad he decided to turn pro in golf. One tragic week in October changed all that forever.
McPherson was participating in an amateur golf tournament at Stanford Golf Club that October. After the second round, he was to meet Kevin MacMillan, a star football player for the Cardinal, to renew acquaintances. MacMillan, who was younger by two years, was considered one of the finest athletes in State of Oregon history. The two grew up in the Grant district, where MacMillan was a star at Grant High School. They weren’t close, but knew one another since McPherson coached Kent MacMillan, Kevin’s younger brother, in Pop Warner football. They were to meet, along with some mutual friends, at a local Stanford pub, The Golden Spike. The second round of the golf tournament was slower than normal, so McPherson was running late. As fate would have it, MacMillan and his friends got tired of waiting, and left five minutes before their guest arrived. In a tragic turn of events, MacMillan and another Stanford athlete, pole vaulter Mike Becker, were killed on their way back to campus. The driver of the car they were riding in lost control on University Avenue, hitting a tree. The next day, while walking off the 18th green, McPherson was met by some friends, who delivered the shocking news.
Devastated, he asked for, and received, permission to withdraw from school. On the way home to Portland a couple days later, he desperately needed someone to talk to regarding MacMillan’s death. So, he decided to stop by a Portland hospital to see his college neighbor, Julie Sanders. A 21-year-old junior, Sanders was to be recovering from simple surgery to repair a circulatory problem. In one of those surreal, indescribable moments that defy human logic, McPherson was told something had gone terribly wrong, and that Sanders had died unexpectedly from complications with her surgery.
It would be two months before McPherson could get himself together. While Sander’s unexplained death was painful, Johnson says MacMillan’s accident has haunted his childhood friend for 30 years. “I think Steve, to this day, blames himself for Kevin’s death. He feels that – had he not been late – Kevin would be alive today. Imagine carrying that burden around with you your entire life.”
Professional Life
The next few years were a blur. McPherson turned pro in golf; showed enormous promise when he fired a final round 63 in his first professional event; then proceeded to play several top tournaments around the country. But, something was missing in his life. “I was terribly lonely out there,” said the former pro. “I don’t know. You think it is your dream, but then it is just not what you expect it to be. I missed my family and friends terribly.”
So, in 1985, he came home. He kept that promise to his mom, returning to school so he could earn his Education degree from Oregon State. Later, he went to Dressel for advice. Soon after, Coach Dressel, who was building a football powerhouse at Benson H.S., named McPherson quarterback coach. In addition, Bill Ranta, the school’s baseball coach, offered him a varsity assistant job. Just like that, he was committed to a full-year of coaching.
That experience would set a path for his life that would be inescapable. He loved coaching and he loved the guys he coached with at Benson. “The time I spent at Tech was very special to me,” McPherson said, reflecting back. “While I know I am a disappointment to those guys, Coach Dressel and Coach Ranta are the two people I admire most in the world. I have always said I learned from the best. They were great coaches, great leaders, but they were even better friends.” His golf career was now second string to a full-scale coaching career.
By the time Benson had won three straight Portland Interscholastic League championships in football, McPherson had developed a passion for coaching. And by all accounts, he was good at it too. “I don’t know how to describe those days,” he says with enthusiasm. “It was electric. We had great teams, won championships, sent kids to the top college programs, and it was one heck of a great bunch of coaches. It was a great experience for our kids, and our coaching staff had great fun together.” Still, McPherson’s future was unsettled, but there was no doubt that coaching was winning the internal battle with professional golf.
The first sign McPherson had great potential as a coach came during one of Dressel’s Sunday night film sessions. Coach Mac, as everyone called him, spotted several tendencies in their next opponent’s formations. He felt their positioning telegraphed what play they would actually run. That Friday – game time – told the story. By the end of the third quarter, Grant, Benson’s opponent that night, had failed to get a first down. In one sequence, Grant posted three wide receivers to one side. Benson, courtesy of the scouting report prepared by their assistant coaches, left the middle receiver uncovered, opting instead to post safety Denver Skallbeck at the line of scrimmage, on the opposite side of Grant’s three-man stack. True to form, Grant ran a weak side option, but Skallbeck was right there to intercept the pitch. He scampered 40-yards for a Benson touchdown.
“That is a great example of how Steve’s coaching mind works,” said Johnson, who coached one year of Sr. Babe Ruth with Coach Mac. “He has a feel for the game, great instincts, and sees the game much clearer that a lot of his peers. It doesn’t matter what sport it is. It’s one of those things where some have those special instincts and some don’t. Steve definitely is one of those guys who are gifted that way.”
Though McPherson loved coaching, he equally enjoyed tournament golf, so he routinely played in regional professional events. It wasn’t long before he was a top player in the Pacific Northwest. However, the balance was a delicate one because of the Professional Golf Association’s restrictive rules governing local tournaments.
One of those rules required participating pros to work in a golf shop, or in the golf business, 40-hours weekly. Since it was impossible for Coach Mac to meet that requirement while coaching, it created animosity amongst other golf professionals who, quite frankly, were not as talented as McPherson. Soon, local golf pros made him a target for their complaints. Later, he became tired of the pettiness surrounding club pro golf. It all came to a head when one local pro accused him of cheating in a golf tournament. During the inquiry, the Oregon PGA went as far as to interview McPherson’s caddy in the event, a 12-year-old boy. Though the Pacific Northwest Golf Professional three-man panel ruled in his favor, McPherson was disgusted and fed up. The next week, he resigned his membership to the PGA.
“I remember when that happened,” said an Oregon-based golf professional, who spoke anonymously because of fear of retaliation from fellow golf pros. “Steve had won that tournament back-to-back years, but there was a lot of talk by one guy and his friend that Steve had recorded a wrong score. It is so ironic because Steve could beat both those guys left-handed. The funny thing about it is that Mac routinely gambled for a lot more money than they played for in that tournament. So, in protest, when they ruled in his favor, he blew them off and never even picked up his check.”
His rebel mentality is clear when McPherson attacks the subject. Clearly, he had not forgotten what they did to him. “What a joke,” said the former pro. “I won that event by five shots, two years running. The guys involved in that mess are a bunch of pussies. They accused me of posting a wrong score on a hole. Then, when it was determined they were wrong, they accused me of posting the wrong score on another hole. Instead of confronting the issue right there and then, they waited until everyone left the tournament, then complained in private. Instead of manning up and talking straight, the guy at the Oregon PGA – the Executive Director -- withheld info and held secret meetings. It was ridiculous. Then, to top it off, they got a 12-year-old boy involved in it. I was ashamed to say I was associated with them.”
McPherson, laughing out loud when he heard what one of his peers had said about his drinking and gambling, added, “your guy was right, I drank and gambled more every weekend than we played for in that stupid-ass tournament. I played those little tournaments for the thrill of the competition, to see the fellas, and to hang out. The guys who were involved in that mess should have spent less time complaining and more time competing. They should have been ashamed of themselves.”
Joe Ellis, who caddied several times for McPherson over the years, recalls one incident that, in his opinion, sums up his friends relationship with local golf pros. He was caddying for Coach Mac in the U.S. Open qualifying at Tualatin Country Club, and, after the first-round, McPherson had basically shot himself out of the competition. Instead of withdrawing from the tournament, which a lot of guys apparently would do, McPherson decided to play the second round to work on his game. He also felt he owed it to his playing partners to show them the courtesy of not changing the rhythm of their group, since one of them was still in contention.
Ellis recalls, on the 17th hole of the last round, McPherson hit is second shot into a green-side bunker. Instead of hitting the ball out of the sand, McPherson kicked the ball into the rough next to the green, stepped on his ball, then practiced an explosion shot out of deep rough. When one of his partners asked him what he got on the hole, Coach Mac told the guy “to give me a six”.
“I'll never forget it,” remembers Ellis. “After the round, Steve had to run off to coach baseball. The guy keeping his score stood in the bar and told everyone Steve had kicked the ball out of the trap. It implied that Steve did it to improve his score, basically cheating. The guy knew Steve was just working on his game, but he lied to the guys in the bar anyway. It was one of the biggest chicken-shit moves I have ever seen.”
Ellis speaks fondly of McPherson's golf game. He believes his friend could have made it big, but that McPherson just had “too many interests.” He tells a story about a shot McPherson hit in the Washington State Open, on the last hole. It was a par-five, into the wind, where McPherson was blocked by a tree. He had two options: lay up to the right, or hit the ball into a cross wind over water and turn it back to the green.
“Forget about the fact that the wind was blowing 20 miles an hour,” says Ellis excitedly. “Steve hit driver off the fairway, over water, into a head wind, turned it back to the right, and knocked it directly into the center of the green. There are not very many people in the world who could execute a shot like that, and there are even less who have the imagination to even see it.”
After the cheating accusation, it wasn't long before golf became uninteresting to McPherson; something to do when he wasn't coaching.
A Coaching Opportunity
Recognizing Coach Mac's potential, Vic Carlson, the Athletic Director at Jefferson H.S., an inner city school in Portland, offered him the Head Coaching job in baseball. Since Jefferson was known for great basketball teams, but little else, everyone he knew advised him not to take the job. The “Jeff” area had no youth baseball; the school had terrible facilities; and the big knock – the area was dangerous; people just didn't think Coach Mac could be successful there. So, to prove them all wrong, he accepted Carlson's offer.
In his first year, 1988, Jefferson did the unthinkable, beating state powers Benson and Wilson in the same year. They ended the season 17-12, but were as competitive as they had been in years. “We weren't very good,” said their coach. “But, I loved it there and those kids sure did play hard.”
That same year, Dressel and his Benson Techmen won a state football championship. In addition to Carol Eldridge, who lived with McPherson, Johnson and his dad attended the state championship game at Portland's Civic Stadium. After the game, before he joined the celebration of the PIL's first state football title in years, Coach Mac asked Johnson and his dad to visit MacMillan's grave with him. MacMillan played in the PIL, so McPherson felt he owed it to MacMillan to stop by and pay his respects.
Johnson describes the touching scene: McPherson drove to Skyline Cemetary, placed flowers on MacMillan's grave, then knelt down and kissed the football helmet on MacMillan's tombstone. Johnson and his father watched as Coach Mac pulled out a piece of chalk, then proceeded to draw play-after-play on the former Stanford star's grave marker. “It was one of the most amazing things I have seen in my lifetime,” recalls Johnson, who is now 52. “Steve drew every offensive play Benson ran that day on Kevin's grave. He recalled every play, every sequence. He basically gave Kevin's memory a play-by-play of the game's biggest moments. By the time we left, we were all crying our eyes out.”
The next three years, Coach Mac brought respectability back to Jefferson baseball. Also, he had an American Legion team that won 30 games, and a Senior Babe Ruth team that was beat in the state finals by Forest Grove. During that time, he hosted teams from Australia and Japan, building international baseball relationships, and he was asked to assist the West team in the United States Olympic Festival. He was building a reputation as an outstanding, up-and-coming star in coaching.
While at Jeff, McPherson and Carlson became close friends. The two routinely played pro-am golf tournaments together, winning several times. Also, Carlson turned McPherson on to thoroughbred racing. It wasn't long before they were spending a lot of the time at Portland Meadows, the local racetrack.
For a time, Coach Mac was on top of the world. He was a standout professional golfer; a hot commodity as a coach; and he'd had great success both breeding and racing thoroughbred horses. On the surface, things seem great. But, in reality, things weren't great at all.
A Storm is Brewing
While McPherson's life, in so many ways, seemed magical, the truth is he wasn't happy. During this time, his girlfriend, Eldridge, contracted a rare spinal disorder called Transverse Myelitis. The couple was told, initially, that she would never walk again. The original diagnosis shocked the family. “I'll never forget it,” frowned McPherson. “It was a terrible time for both of us, but it was especially so for Carol.”
Crumbling under the stress, he began to drink excessively, and spent all his time at the racetrack. Soon, he was gambling too much as well. The pain of that time is evident in Coach Mac's voice. “I wasn't very responsible,” he recalls. “I was out too much, gone all the time. I don't know if I was afraid, scared, or what. Looking back, I could have done a much better job of handling the situation.”
To make matters worse, he and Eldridge had grown apart. McPherson blames himself, but can't really put a finger on why things started to sour. “I think when you are laying in bed worried about everything but what young couples should worry about, failure is inevitable,” he says.
About the time McPherson and Eldridge seperated, he met Ellen Forgett, who he describes as “for the longest time, the only woman I ever loved in my life.” He began spending a lot of time with the Japanese-American beauty. “She was a remarkable woman,” he fondly recalls. “I screwed up by not having the balls to ask her to marry me. We adored one another.” As he talks about Forgett, and what might have been, a sadness rolls over his face. “She was something special,” he adds. He says it was a difficult time in his life, a time for serious reflection. “I didn't know what I was doing with my life,” admits McPherson. “But, what I do know is that I was never honest with myself, so I couldn't be honest with anyone else.”
As Coach Mac was trying to decide what direction to take his life, out of the blue, the chance of a lifetime dropped in his lap. At least, he thought it was the chance of a lifetime. In 1993, Mike Early, the golf pro at Port Townsend Golf Club in Washington state, called to see if McPherson might be interested in purchasing the lease to the club. It was made clear, too, that Port Townsend H.S. might be looking for a new head baseball coach. After extended discussions, he needed $100,000 down to secure the deal. Since he only had $50,000 of his own money, McPherson went to Eldridge's mom, Barbara, to borrow the rest. By the summer, the deal was done, and Coach Mac was now back in the golf business.
Armed with a new found excitement and a new lease on life, McPherson was thrilled to death he had made, what seemed like, the perfect change. Little did he know that he had made, by his own words, a “deal with the Devil”, and that doing business with Mike Early would threaten to destroy his life.
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