Mondays with Mike: One soccer ball’s journey

This ball was on Challenger that fateful day. Flown by Ellison Onizuka for his daughter, a soccer player @Clear_LakeHS. #NASARemembers pic.twitter.com/grShwq372X

— Shane Kimbrough (@astro_kimbrough) February 3, 2017

Astronaut Kimbrough tweeted a photo of the soccer ball that made it into space.

On the morning of Tuesday, January 28, 1986, I headed to my barber in downtown Champaign, Illinois. It was the day after the day after the Chicago Bears had won their first and only Super Bowl. I knew that in Chicago there would be a parade in freezing temperatures, but other than that, I hadn’t turned on the radio or the TV and was oblivious to other news.

When I got to the shop, my barber was standing, looking up to a wall-mounted television, glued to the screen.

“What’s going on?” I asked. The space shuttle blew up, he explained. “It’s terrible.”

I settled into the barber’s chair, and he started his work. “Can you imagine being a family member watching that?” he said. “And they keep showing it and showing it. Why do they do that?”

Right about that moment, he spun my chair around and pointed up–it was being played again. “See, watch it, it’s terrible.”

Indeed it was. I recalled my days living in the Washington, D.C. area and my chance meeting with a journalist named Gregg Easterbrook. He was at a dinner party at a mutual friend’s place. We got to talking and he mentioned that he’d written a piece about what a bad idea the space shuttle program was. The guy clearly knew his stuff, but I admit I sort of pooh-poohed him, thinking he was just a space travel killjoy.

I was wrong. You can still read it here—it’s called “Beam me out of this death trap, Scotty,” and although it didn’t directly  call out the O-ring problem that caused the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, it’s full of red flags that did play out for the worst.

I hadn’t thought much about any of this until last night when I was watching E60, an ESPN television news magazine. It’s sort of like 60 Minutes, but with a sports angle. It’s almost always a pleasant surprise, and last night was no exception.

One piece chronicled the highly unlikely journey of…a soccer ball. One of the astronauts on the ill-fated Discovery mission was named Ellison Onizuka. He was an assistant coach of his daughter’s high school soccer team. When he boarded the ill-fated Challenge, he brought along a team soccer ball that was inscribed with a good luck message from the team.

Miraculously, the ball was recovered intact. Eventually, it found its way into a trophy case at the high school Onikuza’s daughter attended. Clear Lake high school, owing to its proximity to Cape Canaveral, has graduated lots of astronauts’ kids. In 2016, an astronaut named Col. Shane Kimbrough, a Clear Lake parent, was scheduled for a stay on the International Space Station. He asked the high school principal if there was anything from the school she’d like him to take with him.

And so, on October 26, 2016, the ball finally made it into space, where it spent 173 days. It came back safely, and it’s back in its case at the high school.

You can read the online story here. ESPN regularly re-airs the E60 segments—it’s a gripping piece of work. I can’t help but think that Ellison Onikuza and his crewmates would’ve been happy to know that the ball made it to space—and in particular that their work and dedication was being carried on.

Often, I find these stories a little too sentimental, and even manipulative. But somehow, the picture of that ball floating weightlessly against the backdrop of space floated my boat and my spirits.