Sox' Williams a proud dad even in defeat

The picture told several thousand words.

Though one would suffice: inconsolable.

That was Kyle Williams late Saturday night, sitting on the bench, buttressed by teammates with their arms around him.

On the final play of his college career, the senior wide receiver from Arizona State had muffed a kick that cost his team the game.

And in the stands sat a father, helpless and heartbroken.

"Unfortunately, failure is a part of sports,'' said White Sox GM Ken Williams. "Especially in baseball, the game teaches you to have a short memory.''

The dad knows all about the best and most difficult moments in sports, having been both a football player at Stanford - witness to the infamous "Stanford band'' play - and a major-league baseball player, not to mention a GM who built a World Series team.

But this was his son, who had just played the game of his life.

Kyle Williams caught 9 passes for 130 yards, including a couple acrobatic catches that could have made anyone's plays of the week.

An underdog in its rivalry game with Arizona, Williams had returned a punt 53 yards that set up ASU's first points, cutting the lead to 14-3 in the third quarter.

Early in the fourth, Williams caught a 44-yard TD pass that pulled ASU to within 14-10, and then he made the play of the game.

With 2:09 remaining on a fourth-and-12, he went up in the back of the end zone for a circus catch and ripped down a 14-yard TD that tied the game at 17-17.

But with about a minute left, instead of letting the ball bounce, he tried to save his team valuable real estate and give ASU a chance to win the game, signaling for a fair catch while surrounded by defenders.

The ball tipped off his fingers and fell on one bounce to an Arizona player at the ASU 22.

Arizona kicked the winning field goal as time expired, and Williams' brilliant performance was trampled by the Wildcats' celebration.

"I went down to the locker room after the game and he was pretty upset. It was tough to see,'' Ken Williams said. "For his college career to end like that, it hurts. You hurt for him.

"But my message to him was that the same aggressiveness, that same intestinal fortitude, that allows him to make the catches he makes, is also going to cost you sometimes.

"That's what playmakers do. They make plays. They're always trying to make plays, and mistakes sometimes happen when they're trying to make plays. That's part of it.

"I'm trying to be an objective dad here, but he made unbelievable catch after unbelievable catch that night.

"I told him that. He's pretty resilient. He went out to dinner that night and by then he had snapped out of it.

"You know, he's been a baseball player his whole life and baseball teaches you how to do that. It teaches you that you have to get rid of Monday in order to focus on Tuesday.''

It doesn't hurt that the younger Williams has been hanging around major-league dugouts for so many years.

"I guess in our family, all our kids have been raised with a certain amount of toughness, and they know mistakes are part of life,'' Ken Williams said. "They understand sports at a high level.

"He knows that at that position, if you miss a ball on first down, by second down you better forget about it because it's time to make another play.

"There were so many positives in that game for him and he's not going to let that one play stay with him. He's too smart for that, too tough for that.''

Kyle Williams has been told that he has an NFL future and should get an invite to the combine, so it won't be his last time on a football field.

"I care about him taking it to the next level only because he cares about it,'' Ken Williams said. "I personally don't care if he ever plays another down of football.

"It's difficult for me to watch them play football because it's such a brutal sport. It's my favorite sport, but it's a brutal sport.''

NFL or not, Kyle Williams has nothing to prove to his dad, and no muffed punt for which to apologize.

"The thing I'm most proud of is he's on schedule for graduation with his class,'' his father said. "Nothing he does from here on out could make me more proud than he already has.''

brozner@dailyherald.com