Games Are Getting a Kick-Start

ATHENS —  An Olympic flame arrived here Tuesday, three days ahead of schedule, yet timeless in its glow.

It arrived not in a torch, but on the sleeves of U.S. softball players.

It will be maintained not in a caldron, but their coach.

His name is Mike Candrea, and he will try to lead his team to a gold medal less than a month after his wife, Sue, collapsed at their feet and died.

He faced a group of reporters for the first time Tuesday and wept.

“It’s a daily struggle,” he said.

His team surrounded him and shuddered.

“It’s so hard,” outfielder Jessica Mendoza said.

They are two-time defending Olympic champions, yet they are wounded and unsettled, and certain of only one thing.

If their grieving coach burns enough to show up, how can they not?

“For him to get back on the field with us, that first day, he was so strong, I actually had tears in my eyes,” first baseman Leah O’Brien-Amico said.

Candrea rejoined the team here last week, less than three weeks after a tragedy of Olympic proportions.

It was a July Friday night in Wisconsin, where the team was waiting at an airport to travel to its final pre-Olympic tour game.

Sue Candrea, 49, wife, mother and team comforter, ordered some fast food and sat with the group.

“I went to McDonald’s for her,” Mendoza remembered. “When I came back, lots of people were standing around somebody who was on the ground.”

It was Sue, who had been stricken with a brain aneurysm.

“When I saw her, I didn’t recognize her,” Mendoza said.

While Sue was being rushed to the hospital, the team prayed.

“I mean, we were all right there,” Mendoza said.

Two days later, in the early morning of July 18, Sue died.

“One minute she was running the treadmill, taking a walk ... then she was gone from me,” Mike said.

Last week would have marked their 28th anniversary. She was not only his life partner but his best friend, running a two-child household while he was winning six national titles at Arizona.

“She allowed me to do that,” he said. “I never had to worry about paying bills, never had to worry about anything. You never realize how much you miss someone until they are not there.”

Sue even quit her job last winter to join Mike on the team’s tour, sitting with him at the front of the bus, letting him sleep on her shoulder, reminding him to have fun.

“They were so cute together,” Mendoza said.

Sue insisted that players smile when they passed her on the bus. She passed out homemade goody bags filled with lotions and lipstick and things that their tough, mustachioed coach would never think about.

“She was like a mom to us,” Mendoza said.

The team flew to her funeral, the players hugging one another, and cried.

Their coach returned to his Arizona home and wandered about the empty rooms.

“That was really, really hard,” he said.

And then, oh yeah, time for the most important sporting event of your life....

Sue’s death occurred so close to the start of the Games that her name is still listed in the team’s media guide.

Her death was so recent that, when Candrea was studying video of a warmup game against Italy, she appeared vividly in the background.

Before the players saw the same video, worried about causing more grief, team officials had edited her out.

And now he -- and they -- have to think about opening here against Italy on Saturday?

“My wife was with me since February,” Candrea said. “I know how much she enjoyed watching this team, how much she was prepared to come to these Games. It came down to ... a lot of people said to me, don’t even think twice about carrying out this journey.”

Crystal Bustos, who lost her grandfather early in the 2000 Games in Sydney, yet remained with the team, understands.

“I was ready to get on a plane and go home,” she said. “But my family convinced me that he would have wanted me to stay. After a few days, it became clear, this was also the best place for Coach.”

When he took the field last week for the first time since the tragedy, he knew he had made the right decision.

“For the first time, my mind was actually able to concentrate on one thing,” he said. “It’s been a real therapy for me to come back to my family. They are my security blanket right now.”

A family. If this U.S. team didn’t understand it then, it understands it now.

The players lend the coach their hustle on the field and their shoulders on the sidelines, and understand that even winning a third consecutive title would be nothing compared with handling this loss.

They would be this year’s Dream Team ... if it all weren’t such a nightmare.

“Everybody talks about [pitcher] Jennie Finch, but there’s beauty all around you on this team,” said Dot Richardson, infielder-turned-broadcaster.

Beauty, not only in their deportment but in their duffel bags, where many of the women keep the little handwritten notes that Sue Candrea put in those goody bags.

“Go for the Gold,” it read, and so they will, carrying their coach with them. Or is it the other way around?

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.