Way back in 1989, Walt Weiss won the World Series with the Oakland A’s, and Barry Helton earned a Super Bowl ring with the San Francisco 49ers. Twenty-two years later, Weiss and Helton rocked with nervous anticipation in the same prep baseball park, watching their sons play for a state championship.
There’s no question which was a bigger deal. The only thing that runs hotter than the emotions of a teenage ballplayer is the heart of a parent hanging on every pitch.
“The first huge game I ever won as an athlete was a state high school championship. That feeling stays with you forever. And nobody can ever take that feeling away from you,” Helton said Saturday.
The Cheyenne Mountain Indians could not have captured the Class 4A championship without the pitching and hitting of junior Bret Helton.
As rain fell late in the Class 5A title game, Brody Weiss ripped a double through the gloom of All-City Field during a decisive seven-run sixth inning that propelled Regis to a 15-10 victory against rival Cherry Creek.
Time of his life? Brody Weiss was lucky to be here. “Exactly right,” he said.
As a 3-year-old, he spent far too much of his summer battling to stay alive, after a dip in a Georgia swimming pool left him gravely ill from E. coli bacteria. The kidneys of the young Weiss failed.
But when the 1998 All-Star Game was played in Denver, then-Rockies owner Jerry McMorris sent his private jet to transport a tough kid into town, so little Brody Weiss could sit in the stands when his father was introduced as a member of the Atlanta Braves.
“What can I say?” Walt Weiss said at the time. “The kid’s a fighter.”
Other than the worldwide television audience and a hefty paycheck for the winners, there’s only one difference between winning the Super Bowl and taking home the prep baseball trophy.
Celebrating a championship with your high school buddies beats all. Not even the Super Bowl compares. And we have proof.
Barry Helton, who starred at the University of Colorado before joining the 49ers, had one eye glued to a video camera on a cool spring afternoon his son will remember forever.
With Cheyenne Mountain needing two victories to win the double-elimination tournament, Bret Helton won the opener against Valor as the starting pitcher, stabbed line drives as a shortstop and drove in six runs on four hits for good measure. All before dinner.
After the Indians’ 12-0 thumping of Wheat Ridge in the title game, somewhere in that happy pile of celebrating prep was one of the most legendary names in Colorado sports.
“The best part of winning a state championship? You do it with your friends,” Bret Helton said.
Long before Todd Helton became a household name in Colorado by thumping doubles into the gap at Coors Field, Barry Helton made Simla High School more than a small dot on the state map.
Not many prep athletes go from 8-man prep football to the Super Bowl. Helton did it twice. He won back-to-back NFL titles with the 49ers.
“When I won a state football championship my sophomore year, I couldn’t have been a happier person, based on sports. That’s as good as it gets,” said Helton, who somehow managed to sneak on the field to punt four times during San Francisco’s 55-10 dismantling of the Broncos in Super Bowl XXIV.
“When you win a Super Bowl, that’s as good as it gets, at the pro level. But the thing about high school is this. Colleges recruit. The pros draft. In high school, you have to win with the kids you played with since you were 9 years old.”
It was the second state championship enjoyed by Bret Helton. “Yeah,” he said, “but my dad won six.”
“No,” countered the elder Helton, chuckling at the error made on behalf of a prep legend in need of zero padding. “I was only on four state champion teams. Three in football and one in basketball.”
Walt Weiss, who played shortstop for the Rockies from 1994-97, is now a coach on the Regis baseball staff.
“I don’t think it gets any better than when you’re a player,” he said. “But I was amazed at the emotions involved with these kids. They play with such passion. It means so much to them. You succeed and fail right there with them.
“You’ve got to watch the game as a coach. But the dad creeps in.”
A championship hug is as tight as the love between a father and son.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
