Keith LeClair is the reason Vanderbilt assistant Erik Bakich got into coaching.

"I wanted to do what he did," Bakich said.

Bakich arrived at East Carolina as a business major, but that changed after just one semester around LeClair, the prototypical player's coach whose energy and whatever-it-takes attitude was infectious.

"It wasn't so much about Xs and Os, it wasn't so much about mechanics or fundamentals," said Bakich, who played for LeClair from 1999-2000. "He just had the ability to get everyone on his team to want to just run through a wall and to outhustle and outwork the opponent and just bust your butt to do anything to compete and to win."

Keith LeClair is the reason Bakich wears No. 23.

"I think about him every time I put on the jersey," Bakich said. "I had never worn No. 23 until I started coaching, and I knew once I did start coaching, I would always want to wear his number."

Bakich isn't the only one. In fact, he is one of seven of LeClair's formers players currently coaching Division I baseball. There's Cliff Godwin at Central Florida, Joe Hastings at Boston College, Nick Schnabel at Liberty, Bryant Ward at South Florida, Ben Sanderson at Florida Atlantic and Brian Cavanaugh at East Carolina, all wearing No. 23.

"We're coaching because we all made a promise to him that we're going to do everything in our power to get our teams to Omaha like he did for us," Bakich said. "We want to have the same impact on the kids that we're coaching that he had on us and eventually get to Omaha. When it does happen, when we do get to Omaha, part of us is going to think, `This is for him.'"

Keith LeClair is also the reason why the Vanderbilt baseball team will take part in The Walk to Defeat ALS this Saturday at 9 a.m. at Centennial Park.

On July 17, 2006, at the way-too-young age of 40, LeClair died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly referred to as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, after a grueling five-year battle. Bakich said the hardest part was watching how quickly the disease took control of his hero and inspiration.

Click here to read the rest of my features for VU Commodores. I know it's football season and we're all caught up in wins and losses, but it's story like this one that put it all in perspective.