He's No Walk-off

Sometimes, Rudy gets run over.

Meet UCLA's Andrew Baumgartner.

Wait. You already know him.

He is that walk-on wide receiver who tried out for the team on a whim, played well enough in training camp last summer to earn a scholarship, caught a touchdown pass to start the victory over Oklahoma, caught a fourth-down pass on the winning drive against Washington.

In two short months he went from math nerd to folk hero, from dreamer to deliverer, a scrawny, slow, giant epitome of that good old college try.

Our hero is back at practice this summer for his final Bruin season, still scratching, still soaring, with one difference.

He's a walk-on again.

This summer, by letter, Baumgartner was informed that the Bruins would not be renewing his scholarship.

The money was needed for top freshman recruits. It couldn't be wasted on a senior who wasn't as talented. Baumgartner's fire was appreciated, but his abilities were dispensable.

Eighty-five scholarships, and not one for a kid who caught 111 yards worth of passes.

Eighty-five scholarships, and they took one away from a kid who led all UCLA receivers with an average of 18.5 yards a catch.

Baumgartner wanted to quit.

"It was a tough deal, I figured it was time to get on with my life," he said.

His parents were stunned.

"I thought once you got a scholarship, unless you did something terrible, they never took it away," said his mother, Carol Claypool.

He was on the verge of turning in his pads when the strangest thing happened.

All these friends and teammates and coaches he had inspired, they suddenly inspired him.

"People kept asking me to remember why I tried out for the team in the first place," he said. "It was never about the scholarship. It was always about just loving to play college football."

So this fall Andrew Baumgartner will play again, one more time, and again he will be the most unique impact player on the field, but for a different reason.

He'll be the only one who has taken out a $12,000 student loan to be there.

"I guess I want to finish what I start," he said.

Sometimes, Rudy gets run over.

And sometimes, he just gets back up again.

*

Baumgartner was on the phone, Friday afternoon, flush from the first week of UCLA practice.

"Things are going great," he said. "I'm running with the first and second team. I'm having fun. You never know."

He never gives it a rest, this kid.

He still thinks he has a chance to play, even though walk-ons rarely play.

He still thinks he can have the same leadership impact of last season even though, after school starts, he won't even be able to eat with the team at the training table.

"That's OK, I've eaten at Taco Bell before," he said.

He still believes in the fluffy clouds of college football, even as they have grown dark and rained an embarrassing storm upon him.

"It's a great sport, it helped me find a niche on campus. I play for my teammates, I play for fun," he said.

All of which inspires two words.

C'mon, Karl.

In trying to rebuild the Bruins program, Coach Karl Dorrell needs as many solid cornerstones as flashy shingles. In selling his young program as a place of big dreams, couldn't he find room for the biggest dreamer of all?

"This was a one-year deal, a one-year reward, and Andrew knows that," Dorrell said. "He understood everything."

Maybe, but, hearing Baumgartner's story, understanding might not be so easy for the rest of us.

He showed up on campus from Marin Catholic High in the Bay Area, a three-sport athlete with a 4.6 GPA but not enough raw skills to warrant a major-college look.

He came to UCLA as an engineering major, but he found himself stopping by varsity practice on the way to class. At barely 6 feet, barely 200 pounds, it appeared that some of those guys could crush him.

But he saw the practices, and himself, differently.

"He would look out there at the wide receivers and say, 'You know, I can do that,' " recalled his friend and roommate, Griff Barash. "You could tell he was starting to dream."

After leading intramural teams to consecutive school flag football championships -- go Team Ramrod! -- he called the football office after the 2003 season and asked for a tryout.

"I missed the sport, I didn't feel complete, I had to try it again," he said during a campus interview last week. "So I called the football office and, on their answering machine, I asked for a chance."

At the annual student tryouts, he made the team as a walk-on, then suffered a high ankle sprain and watched the 2004 season from the sideline or the couch.

The following spring, still playing, even changing his major to math and economics to better fit his football schedule, he began to get noticed.

Said Dorrell: "He knew he wasn't the fastest of guys, but he had a special quality about him, he was smart, he worked hard, he showed us something."