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FeedSports: Crew Cat
How former Columbus Crew captain Frankie Hejduk became the team’s fan-loving, beer-swigging, energetic, tireless, likeable, long-haired brand ambassador
PHOTOS BY JODI MILLER
Frankie Hejduk takes only a few steps from an exit on the west side of Crew Stadium, when a man at a nearby tailgate shouts his name.
As the guy jogs over, others follow, setting down plates and drinks, reaching for their phones. Within minutes, Hejduk stands in a clumsy tangle of hugs, autographs and high-fives, enveloped by greater and greater numbers who talk excitedly and appear giddy, jubilant, almost in shock.
The former Columbus Crew captain signs jerseys, tickets, biceps and, after a gentlemanly compromise, a woman’s collarbone. He hands Crew scarves to some star-struck kids, swigs a Modelo and poses for a series of photos.
With each shutter click, more join the scrum.
Hejduk leads the tailgaters in a raucous chant of “We Are Massive,” a team motto, then breaks free to wander the crowds that have condensed around the stadium before first kick against Sporting Kansas City on a steamy July evening. Endless shouts of Heeyyy Frankieee ring from a radius of 30 yards.
He hasn’t worn a Crew jersey since 2010, but Frankie Hejduk remains unmistakable with his lean build, shaggy brown mane and overwhelmingly upbeat persona.
And this is what he does for a living.
After announcing his retirement in April, the defender who captained the 2008 championship team began work as the Crew’s brand ambassador. The front office crafted the position specifically for him, but he’s essentially a mascot without a costume. He’s tasked to provide the organization with a public face, recruit new fans and stoke community support behind the city’s major-league soccer club.
If this job description sounds vague, that’s partly because it is: The idea is to get the team legend engaged with all sectors of the community and let Hejduk be himself.
His official duties today include posing for photos with an Air Force officer, meeting winners of the Corporate Cup tournament and fielding questions during an event with local referees. He’s capable in formal situations but most comfortable here among fans—cheering, vibrant, unhinged.
As the atmosphere intensifies, so does Hejduk, who can no longer contain a series of ecstatic whoops as he walks toward the front gate. He alternates among wild gestures, throat-shredding cheers and exclamatory shouts: You ready to rock? Here we go, huh? Who brought their lungs tonight? His excitement ripples through the fans walking to their seats.
During his time in Columbus, his equal love for partying, playing and people made him stand out in star-strapped Major League Soccer. In his new role, little has changed except his place on the pitch. Wearing a yellow Crew shirt, cargo shorts and cream-colored sneakers, he still looks like a surfer dude who wandered over from a nearby beach.
Game time is close, so Hejduk enters the stadium’s lower deck. He never turns down requests for photographs or signatures, those joyous moments between fan and idol, and nearly everyone recognizes him. He’s forced to move in short bursts, as if he’s in the receiving line of the world’s largest wedding.
“I don’t mind it,” he says smiling, somehow invigorated by a particularly long shoot. “If you want to promote the sport, you gotta do it.”
With the Crew behind 1-0, Hejduk makes his way to the Nordecke, a raucous supporters section in the stadium’s northeast corner. In these moments, Hejduk seems even more valuable. He whoops, hollers, bangs on drums, then hops the fence to field level. He froths the die-hard fans by leading their favorite cheers, his face contorted with intensity, until they start their own in his honor: Fraan-kie Heej-duk. Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap.
He climbs back over the fence, into an ocean of black and gold, and disappears.
About 25 miles north of San Diego on I-5, what Californians call the Five Highway, sits a small, sleepy beach town called Cardiff-by-the-Sea. Perched on a waterside bluff, it’s a stunningly beautiful place, even by Pacific Coast standards, and a rare hamlet saved somehow from the concrete sprawl slowly connecting San Diego to Los Angeles.
Surfers travel hours to ride the rock reef off the Cardiff coast and catch waves alongside the town’s sun-kissed natives. They are ruggedly unique, casual and good-natured. The kind of people who walk to the grocery store without shirts or shoes.
This lifestyle colored Hejduk like a deep summer tan. Born in Cardiff in 1974, he grew up at the beach. His family would rough it for several weeks each summer at the town’s waterfront campground, living by the rhythms of the wind and the water. In Cardiff, a young Hejduk learned to laugh easily, to enjoy people, to punctuate sentences with “cool” and “dude,” and to practice SoCal’s now-commodified Zen.
It was more than an image. Surfing was Hejduk’s first love, and he excelled on the water, often competing against and sometimes beating Rob Machado, a lifelong friend who went on to become a popular pro surfer.
Yet, since about age five, another passion had been drawing him inland. He started playing soccer in Saturday leagues, then graduated to traveling teams, where coaches coveted his ridiculous speed and stamina. Eventually Hejduk joined the storied Nomads Soccer Club in nearby La Jolla and fell in love with the game under Brian McManus and Derek Armstrong, the charismatic European footballers who headed the program.
“They made it fun,” Hejduk explains. “I wanted to go to training. I wanted to go to the games. If I missed a practice, it was like the end of the world, because I had so much fun, because of those guys.”
Hejduk’s technical skill and natural talent sometimes paled in the Nomads program, which boasts at least 22 alumni who’ve played with the U.S. national team. But he was driven and passionate, a fitness freak known to scrap and hustle, like during an infamous drill called the Snake Run, when players sprinted up a hill rumored to be full of snakes.
“He emerged as the fittest player on the team probably after a year,” recalls Armstrong, who oversees coaching for the Nomads. “He was always a good character, always a leader. There can be bad influences and good influences in the dressing room, and in every damned dressing room, you want a Frankie.”
As graduation approached, two wildly different career paths stretched before him. In high school, Hejduk would ride morning heats in a surf competition, travel to an afternoon soccer game, then return to catch waves in the finals. His parents were taxis. In 1989, the year he won the first of three state soccer titles with the Nomads, he also qualified for the U.S. amateur surf team.
Sigi Schmid, arguably the best college coach in the country at the time, tipped the scales to soccer when he offered Hejduk a scholarship to play at UCLA, the phone call every high-school player in Southern California dreamed about.
In a way, though, Hejduk had already made up his mind. Surfing is the idyllic pursuit of an individual against the elements, soccer the beautiful game stitched by team strategy and shared passion. Hejduk was fascinated by the sport, how it worked and breathed and developed.
And, ultimately, he wanted to be on a team.
“For whatever reason, being part of a team was cool to me,” Hejduk recalls fondly. “I loved everything about the team—playing soccer with the guys, winning with the team, high-fiving other guys when you do win. That stuck with me.”
The greatest moment in Crew history came on Nov. 23, 2008, when the team trounced the New York Red Bulls 3-1 to win its first league championship, capping a three-year team transformation and one of the most dominant seasons in MLS history. Players were branded into fan memory as they hoisted the trophy amid joyous shouts, group hugs and a party-supply monsoon that drenched a sunny field in Carson, California.
Frankie Hejduk competed in the 1998 and 2002 World Cups, as well as the 1996 and 2000 Olympics. Yet he speaks of the 2008 MLS title in wistful, poetic terms. He runs out of explanations, acknowledges that he’s repeating himself, and continues gushing.
“I remember how I felt in 2008—the love that I felt by the fans, by the community and by the city,” Hejduk recalls. “We are a team of the city.”
It’s early on a hot June weekday at Café Brioso, Hejduk’s favorite Downtown coffee shop, though he’s already in trademark form. He greets fans who approach his sidewalk table and washes down a double espresso with a small coffee.
After beating New York, the Crew hosted an epic, champagne-soaked locker room bash before returning home to its rabid supporters clubs and a football fortress that nodded proudly to its hometown soccer team.
“I felt like I was playing for everyone in the city at that time,” he adds with a wave of his hands. “When I stepped on the field, I didn’t want to disappoint them.”
Several nights after the championship game, Hejduk awoke to commotion outside his house. He flipped on some lights, went downstairs and found his property in Westerville covered in toilet paper. It was vandalism born of love.
Black and gold streamers hung from trees and eaves. Pictures of Hejduk and his teammates were plastered to his garage door. In the distance, a group of kids scampered away in laughter.
“To see, from the kids, that they loved me that much, that they had so much fun during that year—you can’t beat that,” Hejduk remembers, nearly in tears. “I think it was at that moment that I just went, ‘This is home. This is home.’ ”
For years, the Hejduks planned to return to California when he retired. (He named his second son Coasten and his first daughter Cali.) They changed their minds. When Hejduk finished playing, his family would stay in Columbus, where his wife Elissa had roots, two of his kids were born and he believed he had played with an entire city behind him.
“The eight years that I was here were some of the best years of my life,” he says. “To be honest, it really was a no-brainer.”
After the 2008 season, Hejduk played two more years for the Crew before being selected in a special draft by Kansas City and landing with the Los Angeles Galaxy. There he won his second MLS title alongside Landon Donovan and David Beckham.
Still, his plan never wavered. He racked up enough beach time in L.A. to last another decade and stayed in contact with Mark McCullers, the Crew president and general manager who found a way to bring Hejduk back to Columbus.
“Being around him, there was no one who was more a face of the organization, who was as outgoing as him,” says Patrick Guldan, managing editor of Crew news site MassiveReport.com. “What you see is what you get, and it’s so much different than what you see out of other athletes.”
Starting in 2003 with the Crew, Hejduk showed unquenchable energy and gritty locker-room leadership. He was fielded as a defender but tallied seven goals and 16 assists, thanks to his scrappy long-distance, low-percentage runs on goal.
As captain, Hejduk dunked the pro athlete’s squeaky-clean public persona for that of a relatable everyman hero that fans could approach or possibly even meet at the bar after a game.
For example, when he was suspended for a 2008 home game against the Galaxy, Hejduk dressed in black clothes and sunglasses, stood on a truck bed outside the stadium, and downed a beer in a single chug amid rowdy, tailgating fans with phones and cameras. Accounts of Frankie being Frankie scattered across the globe. The London Telegraph quoted him saying: “I had a couple of beers, ate some tacos. I enjoyed myself. That truly was one of the best times I’ve ever had at a soccer game.”
Instead of applauding fans after a game—the polite international custom—Hejduk would walk toward the Nordecke clapping, then slam a beer handed to him by a fan. For much of his career in Columbus, he was captain of the entire Crew Nation.
“Frankie is an iconic figure in this community and this game,” McCullers says. “We wanted to put him in an environment where he could continue to draw attention for the club.”
Brand ambassadors are rare in pro sports, so McCullers was free to shape the position to fit Hejduk’s unique skill set—his laid-back charisma, tireless work ethic and first-hand knowledge of the electricity that brought home the trophy in 2008.
“Frankie’s emotionally connected, and he expects—if not demands—you to be emotionally connected also,” McCullers explains. “He’s taken a lot of the characteristics that were his on the field, and now he’s applying them to the club, to the organization, to the fans.”
On paper, Hejduk’s job is defined by broad responsibilities—making appearances at official events, glad-handing sponsors, increasing Crew visibility, building a larger fan base. More generally, he wants to bring back the energy of 2008, then build on it.
“A stadium and an atmosphere can breed a team into winning ways,” Hejduk says in one of his trademark, animated bursts. “That’s what I want to get back for these guys here. I’m not playing anymore on the field, but I can still do something to let those guys have that feeling that I had.”
Ohio State’s campus is empty the Friday afternoon of finals week in June, as students return home, catch up on sleep or salve the previous night’s senior crawl with a visit to the patios along North High Street, which are roaring and packed by noon. Classroom buildings stand dim and forgotten. Even the Oval seems oddly still.
A spot of color on the sea of abandoned grass comes courtesy of Hejduk, who has fashioned a makeshift court for soccer tennis, a skills game that club players use to unwind after practice.
His setup is a small oasis of reggae, soccer and summer fun—the vibe that follows him wherever he goes. In 1998, before he joined the Crew, he signed a contract with German club Bayer Leverkusen, and fans in the landlocked industrial city welcomed him by bringing surfboards to the stadium.
Hejduk uses a small net he can transport in a backpack and rings boundary lines with Crew scarves. On one side sit a cooler and small speaker blasting Bob Marley, Hejduk’s idol. His first son’s middle name is Nesta, which is also Marley’s, and he was known to break into reggae-inspired dances after scoring goals.
Part of Hejduk’s mission is to attract students to Crew games, so he plays soccer tennis nearly every Friday. By 2 p.m., he’s shirtless, thin but chiseled, wearing gray board shorts and wrap-around shades threaded through the sides of his brown, wavy hair. He squares off against his polar opposite—a tall, pale intern from the Crew front office who wears khaki slacks, a blond buzz cut and sturdy leather shoes.
A remnant of students, modest by spring quarter standards, glances curiously from a nearby blanket, so Hejduk, graveyard of dull moments, runs over to introduce himself.
Crew fans often recognize Hejduk from afar—waving, shouting his name, shaking his hand or sharing when they once saw him make a spastic run down the right-field line or greet the Nordecke after the game. Those in town who’ve never met him often have heard his name or recall it when they see him in person.
Many students new to Columbus know nothing of Hejduk. They’re simply drawn by the unwavering energy and friendly invitations of a dude who, in some moments, looks like a bronzed, ripped Cousin It. Soon Hejduk returns with a small entourage. After the rules are set, two teams of four follow his lead, trading kicks over the net as he lavishes enthusiastic praise on their clumsy attempts.
No more than eight students join the game, though it’s worthwhile in Hejduk’s diligent, small-ball algebra. He values every high-five, every blurry tailgate photo, every Downtown sidewalk conversation, every clinking glass at Barley’s or Fado.
The group playing soccer tennis clearly enjoys Hejduk, who peppers them with questions about summer plans and jokes about who’s faring worst after senior crawl. Nearly two full games finish before several students ask the question hanging low in the summer heat: So, dude, like, why are you out here anyway?
He explains who he is, who he was and why he plays pick-up soccer games with strangers half his age on the Oval. Students inspect his championship ring and an iPhone picture of him with David Beckham taken during his lone season in Los Angeles. The teammates smile back from the screen as students crowd closer.
As a brand ambassador, Hejduk is lethal from close range. In these moments, he will detail the Crew’s vibrant fan culture, mention its bright future, comment on the roster and remind students of discount tickets available at the Ohio Union. Within minutes, the students are completely comfortable that a player boasting 85 appearances with the U.S. national team insists on giving them enthusiastic high-fives and free Crew gear.
His greatest skill is to make people feel both awestruck and comfortable—impressed by his status, disarmed by him.
It’s sweltering, and Hejduk is itching to watch the Euro 2012 matches. He proposes a few beers at Kildare’s, a pub in the South Campus Gateway. Twenty minutes later, students are clinking pints compliments of Hejduk, a champion footballer who, on this random Friday afternoon, is their most supportive friend.
“I don’t know if you’re going to believe this,” a student named Taylor Karg says to a friend on the phone, “but we’re hanging with a famous guy right now.”
People in Karg’s situation struggle to explain it: His name is Frankie Hejduk. He works for the Crew. He played in two World Cups. No, he’s sitting right next to me.
About a half-hour later, a graduating senior named Evan Wydro tracks down the group. He had played soccer tennis on the Oval but left to meet his girlfriend, who he’s brought to the bar to meet Hejduk.
“You made my graduation,” Wydro says to Hejduk, who’s visibly excited that the kid came back to have a beer. “I felt like I was in Hollywood because you were just strolling by.”
