The sign above the door reads "Lambo St." Flags line the ceilings-Greek, American, University Athletic Association and U.S. Marine Corps. By a desk sits a six-foot-nine behemoth, his legs kicked out and stretching halfway across the room. There's a nearly-finished plate of sesame chicken and rice on the floor, and a red-headed girl sits on the bed watching American Idol. Bryan Lambert '05 has spent countless nights like this one during his five years here, but tonight is different. The two-sport star and all-UAA basketball and baseball player may don a Judges uniform for the final time tomorrow. It's easily been his best year yet; the pitcher and forward broke the school record for saves and led the basketball team to its first winning season in a decade.

Friday at noon, his baseball team plays heavily-favored Bridgewater State College in the first round of the East Coast Athletic Conference tournament, but Lambert confidently says his ace and friend Tim Dunphy '06, who was shelled by the Bears earlier in the season, is ready to play. He won't think of tomorrow's game as possibly being his last game. He says he can't. Instead, he's picturing a championship game where he tosses the winning pitch.

Beneath this outwardly confident giant is a down-to-earth competitor who wants nothing but to be the best he can be at everything he tries, and as the inevitability of his time at Brandeis penetrates that exterior calm, he begins to think back on past challenges, failures and triumphs.

A Christian who loves sports at a Jewish school that doesn't seem to care about them almost sounds like a joke, but for Lambert, it's helped him become who he is and showed him where he is going.


He almost seems to overshadow the plate itself when he stands in the box against Bridgewater on the windy Friday afternoon. Clutching the bat against his body, he grabs some dirt from behind home plate, siphons it between his hands and wipes them off on his jersey. After every pitch he spins the bat from the bottom in meticulous circles. Finally, he sees the one he wants, and the entire frame of his body swings forward as he sends the ball flying over the left field fence. Home run. Three-run shot, one of seven he's hit this season.


Where he's going is Portugal. A sports agent has negotiated a contract for him to play basketball in the country's professional B-league, and he's due in Lisbon in September. The redhead, his girlfriend Joanna Schleider '05, is coming with him, too.

"She's the smart one," he says.

Schleider hesitates with a smile, looking way from the TV before tacitly agreeing.

Baseball could still be an option. Lambert will play in the New England Intercollegiate College Baseball Association All Star game at Fenway Park on June 5. Scouts will be there. There are leagues overseas in which he can play, but, ever the competitor, he feels that baseball's lack of globalization will mean less competition.

Plus, "there's just something about basketball," he says. "Sometimes, it's just who wants it more."


It's Lambert who wants it more right now. Ace Dunphy is solid all game before finally breaking down in the seventh and giving up most of the Judges' large lead. As coach Pete Varney comes out for a conference on the mound, Lambert starts warming up on the dirt between first and second base-a little trick the team does to give him extra warm up time. He's on the mound now, and, with the bases loaded, the margin for error is zero. Ground ball to shortstop. Double play. Inning over. Lambert gets the save, and his college career lives for one more day.


Lambert has had to endure more than his share of losing. The basketball program was in shambles when he arrived, and the end of the tunnel was far from sight before the school hired coach Brian Meehan two seasons ago.

Lambert describes the contrast in the early years of his athletic career at Brandeis, playing for a basketball team that accepted losing in the fall ("I couldn't believe how OK some of these guys were with losing," he says) and then playing for a baseball team in the spring that saw winning as the only option.

The losing has given him patience, but it's not the only thing that contributes to his quiet, no-nonsense approach to life.

"It's tough being at a place where something that you love so much is put second," Lambert says. "But it's made me appreciate it more."

He speaks the same way about his religion. Lambert has a chairo (symbol of the Greek Orthodox Church) tattooed on his right arm and a symbol of the Virgin Mary on his left, but he's spent five years as part of an overwhelmingly Jewish student body.

It serves as proof of his inner resolve, a determination to see as direly important those things that everyone around him ignores as irrelevant.


The scene repeats itself on Saturday, Lambert's just replacing a different pitcher. Rookie Tyler Robinson has pitched a gutty game against Endicott College, but he's loaded the bases in the sixth inning and needs help. Lambert takes his extra warm up time, walks to the mound and throws his first baseman's glove into the dugout. He gives up a single to the first batter and one run scores, but he gets the next one on a grounder to second, and runs back to the dugout with the score tied, and the game in his hands.


It's easy to stereotype a tall guy who plays two sports as a conceited jock. It's something Lambert acknowledges happens to him, but not something he worries about.

"I think I learned early that the best way to approach things is to just take care of your own business and not worry about how others perceive you," Lambert says. "I care what those people who love me and care about me think."


Time is almost up. He's just been throwing too many pitches. It's the bottom of the 10th inning of a real defensive struggle, but the Endicott batters seem to be catching up with his fastball. There are runners at the corners, and the man pitching for Endicott is at the plate. Lambert has been frustrating batters with his low fastball, but he throws one inside. Single to left field. Run scores. Game over. He walks back to the dugout, and begins unlacing his cleats for the last time.


There's one cup standing, and the ball is again in his hands. He arches the white pingpong ball high in the air, and it falls into the cup. Game over. Lambert wins the game of beer pong. He and his teammates are celebrating another season of baseball, and while Lambert is enjoying his last moments of college innocence, part of him is still on the mound. Watching him in action, it's clear that no one recognizes his mistakes before he does, and he talks about the one that ended his career.

"He was so ready to hit that inside fastball," Lambert says of his final pitch.

He insists he wasn't considering the end of his career when on the mound, and it's hard not to believe him after watching him play. When he makes a mistake, the disappointment leaves his eyes long before the next pitch is thrown.

"It's so easy to drift away and get beat, and then the moment's over and you've already lost," he says. "If I was thinking about that, then it would definitely be the last time I pitch."

Perhaps the biggest mistake is the one that kept him here an extra year, cheating on a paper his sophomore year. He was suspended for a semester, but in characteristic fashion, he credits it with getting him to make the most out of his college experience.

The road ahead is difficult. But he'll approach it the way he always has. For all of his talent and all of his ability, the man is able to acknowledge all of his shortcomings.

It's why Meehan says he would offer him a job if he had an opening ("He never once questioned anything, he did everything we asked," Meehan says. "I've never had a kid like Bryan Lambert, anywhere").

It's why his teammates say that they feel supremely confident when he's on the mound. ("When he pitches, you expect to win," teammate Brandon Pick '08 says).

It's also why he thinks he'll be successful, first in Europe and then in the career he hopes to have as a coach.

As he looks back on his time at Brandeis and forward to the rest of his life, he considers himself lucky.

"I have some of the best memories of my life here," he says.

He calls meeting Joanna the best one, and says how happy he is to take that part of college with him to Portugal.

"I love sports, and I love basketball," he says. "I can't think of anything better than making money, putting food on the table and providing for my family through sports."

Pausing, he adds, "What's better?"

Nothing.