Rubbing his balding scalp, Mike Smith leans back and recalls his favorite Syracuse men’s lacrosse game.

“The ‘89 championship: Syracuse-Johns Hopkins,” he said. “I’ve got that memorized.”

And not because he played in it.

Smith was 8 in 1989, but the game is on one of about 25 lacrosse video tapes he’s stashed in his South Campus apartment.

A senior midfielder, Smith, 22, is a throwback. He watches the History Channel. He hates rap. His favorite summer activity is fishing with his black Labrador retriever off the shores of his Long Island home.

“I’ve always looked a little older my whole life,” Smith said. “Plus, I’m balding.”

“We call him The Old Man,” said midfielder Bill Perritt, Smith’s roommate. “I mean, look at him.”

“He looked that way freshman year,” defenseman Sol Bliss said. “We’ve always picked on how hairy he is.”

For all his 40-something traits, Smith, a second-stringer, plays a cerebral game and calms the Orangemen’s lightning offense. Since the 6-foot, 195-pound Smith lacks outstanding size and speed, he focuses on mastering SU’s offensive plays and limiting turnovers.

Syracuse, which plays at Hobart tonight at 7, committed 28 turnovers in an 11-10 loss Saturday to Princeton. It’s a sore stat for a team looking to repeat a national title.

“We need to use our heads a little bit more,” Bliss said.

That’s where Smith comes in.

“He is a settling factor,” SU head coach John Desko said. “Sometimes, you see the game get a little frenzied, and he gets the ball and gets the guys to calm down.”

Smith learned that patience growing up the youngest of five boys. Since he’s eight years younger than his next oldest brother, Smith often felt the brunt of backyard lacrosse games, in which his brothers always forced him to play goalie.

“They had no mercy,” said Smith’s mother. “He never really was allowed to be little.”

For a speech class presentation two years ago, Smith showed a video tape of a time when he decided to stand up to his brothers, who responded by hacking him with their sticks.

These days, when Smith and his brothers — Chad, 30; Brett, 31; Shane, 35; and Todd, 36 — return home, they set up a plastic milk crate in the street and hold shootouts.

Smith’s brothers, who all played college lacrosse, piqued his interest in the sport. Smith would sit for hours and watch game tapes with his brothers, studying the offensive moves he’d later practice against the wall at Baldwin High.

He scored 43 goals as a senior at Baldwin but found himself playing on the third midfield unit his first two-plus years at SU.

“You’ve got to find your niche,” he said. “Mine was understanding the offense pretty well. I’m not going to make any plays that wow the crowd. I just try to be a smart player out there.”

He’s tradition-savvy, too. Sometimes, Perritt, his roommate, will stroll downstairs at 3 a.m., only to find Smith watching the 1989 title game.

“Every time you watch it,” Smith said, “you find something new.”

Said Bliss: “We always say he’s only really happy two-and-a-half hours a day — when he’s practicing.”

Smith realizes he probably won’t play pro lacrosse. He plans to come back to SU next fall to student teach and complete his physical education major.

Before that, though, he’ll spend this summer like he did last: fishing from his 16-foot Dory boat with his dog, Talon, on the Peconic Bay, which sits 400 feet from the Greenport bed and breakfast his parents opened in September.

“I’m in no rush to grow up,” Smith, The Old Man, said.

So this summer, from his bedroom in the attic of the bed and breakfast, an old Victorian house with a wraparound porch, Smith gets a perfect view of the bay — a placid perspective that suits him just fine.

Published on March 24, 2003 at 12:00 pm