For Big Ben, it starts with baby steps

LATROBE, Pa. – On the morning of Ben Roethlisberger's(notes) redemption, a 68-year-old grandmother from Pittsburgh's south side drove to the local Giant Eagle grocery store and purchased a piece of poster board. On it she scrawled her valentine to a man accused twice of sexual assault, who allegedly exposed himself to a young woman in a Georgia bathroom and became the most scorned man in a town that wanted dearly to embrace him.

"We support you Big Ben" Kathy Najdzinski wrote on her sign. "Prayers and love."

"He's like one of my children," she said.

Then she and her daughter Sandy Sweeney came here to the first day of Pittsburgh Steelers training camp. It was an important day, the first time Roethlisberger would appear before Pittsburgh's public since that night spun out of control in Milledgeville, Ga., since NFL commissioner Roger Goodell suspended him for at least the first four games of the season, throwing the Steelers into offensive chaos.

Najdzinski thought he needed her support.

Sweeney wasn't sure he had really changed.

Both, like the hundreds of other Steelers fans gathered outside the locker room entrance at St. Vincent College, were looking for something from Roethlisberger. A smile. A wave. An acknowledgment he was not the same. It was 2:45, only minutes before Saturday's afternoon practice, which would be open to the public.

On the other side of the door, Roethlisberger fretted. He was nervous, unsure. In the previous weeks he had worked to repair fractured relationships with teammates. He had approached team employees and apologized for past boorish behavior. He told everyone he needed to change, to be a better person. He was sure most of the Steelers understood he was sincere.

He did not know about the fans.

What would they say? Would they cheer? The day before he told a reporter from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that it "would tear me up" if they booed.

Just then, receiver Hines Ward(notes), a player who has criticized Roethlisberger in the past, moved next to him. Earlier in the day Ward said he sensed Roethlisberger making an effort to be a better teammate, to be a friend. Now it was clear the quarterback needed one himself.

"Let's walk together," Ward said.

And so they did. And the fans whose reaction Roethlisberger feared the most began to cheer. They waved their arms, they shouted his name. Najdzinski shook her sign and screamed. Relief spilled across his face. He turned to the fans and shook their hands as he made his way along the roped-off patch that winds down a hill and toward the practice field.

Later he would call the reception "warm and loving," quickly adding, "as I thought it would be," before pausing.

"As I hoped it would be," he said.

It always has been easy to discern which Steeler is the most popular. Scan the fans. The jerseys never lie. For the past few years, Roethlisberger's No. 7 has filled the hillsides at St. Vincent. This time the dominant numbers were Troy Polamalu's(notes) 43 and Ward's 86. There were Roethlisberger shirts but not as many as in the past.

Rick Hencye, a firefighter and EMS from Monessen, Pa., dumped his Roethlisberger jersey in the garbage after the details of the Milledgeville debacle were released.

"I'm through with him," Hencye said. What he is accused of doing that night "was wrong, very wrong. On so many levels.

"He thinks his stuff doesn't stink. All this about him being changed, it's all talk. He might be a good quarterback but as a person what he did to his team. …"

He shook his head.

He wore a gray T-shirt with Polamalu's 43 on the front. Polamalu was his new favorite Steeler, he said. Polamalu, he said, seems sincere around the fans. He does a lot for children with special needs. Roethlisberger, he decided, never will be a Troy Polamalu.

And yet on Saturday, Roethlisberger tried with the fans. He smiled as he walked around them. When they shouted his name he waved. He nodded when some yelled, "You're the man!" After practice he held an impromptu press conference, at which he admitted several times to his nervousness. He said he was trying to be more personable. Then when he was done he said, "All right, guys, take care."

In the past he would have grunted a few quick answers and abruptly strutted away.

This time he turned and walked toward the stands, where several hundred fans remained calling his name. He waved them down a small fence, where he stood and signed autographs. At one point he signed his jersey and gave it away. He later reached down and signed his shoe, handing it to a child. After a few minutes, he signed his other shoe and gave that away, too.

Najdzinski made her way to the front. She handed him her sign. He took a pen and autographed it.

"No," she said. "This is for you."

He looked at her and smiled.

"Thank you," he said.

Right there on the side of the field at St. Vincent College, Najdzinski's hands began to shake. She pumped her fist in the air, then dabbed her eye.

Roethlisberger always had reminded her of her own boys; that's why she liked him so much. And on Saturday, as he accepted her gift of a homemade sign, she wanted to believe so much that he had changed, that the past incidents were the mistakes of a young man momentarily caught up in his sudden fame.

He was everything she hoped he would be.

Then her face clouded.

"As long as he doesn't go and screw around again, he'll always have a fan here," she said.

And if he does?

She shook her head.

She, too, would be through with him.

Which is something Roethlisberger had to understand on the first afternoon of his redemption. The city he almost lost is giving him another chance. But even the fans who love him the most will be watching, waiting to see if he has really changed – or if this is all just an act from a man they wanted to love but found they couldn't trust.