An extraordinary extra point is a reminder of who’s missing

In his two-year USC career, Mario Danelo was probably on the field for less than two hours.

The Trojans were about touchdowns, Danelo was the squiggly frosting on the edges of those touchdowns.

The Trojans grandly kicked opponents between the teeth, then Danelo quietly kicked a football between the uprights.

He was just a kicker, right? Who misses a kicker?

Sitting in the Coliseum stands a couple of weeks ago, watching other parents’ children play football, Joe and Emily Danelo learned.

We all learned.

The Trojans scored the game’s first touchdown in their season opener against Idaho, lined up for the extra point, and, wait a minute. . .

“There’s no kicker out there,” said Joe, nudging Emily.

“What?” she said.

“Look, they’re lining up with no kicker on the field,” Joe said.

Turns out, the Trojans missed their late kicker so much, they came out for their first extra-point play of this season without one.

They lined up with 10 men, then waited in silence until the play clock expired and they were given a five-yard penalty.

In the stands, realizing what was happening, Joe and Emily both began crying.

Eight months after their son’s death, they were once again reminded of how he lived.

He was only a kicker, flashing across the Trojans’ landscape for the briefest of moments.

But oh how he lived.

“My son was just a regular kid, one of the guys,” Joe said. “But, man, I guess his spirit was really something special.”

On the front ledge of a quaint San Pedro home that squats on a hill above the Pacific Ocean, a faded, weathered USC banner bakes in the salty air.

It is a banner signifying that Mario Danelo lived there.

It is a banner that will remain even though he is gone.

“We don’t care how bad it looks, it’s not coming down,” Joe said. “It’s his banner, it’s his house.”

In their first interview since their son’s death, the Danelos invite a visitor inside a house where corners are still filled with their son’s light.

In Mario’s bedroom, his USC jersey and helmet are spread across his bed. His USC shoulder pads are on his head board.

There are photos covering the walls, trophies everywhere, even his cellphone and sunglasses sit on top of a dresser, as if any moment he could grab them and run out into his beloved seaside community.

“Sometimes I really do think he’s just going to walk back in here,” Emily said. “Then I realize that’s not possible. But still. . .”

Still, the family waits for closure that may never come.

In the early morning hours of Jan. 6, after partying with friends, Mario left his home, telling his father he was going for a walk.

Nobody saw him again until the next day, when he was found at the bottom of a cliff below Point Fermin Park, several blocks from his house.

Cause of death was listed as multiple traumatic injuries.

But manner of death was undetermined.

The coroner could not decide whether he had jumped, was pushed, or was perhaps even assaulted and carried to the bottom of the cliff.

Eight months later, few believe it was suicide, as Mario was an eternally happy kid who was so focused on his future that he had worked at the San Pedro docks that day so he could retain his union card for future work.

Many instead believe that Mario, whose blood-alcohol level was past the legal limit to drive, had climbed a four-foot wall along the cliff so he could urinate in the privacy of a bush. He then lost his balance on a slippery ice plant and fell 150 feet to his death.

His parents believe neither theory. His parents suspect foul play.

They say his body, clothed in gray USC sweats when they viewed him after his death, seemed pristine, untouched, quite unlike someone who had just fallen into the rocks.

Said Joe: “I don’t know what happened, but I know he did not fall. He could not have fallen that far and still looked that good.”

Said Emily: “We don’t know now, but someday we’ll know. Someday somebody will come forward. We just know it.”

At the time, Danelo had just finished his second season as USC’s kicker after turning down scholarships elsewhere to join the program as a walk-on.

In his career, he missed only two of 28 field-goal attempts, seven of 134 extra-point tries, and set an NCAA record with 83 extra points in 2005.

“I missed more kicks in a day than Mario missed in his life,” said Joe, a former NFL kicker.

He was good. But he was not Matt Leinart or Reggie Bush in a program where the main color is still glitter, and so nobody was prepared for what happened when he disappeared.

“We all saw he was about more than just a leg,” Trojans long-snapper Will Collins said.

His funeral crowd was overflowing. The boxes of letters received by his parents were overwhelming.

USC suspended use of his jersey, stuck his name and number on the back of their helmets, painted his No. 19 under the goal posts at the practice fields, left his meeting-room seat vacant, and hung up a banner with his trademark saying.

“I’m living the dream,” he told people.

Turns out, he not only lived the dream, but he shared it.

In the wake of his death, stories have emerged that will last much longer than the memories of any kick.

“You always think your kid is special, but, man. . .” Joe said.

Special?

It turns out, Mario Danelo’s time here was brief but indelible.

Emily met a woman in San Pedro who thanked her for the cleats.

“What cleats?” Emily said.

“The cleats that Mario gave my son, his first pair, because we couldn’t afford to buy them,” the woman said.

Joe heard from another San Pedro family whose son had suffered from leukemia. Mario not only called him with best wishes, but gave him his cellphone number and maintained an ongoing dialogue.

Then there was the San Pedro teacher whose son was in Iraq. Mario arranged for autographed USC posters to be sent to him.

“There were things he did, we had no idea,” Emily said.

And in places that they couldn’t imagine.

Emily received a letter from a woman in Catalina who said that, during summer visits there, Mario would stop by the home of a couple of aging Trojans and listen to them talk about their glory days.

“They would want to ask about him, but he wanted only to hear their stories,” Emily said. “That was our son.”

While most folks offered their thanks to the Danelos in letters and phone calls, one family literally gave them the shirt off their back.

Robbie Franco, a highly regarded middle linebacker on the San Pedro High football team, dreamed of wearing his father Bob’s No. 25.

But when Mario died, Robbie decided to spend his last two seasons wearing Mario’s San Pedro No. 32.

“He always wanted to grow up like Mario,” Bob said. “It’s a testament to the kid and to the town.”

Living the dream, sharing the dream and, finally, playing the dream.

That’s what happened in the season opener, during which 90,000 fans gave the Danelo family a standing ovation, followed by 10 players honoring him with the phantom extra-point play.

Dave Buehler, the kicker, thought of the play. Collins, the snapper, sold it to Coach Pete Carroll.

“I was like, ‘Wow,’ ” Carroll said. “What better way to remember someone who impacted us so much?”

During the phantom play, staring back between his legs at the empty space that was once filled by his close friend, Collins began crying.

When Buehler finally ran on to the field for the actual kick, Collins was still crying and, now, praying.

“I’m like, ‘I’m in no position to snap the ball here. ‘C’mon Mo, help me out,’ ” Collins said.

The snap was perfect. The extra point was converted. Fans are still talking about it. Perhaps the most compelling sequence of plays in the Carroll era.

The night before that game, Collins called the Danelos. On Friday night, before the Nebraska game, he will call them again.

On the eve of every game this season, he will call them, because Mario Danelo used to called them like this, and his torch of touch must be continued.

“Like he said, Mario lived the dream,” Collins said. “Now we’re all living it for him.”

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.