Baseball

SANDLOT BASEBALL: A story about Indian Land from PATHWAYS

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I have spent a large portion of my life sitting on a tractor, riding mower or John Deere Gator doing nothing more than traveling in circles. Cutting fields or dragging infields for untold hours, always ending up where I started. Miles and miles going absolutely nowhere. Occasionally, I did try to cut in different directions so that I might unwind myself. My last field, a middle school field, in Greenville County, South Carolina, was a palace compared to any of the fields that I played on in high school. It was a different time on a different planet, it would seem. My statement doesn’t mean that I didn’t coach on some pretty poor fields.

Our field was no different from any of the other fields that we played on in that it was terrible. Like many other fields, it was built as an afterthought. It was, however, terrible in different ways than the other terrible fields. Every field has its own…ah…ambience for lack of a better word. Ours was a football field adjusted to accommodate a baseball field. The backstop was constructed from creosoted “re-purposed” telephone poles and chicken wire. A skinned infield was located off of one end meaning the right field fence would have been about two hundred and fifty feet from home plate…if there had been a fence. Instead of a fence we had a steep drop off that was studded with pine trees. The left field line went on forever following the general path of the football sidelines until it ended with a fence. While much deeper, at least there were no light standards to navigate in left although there were goal post to worry about. In right you had to worry about light standards and goal posts. David Jowers, a big, blond-headed lefty, ripped a line drive so hard that when it hit a light standard he was almost a “3 unassisted” at first base from the rebound. After striking the standard it one-hopped back to the first baseman.

I found myself “camped out” in right field my sophomore year as the starter. Proud to start, normally right is where you put your worst fielder if you are playing on a little league team. Thank goodness this wasn’t little league or I might have gotten my feelings hurt. I think I played in right because I was the most expendable. No big loss if I ran into one of the light standards or got tangled up in a goalpost.
My first start was not on our terrible field, however, it was on someone else’s terrible field, Mt. Pisgah I think, and my first start was almost my last. Their field was not a football-baseball combination, it was an afterthought stuck behind the gym which took up a lot of the area of right field along with its high brick staircase that led up to court level. Just behind the infield a hard-packed dirt road ran through right and on into left field. Did I mention the outfield grass had not been cut and mounds of clover pushed up through the dormant Bermuda? To further complicate my field of dreams, the fans brought their lawn chairs and sat in the shade created by the high gymnasium walls and the tall staircase. If there were any ground rules involving fans I was not told them.

Early in the game a ball was hit over my head. I thought I could reach it…back then every ball that was hit I thought I could reach. Doing my best impersonation of Willy Mays at the Polo Grounds, I spun to my right and sprinted to the point I thought the ball was going to land. All I could see in front of me was a sea of fans…well maybe not a sea, more like a small pond of fans. All I could hear when I looked back over my left shoulder for the ball was the SNAP, SNAP, SNAP of lawn chairs being closed as fans vacated the area. No, I did not catch it. I watched the ball pass cleanly between my extended glove and my nose right before I stepped into someone’s green and white lawn chair. At least they didn’t have to cut me out of it.

Late in the game a flare was hit between me and the second baseman. I decided to field it on its first bounce but the ball didn’t bounce. Instead, it died in a clump of clover and my glove passed harmlessly over it. Slamming on brakes I then fell down, got up, overran the ball again before the “third time being the charm” came into play. All I could do was hang my head. When we finally got them out Coach Gunter met me at the bench and asked “Do you need to take a stick with you?” “Sir?” “So you will have something to hit it with!” Yeah, maybe. Later a popup between the second basemen and myself would turn into a double as I waited for it to come down…AFTER IT BOUNCED! The ball hit the hard-packed dirt road. Momma, I want to go home!

Thirty plus years later I would find myself standing at home plate behind Lockhart High School thinking about the fields that I had played on and wondering if I had just stepped through a time portal. In the spring, their outdoor athletic facility was a football field that doubled as a baseball field. In dead centerfield was a press box with bleachers that extended into left and right fields. Both sets of goal posts were in play as were several light posts that ran behind the bleachers. The right field foul line actually split the goal post which made them in play. The infield was placed off of what would have been the actual football playing field but dimensions were strange. Somewhere near four hundred feet down the left field line, nearer to five hundred down the right and a mere two hundred fifty feet to dead center if you hit a ball over the press box. What really bothered me was the water spigot with the bucket turned over it in center field and the hole filled with tires beyond the right field goal post. The coach had used more chalk to lay out the out of play areas than he had used to line the field. During the longest ground rules meeting in the annals of baseball, I was told that if a ball rolled into the hole filled with tires it was a ground rule double. I was more concerned with what happened if my right fielder fell into it. This game was a tort liability waiting to happen. I decided the best thing for me to do was to put the outfielder I could most afford to lose in right field…just like my coach had done thirty-plus years before.

THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN

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The following is an excerpt from “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…” and one of the reasons that teachers live to teach. Should you wish to purchase a copy it can be purchased in book form or downloaded at the following link: goo.gl/dO1hcX
THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN
As a student, Leroy was no great shakes unless you compared him to a 1.0 earthquake. It would become apparent as time went on that he was a lot brighter than he was letting on but it would take several years for his intelligence to truly manifest itself. After telling him to complete an assignment and get back on task, he tore off a piece of tape, put it on the palm of his hand and said, “put this agin’ your ear and see if you can hear this tape telling you Hell No!” For creativity I would have to give it a ten. For stupid things to say to your teacher and coach, also I give it a ten. As a hush fell over the class, a flush of heat rushed from my feet to my ears. I calmly turned to the door and asked him to step outside with me. I was hoping that by taking time to walk out I would calm down. It didn’t work. When we got to the hallway, I turned and grabbed him by the throat while pushing him against a locker. In my mind I can clearly hear the hollow metal thud that the locker made, and the rattle of disturbed locks. I do not know what I said, which is not a good thing. From past history I would reason that I probably used the F word a lot and probably used it in ways it was never intended to be used. Luckily I came to my senses, realizing that not only had I picked him up off of the floor but that I was choking him. As I gazed upon his reddening face and into his saucer like eyes I decided that I probably should let him down and did. I was not proud of myself and for the next week cringed every time my classroom door opened. I fully expected the men in blue to show up to arrest me or Mr. Rhodes, my principal, to fire me. It did not happen and interestingly, Leroy’s brightness began to show a flicker of dim light. Please, I would like to make an observation to all budding young teachers; this is not a good motivational tool.

Leroy was also a baseball player of sorts. Two for four at the plate is great but as a career not so much. In the four years that I had him as a player he was able to complete just two of those seasons, his freshman year and his senior year. In between there was an issue with eligibility his junior year but before that, there was an issue with me and his anger his sophomore year. Small, quick and wiry, Leroy possessed a howitzer for an arm although, at times, it was somewhat inaccurate. As a freshman I used him as a pitcher, short stop and outfielder and he distinguished himself enough to make the varsity team his sophomore year. Unfortunately, Leroy had a huge hole in his swing. Anything that curved or bent avoided his bat as if it had some sort of perilous disease. My tiring of repeatedly saying, “Out in front and over the top” caused me to bench him in favor of another player. People on the bench have at the very least, two issues; one, they don’t like being there and want to play more. I understand this and really do not want a player that doesn’t want to play. Two, they do not like to chase foul balls. To a player chasing foul balls is demeaning. I agree with them that it is demeaning but I don’t care, it has to be done. Being Leroy, the anger kept building until finally he could not take it anymore. When I told him to “hop on” a foul ball he did not move even though I knew he had heard me. “Leroy, the ball will not grow legs and come back on its own.” His comeback was, “It’ll have to before I go pick it up!” My calmness surprised me. “Leroy, either get the ball or go get out of your uniform and don’t come back.” Unable to get past his anger you can guess which option he chose. I found his uniform hanging on the door knob of the athletic office. The ball did not return itself either.

Because I primarily taught freshmen, I saw very little of Leroy his junior year. Some would say this was a blessing and at the time I would have agreed. Due to his grade problems I did not have to deal with him during baseball season and did not expect him to come out his senior year. As usual I was incorrect. Like a bad penny, he kept turning up. What did I have to do to get rid of this kid? When I saw him sitting at a desk in the first organizational meeting of the year, my first thought was “You’re cut.” As the meeting came to a close, I noticed Leroy hanging back. As soon as everyone had exited, Leroy was at my elbow. “CaCaCaCoach Miller,” he stammered while looking at his shoes, “You don’t owe me anything but can I come out for baseball?” I was somewhat taken aback that he had even asked. “Why should I let you come out Leroy? We have not exactly Gee-Hawed.” Again looking at his feet Leroy finally looked up and said, “I’m not the same person. Can you give me a chance to prove it?” With “No way!” on the tip of my tongue I instead said sure. I am such an old softy. I did not totally lose my mind, I gave him quite a few parameters to adhere to and he did; to a Tee!

Leroy’s season was a good one for him on the worst team that I had at Riverside. He still had the hole in his swing but so did everyone else. In between innings I found him sitting next to me talking about the game that was in progress or cutting up with his best friend, David Brissey. He seemed to be less angry and much happier. At practice he was usually the first one out to the field and since he lived near my route home I began to taxi him home. In other words, I was seeing way too much of him. Seeing and participating in the turn around in Leroy’s personality helped make the season more successful than it really was. He was still an angry young man and at times gave in to the anger. Mostly he used his anger as a tool for success and for some reason Leroy had decided that I was responsible for that success.

As Leroy’s senior year drew to a close I found myself being invited to many different family functions, including graduation celebrations, graduation itself and an impromptu evening fishing expedition over spring break. As we sat in his grandpa’s old and beat up Jon boat Leroy told me that the best thing that ever happened to him was being jacked up against a locker and being kicked off of the baseball team. He had done some type of self-analysis his junior year and realized that he was headed down a long, bumpy and unhappy road if he did not change his ways. Not bad for a seventeen year old. It was as if he had become self-aware; then he dropped a bomb shell. He was going to go to college. I did not want to throw ice water on his dream but to myself I contemplated the likelihood of his success with the grades that I knew he had. They would not reflect the type of student usually pursued by institutes of higher learning. I am glad I didn’t and was once again was proven incorrect. Leroy took remedial and transfer courses. On a recommendation from me, he began his career at North Greenville University and if memory serves, somehow ended up at Furman University. If Furman were up north it would have been a member of the Ivy League and mentioned with Yale and Princeton. He not only ended up there, he graduated. Leroy traveled a little farther down his road and picked up a Masters Degree and even ended up teaching at the collegiate level for a while. I try not to wish bad things on good people but I fervently hope that he had a student that was just as big a hemorrhoid as he was. I also sincerely hope that if Leroy had such a student that the student turned out just as successful as Leroy did. Leroy, even though I’m not sure why, I consider you to be my biggest success story. Hope you are well!

ENEMA, SC

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Excerpt from “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…” available on Kindle at http://goo.gl/1afw3c
ENEMA, SC
“There’s a ‘For Sale’ sign on a big old rusty tractor.
You can’t miss it, it’s the first thing that you see.
Just up the road, a pale-blue water tower,
With ‘I Love Jenny’ painted in bright green”
“My Town” by Montgomery Gentry

Lockhart is a relationship that, fortunately, I did not get to foster. You see, Lockhart is a small town in Union County South Carolina and not a person. I have been there twice and intend not to go there again if possible. It was a mill village in the heyday of textiles in South Carolina named for either James Lockhart, a miller who established a grist mill, or because of two sets of deer antlers that had been found locked together after both animals had perished. Today there are many more deer than textiles left in South Carolina and even fewer people left in Lockhart. If Some Town, SC, were to be called the armpit of South Carolina, then as far as I am concerned, Lockhart is where you would give South Carolina an enema. I am sure there are many good people in Lockhart, it is just I never had the opportunity to meet but a few of them. In forty years of coaching, no team of mine was ever treated as badly as we were treated at Lockhart High School. We were not treated badly by the players or coaches, the fans though were another kettle of fish entirely.

In 2001 I was in year one of a seven year tenure at Tamassee-Salem. For the previous thirty-one years that Tamassee-Salem had baseball, it had been an endeavor in frustration. Tamassee-Salem had not one winning season or trip to the playoffs in their history. I was so cocksure of myself that I thought that I could turn it all around with nothing more than hard work. Try as I did, there was nothing I could do to change the losing climate that was in place in year one of my stay there. We were in the latter third of the season and had not taken one game past the fifth inning “mercy” rule. For those of you who are not baseball fans, the high school mercy rule states that a baseball game is over if one team is ahead by ten runs after at least four and one half innings. Instead of preaching about winning I was more concerned about getting us into the seventh inning. I cannot describe how bad we were those first couple of years but I can tell you that in my first off-season workout, I hit four fly balls to three kids and all four balls found human flesh instead of leather. In our first game we went down eleven runs before we had an opportunity to bat and I had broken two clipboards in frustration. Most of the teams we played tried to keep the score down but for the most part it was a futile effort. I had to ask one coach to stop trying to bunt the ball back to the pitcher in an attempt to make outs. We could not field the bunts.

In addition to being bad there was no way to get anywhere easily from Tamassee-Salem. We would travel south to play Dixie, Ware Shoals and McCormick. To the southeast there was Christ Church in Greenville and Thornwell in Clinton. As we traveled toward the rising sun, we went first to Landrum and then on to Blacksburg. Once past Spartanburg we turned again to the southeast to Jonesville and finally on to Lockhart. Landrum was the shortest at just under an hour away, followed by Christ Church at just over an hour. The rest were far, far away, with Lockhart being the farthest. Because of the way that we played, most of our road trips ended in the wee hours of the next morning.

Lockhart school was typical of what had been built in the nineteen-forties or fifties in South Carolina. The Lockhart architecture consisted of one long brick building with an entrance framed by high columns that reminded you of the Parthenon (except the Parthenon’s columns were in better shape). In the spring, the outdoor athletic facility was a football field that doubled as a baseball field. In dead centerfield was a press box with bleachers that extended into left and right fields. Both sets of goal posts were in play as were several light posts that ran behind the bleachers. The right field foul line actually split the goal post which made them in play. The infield was placed off of what would have been the actual football playing field but dimensions were going to be strange. Somewhere near four hundred feet down the left field line, nearer to five hundred down the right and a mere two hundred fifty feet to dead center if you hit a ball over the press box. What really bothered me was the water spigot with the bucket turned over it in center field and the hole filled with tires beyond the right field goal post. The coach had used more chalk to lay out the out of play areas than he had used to line the field. During the longest ground rules meeting in the annals of baseball, I was told that if a ball rolled into the hole filled with tires it was a ground rule double. I was more concerned with what happened if my right fielder fell into it. This game was a tort liability waiting to happen and I decided the best thing for me to do was to put the outfielder I could most afford to lose in right. Sorry, Casey.

As we waited to begin the game, it became apparent that we were the social event of the week. Our dugout consisted of a portable bench on the first base foul line. There were no bleachers so everyone in Lockhart sat behind us in lounge chairs. Before the game everyone was the amiable Dr. Jekyll but as soon as the umpire yelled “Play Ball!” they all became the very hostile Mr. Hyde. There was one particular gentleman directly behind me who rode me like a fine cutting horse. I usually don’t mind this as it usually keeps the cretins off of the kids. He was dressed to impress, wearing bib overalls over a discolored “wife beater” tee and tipped the scales at least one hundred pounds over what would be considered healthy. Graying brown hair stuck out of his mesh cap in every direction and it was hard to discern where his mullet ended and his back hair began. Every time he tried to get under my skin, I tried to wise crack back. I did take offense when he yelled across the diamond to the umpire: “Kain’t you keep that fat son of a bitch in the coach’s box?” When I came back over after our at bat I pointed out that there was no coach’s box and I really wasn’t that fat. After the fifth inning, I asked him what was going to give his life meaning after I left to go back to Salem. He must have gotten depressed contemplating our separation because I heard nothing from him for the rest of the game.

Everybody who batted got a good dose of fan ridicule. Some of it was the good natured, “You swing like a broken gate” ribbing but a lot of it was personal and most of it focused on body features or types. Todd Oliver became the focus of two young men standing near the concession stand and every time he came to the plate they began to chide him with comments about the Pillsbury Doughboy or the Michelin Man. Todd was somewhat rounded but I really never considered him terribly overweight. I wondered if these two fans actually owned or had ever looked in a mirror. To be honest, had they been a couple of inches taller they would have been round. Both boys would have dressed out at about two seventy five or three hundred pounds and they only stopped yelling when stuffing their faces with hotdogs. I thought about bribing them with food to shut them up but I realized I had not brought enough money for the food they might consume. With hands on hips, I fixed them with my steely glare from the third base coach’s box, in hopes it would draw their attention away from Todd. That simply got the woman who sat with them questioning what I might be looking at. I assured her that it was not her. Maybe if she shaved…her chin. I know…sometimes my mouth should have a locking brake.

At some point I asked their coach if it was always this bad. He studied me a moment and smiled, “This isn’t bad; you should be have been here when we played Jonesville.” I asked if he had ever tried to do a little “fan training” on the accepted methods of taunting and he laughed as if I had told the best joke he had ever heard. “What gives?” He calmly explained: “You did notice that I am black and that this is Lockhart, right?” He went on to say that the only reason he had the job was because no one else would take it and that he was riding out the season. This would be Lockhart’s last baseball season as they consolidated the following year with Union. The people of Lockhart were upset. I was not.

The game itself was the best we played all year. Not only did we get it past the fifth, we held a seven to six lead going into the bottom of the seventh. In my mind I knew that the baseball gods would not shine upon us that day. I could only hope that somehow, someway we would stumble into a win. Their best hitter tripled to right field. I tried to will it to land in the hole filled with tires but he actually hit it over the hole. He scored on a sharply hit ball that skipped through the infield in to right field. As the batter tried to stretch his hit into a double, Casey’s throw got by the five players who should have fielded it. It bounced over the third base foul line and rolled into out of play territory. The umpires deemed that the runner had made third and awarded him home and the game. I really don’t blame them. The umpires had absorbed a great deal of fan abuse and were ready to go home. As I left the field, everyone had turned back into Dr. Jekyll again. They were such gracious winners. One older gentleman came up to me as we left the field and apologized for the conduct of the fans. I started to say that it was okay but decided that it wasn’t. I simply thanked him for his concern.

Tamassee-Salem baseball survived the trip. I tried to build on the positives and soothe sore and bruised pride. I also tried to explain why I felt everything that went on at Lockhart was wrong and how we could not let the fans get under our skin nor would I allow us to stoop to that type of strategy. Getting into our heads was what the Lockhart supporters wanted to do, and by allowing them to distract us, had contributed to our loss. Nietzsche taught that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” It must be true. We played every remaining game into the seventh inning and found ourselves ahead in the seventh inning of our final game of 2001. As we faced our opponent’s last batter I had a different feeling than the one I had in the Lockhart game. We were not going to have to try to stumble into a victory and find ourselves falling short. As we recorded the last out, I reacted to the victory but no one else did. As I jumped to my feet and pumped my hands over my head in jubilation my team looked at me as if I had lost my mind. It was their first victory in two seasons and the team was stunned into a silence reminiscent of funerals and libraries. Our kids had not won in so long that they did not know how to celebrate. It did not take long for them to figure it out. Players, parents and fans were soon chest bumping and high fiving. I am sure, had there been champagne; everyone would have been spraying it as if we had just won game seven of the World Series. I found it particularly satisfying to see the huge grins on the faces of Todd Oliver and Casey Wood. Both of them had played such prominent roles in the Lockhart game and the 2001 season as a whole. If either one of those smiles had been a power source, I am sure it would have lit up Oconee County. I was smiling pretty broadly myself as I thought, “If you could only win one game, the last one should be the one.”

THE GAME OF POLITICS

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I have seen right and left wing posts maligning each other. I have watched the circus they call debates. We haven’t even gotten to the campaign ad season and I am already gagging. It is Trump versus Carson…hell Trump versus everyone, the fiasco that is Hillary, Huckabee, Cruz…oh just pick and plug in a name. Part soap opera, part demolition derby. It would be hilarious if they weren’t playing with my life. It reminds me of a really bad athletic event, especially since each party and their supporters are trying to outscore the other without saying anything of substance. It’s awful because there are no rules it would seem. I have a great idea. Let’s make the election process like an athletic event…no, WE WILL make it an athletic event!

First, we need to pick an event that all of the politicians are good at. Lying or talking all day without saying anything is not a spectator sport. Maybe we should pick an event that they are equally bad at. Something like Australian Rules football…no, we need a game that is or was played closer to home…say …ULLAMALIZTLI! Never heard of it? Can’t pronounce it? Perfect! I would say none of our politicians have heard of it either.

Ullamaliztli is the ancient Aztec game that combined basketball,soccer, football, religion, politics and human sacrifice. I LIKE IT! One would really have to believe in his or her party’s platform to risk having their heart, still beating, ripped from their chest and presented for inspection to the gods. I am liking it even more and I am not usually this bloodthirsty. Wait, there may be a problem. Does Donald Trump even have a heart? Maybe we can get Dr. Carson to try to detect one…WITH AN OBSIDIAN KNIFE! Team members could be picked from the most ardent party members in the Senate or House. The winning team would have the right to put their president into office. There should also be a lobbyist or two on each team, picked at random. Since there is human sacrifice involved, we should get rid of that pesky log jam that both parties hold against the other.

Played on a sunken court with a one-hundred to two-hundred foot rock floor, it had eight to eleven-foot high walls that sloped down to the court floor. Walls…I’m having a vision of prison walls, but while Republicans think Hillary should be in prison for her emails, it’s not that kind of wall. Surrounding the court was a seating area where spectators gambled on the outcome. Skulls of sacrificed coaches and teams surrounded the spectator area and looked down on the contestants. Nice motivational tool and right down Hillary’s alley, I would think.

The goal of the game was to put a nine-pound rubber ball through a stone ring hung vertically and located at mid-court. Sounds easy except for the part about not touching the ball with your hands or letting it hit the ground. The game ended when the ball was put through the stone ring – a feat that sometimes took a day or two of continuous play to accomplish. The game was violent, leaving the contestants bruised and bloodied. I can’t help but visualize The Donald running down the court, the wind blowing through his comb-over, getting cross-body blocked by Hilary Clinton or vice versa. Bernie and Ben are way too soft-spoken to get into each other’s grill. That would not work, I guess, because as front runners, they would have to be the coaches. Okay, Pelosi and Boehner, or his replacement, could body block each other. The upside is that somebody is going to lose their heart…if, in fact, they have one to begin with.

The original game was both political and religious in nature. Wars between Aztec cities were known to occur over outcomes. In one instance a winning king was presented a victory garland with a choking cord inside. He was assassinated on the spot.

Again I feel a bit bloodthirsty but the best part of the closing ceremonies would be the religious sacrifice of the losing presidential candidate… I mean the losing coach and possibly the entire team. If incompetence is not a virtue, it would be the entire team. Stewed to the gills on drugs, the losing coach would be held down, chest split open and his still beating heart would be cut from his chest and shown to the gods. The Aztecs believed that if a sacrifice was not made the Sun would not rise the following morning. In today’s political climate, the “Sun” shines very darkly. Could the sacrifices take the place of term limits? In some accounts it might have even been the winning coach who was sacrificed, but who cares as long as “elbows to the teeth” replace the campaign process. Broadcasted live and in living color “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” would have new meanings as the Supreme Court Judges, dressed in black robes and masks, carried out the sacrifice.

Okay, I don’t want Homeland Security or the Secret Service to come calling. I am really just a harmless old coot who is fed up with our political process that is being played out like a cock fight between old moth-eaten hens with no brains…I mean heads. Or if it were football, the game that is our present political system would take twenty-five plays to score…against air. WAIT…BEER SOFTBALL OR BETTER YET, LIQUER SOFTBALL. That might be as funny as the candidates themselves….

SMALL TOWN FUNERALS

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SMALL TOWN FUNERALS
I grew up in a small community, not even a town, went to a small town college and have taught at a couple of small town schools, one being Landrum. Like the home of my birth Landrum has grown some in the last twenty years but it still has small town looks, small town feel and most importantly small town ideals. This past Friday I sat inside of the First Baptist Church and contemplated what all of that meant. I was attending Brian Kuykendall’s “going home” memorial. Part revival, part musical, it was all love and a wonderful tribute to Brian, his family and his legacy.

While not a huge church, it is the biggest one on Main Street even if it is the only one on Main Street, an oddity in area that sports more churches than “you can shake a stick at.” It was bursting at the seams when I got there and was filled to standing room only by the time the service began. With the fire department in attendance I don’t think there were any worries about the fire marshal closing it down. For a moment I contemplated how a burglar might find this to be a beneficial day to be working with the number of townspeople and policemen attending. Fire trucks were parked outside while the Landrum firemen dressed in uniform served as pall bearers and the rain that fell only added to the sense of gloom. Even inside, what little talk could be heard seemed to be muted. All of that changed once the memorial began.

As one of the ministers talked about Brian’s competitiveness I succumbed to a bad habit, daydreaming. While I should have been concentrating on the minister it was too easy to drift back twenty years. On the football field in my mind I found myself standing on an opponent’s field wondering if it was a requirement for small town football for one of the goal posts to be crooked. When I mentioned this to head coach Jimmy Cox, he cracked, “The way we are scoring on offense it probably won’t be a problem.” Only Eighteen to twenty football players had welcome me to my first meeting with the team and I could not help but wonder about our size, numbers not weight and height. One of those players was Brian.

Brian was competitive, a good thing because he wasn’t the biggest kid in the world…or the most athletically gifted. I think that Brian tasted victory six times in the two years that I was there. For Brian it wasn’t about winning, although it hurt him to lose. Brian was truly all about being the best that he could be and I am not being trite or mocking when I say that. As the memorial continued it was apparent that he had passed philosophy on to his sons and many of the kids that he coached. It was a tenet that was repeated several times during the service Brian proves that being on a poor football team does not define you in life. Brian’s life would have been portrayed as an undefeated season as could many of the lives of kids who played the game. Brian truly had become the best he could be.

It was a ceremony dedicated to love. Not the love for him, which was ample, but the love that was apparent for his wife, his family and his community. Love begets love and it was clear that even for a small town, there were buckets of love and his memorial was a fitting tribute. Brian left behind a lasting legacy that will continue to live through his family, Tammy, Kaleb, Dalton and CJ. It is also a legacy that will continue through his church, the community and the youth athletic association.

As the funeral procession slowly moved toward Brian’s final resting place I was again struck by small town ideals. A police car lead the procession followed by fire trucks. Another police officer held and directed traffic at the main traffic light. You just don’t see that anymore anywhere other than small towns. “Would you rather be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond?” I think Brian answered that question. I know Landrum is happy Brian stayed in his home town even if his stay was much too short.

A BUBBLE OFF PLUMB

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A BUBBLE OFF PLUMB is an excerpt from WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING… which may be purchased through Amazon at the following link: http://goo.gl/UE2LPW

“With the thoughts you’d be thinkin’
you could be another Lincoln
if you only had a brain…”
“If I Only Had a Brain”-Ray Bolger and July Garland

My relationship with pitchers was at best tenuous. It was a strange and wonderful relationship. They were strange while, and despite what my exes say, I was wonderful. That being said, I love their strangeness, the pitchers not my exes. I embrace their oddities because that was what set them apart from the people I normally get along with: the position players. I never was, nor claimed to be a pitching coach or psychologist. Pitching coach and psychologist should be synonymous. Luckily, most of the young men that pitched for me were position players when they did not pitch. At least I understood them part of the time. An exception would be Michael Douty.

Douty was a big rawboned kid, good looking in a Howdy Doody kind of way. Like Howdy and Buffalo Bob, he was always looking to laugh or make someone laugh. “TO A FAULT!” said I through gritted teeth. When interviewed, I would say Michael kept the team loose. That was a nice way of saying he pisses me off so badly I almost want to give him the boot, but not so much that I actually did. Do not assume he was a bad kid; he was a great kid, just goofy. He was a pitcher by trade with an above average fastball and slow looping curve. Unfortunately Michael was also a right fielder by necessity. A good fielder most of the time, Michael sometimes suffered from bouts of mental gas or if I must be crude and I do, the brain fart. A lapse in judgment cost us a game against a rival high school when he committed the no-no of diving for a fly ball as it twisted away from him toward the foul line. The ball was not in foul territory, something that as a coach I had preached against repeatedly. A right or left fielder does not dive for a ball toward the foul line that isn’t foul unless he is sure he can catch it. There is no one to back you up if you miss. With the bases loaded and two outs, he committed the travesty of diving for the ball and not coming up with it. It rolled its way into an inside the park grand slam home run. When taken to task over this, he simply said, “They moved the foul line.” Seriously? I hope Michael meant that he confused the foul line with the out of play line but we’ll never know for sure. What I do know for sure was the outcome. We lost by a run.

At a practice, after throwing a thirty pitch simulated game in the bullpen, he must have been plum tuckered out. When taking his outfield position during batting practice, Michael lay down, pulling his hat down over his eyes in order to catch forty winks. I began to hit fly balls at him with the long and thin fungo bat that coaches use, coming closer and closer until I dropped one right on top of him. It hit nothing important, just his head. I made a point; everyone laughed and got a kick out of it. Most importantly, I did not get sued.

The last time Michael played for me was in an Upper State Championship game against Dutch Fork High School. In this winner-take-all game he came in to pitch and we both became frustrated with our inability to get anyone out. When I went out to make a pitching change, Michael purposely dropped the ball on the ground at my feet, and I reacted by purposely putting him on the bench. It was an eighteen-year-old’s reaction to frustration and a forty-something-year old’s belief that he had to teach a lesson. I wish we had both reacted differently.

We never had an opportunity to mend fences. Later that year, Michael drowned while trying to save a friend’s life. It was an unnecessary death, as if any death involving teenagers are necessary. The young lady he was attempting to save did not need saving and survived the ordeal of being sucked into a storm culvert. Michael didn’t know this and heroically dove in after her and drowned. That next year we put his number thirteen on our hats and began the tradition of praying before games at the flag pole and plaque which was donated and erected in his memory.

In 1999 we played Georgetown for the state championship. As the game moved into the later innings and it appeared we were going to win, I felt a presence behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw my wife, Linda Gail, with an old blue and red cap. With tears flowing down her face, she was pointing at the number thirteen on the back. I was already emotional and felt the tears then, and still feel them today when I think about it. We won the state championship, but more importantly, that memory of Michael Douty, laid back in the outfield, legs crossed and hat pulled down over his eyes, will always be a memory that will be burned into my brain. Somewhere I am sure Douty was laughing at our tears and cracking up with the angels.