Sports

IT AIN’T BRAGGIN’…IF YOU’RE DABBIN’

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I am old school…although I “fully” admit to be having embraced my “hippy” gene in my old age. Despite the discovery of this hippy gene, I am sure my former players and coaching chums will be somewhat surprised to read the view I am going to express. “Act like you’ve been there before” was a mantra I used or have heard used a thousand times that had been expressed by the immortal Bear Bryant. If you are in athletics you understand, “Act like you’ve been there before,” is an old school statement about celebrating…a score, or now, even a first down. Old school was all about anything other than “self-expression.” “There is no ‘ME’ in TEAM!” Whether it is the “Ickey Shuffle,” “Lambeau Leap” or “dabbin’,” I still would like to see them score and just hand the ball to the official but we are in a “hey look at me world,” in a game that should be about having fun. What’s so bad about that?

Cam Newton has re-defined the definition of “having fun” …and the position of quarterback along with the word “polarizing.” Loved by Panther fans and hated by everyone else, I would predict that he could care less about those who use detractions like, “showboat,” “braggart,” and “classless,” which are some of the mild ones I have seen. In fact, by his own admission, he uses the detractors as motivation. With the frame and strength of a linebacker, a strong arm and better than average “pro” speed, he is the “freak of nature personified” and probably does not need any more motivation to be successful. With good looks and a “million dollar” smile, I do admit to a bit of a man crush.

Do I wish Cam would just hand the ball to the official when he scores? Once I did, but seeing the faces of the youngsters who have received his game ball “gifts”, I have to agree with his particular brand of “having fun” even when he goes into his Superman pose. I once described a very good high school baseball player as having a “little league” mentality. This description was not a putdown. I was remarking about his ability to “have fun” in the same way as a “wide-eyed” little leaguer despite the pressure to receive a college scholarship or becoming a draft pick. He received both and had a career in the major leagues, both as a player and as a coach. I see Cam the same way, as in playing as a youth league player. There seems to be a “child-like” wonderment along with the “million dollar” smile. Yeah, he makes a boat load of money playing a child’s game but I would bet “his” money that money is not his primary motivation.

I try to live by, “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” or at least keep my mouth shut and only “sin” in my mind. With many of our sports idols and “role models” I find myself asking, “What were you thinking” when it comes to some of their “off of the field” activities. As Johnny Manziel is finding out, Social Media is not your friend when you, yourself, are your own worst enemy. When one Google’s Cam Newton, there is very little “smut” to dig up. No arrests, no drugs, no spousal or girlfriend abuse. Yeah Cam had the wreck with many assuming incorrectly it was drug or alcohol related, and there is an “out of wedlock” child that he recognizes and takes responsibility for despite the lack of wedding band on his hand. He brought some baggage with him from Auburn, but was it his fault or the fault of an overly involved father or the climate that is college football? Not as tame as Tim Tebow but a far cry from Johnny Manziel. More importantly is his foundation for disadvantaged kids and his many activities giving back to the Charlotte and Atlanta communities. Not only does he provide money but he also invests his time. Gee, I hope he is a good guy…did I forget the “Santa Cam’s Surprise Sleigh?”

Professional athletes have the opportunity to do much good and it is heartwarming for a retired teacher and coach to see a young man who GETS IT and DOES IT. Johnny maybe you should go talk to Cam about what you might do with your time. Is Cam perfect? No way! Most twenty-six-year-old men will have skeletons in their closet that, in twenty or thirty years from now, they will wish weren’t there. I am sure Cam will be no different…than I was.

Viewing this year’s Super Bowl will be interesting and a win-win for me regardless of the outcome. I will pull for the local Panthers and their brash young quarterback but can’t help but pull for “old school” Peyton Manning and hope he gets to ride off into the sunset with a second ring. I will be disappointed whichever team comes up short and I guess I will be pulling for both offenses.

When I watch Cam Newton “having fun” I think of a brash pitcher from the 1930’s who was once quoted to have said, “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.” Dizzy Dean had predicted that he and his brother would combine to win forty-five games in 1934. He was wrong…they won forty-nine. Win or lose on Super Bowl Sunday, Cam ain’t braggin’…but I guess we will have to wait and see how the game plays out to see if he is dabbin’.

Don Miller has written and self-published three books that may be purchased through or downloaded on any device with a Kindle app.

Inspirational true stories in WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING by Don Miller #1.99 on #Kindle goo.gl/DiO1hcX

“STUPID MAN TRICKS” explained in Don Miller’s FLOPPY PARTS $.99 on Kindle http://goo.gl/Ot0KIu

“Baby Boomer History” in Don Miller’s PATHWAYS $3.49 on Kindle http://goo.gl/ZFIu4V

LIBERATION

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I read that the Buffalo Bills have hired a new assistant coach. Ordinarily news like this would not find its way out of the city of Buffalo but today it is nationally news worthy. And why would that be? Their new, full-time, specialty teams, quality control coach is a female and the first of her kind. Kathryn Smith is the first full-time NFL assistant coach. This comes on the heels of Jill Welter’s internship as she served as an Arizona Cardinal linebacker coach during the summer. Back in April of 2015, Sarah Thomas became the first female NFL official. I guess these would be major steps in women’s rights. It doesn’t seem that long ago women newscasters were arguing with the league for access to the side lines and, GASP, the locker room. My guess is, once the furor and the abusive and stereotypical comments die down, they will be successful in this bastion of testosterone. I do find it interesting many men still believe that “A woman’s place….”

I have been involved with many firsts when relates to Women’s Rights. I taught for the first female principal in Greenville County, South Carolina, coached the first female to be allowed to play high school soccer and the first coed to play football at the varsity level. I was looking for none of these firsts and had the media not made an issue of it I would not have known. Title IX now that’s another story.

I wrote the story “Liberation” for the book FLOPPY PARTS and with the news of the day decided to dust it off. I hope you enjoy.

LIBERATION
Even though Charlotte, NC was close by, we were sheltered from the rapidly changing outside world. It was a long twenty miles to the Queen City on a two-lane blacktop and, by the way we grew up, possibly a decade in time removed. We had gone through the duck and cover drills that assured us that any textbook would protect us from a nuclear attack provided we took all sharp objects from our pockets. We were raised to be stoic and to be seen and not heard. In some ways we were raised to be “un-included.” Words like duty, reverence and respect were a part of our vocabularies. We still believed in the “American Exceptionalism” of the post-World War Two United States despite the warts we tended to ignore. We were decidedly Republican and my grandmother openly worried more about having a Roman Catholic in the White House than a democrat.

Still, being typically male, I was more aware of my floppy parts than world affairs, and, beginning in the late Sixties, they both got tied in knots.
Even though any available female was fair game and a target for our raging hormones, we had been taught to respect women. It was okay to pursue, but you didn’t lay a hand on a woman. You gave up your seat to women and you opened doors for women. As males, we did this not because we viewed women as weaker but as a sign of respect, the same way we were taught to say “Yes, Ma’am” or “No, Ma’am.” Most importantly No Meant No and not maybe. It was easier in those waning days of the Sixties because the girls had been taught the same way… and they didn’t have The Pill. I admit I may be looking through “rose-colored” glasses because I had been surrounded by such STRONG female role models. I believe with all my heart that women who grew up in rural settings during the depression and World War Two were taught to be stronger than their urban counter parts. I remember asking my grandmother to describe the changes she experienced during the Great Depression. She laughed and said, “We were farming on the lien and it was so hard already we never noticed.” That would be that she was out in the fields with my grandfather doing hard “man’s work.”

Regardless of my beliefs, all of them began to change as I welcomed the new decade and my address changed to Newberry. There were many movements spawned by the period. Native American Rights, Gay Rights and environmentalism were a few that joined Civil Rights during the “Age of Love”. Also, there was my favorite – Women’s Rights. There was one positive about the Women’s Liberation Movement – bra burning. Whether they were wearing a bra or not, women deserved to have the same rights as men despite the chauvinist argument “I don’t know why they want to climb down off of their pedestals?” After watching MAD MEN I wonder how high that pedestal actually was and who really had the power. I am sure this portrayal was “exactly” the way it was in the Sixties.
Liberation was a battle ground where if you picked sides you were either labeled a eunuch, if you agreed with the cause, or a chauvinist pig if you didn’t. Most of the Newberry coeds were southern gals (Is my chauvinism showing?) and had grown up under the same Biblical tenants as mine. The “times they were ah changing” and it wasn’t unusual to hear discussions about “Who should pay for the cost of birth control?” or “Who should make the decision about getting an abortion?” Fifty years later I still avoid expressing opinions on those questions because to do so would be to spoil for a fight.

Women’s Lib finally tied me in knots in the early Seventies. I remember walking up to the campus library door and seeing the reflection of a coed approaching me from behind in the door’s polished glass. Her reflection was dressed in bell bottoms and a pea coat, fashion staples of the period for those individuals who took political positions somewhere left of center. I also had time to notice her really short dark hair and the narrow, hawkish shape of her face. Nevertheless, I paused and opened the door for her. Smiling, I nodded my head and then got my ears pinned back. With a face that truly had turned hawkish she spat, “What are you asking me to do? Inviting me into to your male-dominated world? Baby Dicked Chauvinist Pig!” If you are waiting for my snappy comeback, hell may freeze over first. I still don’t have one. I should add, she still managed to enter the library ahead of me through the still-opened door but then so did the next fifteen people as I stood with jaw “slack and agape.” Baby dicked? Where did that come from?

Despite wearing khakis, oxford cloth and penny loafers during most of my adult life, I find myself embracing my “Old Hippy” side with flip flops, blue jeans and tee shirts to accommodate my move to the center left of politics as I have retired. Hawaiian shirts are a far cry from bells and pea coats but I wear them proudly. I believe in equality above all else. Equal rights, whether racial, gender, sexual, religious or economic, should be our goal as a country or as a people of that country. Women should have the same opportunities to succeed or to fail as men and it should be for the same pay. I was again sheltered when I chose teaching as my vocation. Teaching opportunities and pay were always equal and, as far as pay was concerned…Sorry, wrong movement. Now, I don’t know about upward mobility into administration but I do know that if I were ranking principals, women would take the top two positions as the best of the many I have had. The best one asked me during my interview in 1974 if I would have a problem working for a woman. She kind of leaned in as if she were going to tell me a dirty joke when she asked me. I thought, to myself, “I want this job so badly I would work for an orangutan.” To her I simply answered, “No problems whatsoever, I love women. My mother was a woman.”

I think there might have been a price for the equality so deserved by women. I read more about the rise of attacks against women or spousal abuse and see that doors are not opened and seats not given up nearly as often as they used to be even here in this hotbed of Southern chivalry. I guess I should add despite a little hawk-faced witch from 1970. Could that be the price that women pay? Maybe they did knock themselves off of their pedestal.

During the late Seventies, athletics were equalized due to Title IX legislation…except it wasn’t, at least in the school district in which I toiled. Rather than add resources to girl’s athletics, resources were taken away from men’s athletics which left a bitter taste in most male coaches’ mouths. I remember being told that, as a baseball coach, half of any money raised by my baseball team could be spent by the softball team whether they participated in the fund raiser or not. Luckily I had great relationships with my softball coaches and this never happened. Everyone didn’t have those great relationships that I fostered with malice and forethought.

While sitting quietly in a graduate course that included a study of the distribution of monies for athletics, a young female coach commented that it did not matter. “God Football” gets it all and until they fire all of the football coaches, girls would get nothing. At a break I could not help myself and strolled over to advise her that, while her feelings might be warranted, expressing them in an open forum might not be the best idea, especially if she were looking for a job. I also pointed out that football paid the bills and probably was what allowed her to have a job. She said something about having to “audition instead of interview” and that she was not “giving up the cause” just to get a job and that “maybe I should wait until my advice was asked for.” Her bell bottoms and pea coat were showing and no good deed goes unpunished. Several months later as we were looking for a girls’ softball coach, I received a call from my principal informing me that he was sending a prospective coach to be interviewed. Yeah, it was her and the look on her face was priceless. No, she didn’t get the job. Instead, we hired a softball coach who was also an offensive line coach. To her credit, she didn’t back down either, but then I am sure she knew she was doomed from the start. Does this make me a chauvinist? I don’t think so… but I do admit to being a realist.

If you enjoyed this story you may download it and other “STUPID MAN TRICKS” in Don Miller’s FLOPPY PARTS $.99 on Kindle http://goo.gl/Ot0KIu

PERSPECTIVE

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Facing my first baseball season after retirement I began thinking about players I had coached and coached against. This story from “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…” is about the best player, in my opinion, I ever coached against and a very special baseball team.

“Two, three, the count with nobody on
He hit a high fly into the stand
Rounding third he was headed for home
He was a brown eyed handsome man.
That won the game; he was a brown eyed handsome man”
“Brown-eyed Handsome Man”-Chuck Berry

The 1992 Riverside baseball team began the season hotter than any team I have ever coached and finished the regular season ranked second in the state just behind Belton Honea-Path. With playoff brackets already drawn, everyone circled the second game of the upper state series. Riverside would host Belton in the second round winner’s bracket game if the baseball gods saw fit. Unfortunately, sometimes the baseball gods get a kick out of not allowing things to happen as they are supposed to. In a game we could not have played any better, we lost to eventual state champion Lugoff-Elgin, one to nothing in extra innings. Riverside still got to host Belton but it was in the loser’s bracket. Belton had also gone down to defeat in its respective first round game. I could hear the giggles from above.
Belton was a perennial upper state power we had faced in the playoffs my first year at Riverside. I was almost tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail when I opted to put their best hitter on with the bases loaded, even though it walked in a run. I did this rather than risking a grand slam homerun with the score six to two in our favor in the seventh inning. Six to three sounded a lot better than all tied at six. As I retreated to the safety of our dugout I was serenaded with a chorus of boos, accusations of cowardice and a couple of descriptive terms or phrases questioning my canine parenthood or when exactly I might have been conceived as compared to my parents’ wedding date. The hitter I had walked, Chad Roper, might have been the best high school hitter I had ever seen and in 1990 was just a sophomore. We escaped with a victory although BHP got their revenge later in the playoffs. Roper had the game winning triple in that revenge game and pitched BHP to a two to one victory.
As a senior, Chad stood about six foot one, weighed two hundred pounds and in addition to his ability to hit, had sprinter’s speed. On the mound Chad was also a pro prospect. He truly was the total package. Unfortunately, for him, a freak preseason horse riding injury had limited his innings on the mound. Prior to this 1992 edition of what became a mutually respected, if somewhat one sided rivalry, I had made the decision we were not going to allow Chad to beat us with his bat. We were not going to give him an opportunity to hit anything good. What should have been sound logic turned out not to matter at all. He hit two solo home runs on pitches that were well out of the strike zone. One low and inside pitch was golfed over the left field foul pole, the other pitch thrown up and way away was hit over the trees beyond the left field power alley and into orbit…around Pluto. (I spoke to several of my pitchers from this era and no one will own up to being the guy who gave it up) When I decided to intentionally walk him, he stole second, then third and scored on a ground out. We played well; he played better, eliminating us from the playoffs. We went home for the summer while he went on to win the State AAA title. I guess I should have said BHP went on to win the state championship, but they would not have won it without this rare player.
I have always had mixed feelings when a season has ended. You are sad that you lost your last game, on the one hand, and question yourself on what you did wrong and congratulate yourself on what you did right. On the other hand, you are a little glad because the hard work is over until you realize spring football practice has started so your own work goes on. After the great season we had just completed, I was a little sadder and questioned myself even more about what we could have done differently. As I puttered around the dugout, picking up gear, speaking to parents and waiting for the field to clear, I picked up a box that was supposed to be full of unused game baseballs and found it to be empty. I knew we had not used that many balls. We started with one and one half dozen baseballs and I could account for six we had used. I am not a mathematical genius but calculated quickly twelve baseballs were missing. As I looked around, I found twelve of my players in a huddle around Chad Roper. They were getting him to autograph the baseballs. There was also a lot of joking and laughing taking place between Chad and my team. That brought more than a little clarity to the importance of losing a baseball game. Mad at first, I suddenly found myself smiling as I realized how young people could put the minor bumps in the road into perspective so quickly. As disappointing as losing is, baseball was and still is a game to be played and not a life or death situation. Most of these young men would not play baseball past high school but would be successful in so many ways. My third baseman William Patton comes to mind. He was offered a full scholarship from NASA and it was not to play baseball. He was unable to find Chad’s home run ball either though I understand he sent several unmanned space probes out to try.
Chad was drafted in the second round of the Major League Draft in 1992 by the Minnesota Twins and spent ten seasons kicking around the minor leagues never rising above double A. He seemed to be one of the unlucky ones who were unable to overcome the obstacles life sometimes places in your way. Sometimes success is the biggest hurdle to overcome. I am sure some people would say he was a failure because he never got to the “Big Show.” I believe those people were wrong and narrow minded. Chad got to do something he loved to do for ten years longer than most of us and got paid for doing it. Professional sports are professional sports at any level, and it takes a special talent to get paid to hit or field a baseball wherever you play. How was that a failure? I believe it was pretty special and would have given up a reproductive body part to have had the same opportunity. My biggest regret from that particular day was not getting him to sign my baseball.
Inspirational true stories in WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING by Don Miller #1.99 on #Kindle goo.gl/DiO1hcX

“STUPID MAN TRICKS” explained in Don Miller’s FLOPPY PARTS $.99 on Kindle http://goo.gl/Ot0KIu
“Baby Boomer History” in Don Miller’s PATHWAYS $3.49 on Kindle http://goo.gl/ZFIu4V

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Excerpt from the short story “Be the Rock” contained in “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…”
Strangely, while I was watching the Rose Bowl last night, Christian McCaffrey’s effort’s triggered a thought process that led me on a pathway from wondering who were the best players that I had ever coached or coached against, something that I still haven’t answered, to kids who needed sports more than sports needed them. Everyone enjoyed Christian’s effort, especially Sanford fans, but what about players that don’t have Christian’s skill set? For some reason it brought to mind a young man from Tamassee-Salem who had no skill set but all, a fact that did not prevent him from enjoying the game of baseball or me enjoying him.
Of all of the kids that I have ever coached, I think Justin Chandler epitomizes what it means to be a “rock.” When I say ever, I mean Newberry, Mauldin, Greenville, Landrum, Riverside, Tamassee-Salem, Greer Middle College, Legacy, and Northwest. Damn! That’s a lot of schools and no I did not have a problem keeping a job. Well, just at one. If you listed our forty or so players, varsity, JV and middle school by ability, Justin would rank last. Not because of want to because he had more want to than most. Not because he wasn’t tough, because he was one tough piece of gristle. Justin had to be tough because he suffered from Cerebral Palsy. Justin had two arms but only one of them worked the way it should. The other arm and hand were drawn and a bit withered, while a somewhat immobile elbow joint did not give him the flexibility that allowed him to extend his arm when batting. Add to those afflictions a foot that was slightly turned inward, paining him at every misstep, Tamassee-Salem may have been the only school where he might have played. He gave me another reality check when I realized Justin also epitomized what it meant to PLAY baseball. It is a game that requires you to play and work hard to be successful, but as I sometimes forget, it is a game to be enjoyed or you should not be doing it. Justin enjoyed playing baseball despite his disability and worked hard to overcome it. At times he made it easy to forget he had a disability. When playing JV or middle school ball he twice made plays to save or win games. In one, a line shot was fielded cleanly and after a transfer from glove to throwing hand, which was the same hand, Justin delivered a strike home to retire a sliding runner and preserve a win. In the second game, with the winning runner at third, Justin executed a suicide squeeze bunt to score the winning run. If he wasn’t carried off on his teammate’s shoulders, he should have been.
The complete book, “WINNING WAS NEVER THE ONLY THING” BY Don Miller, can be downloaded on Kindle or purchased in paperback using the following link: goo.gl/dO1hcX
Coach Miller’s other two books, “FLOPPY PARTS” AND “PATHWAYS” can also be found at the same link.

“RIGHT MEN”

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I sat in a large lecture room during the summer of 1993 listening to the guest speaker during our annual state association athletic clinic in Columbia, S.C. Fresh off of a perfect season and national championship, Alabama head coach Gene Stallings was the speaker. I was impressed at the somewhat quiet, yet solid, demeanor of the Crimson Tide coach. His speech was a low Texas drawl I was sure could turn into a loud growl if necessary. Something in me believes it was rarely necessary. I was amused at a story he told about being embarrassed. In front of millions of viewers, a camera perfectly framed a reaction to a play that included an “F-bomb” expletive perfectly formed on his lips. One of those viewers was his youngest daughter, Martha Kate, who took him to task over the language he used.

You just knew Gene Stallings was a good man and there is nothing in his Bio today suggesting otherwise. One could not be hard-hearted enough not to tear up when Coach Stallings spoke about his son, John Mark. Coach Stallings teared up, I teared up and about a thousand others did to. John Mark was born with Down syndrome and was the light of his father’s life…along with his wife and four daughters. As you can tell, Coach Stallings spoke more about life than he did about football.

I never had the opportunity to sit down and hear Mark Richt speak in person. From clips, comments and sport’s stories I have read and viewed, I would say there is a lot of Gene Stallings in Mark Richt…except for the National Championship thing…but then again I am speaking about life. Richt, the former Georgia coach, now Miami coach, could have been bitter about his firing at Georgia despite two SEC championships, six SEC East championships to go with one hundred and forty-five victories to just fifty-one losses over a fourteen year career. Unfortunately college football is a “what have you done for me lately” profession. It’s about championships I guess.

Richt could have been bitter but made a profound “life” statement instead, “Life is about people, not rings. Rings collect dust.” While not the coach Georgia needs now, they think they need the rings, he is a man the world needs. Richt walks the “Christian Walk,” and has been a positive role model both on and off of the field. Along with his wife, the Richt’s have adopted two Ukrainian orphans, one with proteus syndrome, to go with their own two kids. This is something most people are very unlikely to know, Mark Richt plays everything close to the vest. One thing that he can’t keep close to his vest is the fact that he is a good man.

I wrote a book entitled “Winning Was Never the Only Thing…” It was about kids, peers, family and fans, along with memories of teaching and sports, all more important than victories, championships or passing test. I wish I had come to their lesson sooner. Is it more important to win championships or to produce up-standing, disciplined players? I know you can do both but which is more important? Good luck Mark Richt, I will be pulling for Miami to win championships when Clemson doesn’t. Interestingly, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney played football at Alabama. His mentor and head coach…Gene Stallings. He too is one of the “Right Men.” Theirs’s are legacies that are far more important than sports.

If you are interested in reading more by Don Miller his books may be purchased on Amazon or downloaded on Kindle at the following links
“Winning Was Never the Only Thing…” goo.gl/dO1hcX
“Floppy Parts” http://goo.gl/0Lt0O8
“Pathways” http://goo.gl/6yB5Ei

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.”

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.

RUNNING FROM MYSELF

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Eleven months ago I finished my last long run two weeks before competing, wink-wink, in the annual Spinx Fest half marathon. The following week I was a hundred yards from finishing my last easy run before the weekend event when a miss step ended that dream…and others. Later in that week my doctor said in his best doctor voice, “You’ve got a torn meniscus but Early Osteoarthritis trumps that. You are looking at a knee replacement down the road.” He continued to talk but for some reason I quit listening and fell into a dark place after the mention of a knee replacement.

I am not a competitive runner, not even in my age group unless I am the only one in it, but I like to compete…even if it is just competing against myself. It may be my teaching background, but it seems that when I have a plan and a goal, I forget how much I hate the actual act of running. I also like the cheering at the end of the race after following an attractive woman looking fit in her spandex who is running at a rate of speed, I can keep up with…but at a distance. Is that chauvinist or just being male?

I have missed all my races and the beer afterwards for the past eleven months as my weekly mileage has yo-yoed all over the place and my fear of being seen running in public has soared. Today it reached an all-time low. Three runs this week for a whopping six miles. There are another twenty-four from walking but it just ain’t the same. There is something that unscrambles my mind when I run while walking sometimes causes a reaction resembling the view from a broken kaleidoscope.

I began to walk and run in my late thirties after looking in the mirror. I was active, a coach, but I couldn’t deny that my pants had gotten wider and the long hours on the field had gotten harder, so I began to take my health seriously…until torn cartilage and a toe destroyed by psoriatic arthritis sidelined me. After four operations it became easy not to get up and workout and for a year or so I gave in to the temptation of my recliner, tasty steaks, bourbon, and cigars.

On April 7, 2006, I stood in front of a mirror while standing on my scales and had to admit that two hundred and thirty-two pounds did not look too good on my five-foot nine frame. I vowed to fix it but once again providence would intercede. On April 9, 2006, while celebrating my birthday, an elephant decided to sit on my chest signaling the best thing to happen to me since my wedding, a heart attack.

The best thing? Yes, the best thing because I survived it along with the four stints that were “surfed” into my heart. It signaled a need for a lifestyle change that I fear is in jeopardy if I can’t run. Between a clean diet, therapy and restarting my running I lost sixty-two pounds, much too quickly and ten pounds too much, before finally settling in at a comfortable one seventy-five and competed in my first 5k six months after my heart attack.

I was the “belle of the ball” as far as my cardiologist was concerned but there is a dark side. I still see a fat guy when I look in a mirror and fear I am one step from the slippery slope I was previously on. I am afraid that if I can’t outrun myself, everything I have worked for will crumble. There are other forms of exercise, but I fear they cannot provide the same peace of mind that I receive from my running. I’ve already seen an increase in the scales, beer consumption and even my cigars. Hopefully acknowledging it will help me battle my demons, but I am not sure I can out walk or out bike them. Sometimes a “mind is a terrible thing.”

A STORY FOR BRIAN

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As the first decade of the new millennium drew to an end I found myself being forced into retirement due to our state’s TERI program and the economics in play during that particular slowdown. I was comfortable with this retirement especially when a new charter school opened and wanted me to continue my teaching and I once again became unretired. My coaching career was coming to an end but at least I would be able to teach without the distraction of practices, games, long bus rides and the cold that always began the baseball season and seemed to get colder as I got older. That was what I thought at least…about the cold and the fact that my coaching career was over. As my wife and I walked one morning late in the summer of 2009 I informed her that long time Landrum coach, Travis Henson, had accepted a collegiate position at North Greenville University. With typical Linda Gail insight her comment was, “You better not answer your phone because John Cann (Landrum’s athletic director) will be calling.” I didn’t listen and ended up as their interim coach for a year. It was a good year, not a great one, but it allowed me to reconnect with Brian Kuykendall.
Brian was a former football player and student from my first stint at Landrum back in the mid 1980’s. He was also a baseball player but during my first stint I had been banished to coaching track and I didn’t get to coach him in that sport. I did get to watch, and he was a player that was light on ability but heavy enough in grit and was a great competitor, a coach’s dream. Short and stocky with dark good looks, he really hadn’t changed it seemed when I met him and his son Kaleb at the first parent and team meeting. You are kidding right? Are you old enough to have a fourteen year old and does this make me a “grand coach” of some type? I guess there was a little gray in his hair and goatee but not much. Brian had taken his love for people and kids and had coached or officiated most of the kids that I was getting ready to coach. He was a true sport’s father except one with brains who cared about all of the kids, not just his own. That is not a statement about Landrum specifically just sports in general.
I visited with Brian a few days ago. It wasn’t a good visit and I dreaded it as I drove the twenty miles to the Hospice House in Landrum. Brian is dying from lung cancer and there is nothing I can do about it. He was unconscious from drugs and I just could not get him to wake up to go out and play catch with me. I was struck by how strong Brian looked and fear that his battle will be long and hard on his family. I would rather he go “gently into the night.” His battle with his illness has taken me back to other players who are no longer with me. It has been a year since Tim Bright died of the same terrible disease and I again am struck with the unfairness of life. Children and former players should outlive me not the other way around. I have hopes that the list will grow no longer and that I will live forever but fear that is not going to happen.
As I walked this morning I thought about Brian along with Tim Bright, Heath Benedict and Jeff Gully. I know there are others who have left us, all too soon, but for some reason it Brian and these three, who force their way into my thoughts. I stopped at the cross located on the lake across from Lookup Lodge and asked for answers. There were none forthcoming, just the sounds of water, birds and the young people that populated the area this beautiful Sunday morning. These were the sounds of life when I was thinking about death and the hereafter.
I don’t know what happens after death, I have my faith and I truly believe that death is just another door to step through and there is something more. I joked with a friend about the laws of physics and Conservation of Energy and the possibility of “mingling molecules” or maybe “flashing photons.” This Sunday morning my concept of heaven includes a freshly manicured baseball field with sharp white lines gleaming in bright sunlight. Brian, when you step through that door and smell the sweet smell of freshly cut grass, look for a big blond guy with an even bigger grin, an even bigger, goofy guy with his hat a little off to the side and red headed smart-alecky outfielder who is looking for his next laugh even though he is now laughing. Introduce yourself to Tim, Heath and Jeff and tell them to play a little catch. I’ll be along in a bit and we can get the game started.

WORSHIPING AT THE ALTAR THAT IS FOOTBALL

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IN HONOR OF A FOOTBALL SATURDAY

I am avoiding returning a phone call to a friend and former coaching and teaching peer. This is not a “Hey, how are you doing, whatcha been up to?” kind of call because we have been keeping up with each other. I know what it is. This is the fourth time that I have retired and for the fourth time someone is going to try and get me to UN-retire. “Why won’t you just let me slope off into the sunset and enjoy the cigar and beer?” Why do I keep saying, “Yes?” Not this time! It is enticing with all of the interactions: team building, being a part of something bigger, the comradery with the players and the coaches that you just don’t find anywhere else short of a foxhole…and those Friday night lights. I have always missed football Friday nights. There is something about that green field with sharply laid down lines that almost glow they are so bright. There is probably nothing better in life than taking the field for your first home game…Well maybe one thing but that was so long ago…. What I have not missed yet are the practices, especially those that begin on July 31st… in South Carolina. It looks like they are going to catch a break with temps in the nineties and lower than normal humidity. Oh no! The early week looks bad for them. I say they and them because I am finally going to turn someone down. Sorry, Robbie.

I’m not the first to compare football in the South to a religious experience but that is not going to stop me from talking about it or turning the job down. It is just different and better in the South. There are a few cathedrals to the gridiron gods throughout the rest of the country but those don’t compare. I just don’t think Buckeyes, The West Coast Condoms or Irish Elves can display the trappings for the football sacraments as well as those teams south of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of New Mexico. Tailgating, bands with majorettes, cheerleaders…welllllll, I might have to give the nod for cheerleaders to Oregon. I don’t like the Green and “Yaller” but they wear so little of anything there’s not a lot of it showing…colors I mean.

I began my worship of football at a Clemson game in the early Sixties when invited by a friend to go with his family to watch his brother play at Death Valley. I guess that is when I became a full-fledged Tiger fan and began to worship before the altar that is football. It was not the cathedral it is now but it sure did beat the heck out of Indian Land on a Friday night. I got to meet the “minister” of the gridiron Tigers legendary coach Frank Howard, and could not help but remember our introduction later when I went to a coach’s dinner that featured him as a speaker. The man was a riot and I had a hard time reconciling that this Frank Howard was the same man I met earlier. I guess it was his pregame jitters. A different time in 1976, Howard told a joke on Willie Jefferies, a hall of fame coach for the predominately black South Carolina State University Bulldogs. Howard joked that he had attended a State practice trying to pick up a nugget of information that might lead to a victory and noticed that all of the footballs were painted dark green with lighter green stripes. When asked about them Jefferies responded with a question, “You ever seen a black boy drop a watermelon?” The laughter was lead by Jefferies, a black man himself with tears rolling down his cheeks. My playing days were different from my coaching days. I never played with or against anyone who was a different color. When I coached I found out that there was but one color that mattered on a football field and that was the color of the jersey that you wore. An avowed racist of any color would help, hug, stand up for and drink after members of the other races during their entire careers. I hope that this carried over into their lives after football, as well. Things that were said inside of the locker room might get you beaten severely or worse if they were said to anyone other than your teammates outside of that locker room.

To bring locker rooms into clarity, many activities had nothing to do with dressing and would not be considered religious unless we were talking about the Inquisition. Managers or younger players were sometimes wrapped like mummies and secured to benches with athletic tape. Cramergesic analgesic ointment was applied to heat hip pads or jockstraps of the unsuspecting. And the absolute worst torture known to man, was being told that Atomic Bomb was the best cure for Jockey Itch! Yeeeeeowwwwwwww! I coached a particularly salty group of young men that must have decided that Voodoo should be the religion of choice. Adopting the book Helter Skelter as their bible and Black Sabbath as their choir, this team employed hangmen’s nooses to hang dead birds and snakes around the locker room. A dead squirrel hanging from a noose was presented to the captains of one team to celebrate Halloween. I don’t know if they sold their soul to Beelzebub but they did win ten football games in a row.

I have memories galore associated with football. Most were happy and not blasphemous but there are a few…mostly revolving around practice… which to me were akin to the self-flagellation practiced by certain religious sects. On the practice field behind the gym where we did all of our drill work, morning worship began with the fog evaporating from a copious dew that transformed our heavy elastic and cotton practice gear into individual saunas as our exertions increased. After “Down-Ups,” “monkey rolls” and “Bull in the Ring” our practice uniforms were wringing-wet and ten pounds heavier. We were also a bit bruised. By the time practice was over, the field had dried out so “Sahara-like” that the only place more arid was the inside of our mouths. During those days there was no time limit to practice and water was withheld to make you tougher. Coaches can’t do that now and I am glad. We were kids who grew up without air conditioning and spent our summer days outside working or playing because it was actually cooler there than inside our homes. “You chaps get outside!” shouted by my grandmother was the order that kept me “acclimated.” If you did that to a kid today he would simply die from heat and dehydration. Even though we thought we were dying, it was just a form of heat “castration”…from sweating our balls off! I remember nursing on the edge of a bloody sweat-soaked towel in hopes of getting a single drop of moisture.

I believe the worst travesty ever perpetrated by a coach to his team was carried out by Bennett Gunter, our coach. On a particularly “crusty” day, he carried a bucket of water with ladle and covered it with a towel to keep the bugs out. It must have been the only thing we could think about because as a group we sucked. During the middle of practice he called us over to tell us that, and with the water bucket in the middle of our little circle, took the towel off, removed the ladle…and then tipped the bucket over onto the ground! As I watched the water-parched earth consume our water, I wondered how much trouble I might get into if I dove face first into the mud hole and tried to suck the liquid through my teeth.

During those August practices as soon as we had run our sprints, several of us would head to the boiler used by the cannery and drink the cold boiler water that seemed to be as frosty and tasty as a clear mountain stream, despite its metallic taste. I wonder what kind of health “time bomb” I have residing inside me from drinking that water.

I was fortunate to go to a small high school because fewer students meant that I got to play sports. Luckily, football, like most religions, accepts all comers, at least at the high school level. There were twenty-one bodies in my graduating class in 1968 and only ten were male. Of those ten, only seven of us played our entire high school career and that was a good thing for me. Timid, geeky in a non-geeky way, athletically challenged, clumsy in all other activities, and with an aversion to physical pain, I was not prime football material, at least early in my career. As a junior high player or even later, I would have earned the title “top water superstar.” Remember, cream is not the only thing that will rise to the top. Bobby Beechum, a seven-hundred and fifty-pound eight-foot-tall giant, taught me my first lesson. Throwing me like a bowling ball and making a 7-10 pin split, I learned that it is better to “give a lick than to receive.” I also remember running sprints one day when Coach Gunter exclaimed for everyone to hear, “Miller, I have to line you up with a fence post just to make sure you are making forward progress.” It could have been worse. A friend of mine who walked on at Clemson was told by Coach Howard that, and I quote, “Son, you are a wasted fuck!”

Most of my career I probably would have agreed with that assessment had it been made about me. With a series of injuries limiting my already finite abilities, I struggled through my freshman and sophomore years before getting “mostly” healthy. Still, my career up until my senior year might be summed up by my introduction to Pageland great, South Carolina standout and Hall of Fame Coach Al Usher. During a game my junior year we said our hellos at our five-yard line. I was high and he was low and leverage wins. Five yards later it was a touchdown for Pageland, just one of many that night that saw us embarrassed on our own field. During halftime, my coach RO Potts, slammed my shoulder pads and blew chewing tobacco breath into my face while yelling, “And you! How do you let someone drag you five yards into the end zone?” My brain reasoned, “Because that’s all he needed.” Luckily, I kept my mouth shut!

My senior year, hope sprang eternal, but it didn’t start too well. We made a road trip on a rainy night to Pageland, the self-proclaimed watermelon capitol or the world. Nothing good happens to me in regard to Pageland and, for some reason, I have had no success growing watermelons. I try to avoid Pageland at all cost. Driving rains kept both the worshippers and the offensive output down. Early in the game we drove for a touchdown but missed the extra point. For three quarters we moved the ball up and down the field without scoring. Deep in the fourth quarter and, in our end of the field, we lined up to punt, giving me the opportunity to break the football commandment – “Thou shalt not snap the ball over your punter’s head.” As the long snapper, it was my responsibility to spiral the ball to my punter. The ball was wet and heavy and my last thought was, “Keep your butt down and don’t snap it over his head!” I did neither. Our punter covered my errant snap for a safety and two points. The resulting kick from our own twenty gave them great field position and eventually a narrow eight to six two-point victory. I was probably at my lowest when “an angel fell from the sky” in the form of my coach. Coach Potts could have ruined me for life but instead placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “The game did not hinge on that one play. We had every opportunity to win that game and should have. We all share the loss.” “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” It is a religious lesson that I have tried to remember and live all my life.

Time limits, unlimited water hydration and lighter, less water absorbent uniforms are not the only aspects that have changed about football since I played and since I retired from coaching football. For the most part I think they are good changes even though it is sometimes hard to recognize the game today as the one I played as a boy. Bull and the Ring along with Oklahoma drills have been outlawed as has using the head as a weapon since we have become more concerned about safety. Do I think our brand of football was tougher? Most assuredly! But I don’t guess “three yards and a cloud of dust” was nearly as much fun as the new version. Parishioners have embraced the new version and still cheer that “My god is better than your god!” no matter how many times the ball is thrown. Congregations have swelled at the cathedrals throughout the nation – not just in the South. Even our most conservative “ministers” are throwing the ball all over the field and the participation of “acolytes” has definitely increased. Still I find myself worshipping at the altars of Georgia Tech or the service academies that still run the option, at least when they are not playing the Tigers in the much improved cathedral known as Death Valley.