Because of a Ball
We never went anywhere as kids without some kind of ball to play with. Last week while I was playing catch with my grandson, I was telling him stories about my brother and me doing the same thing. Bob and I always kept our gloves and baseballs in a bag in the back floorboard of the family car.
When Mother made us go with her shopping “overtown,” (for the uninformed, overtown meant Sheffield, Muscle Shoals, Tuscumbia and Florence) we would find a grassy area and play catch. We even had some rubber-covered baseballs to work on ground balls on the concrete parking lots. We will never know where some of those ended up after they went down the sewer drains in front of Woolco on Florence Boulevard.
At other times, we would pull out the football and throw passes. Like others our age, we made up competitive games. Anything to keep score and declare a winner. I had a “ball addiction” and went to bed many evenings, listening on a transistor radio under my pillow to Harry Cary broadcasting St. Louis Card baseball games on KMOX.
Our pickup basketball games were legendary. Most were at the tennis courts, known as the “asphalt.” Our games were totally colorblind to skin color. We even put up a basketball goal in our backyard. Daddy never complained about his precious zoysia turf being torn up to the point that we played on a packed red clay court. Our neighbor, Bruce “Hog Jaw” Gargis would sometimes yell out his bedroom window for us to please quit bouncing that ball on the dirt because he was trying to sleep. End of the game.
Our youth days were complete “because of a ball.”
Think of the different sports balls in your life that actually changed your life. That’s not an overreaction. Think of the friendships, the dates, the marriages, the life lessons, the hurts, and ALL the fun that can be traced back to one phrase: “because of a ball.”
It could be a football, basketball, baseball, soccer ball, tennis ball, ping pong ball, bowling ball, pickleball, billiard ball, racquet ball or golf ball. Take your pick. Think of the joy and camaraderie that came from either being a player or spectator of any of these listed.
As a former player and coach, I could give countless examples of lives being changed “because of a ball.” At Colbert County High School, we only had 3 sports: football, basketball and baseball. Without naming names, so many came out for junior high football and the first thing they told my dad, the coach: “Coach Bradford, I know nothing about football but I want to play.” These guys ended up as starters on the varsity but the self-confidence and sense of team was the most important thing.
So many players would tell you in a heartbeat: “If not for sports, I would have ended up in jail and never graduated. The players became my brothers and the coaches were like second fathers to me. I never wanted to let either of them down.” All “because of a ball.”
As a high school coach, there is a saying among the coaching profession: “these young men need us much more than we need them.” Where else can they learn about discipline, teamwork, sacrifice, conditioning and accountability? Very few people can understand the hurt and disappointment, when a young man would quit when things got hard. It hurt even more when they lost the team feeling and their lives took a wrong turn. This isn’t to say that all who quit a team will fail at all. Ask any former player who is over 40 if they regretted playing sports? The answer will be somewhere near zero.
Very few high school players make it to the next level. High school is where athletics is played in its purest form. They play for the love of the game, the love of their school and for their families and teammates. So many of my former players are now grandparents who share stories of their playing days with their own grandkids. Of course, their kids have heard those same stories for years. I could brag about the ones who overcame tough odds to be great family men. Listening to some of their stories is known to cause excessive eye leakage.
As a former college football coach, recruiting was the lifeline of the football program. Nothing is more rewarding than seeing the “success” stories of former players who never made it to the NFL. More than two dozen of my recruits, never had a family member attend college. Many of these were below the poverty level. One had never slept in a hotel. One player’s father was in jail for life after killing a man over a bad drug deal. One player had never been on a team with black players. He ended up rooming with a black player and they were in each other’s weddings.
Fans like to think that coaches take the most pride in their overall record. That’s wrong. I will speak on behalf of ALL former coaches:
“Our greatest pride is knowing that we played a small part, not only in the player’s life but indirectly, in generations to come.”
Why?
“Because of a ball.”