Big Ball and Bat

When we were little my brother and I would play a game we called “big ball and bat.” One on one. Not sure why we didn’t roll the big plastic bouncy ball like a pitch. Instead we placed the ball in a hole we had worn out in the ground and hit it with a wooden baseball bat (usually a Braves bat day giveaway). 

When I got older my dad entered me in the Punt Pass & Kick competition. He bought me a football and tee to practice. At the local competition my pass and punt were average, but my low to the ground kick scored second for my age group. After that I began kicking down the driveway after school. I would go chase the ball, then go back and kick it again. Eventually I got good, and became the kicker on my ninth grade team. My parent’s driveway still has a lopsided pine tree next to it, where my kicks knocked down the branches on one side.

I rarely kept stats, until I got to high school and kicked for the team. Instead of games I would draw – airplanes, baseball and football players, cars. I would play the game TROUBLE with my brother or sister and sometimes by myself. I just hated the loud noise it made. In college I started playing RISK and backgammon. I would play backgammon by myself. 

I kept stats on the mighty mite teams I coached. Probably still have them somewhere. Then I kept Will’s stats when he started playing baseball. Soon I was keeping the stats for the entire team. Still have all the scorebooks and excel spreadsheets.

Never played many games during recess until the seventh grade at Springdale Elementary School. There we played a hard-nosed football game. Without a tee, I would lie the ball on its side and kick the ball “on-sides.” The most memorable play was one day after the bell rang ending recess. We ran one more play. If the other team didn’t score, my team would win. John Gibson, the fastest boy in school, got the ball and was running for a touchdown. I was the only one in his way. As he was about to run past I stepped in front of him, and we collided nose to nose. As I fell down I remember seeing him spinning around like a top as he fell to the ground, as I had hit him really hard. My nose was bleeding, and I my once smooth nose now had a more characteristic bump. This is probably when my runny nose problems started as well.

I don’t have many memories of junior high PE. The coaches were more interested in whether you wore the proper gym clothes than actually performing exercises. The one exception was the week we boxed. Each out lasted two minutes, with combatants wearing boxing gloves and white junior high football helmets. My one match was against my fellow bus 64 rider Rex Dooley. Like me, in eighth grade Rex was tall and skinny and sported a cheesy moustache. When the match began we both danced about. The punches weren’t exactly glancing. After sixty second we were both exhausted from holding our gloves up. By the last 30 seconds we were leaning on each other. The one difference: while he just leaned on me, but while I leaned I was punching him in the midsection with both fists. When the bell sounded it was the greatest feeling in the world when the coach lifted my arm in the air as the victor.   

The Lanier High gymnasium is a huge gray block. The northern side of the structure is devoid of detail, with the exception of one small door in the northeastern corner. One spring day I was standing in the door before my PE class began, wearing gym shorts and tennis shoes but no shirt. My good friends Bob Brewster and Catherine Hendricks (the homecoming queen) were walking across the parking lot, and we waved to each other. After that Catherine swears she looked off in another direction. Bob was still looking at me when Marty Drawhorn snuck up behind me and pulled down my gym shorts, revealing my whitey tighties. With my shorts at my ankles, I waddled out of the doorway. Bob said it was the funniest thing he ever saw. Catherine swears she didn’t see anything.   

At Tech my favorite PE class was aerobics. Took it twice. You’d run for half the class, on the track around Grant Field. That was when the track ran under the small north stands. The last 30 minutes we’d play football on the AstroTurf field. Our instructor was Whack Hyder. He knew my grandmother, who had worked for years in the registrar's office. He would visit the office to make sure his basketball players were eligible. After that he would always greet me and ask about my grandmother, even years after I graduation.

Gymnastics was taught by the football team’s strength and conditioning coach, Coach Polhemus. Fortunately for me, he wasn’t much into gymnastics. Most of the grade was based on calisthenics and the one mile run. While we stretched Polhemus would stretch and lecture us on his outlook on life (going the extra mile). He was the one prof whose good side I got on. One “test” was doing one hundred sit-ups. Afterwards he called roll, and we’d reply with the number of sit-ups we did. Most said one hundred. When he called my name I answered “101.” He loved it. 

Based on our training runs, Polhemus considered me the favorite to finish the mile run with the fastest time. We were running around the four indoor basketball courts in the brand new Student Athletic Complex (SAC, where the Olympic swimming pool was later built). I had never competed in an official race before, so I took off and led the entire way. It wasn’t that I tired out, but on one of the last turns a classmate passed me to win. I never saw it coming.

Downproofing was required for graduation – unlike today. I could swim ok, but I had never been one to swim great distances. We were taught to stay in water for 45 minutes wearing long pants and a long sleeved shirt, with our hands tied, our legs tied, and eventually both hands and legs tied. We’d spend most of the time calmly bobbing up and down, but we’d also have to perform certain tasks – like performing an underwater somersault and swimming to the deep end and back. 

Another test was the underwater swim. To pass you had to swim the length of the Olympic-sized pool. To get an “A” you had to turn around underwater and swim all the way back. We couldn’t dive in at the start – instead we had to jump in backwards. I set out just wanting to pass, but I made the turn and kept swimming back. Eventually I made it all the way. I made a “B” in the class without much trouble. Getting an “A” required performing all the tests almost perfectly, which I just couldn’t do.