In these days of unabashed adulation of athletes, both professional and amateur, almost worshipped in the glare of our flickering televisions or from the heights of the nose-bleed stadium seats, how about a tribute to the uncoordinated, the awkward, and the butter-fingered?
This column is dedicated to everyone who never was the first one picked for a playground ball team, who never won a race, spiked a football, hit a home run, drilled the winning shot, made an all-star team, or dated a cheerleader.
Having said that, I, too, have also bought into the sports “mystique,” even paranoia, that grips our nation and world. What I said in my opening statement is in the category of one of those “yelps” that were featured in the Scandinavian sagas such as Beowulf where the hero stood up in the mead hall and bragged about his phony “bona fides” to all who would listen. That’s me: all sound and no fury. Bluster. All hat and no cattle. A slave to Friday night lights as much as anyone else.
It’s probably because I wasn’t much of an athlete in high school. I “went out” for football for five years, but my heart wasn’t in it. I certainly wasn’t “cerebral,” but I already looked at the sport like many Europeans do today: testosterone-driven, excessively violent, and potentially dangerous. But, if you were a boy of any size and didn’t play football in a small Mississippi high school in the 1950s, you were a non-person; your very manhood was suspect; you were socially emasculated; and you were an outlier. If you did play football, just even dress out, your vices and sins were forgotten; your ugliness and shortcomings were overlooked, even celebrated. Unfortunately, I had two basic problems: I hated practice, and I hated authority. I didn’t believe in either one.
Somehow, though, I always made the team, probably because they needed live blocking dummies. I played right tackle, and my teammates on either side of me were both selected as “All Lamar County” in the old Desoto Conference. I was neglected to be selected as “All Ignored,” or ignored to be selected as “All Neglected,” I never could figure out which. I was kind of like the team “goat” – not GOAT (Greatest of all Time) as with Alabama’s coach Nick Saban, but just plain “goat.” Most practices, I really felt like the team “dog,” but not like DOG with its “champion” connotation as voiced by coach Deion Sanders, but as in a cocker spaniel or somebody’s chihuahua that had wandered onto the field.
If there was an award for the “Sorriest Football Player in Lumberton History,” I would be a serious contender. If NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) had been around in the 1950’s, I’m sure some fat cats in town would have paid me not to play. I remember the homecoming parade during my senior year (1959). Every senior football player had his own decorated float. The players were represented as textbooks, and the books had senior girls riding the float serving as beautiful bookends. Seems weird now, when you think about it. Anyway, somehow, the teachers had rounded up four girls to ride on my float – I don’t know how they persuaded them. The girls must have lost a coin flip or possibly been offered the next day off from school.
Oh, I had my moments. It seemed like every year when we played Brooklyn (Forrest County Agricultural High School) and Purvis I would magically make the first team. The thing was, when we played the Aggies, I had to line up against a player named Walter Suggs, who went on to star at Mississippi State and who, I think, had a cup of coffee in the pros. When we played the Tornados, I had to line up across from Marvin Brazille, who later was a standout player at USM, and who eventually became sheriff of Lamar County and then a United States Marshal. Both were great, clean players, but every year they would almost beat me to death. This was back before helmets had the elaborate mouth and face protection they have now. Ours had a simple plastic bar. Both Walter and Marvin specialized in the “forearm shiver,” or smash, before they gobbled you up on defense, and I was usually cross-eyed by half time. Marvin had a job bagging groceries on Saturday at Myatt Brothers Supermarket in Purvis, and when he saw me, he would catch my eye, and smile as if to say: “I’m going to get you, sucker” - at least that what I thought he was thinking.
If you love Mississippi football at any level, past and present, there’s a new book out that is a “must” read. Written by Rick Cleveland, one of the state’s most celebrated sports writers, and Neil White, a Gulfport native who has written or published over 50 books, “The Mississippi Football Book” (Nautilus, 2023), “presents stories and records from the greatest teams, coaches, and players who lived and played in the greatest football state.” I first heard the two authors present their book at this year’s Mississippi Book Festival on the state capitol grounds. I was so impressed with their presentation and with their book that I went to hear them again at a special Osher Lifelong Living Institute (OLLI) event a few weeks ago. There they were introduced by Dr. Joe Paul, the newly inaugurated president of USM.
One of my favorite anecdotes that Mr. Cleveland related concerned the late Ray Guy, USM’s NFL Hall of Fame punter. A natural, all-around athlete, excelling in all sports, he was also a member of his Georgia high school’s track team. On the way to a track meet, his coach realized that they need a high jumper and asked Guy if he would compete in the event. He agreed; the coach taught him the necessary approach and jumping technique in the aisle of the school bus, and, of course, Guy proceeded to win the high jump event.
Sitting in the audience, and hearing the above story twice, I couldn’t help but remember that I had a somewhat similar experience, up to a point. Lumberton had a track team and, a few hours before a meet at Poplarville, the football coach, also the track coach, asked two of us on the football team if we would throw the shot put. We had never even seen one before. We practiced our technique with a football in the aisle of the bus on the way to Poplarville. Unlike Ray Guy, we came in last.
When Dr. Paul introduced the other author of the Football book, Neil White, he mentioned that Mr. White’s best-selling memoir, “In the Sanctuary of Outcasts” (Harper Perennial, 2009), was “one of the best he’d ever read.” Since the book is also one of my favorites, I had already asked Mr. White to autograph my personal copy that morning. Briefly, the book covers his rise and fall as a magazine publisher in Gulfport and New Orleans; his conviction for serious white collar financial crimes “to keep his publication empire afloat;” and his incarceration in a “soft” federal prison at Carville, Louisiana, for one year. It was certainly a strange “institution.” The federal government was phasing out the only leprosy hospital in the nation and beginning to utilize the buildings and grounds as a prison for individuals convicted of “white collar” crimes. Around 150 leprosy patients were still in resident. Consequently, Mr. White lived among convicts, the sick, doctors, nurses, priests, and nuns – all freely roaming the facility. Mr. White, who had lost everything – fame, fortune, friends, his wife – was inspired by the work of the religious who attended the sick, and the fruits of their work among the “outcasts” became part of his life’s reclamation. He was also inspired by the strength and resolve of the sick themselves. You need to read this book for yourself.
Mr. White’s story resonated with me for two reasons: his journey to redemption is an inspiring story and an example for all of us. Most importantly, his experience among the leprosy patients at Carville reminded me of one of my personal heroes, Father Joseph de Veuster (1849-1889), a priest of the Society of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (Picpus Fathers), who was recently (2009) elevated to sainthood by Pope Benedict XVI for his missionary work among Hawaiian leprosy patients.
I read the biography of Father de Veuster, or “Father Damien,” as he was better known, while sitting on the back row of some long-forgotten class in high school. A Belgian priest, he spent 16 years of his life (1873-1889) as a missionary to Hawaiian victims of leprosy secluded on the small island of Molokai. He bandaged their wounds, built coffins, dug graves, heard confessions, and said mass every day. Eventually, he, too, succumbed to the dread disease. While I’ve never set foot on the island, which is the second smallest in the Hawaiian chain, containing only two small towns, I’ve often sailed by it and wondered about Father Damien and his selfless ministry.
Two other sports I did not excel in were swimming and boxing. When I joined the Navy, I did not know how to swim. When I was little, I didn’t have anyone to take me swimming so I could learn, and when I got big enough to take myself, I was ashamed that I didn’t know how. As you can imagine, the Navy expects everyone to be a swimmer, so that was soon sorted out in bootcamp. On the first night, after getting six inoculations (no anti-vaxers allowed), we had our swim test. To pass, one only had to swim across an Olympic-sized indoor pool. For someone like me, though, it would take a miracle of the scale of Yahweh parting the Red Sea for the Israelites to walk through for me to pass. In fact, that was my strategy – I was going to jump in, hold my breath, and walk across. It didn’t work. No miracle. No Deus ex machina. I was quickly dragged out of the pool by the lifeguards and added to the growing list of non-qualifiers.
For the next two weeks, every night while my shipmates shined their shoes, washed their clothes, prepared their lessons, and wrote letters home, I packed my bathing suit and trudged off to the pool for what was euphemistically called “stupid swim.” I’m still uncomfortable in the water, but I progressed enough to qualify as a First Class Swimmer there and later at Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Newport. I also survived several encounters with the so called “helo dunker,” which simulates egress from a waterborne helicopter crash, the successful completion of which is necessary to be a passenger on a Navy helicopter at sea. Incidentally, I believe such a test is now required of personnel working on offshore oil rigs.
As far as boxing, you can look at my broken nose and gauge how much success I had in the arena. I went a few rounds in my younger days during Friday night “smokers,” which are what boxing matches are called in the Navy and Marine Corps. I had much more success as a boxing coach. When I was assigned to the Battleship New Jersey (BB-62), out of Long Beach, California, I assembled a boxing team that was the terror of West Coast military bases from the Mexican border to Bremerton, Washington. I carried two “All-Navy” boxers, twin brothers, out of East St. Louis, Missouri, as well as about a dozen other solid fighters. We were light in heavyweights, usually getting some big boy up out of the engine room who just wanted to “beat up on somebody.” We also had a 112 pounder who was a baby-faced assassin that I hated to turn loose on anyone.
Our ship was over in the Indian Ocean, and we came alongside the USS Peleliu (LHA-5), a large assault ship that carried around 800 Marines on a six-month float (deployment). They sent word that they “didn’t have much to offer, but that they wanted to box.” It sounded like a “set up” to me, but we went over, anyway. And it was a set up. An ambush. We arrived, dressed to fight, and there’s all 800 Marines on the flight deck, sitting around an expensive and professional boxing ring. They are all worked up to a screaming frenzy. The referee was no less than a full bird colonel. Their boxers were dressed in matching red and gold USMC silk trunks and robes, and they danced out to the tune of “Rocky” blaring over the ship’s loudspeaker.
We just looked at each other and laughed, because we knew what we had. To make a long story short, we won 9 out of 10 bouts; only losing the heavyweight match because I threw in the towel since my guy was getting cut up bad. As each one of their boxers went down, the crowd got quieter and quieter. When it was over, all you could hear was the wind blowing and the sea gulls screeching. I was beginning to wonder if we would have to fight our way off the ship, but they ended up being very nice to us, even giving us ice cream which we hadn’t had since leaving Pearl several months earlier.
In closing, whatever side you happen to come down on regarding the old environment vs. heredity, nature vs. nurture argument, here’s proof that DNA is not destiny. Perhaps my clumsiness is not necessarily hereditary. At the conclusion of the recent college softball season, our granddaughter, a William Carey pitcher, was selected as the Southern States Athletic Conference (SSAC) Freshman of the Year! Her grandpa might be a klutz, but not her.
Light a candle for me.
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Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
