CAREER KNOCKOUT

It happened about this time of year 46 years ago and I still get nightmares about one of the top three bad events in my life. I was a junior in high school and totally secure in my little world of Haleyville, Alabama, the greatest place to grow up in during the 60’s. During the winter I’d been named a captain of the next year’s football team, I was making pretty good grades and dating the drum majorette of the band. Spring sports were played for pure enjoyment and to give us kids an excuse from working during that time of year. The coaches that coached football in the fall and for a few weeks in the spring coached our baseball and track teams and got us to and from the other small towns in the area for games.

Since I was the biggest and by far the slowest kid on our baseball team I naturally got the call to catch. I was a decent catcher for our time and size of school but mostly I was the only one that would fit the chest protector that had been bought years before when the school had a real catcher. I stopped a high percentage of the balls thrown at me and on occasion, if the base runner was as slow a I was, I could get the ball to James Cecil Long who usually covered second for a put out. On offense I often hit the ball but was so slow I have been known to suffer a put out at first from a ball hit to left field. Fortunately for me we did not have anybody else that could wear the chest protector so I got to play on a regular basis.

Another big downer for baseball in our little hometown, and most of our area, was the lack of decent facilities to play on. In Haleyville we played in a field out near the Armory that I guess the American Legion had built many years before. The backstop was made of some old power poles (I’m sure Alabama Power found missing on some inventory) covered with chicken wire that had been salvaged from farms when the chicken industry moved from yards to chicken houses. The dugouts were only benches set fairly close to the first and third base lines due to the fact roadways separated by huge ditches ran immediately behind them. Not much chance to make a play on a foul ball since the player making the play was in danger of falling into a 4 to 8 foot ditch if he got outside the benches.

We did have from time to time some pretty good baseball players. Bob Masdon, a lifelong friend was probably the best I ever played with. When Bob was 15 he hitched a ride with some older kids to Winfield where the Cincinnati Reds were holding tryouts. Bob lied about his age when he registered that morning and he did so well in the tryout that the guys running them offered him a contract. He had to confess his true age and go home empty handed. The victim of my misadventures was a pitcher named Talmadge Goodwin. Talmadge was a pitcher unequaled during our time as high school baseball wannabes. Talmadge was the real thing, the first guy who could really throw a ball through a car wash and have it come out dry, that is if we had car washes during that time. He had every pitch and heat to burn, but unfortunately I was his catcher and he never made it past playing for the Pete Miller All-Stars, on Sunday afternoon in Winston and Walker County against the likes of Nauvoo and Carbon Hill, all because of me.

To showcase Talmadge and Bob and some other fairly good players our coach scheduled a game in Florence against Coffee High School that fateful day in the spring of 1962. The entire team crammed into three old army surplus cars the booster club had bought for the athletic department and headed for Florence and our shot at the big time. As we unloaded we could just a well been at Wrigley Field or Yankee Stadium. As I remember that field today it was beautiful. A field with grass on the infield and outfield, smooth, rock less red clay base paths and hitters boxes, on deck circles on both sides of the plate and most important a fence completely surrounding the park with yardage signs down both power alleys and in straightaway center. It could not have been more beautiful. In contrast most of us didn’t even have matching pants and jerseys and wore three different caps.

Uniformed umpires met at home plate with both coaches and after the normal warm-ups the game began. I don’t remember exactly, but I do know that we had a base runner or two in the first inning but failed to score any runs. Scouts from several colleges and a few professional scouts had come primarily to see this kid, Talmadge Goodwin from Haleyville throw and check out all the rumors making the rounds in those days. I was catching this star and was in total awe of the whole thing, maybe too much in awe. Talmadge warmed up from the mound to start the bottom half of the first inning. He had his best stuff on this big day. His fastball was literally knocking the mitt off my hand and all the breaking stuff was moving like a roller coaster car on a fast track. Every scout had his eye on this phenom and Haleyville was about to make its mark on the baseball world, except for one small problem. Talmadge signaled me that his warm up was complete and to ‘throw-it-down’, the last ritual before bringing the batter to the plate. As Talmadge threw the last pitch a hopping curve ball, he turned his back to the plate and bent over to pickup a rosin bag lying next to the pitching rubber. I caught the ball and with my best move jumped from my squat and fired the ball to James Cecil at second. I fired just as Talmadge raised up facing center field from his bent over position.

I never saw the ball come down. I did see it hit Talmadge in the back of his head and I saw it careen skyward, I promise I never saw it come down. Our hero was fallen, not in combat but from my friendly fire. They hauled him off on a stretcher and we picked up him at the hospital in the army surplus car on the way home. Talmadge signed a football scholarship later that spring to Alabama but never played a down. I have always wondered what would have happened if I had now knocked him out of not only his but our whole teams biggest game.

Talmadge is dead now (not from my throw) and he never held my throw against me, but I will never forget it. That throw would have been perfect if he had just stayed down and left it alone.