Take Me Out To The Ball Game

My Dad loved sports. College Football, Major League Baseball (the St. Louis Cardinals) and basketball... especially basketball. My fondest and most enduring memories are of him sitting in his recliner, a portable radio* in his lap, listening to the games. Occasionally, he would have to shift the antenna and adjust the tuning dial to pick up the AM stations that were broadcasting the games, KMOX St. Louis, "3 DoubleU E" (WWWE) Cleveland, WBAP Fort Worth-Dallas and the lowly KWPM West Plains, Missouri.

Every now and again, Dad would get a "hankering" to see an in-person sports game. Now, we didn't travel to a Cardinals game or to Columbia to see the "Mizzou Tigers" and certainly not to Kansas City to take in a Chief's game. Most of our "in person" attendance to sporting events were sitting in the truck, on the street outside of the West Plains "American Legion Baseball Field", watching the "Zizzers" in action! (There was usually a bottle of Pepsi involved and the occasional bag of peanuts to insert in said bottle of Pepsi!)

But there were those nights when Dad went all out. He'd say "Let's go down to the Central Gym and watch the city league games.

West Plains had (and I guess still does) city league basketball teams. These teams were made up of local men who had passed the High School age but still felt they had enough steam to be competitive on the hardwood court. The team was usually sponsored by a local business and consisted of six to seven members to allow some sort of rotation.

The games were played in the old Central School Gymnasium, which at one time was the West Plains High School Gym 

Looking at the picture above, it seems that by the time we attended these games, the front part of the gymnasium had been removed and the front was the tall, arched portion.

The games were, for the most part, a civil rivalry but there were those times when tempers would flair and contestants had to be separated. The referees were hometown guys and did the best they could to keep the game from becoming a free-for-all. Although this has been almost fifty years ago, I can remember a couple of the players for sure and some "maybes". Tim Cherry and "Big" Mike Forbes are two that really stick out in my mind. Perhaps the readers of this blog can help me with the "maybes"!

Overwhelmingly though, the best part of all of these outings was just spending time with my old Dad. We didn't have any deep personal talks, we didn't discuss the problems of the world; We just sat on the old wooden bleachers, occasionally making a comment about a play or a shot, and watching the back and forth of the game.

I have no memories of sitting with my Dad in a football stadium or basketball arena with thousands of screaming, fanatic fans. No recollections of the roar of the crowd when a homerun sailed into the outfield seats or when a player was thrown out at the plate. But I do have these pleasant, sentimental, heart-warming memories of a Father that just took time to do the little things...

*("Why the radio" you ask? We did not have a television growing up so our link to the outside world was the radio and a daily newspaper.)

Although I cannot relate entirely to the song "Take Me Out To The Ballgame", I love this rendition by Carly Simon.