Oh, To Be An Athletic Coach (Cont.)
Screen 5 of 6I heard this conversation but made no comment about it. However, I, too, was thinking, "Sure, why not?" So that night I called the Clarkesville coach and asked him if he wanted a chance to get revenge for the defeat his team had suffered at our hands earlier in the season. He jumped at the offer, and we agreed to play each other again in the season's final game for both teams--to be played on a Friday less than three weeks away.
As predicted, we lost the next two games, but in the finale to a less-than-successful season South Hill defeated Clarkesville once again, and by exactly the same score as before, 12-6.
Even though we finished our football schedule with only a 2-6 won-lost record, most everyone, including the coach, was encouraged. Many were already saying, "Wait 'til next year!"
The basketball season, though generally uneventful, was more successful. We lost a few games, including one in which we were forced to play the entire fourth quarter with only four South Hill players on the floor, due to illness among the players and to an excessive number of called fouls; but we won most of them. The climax was beating Chase City for the county championship. Our success in this winter sport probably bears out the claim that it certainly helps if the coach has some relevant experience and if his players believe he knows what he's talking about.
The baseball season was more interesting, chiefly because of some unexpected developments--several pleasant surprises, I might say.
In my senior year in high school, when I was a substitute on the baseball team, I learned about the squeeze play, "suicide squeeze" it was sometimes called. This play is executed when the runner on third base starts running toward home plate at the moment the pitcher releases the ball. The batter, who has been advised in advance by the third base coach that the squeeze play is on, knows he must bunt the ball. It is called "suicide squeeze," because if for any reason, the batter does not bunt the ball, the runner is nearly always put out, since he has figuratively "committed suicide."
Fortunately for our South Hill team, no one in that part of Virginia knew about this play. At least, it had not been used before in Mecklenburg County. So when we introduced it and used it in several games early in the season, the opponents were taken by surprise. Our successful use of this fancy "squeeze" play, along with some lucky breaks for us, resulted in seven victories for us out of the first nine games. Again, students, faculty and supporters of athletics in the community were very enthusiastic and generous in their praise.
But then our fortunes changed; the bottom seemed to drop out of our activities. "Travelstead's squeeze play," as opposing coaches called it, became too well known. The other teams were ready for it; and furthermore we seemed to have more and more difficulty advancing runners as far as third base. Consequently, we won only one of the next five games.
At this point, our luck changed again, this time for the better. A well known retired major league pitcher moved to South Hill in early March and offered to help coach the pitchers on our team--we had only two when he arrived. His son, a rangy six-footer, also moved to town and immediately enrolled at the high school. Fortunately he had been trained for pitching by his father, and since no eligibility rule prohibited it, we made him our star pitcher the week after he arrived. We didn't--at least I didn't--know anything about "sliders," "knuckleballs" and "floaters," all of which seemed to come along later, but this young man's "out-drop," "in-curve," and "fastball" were all we needed. Opposing batters could hardly see his pitches, much less hit them. His skill, supplemented by the improved pitching of the other two boys who were being coached by the retired major leaguer, and just average batting and fielding by the rest of the team, resulted in our winning all five of the remaining games, four of them by shutouts and one a no-hitter. At the season's end, we had an enviable and much talked about 13-6 won-lost record.
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