I got a phone call several years ago while I was doing some Howard Payne baseball games. Abram Choate, Sports Information Director of Howard Payne, calls one day. “Hey, would you like to go to Waco and do a Howard Payne-Baylor baseball game?” I said, “Man, would I!”

Howard Payne and Baylor were going into their respective conference tournaments and they had decided to get together and play a practice game just to keep everybody tuned up. It was a game against one of the “big boys” and I thought it was important to broadcast it.

So, we go to Waco. Now, this is the new Baylor baseball stadium. They only thing wrong is that it wasn’t finished. The upper deck wasn’t finished but the lower deck was. In between the two was a walkway and that’s where I broadcast the game, at a card table, right next to a card table that was occupied by Frank Fallon, one of the great broadcasters in Texas history, and the voice of the Baylor Bears.

As I am getting ready for the broadcast, one of the Howard Payne coaches comes to me and said, “By the way, I don’t know if you’ve been told, but we aren’t using any of our top three pitchers, or our top two out of the bullpen.” Had I know that before the game, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to broadcast it. The reason, Baylor had one of the best teams in the country, and here we were, basically not using any of our pitchers.

It was a thrashing! I don’t know if you can even find it in our record book. The final score was 30-something to 3 – something like that. We threw pitchers that I didn’t even know were on our team – and I broadcast our games. It was an unbelievable thrashing.

The new ballpark is right up against the Brazos River. The river is just beyond the outfield fence and one of our players after the ballgame was imitating a weather forecaster on the radio. He was saying, “Even though it’s bright and sunny, unbelievably, we are getting reports of baseball size hail in the Brazos River this afternoon.”

It was good for a laugh after the loss wore off. I can’t even remember how many home runs they hit that day, but it was still a great experience to play that ball game. Memorable at the least.

It also reminds me of the time we played a doubleheader against the “big one” – the University of Texas. Fact is, I think the Horns went to Omaha for the College World Series that year. Even though we got whipped in the doubleheader like 14-1 and 19-2, our claim to fame was that the Longhorns had to come from behind to beat us in both games of that doubleheader. We got a run in the top for the first of the first game, got a run in the top of the first in the second game, so we were ahead in both games 1-0. A small victory.

We weren’t as competitive as I wanted us to be that day, but sometimes in sports you are judged by the company you keep. It was actually a great thrill for me to be able to do a doubleheader against the University of Texas and that single game blow out against the Baylor Bears. I have fond memories of all three games now. Not so much back then.

Until next time, so long everybody.

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‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at [email protected].