With so many area teams now in the baseball playoffs here in 2022, I can’t help but be reminded of 1991 when I had the worst experience in my life at a playoff game.

Brownwood was in a two out of three series and I can’t even remember who they were playing. Game two and game three, if necessary, were scheduled for the high school park at Wichita Falls.

It was like a May afternoon, clear skies, blisteringly hot, I mean unbearably hot, and it just so happens that this stadium had no roof and no press box. It was just concrete with wrap around seating. It did have a lower walkway where I set up a table and the equipment and was ready to broadcast.

By the way, Mark Bachtel has just been named head football coach and athletic director at Brownwood High School. Obviously, he’s at the game. He took his precious wife Betty along with him and that’s probably why I’m still alive today.

I started doing the ballgame and the heat was just oppressive. There wasn’t any wind. Temperature was about triple digits and away we go. It was so hot that in the later stages of the first game the home plate umpire collapsed. I mean collapsed to the point to where they had to call an ambulance.

The base umpire put on the equipment and he took over behind the plate for the rest of that ballgame before somebody could show up to help. He called the whole game. He called first base, second base, third base, home plate. He was the only one there. Brownwood won the first game and we evened the series at 1-1. Game two in 30 minutes.

I barely made game one. I went and found someplace out of the sun prior to game two. Of course, eventually I had to go back out. I’m telling you, the last game that day was so hot that I was seeing elephants running out onto the field. It was horrible. I had my head down between pitches to keep from passing out.

Then I felt something cold around my neck. I turn around and Betty Bachtel had gone to the concession stand, bought up all the ice, and she was soaking towels in the ice and then bringing them to me to put around my neck and wipe my face with. It’s because of her that I made it to the end of the game – and we won!

On the way home, I stopped at a convenience store and I bought a six pack of water – I had stopped drinking the hard stuff a few years prior. I downed those six while standing in the store. I drank those six and bought 12 more. I got those in the car and took off for Brownwood and drank those other 12 before I got home.

I’m not sure I didn’t have heat stroke anyway. It took me about three days to recover and I have no earthly idea who we played the next round in the playoffs or if we won. I simply knew I was lucky to even be alive.

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].