This I think occurred in the late 1970’s. I’m so old I can’t remember. But the Brownwood Lions were in the playoffs so I guess it was ’77 or ’78, in fact I think we went ahead and won State that year. We were playing in Waco that night in the second round of the playoffs and it’s a team that we beat fairly comfortably. Fact is, I think it’s the only time we ever played them and we won that night.
It turned out the same afternoon Baylor was playing Texas at the same stadium in Waco. Well, Harry Sockol, my color man on the broadcasts, was a huge UT fan –I mean a HUGE UT fan. At that time, I really didn’t care about either team too much. Texas was pretty good that year but Baylor was awful. I think they were like one and eight or one and nine at the time. Texas was an overwhelming favorite in the ballgame. So, Harry calls me and says, “Hey, you wanna go early and watch the Baylor and Texas game?” I said, “Hey, why not?” So we go up early and we sit on the Texas side and we watch the ballgame. Harry had an uncle who was a pretty big deal at UT. He had been a higher-up on the UT campus. He was the former President of the Southwest Conference and President of the NCAA as well and his name was J. Neils Thompson. He and his wife, two friends, and the driver of their limo, actually fixed us lunch in the parking lot of the stadium – table, chairs, everything – was set up out there beside the limo. The meal was great but I’m not sure the game turned out like they wanted it to. Baylor plays the dickens out of them, and believe it or not, Baylor ended up winning the ballgame! Well, that’s headline enough. That’s a big deal! But it wasn’t the big story of the ballgame.
Now, some of this I found out from different people many years later, but this turned out to be the infamous “worm” game. Bill Hicks, who later on coached at Howard Payne, was on the staff at Baylor. Grant Teaff gets up to deliver his pregame speech. He tells the story about this guy who wrote a story that he had read about a guy who was ice fishing up in the far North, dead winter. They were having to cut holes in the ice. One guy was catching all the fish and the other guy says, “How in the world are we fishing in the same hole, and I’m not getting any and you are catching all the fish?” The guy opened his mouth and he pulled out a worm! He says to the man, “Well, you gotta keep the bait warm.” That was the whole story. Teaff was going to tell this story to his team and apply it to football. So, he tells it and then he applies it to football. He says to his team, “Just in case you were wondering, (he opened his mouth and pulled out this worm) I’m keeping the bait warm for you!” Well, Baylor players go crazy! They jump up and run out of the tunnel and play a great football game.
Now, Bill Hicks told me later that they had this big ‘ol kid who played in the defensive line. He’s the only one that didn’t get up and run out on the field. Bill said all he was doing was just sitting there and saying over and over, “He had a worm in his mouth!” Well, they finally got the kid on the field and, of course, won the ballgame. It is one of the great stories, I guess, in Southwest Conference history. The “worm” game in Waco between Baylor and Texas. I’m glad I got to see it!
Until next time, so long everybody.
***
‘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].