Many years ago when I worked at KBWD, somebody got the crazy idea that we ought to have a radio station basketball team. Actually, it was me! I got a call one day from someone in a small school and they said, “Do ya’ll have a radio station basketball team like some of the stations do in bigger areas”? I said, “No, we don’t. Why?” And they said, “Well, because if you did we would love to have you come to our school and play. We would charge admission and make money for our school or senior class.”
It really sounded like a good idea at the time. We had enough people at the radio station who could bounce the ball so we could actually get from one end of the court to the other. Of course, none of us had any athletic ability nor the stamina to make it twice down the court. Since I still thought it was a good idea, we ordered basketball uniforms. We started working out. I’m not sure in the history of mankind has there ever been a less talented basketball group. I can’t even remember all of the people who were on the team. I will just suffice it to say we weren’t good. We looked funny! We played funny! I guess we were entertaining, but terrible. Well, we played that first game and indeed that school made quite a bit of money. But then, everybody else wanted us to come and play. After the first game we were so sore I wasn’t sure anybody could show up at work the next day.
The phone calls started coming! I mean, LOTS of phone calls to where our schedule had us playing three and four times a week and dying. Then, we padded the team just a bit to survive. We decided we would get ex high school players, ex Howard Payne players, and kind of mix them in. Well, actually our rule was that one person from the radio station had to be out there with as many as four who had never seen the inside of a radio station. That’s the only reason we survived!
The games were interesting to say the least. Sometimes we played against high school kids – that was fun. Sometimes we played against their moms and dads – and that was fun as well. But some of the time we would end up playing against the coaches at the school and they enjoyed showing off their prowess on the basketball court. They loved mashing us – beating us – laying us out on the floor and it was good fun for them. We almost died and I didn’t think we were going to survive a couple of those schools.
Anyway, it was an interesting time at the radio station, and it just proves that we were not the smartest radio station in Brownwood. We may not have been the smartest in Texas, or certainly this area. I do know we did it a lot longer than we should have.
By the way, just to prove to you how smart I was not, a few years later, having not learned a lesson, I talked the guys at the radio station into having a softball team. We end up playing at the park one night for charity. We played like the fire department or police department, and it turned out to be just as bad as the basketball games. We couldn’t play softball either. So, to add a little humor somewhere in the game, we were going to take a grapefruit that we had painted white and substitute it for the ball then let someone on their team hit it so it would make a mess all over the batter. Well, whoever hit it, hit it so hard that it went all over him and our entire infield as well. That was probably the highlight of a really bad ballgame! Thankfully, it was our last game.
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].