“Smooth as a baby’s bottom” is how my
brother described our old football. He was right; it was so slick that it was
difficult to get a grip on the ball making it a challenge to throw. Now, the
ball was old enough that we couldn’t even remember when we had replaced the
worn stitching with shoestrings from an old pair of sneakers. We often laughed
about our stitching effort.
I remember the day dad brought the ball
home. It came with a plastic tee. Up until that time we did not have a real
football. We had made our footballs from old socks, paper or anything else we
could shape sort of like a football.
Dad wasn’t much of a football fan. He
thought it was a game in which large men were free to pummel small men, period.
Football held his interest only until the tip-off of the college basketball
season. We were surprised the day he pulled into the drive, and tossed us a box
with a football and a tee. It was something that we marveled at, and couldn’t
wait to start kicking.
We began kicking it off the tee with
miserable results, often sending the football to crash into the side of the
house. At least, until dad moved us out to the field to play. We enjoyed our
new football, kicking it off, tackling one another, laughing, and spending
countless hours running in the field.
We played with the ball for about eight
years, having thrown thousands of passes and having played hundreds of games
with other kids from the neighborhoods we lived in. These were countless hours
of fun we had with the ball, sharing good times with each other, family, and
making new friends.
Finally, the ball was near flat, and we
purchased another, a better quality football. We were home on leave, and I
noticed the old ball sitting on the trash pile mom had for me to take out to
the bin.
As I tossed the other items in the bin, I
thought about all the fun times, friends, and games we had played with this old
relic. Laughed to myself at the knocks, the friendships, and good times we had
over the years.
I heard a voice call out “Mister, what are
you going to do with that ball?” I responded that I was getting ready to
toss it into the trash bin. I turned around to see two boys about 8 years of
age. I recognized them as two brothers from the neighborhood. “Can we
have the ball?” I said “sure,” and tossed the ball to one of the boys.
They proceeded to go down the alley
tossing the ball from one to the other, laughing and enjoying their newly found
treasure.
I was soon off to my duty station in Germany
Joe Glasgow is
a former senior staff writer at Fanstop.com, and is the author of the book Play
Ball! Growing Up With Baseball https://amzn.to/2o4M62h
