Bench Brew

A Bench Warmer Memory from Bob Cairns

Perhaps this story should be titled Once A Benchwarmer Always a Benchwarmer. Because after my high school bench warming days, I would go off to Frederick Community College. My father suggested this would be an appropriate educational start considering my academics in high school.

Actually, his direct quote was, “No, you are not going to the University of Maryland (all in-state students were accepted in those days) to party at some frat house. You will flunk out of UM by lunchtime!”

So, it was off to Frederick Community College, a night school, where I would learn that they actually had a basketball team that played other Junior Colleges in the state.

Certainly, I could start for this ragamuffin team. After all I had, bench be damned, suited up and sat for Francis Scott Key, one of the best high school teams in the state of Maryland.

I went out for what my friends Cookie and Zim and I dubbed The Frederick Finks where we managed to, oh, within one or two practices, play ourselves on to the Fink’s bench.

Now no hard feelings, but the three of us all had our eyes on a guy who spent most of his minutes as a Fink right there on the bench with us. And he was the best player on the team and that included the starting five. But, that said, all three of us had a better shot of coming off that bench than Milker Mullens.

Milker, a local farmer, was old probably in his mid-twenties, and he carried a bit of extra weight.

Milker could really play---great ball handler, sweet set shot. But he wasn’t going to crack the lineup and be off the bench ahead of us due to what our coach Skip Zimmerman described on numerous occasions as “personal deficiencies.”

And the biggest deficiency wasn’t Milker’s weight. Milker would drink at least a six pack before every game and almost always carried a few extras iced down in his gym bag for our long car trips to away games.

In the huddles before games, Milker smelled like the National Boh Brewery. And Skip, never failed to bring attention to this by saying, “Whoever in the hell in this huddle has been drinking, he doesn’t need to even think he’s going to play five seconds in tonight’s game. And that person might consider getting on the scales occasionally as well. We play a run and gun offense and so if anyone of you has had anything to drink on the ride up here to this game, take a good look at that bench behind me because that’s where you’re going to be tonight!”

“Any questions?” 

I don’t recall there ever being a question. But I will say this, Zim and Cookie and I got as far away from Milker’s brew breath on that bench as we could.

And the funny thing was that Skip, our coach, knew it was Milker, but he just couldn’t catch him. I remember seeing him searching his car for beer cans, and his locker before and after home games. As close as he ever came to nailing Milker was the night he discovered ice in his gym bag, which Milker explained as simply there to keep his pregame sandwiches fresh.

One evening, we’re all packed in cars driving to play Cumberland Community College which is way the hell up there in Western Maryland.  It was dark out, and we came to this stop light. We were following Milker’s car.  Skip suddenly slammed on the brakes and said, “Take the wheel, Cairns, and hold her here I’ve got him.”

Well, he had just seen Milker, who was in the car ahead of us, tip a can and take a big slug of beer.  Skip goes racing up and yanks the passenger’s door open.  I can see his head bobbing up and down and then suddenly he just sort of slumped and came back to us and got behind the wheel!”

Finally, I said, “National Boh or Iron City?”

And Skip  said, “The son of a bitch was drinking a can of Metrical, one of those new-fangled diet drinks, asked me if I’d noticed that he’d dropped a few pounds lately. And then he  wondered if he could stick to that diet that it would get him off the bench and back on the starting team.”