Laundry Day
A Bench Warmer Memory from Bob Cairns
We’re playing Westminster, Maryland, at home, and it’s a basketball pride win for us. They are a much bigger school located in the County Seat, have a football program (we did not) and, of course, I haven’t seen action all year and so there’s no reason to believe I’ll be playing, even in a mop up, against these guys.
With the clock winding down in the fourth quarter, I’m wedged there between two of my more “creative” bench mates, and I’m trying to keep them from faking a ref’s whistle or dropping a towel so they can look up the cheerleader’s dresses.
Granted we’d all been screwing around flipping off the Westminster fans, coughing up insults to passing referees.
Suddenly, one of the benchwarmers says, “Hey, Beetle, Coach wants you. He just looked down here and pointed at you!”
No way, of course, but when I looked at Coach, I couldn’t believe it. He was in fact pointing at me. I thought, “Hey, he wants to go over one of my scouting reports, or maybe, he wants Pernell, our number six man, to come in and slow down that kid that’s been dropping in those long bombs all night that have us back on our heels.
But now coach was looking right at me and pointing at me. Then he grabbed his pants and pointed at me again. And beside me the bench boy chorus—Davis and Millberry--is pushing me saying, “Beetle, he wants you, probably has some fouls he wants to give or something!”
The only thing that made sense was the fact that all of our starters were in deep foul trouble so I’m just for the moment thinking maybe he does want me to go in, maybe take few charges for the team or something. But none of this made any sense.
Then coach pointed at me again, and now the whole bench is really tuning up, “Beetle, he wants you. Get out of those warmups!”
So, I stroll up and stand next to coach. And while he’s fidgeting around watching the game, trying to figure out how to get this one under control, well I start to undress. Off comes my warmup top, then my shooting shirt (we actually had them). Then I wedge in and sit down and slide off my warmup bottoms.
And now with the home team bleachers right behind us, the crowd sees that their favorite little seat warmer is getting ready to actually go into a game. So, the fans cut loose, “Beetle, Beetle, Beetle!”
Hell, the Westminster fans, a bunch of their football players in the crowd got in to it, laughing, cheering, and carrying on.
And that’s when coach turned around and saw me standing there like a douche with my laundry in my hands and said those words that a player never forgets when they come from his coach.
“Beetle, what in the hell are you doing here? Get down there and send me both Millberry and Davis. This is serious shit we’re in. I need a shooter and somebody to play defense that can stop that number 12 of theirs.”
Then I spin around, look down the bench and the boys are nimbly slipping out of their warmups, howling with laughter, ready to come to the rescue!
As I gathered my laundry under the cloud of hoots and cheers, I had no idea, but I was waddling along back to my seat with another one, another memory from the bench.
