Remember those high school basketball games when the score got so lopsided that the coach felt compelled to put the little fat benchwarmer in, the one who—to the hoots of the fans—would play down the clock through garbage time? I was that hefty benchie!

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.

Okay, I’m thirteen, the backup catcher for the New Windsor, Maryland, Babe Ruth League team. Frankly, just out of Little League I’m a bit overweight and undersized for the challenges of the official major league diamond. So, I’m spending my evenings riding the pine and watching Jimmy Albaugh, a one-handed wonder, behind the plate who’s leading the league in passed balls.

There’s little doubt that you’re the last man on a basketball team when your team goes to the State Finals and your coach takes your uniform away from you and gives them to a more talented player he’s bringing up from the Junior Varsity.

Back in 1960 Pernell Millberry was one of the best shots on the Francis Scott Key Eagles’ bench. How did I know? Because he sat beside me on the high school’s bench and told me this during every game we played.

In nineteen sixty our Eagles had lost that barnburner at the University of Maryland’s Cole Field House to Surrattesville by a lousy four points.

Jack Baile got some deserved ink in another one of my bench warmer stories and now here he is again. Jack was a hell of a good athlete, all county high school first team in basketball, soccer and baseball. He went off to Western Maryland College, a very good school nearby, and found himself, what with a rash of scholarships being distributed to players from New York, Baltimore and Washington D.C., on the bench.

Perhaps this story should be titled Once A Benchwarmer Always a Benchwarmer. Because after my high school benchwarming 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.

It’s impossible to coach Little League baseball without having benchwarmer stories. In the late 1980’s when my son was playing Little League in Raleigh, NC, I served as an assistant coach under Francis Combs, who had quite a resume as a baseball player.