Where’s Charlie?
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!
Laundry Day
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.
Albaugh Strikes Out
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.
Lightning Strikes Twice!
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.
Bench Warmer Betrayal
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.
Moon Over Western Maryland
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.
Bench Brew
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.
The Project
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.
Best Seat on the Bench
In the writing of Pen Men: Baseball’s Greatest Bullpen Stories Told by the Men Who Brought the Game Relief, Bob Cairns had the pleasure of spending time with some of the game’s great pranksters.
Divide and Conquer
Fred Barakat, who headed the ACC referees shared this V berating the pinstripes bench story. NC State was playing Duke at State’s Reynolds’s Coliseum, and it came down to one call at the end of the game. And anyone who knew the ACC in those days knew that Lennie Wertz, a little blond ref was (or at least it seemed to us fans) going to be in the middle of a big call at the end of a nailbiter.
Bench Wrestling
It was little known during those days in the 80s but the fact was that V and Tommie Abatemarco, his head recruiter, had not only been together for years---Iona, etc. but they had this thing where they, at often the most surprising and inappropriate times, liked to wrestle. They moved furniture back and wrestled at lunch time in Sam Esposito’s baseball office.