Rooting for the team

All my life I have seen people rooting for their team or players and have done so myself. My earliest memories are going to the high school football and basketball games as a grade schooler in Ekalaka. That would have been in the 1940s and the early 1950s.

We had some good teams and players back in those days; we still hear from Loyd Townsend, one of the premier athletes back then. Loyd played for many years on the town teams, including basketball, as well as refereed. Two others I remember are Ross Caton and Billy Jo Ludwick. Ross Caton was the fullback and he would dive for extra yardage. He was a very good football player. Billy Jo Ludwick was a ferocious defensive player and would launch himself into the air and tackle somebody.

When I started high school, I went out for everything. Unfortunately, I was not a good athlete so all I did was try, but I could, and did, root for the team. Back in the early days, we didn’t even have bleachers. People just stood on the sidelines to root for their team. Guys like me did have a bench to sit on.

I saw people screaming and yelling and seemingly making fools of themselves, but most Ekalaka fans were pretty sedate. The cheerleaders would say, “That’s alright, that’s okay, he won’t make it anyway.” I thought that was pretty rude to say. Later, after moving to Miles City after graduation, I was introduced to rabid fans. I went to all the ball games of any kind that I could during that year of junior college before I went into the army.

Some fans were hecklers or even worse. My brother and I used to go to the American Legion baseball games. Dave McNalley, later a major league pitcher for Baltimore, was the pitcher for Billings. He was a great pitcher, but that day he was having a hard time getting the ball over the plate. A fan named Gruber kept yelling, every pitch, “Let’s have that old high one pitcher.” One time McNalley turned loose a fast ball that hit the screen right in front of Gruber’s head, then he turned around and grinned slyly. It shut Gruber up for a moment.

When I was in basic training in the army, I got in on a fan situation. Everybody always says, never volunteer for anything in the army, you might end up with something completely different than what you volunteered for. Anyway, this time someone came around on the weekend and wanted volunteers to go to a ball game. Before thinking, I volunteered. It turned out that it was alright, they just wanted someone to march, in formation, and represent each company at a baseball game. I did it every weekend from then on.

One of my best memories as a fan was when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s lifetime home run record. I was living in Bishop, California at the time. I had been a big time Milwaukee Braves fan as a kid, and when I lived in Los Angeles I went to all the games that I could. When it came time for Aaron to break Ruth’s record, I really wanted to see it. I even bought tickets for a likely game and then didn’t go when it didn’t look like he would break it on that day.

I had to settle for television. I think that the pitcher, Al Downing, threw the ball down and in, Aaron’s strength, just to get it over with. Anyway, as a 40-year-old man, I screamed and jumped around just like a little kid, all in the privacy of my own living room.

I really was a big time Milwaukee Braves fan. I really tried to transfer my loyalty when they moved to Atlanta, but I just couldn’t do it. I watched the last game that they played in Milwaukee County Stadium. They were playing the Dodgers. Ron Perranoski, the Dodgers’ relief ace, was pitching.

he game meant nothing to the Braves but everything to the Dodgers. Usually Perranoski only pitched one or two innings. This time he pitched six innings with the game on the line and just kept shutting down the Braves’ big guns. Even though I wanted the Braves to win, I really had to hand it to him for that relief effort.

I don’t watch or root for sports nearly as much as I used to. I have become kind of a San Francisco Giants fan and also kind of a Sacramento Kings fan. Both of them, especially the Kings, are hard to root for. Probably all you have your stories of rooting for your teams, this is mine.