Well, when I became one of the “Voices of the Brownwood Lions” sometime back in the early ‘60’s one program that was waiting on me was the Coaches Show. I think I was in on the very beginning and I think it was kind of negotiated out. The radio station wanted two or three days a week and the coaches said “Well, we can do it all the time – three, four, five days a week”. The radio station kind of said, “Okay, five days a week”.
They were thinking it was Coach Wood – alone – and sometimes it would get a little bit hectic because it wasn’t Coach Wood. He said, “You know, I can do this a lot better with Coach Southall along.” Then, sometimes they would bring Coach West in after he arrived in ’65 or so. And eventually, all of the coaches would do it. So, the Coaches’ Show, that’s all it was known as, came on every single day.
It was supposed to be fifteen minutes in length. Sometimes you would have Monday go seven minutes, Tuesday go eighteen minutes, Wednesday – it was just all over the place. Anyway, we had a Coaches’ Show and it was probably more permanent than any show on record. It had some highlights and it had some lowlights.
Coach Wood would very seldom venture off into something he believed in, stuff that would make a permanent idea for you. It was supposed to be just a sports show so he didn’t deal in heavy weight stuff. I think it would have been fascinating to have him talk about “so and so” and kind of learn a little about his philosophy but he didn’t do that. His show was a sports news show.
He would go in first thing and he’d “pull the wire”. In other words, the AP wire which had all the sports in the world. It had names you couldn’t pronounce. It had whatever, but those coaches were bound and determined that they were going to focus on the sports news. All people wanted was their comments on the next opponent. Sometimes you would never get to the next opponent. But off they went.
Early 1960 they started that and it was something to behold. They would start off and let me give you an example. Let’s say it was Spring-time of the year. They would start off and say, “Well, the Yankees beat Baltimore again today” and they would talk about that for five minutes or so and then they would come up and say, “Here’s something that’s kind of interesting, the Red Sox beat the whoever today” and it would just go on and on and “Johnny Unitas had quite a game for Baltimore on Sunday if you missed this”. That’s all it would be. It would just be them reading the sports. Anyway, we finally got that straightened out and they settled into a little bit of a routine. It worked out, but this was five days a week! They just never stopped. They finally got Coach West in there, and if you didn’t know it, Coach West was kind of the calming influence of that twosome. Coach Wood, when they got Coach West in there said, “Here, you take charge of this”. He didn’t like that very much but otherwise, it became Gordon and Morris shoot the bull.
One day Gordon started off and talked about something like “The Red Sox won their fifth in a row behind starting pitcher so and so. Morris came on with his, and he said, “You know so and so”…started and said the same thing. Then it was Kenneth’s turn. They were doing the same story! They never checked with each other.
I don’t think they every checked with other when they were doing a ballgame either. But, it worked out ok.
Until next time, so long everybody.
***
‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at [email protected].