Stories from the Steps

SPORTS STORIES FROM THE STEPS, SEASON 2, GAME 1: Let me tell you a story about a Baptist boy & a bet & what I learned 51 years ago today, as I got baptized in betting & a glimpse of a Sunday in the life. Super Bowl VIII (as we are 4 weeks away from the big game unifying our country in its inability to read roman numerals, that’s an 8) was played on the 13th day of January ‘74 & without advice or $5 parlaying into $200 of free bet incentives from a celebrity hawking a sports betting app, while one year away from a 3 year crush on the NFL Today’s Phyllis George & still two years away from the my generations sports app, “Jimmy the Greek” on set with Phyllis, & Brent, & Irv armed with his check marks & street cred for picking Broadway Joe & the Jets in SBIII (that’s a 3) & introducing the word “intangibles” into the sports minded preteen male lexicon, armed with only my Street & Smith’s Pro Football yearbook with Dolphins cover boy Larry Csonka & my gut instinct, I was unaware of what the “money line” was, but summoning all my 6th grade chutzpah after a post recess climb of those concrete steps that had yet to become a muse & taking my window seat in class, I played it & laid my entire weekly lunch budget, 50 cents for Sealtest chocolate milk to wash down a peanut butter & GRAPE jelly sandwich because any other flavor is wrong, Golden Flake cheese curls & a Little Debbie oatmeal creme pie on the Minnesota Vikings to take down the Miami Dolphins. As the sun set on that January afternoon, with the Dolphins 24-7 victory secured, my first lesson into why it’s called gambling & not winning & why Las Vegas has really big buildings was given & I dressed for a sure bet of 1970s Baptist life, the Sunday night service (*) knowing this particular week, given the game result, I was going to use God, like a lot of church folk, the way a Saturday night drunk uses a downtown lamppost, for support rather than illumination because it’s exceedingly unpleasant for an 11 year old to explain to his father he has a bookie & owes him a week’s wages, & as Opie Taylor so eloquently stated to Andy & Barney in the Mayberry courthouse adorned in torn denims & a black eye after he lit into his milk money extorting foe like “a windmill in a tornado”, from Monday, January 14th to Friday, January 18th, I sadly learned why a PB&J “sure tastes a lot better with milk”…


(*) I know this is a sports show, but other sure bets of the 70s Baptist walk were, scoreboards hung near the front of the sanctuary noting attendance, budget needs &/or collections & maybe the number in the hymnal of the songs we’d be singing that day & it was a sure bet we’d sing the 1st, 2nd, & last stanzas or 1st, 3rd, & last but never all 4 as the composer intended (if you’re still with me & under 40, the hymnal is the white book in the pew rack that’s been replaced, according to some, with a laser show & rock concert😀), responsive readings & often, an assembly of the entire Sunday School prior to 9:45 Sunday School. Also a sure bet, at halftime of the 11AM service after awkwardly identifying visitors & between the congregational singing of 3 of 4 stanzas & the preaching sure to garner an amen from the guy in the leisure suit stage left, the choir in its robed glory or a lady in a beehive ‘do or a lady real good at making a joyful noise but not needing a solo microphone to reveal that talent to the world would sing a “special” as ushers dressed in suit & tie, not slacks & a sport jacket because somewhere the Lord decreed the same black & navy suits & somber faces of a pall bearer in those that collected tithes even though He & his 12 man posse strolled the shores of Galilee in the original Chacos & togas, passed the offering plate to the givers giving cheerfully & the not so cheerful giving their watch a glance as they plotted to beat the other Protestants to Morrison’s Cafeteria in Eastgate Mall, not too mention that Baptists cared little how others voted, cared a lot if one took a nip for other than medicinal purposes, preferred the more lukewarm option of float as the waters of Roe v. Wade were initially navigated, & were certain to enter the building in a cloud of smoke like The U entered the Orange Bowl in the 80s & 90s as the menfolk lit up their Salem’s & Winston’s & Camel’s. And since this is a sports show, as Casey Stengel said, “…you can look it up”.