PART 2, COACHES, WORDS THAT STICK WITH YOU:
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the guy on the right, Paul Careathers. Today, it’s the guy on the left hand side’s turn, Doug Moser.

I was in the first class Coach Moser taught at Elbert Long School. It was art, one of those nine week exploratory classes. I was no artist but I still remember some art terms, like vanishing point. It’s the place where a painting fades into the horizon. With Coach Mo’s passing seven years ago this week, every man, my Dad, my Grandad, men at church, & Coach Careathers that impacted my youth, was gone, my life imitated art. They had all crossed the horizon.

Seven years on & it’s time, as Hemingway stated,”…to sit at the typewriter & bleed”. It starts under that basketball rim in the photo. Coach opened that old gym straight out of “Hoosiers” casting in the summer. I strolled in one day to work on my free throws.

As I stepped on the court, dribbling a Wilson Jet, I noticed my baseball bat, my 33″ Hillerich & Bradsby Jackie Robinson model, it’s thick handle coated with grip aiding pine tar precisely applied by me, leaning against the wall on the opposite end of the gym. Under that pictured goal, stood Coach Mo, glove on one hand & a supply of tennis balls at his feet.

I had finished the just completed season with a less than stellar 0 for 26 slump, or as he put it when I asked what was happening, “you couldn’t hit water if you fell out of a boat, we’re going to fix that.” I guess we did okay. Somewhere in a box is a trophy & in a scrapbook a photo stuck to a page with the yellowed patina of adhesive tape, recognizing my being the All City 2nd baseman the next baseball season. One truth, the trophy & the face in the picture should be his. He put in the same amount of work as me.

Another truth, the effort to be Coach to his players was never ending. He was & is a constant star in my constellation & I’m confident he was in others, whether times were bitter or celebratory. There is no testimony without the test. When a spring football injury put me in a cast for a summer, he found time to leave his new job at his alma mater (a job that would result in a state basketball title) & visit me in the hospital.(*)

Through rehab, college, to my wedding, births of sons, reunion lunches with teammates, sharing sad hugs when his first wife & my Dad bothpassed, comparing March Madness brackets, a note after a house fire expressing his belief in my ability to have a personal comeback & lead a family in one. Before my Dad passed, I asked him what made that school, that gym often feel more holy, more consecrated, than our church just a quarter mile up the road. He never hesitated when he answered, “unlike most of our houses of worship, half the folks in the locker room weren’t faking it.” In the case of Coach Moser, he couldn’t have been more accurate. Somewhere, there’s a pine tarred bat & tennis balls to testify…

(*) Coach Moser wasn’t the only coach on his visit to my hospital room. Coach Careathers came with him. What follows is the epilogue to a piece I wrote titled “Souveniers” before that old school met the wrecking ball. It sums up these two men & verifies the words of my Dad about faking it.

EPILOGUE: Less than a year after graduation, I found myself with Coaches Moser & Careathers even though we had left for other schools. I was in a hospital room with an exploded left leg in traction from a spring football injury. Coach Moser was laying the foundation for state title winning Lady Dynamo basketball & Coach Careathers was coaching a guy who would be enshrined in Canton, Ohio, Reggie White. I’m still moved by their appearance, one they made to encourage me, not one of their players any longer, on a comeback that ultimately failed. The failing meant that the previous November, I walked off a football field for the final time. My new school had traveled to meet my old school besties new school. After the game we found each other. Familiar faces in unfamiliar uniforms. He in his home white jersey & blue pants, me in a maroon top & gold bottoms, but Butch & Sundance walking off together again, me on the left, him on the right. Under the goal post & across the track & time to part. He, straight to his locker room, me taking a step back, patting the back of his jersey between the 4 & the 7, & heading to my team bus. Every athlete wants to leave the field a hero or be valiant in defeat or as Spartan mothers told their warrior sons on the way to battle, “…return with your shield or on it”. I left neither a conqueror or on my shield. I left with a third, unknown to a Spartan, rather pleasing option. I walked off the final time with my best friend, and that, along with coaches who forever consider you their player, are souvenirs too…