Even when I was a little kid I was interested in sports. As early as 5 or 6 years old I was keeping a scrapbook of players from Notre Dame University football. In a previous story, I detailed my dream of someday playing quarterback for the Fighting Irish, but that blew up very quickly, along with my football “career” the first week of freshman year at Notre Dame High School (The Extremely Brief Football Career of a Batavia Boy 12/29/2018).
The memory is a strange thing, but I distinctly recall watching the Cotton Bowl football game in 1954 when I was 7 years old. It stands out because in the game a player from Rice University was running for a touchdown when an opponent from Alabama who was sitting on the bench ran on the field and tackled him.
In October 1956, when I was 9, I remember watching the entire baseball game (in black and white, of course) when Don Larsen of the New York Yankees pitched a perfect game in the World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers ( I was rooting for the Dodgers though).
In October 1957, my favorite baseball team, the Milwaukee Braves, won the World Series beating the Yankees in seven games. Weekday games back then were in the afternoon (men would go to the games wearing suits!), and unbelievably and forever endearingly, my mom let me stay home “sick” from school one day to watch. I got bragging rights over my friend Charlie who was a Yankees fan, and I now have a pretty impressive collection of '57 Braves memorabilia, including signed balls from the team's four Hall of Famers – Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, Eddie Matthews, and Red Schoendienst.
In November 1957, I delighted in viewing Notre Dame University, which was a 19-point underdog, end Oklahoma's 47-game winning football streak by upsetting the Sooners 7-0.
I mention these sports events not to brag about my memory (somehow, my brain has blocked out my entire year of kindergarten at Washington School), but to illustrate how focused I could be on athletics at my very young age.
Neighborhood Games
As far as playing sports, that was limited to the neighborhood and parks with my friends. There were no Pop Warner or Vince Lombardi youth football leagues then. (Lombardi was not even a head coach until 1959.) I did have my own helmet, though ( A Batavia Boy's Favorite Childhood Possession Was His Red Football Helmet 10/7/2018).
Pretty much the only organized sport with leagues for young kids then was Little League Baseball. But, I was too shy and lacked the confidence to sign up and/or try out. My friends and I would sometimes play at the Little League field on State Street by MacArthur (now Dwyer) Stadium. But, we would play there on the weekday afternoons when no one was around. In the evenings and on weekends, the teams with the uniforms and coaches would take over.
I can't recall anyone in my neighborhoods (first Thomas and Ellicott Avenues, then North Spruce Street) having a basketball hoop in their driveway where we could play that sport. We had a gym at St. Mary's School, but I don't remember the school being in a CYO league or if they were, once again, I was too shy to join.
The first time I even played basketball was in 7th or 8th grade in St. Mary's School gym class. A classmate, Mike Woodward (whose family owned and still runs the Alabama Hotel Restaurant), encouraged me by saying, “ Reilly! You're the tallest kid in the class! You gotta play.” He even took me aside and showed me how to make a layup. But as I got toward high school, I had played very little.
Heading To High School
My freshman year at Notre Dame, I was too crushed by my football debacle to even think of trying any other sport. It was all I could handle just to try to get through algebra and Latin. Veni ,Vidi, Deficere.
As sophomore year became imminent, some of my friends decided to join the cross-country team. Even though I had never done any distance running, this choice seemed feasible to me because I could be with my buddies, everybody automatically made the team, and you wouldn't get your brains beat in.
I really don't remember anything about that season as far as meets, or team record goes. I did discover that I was only a fair runner and never finished in the top 5 to get points, but I enjoyed the exercise and camaraderie of being on a team.
Some of us had to learn the hard way, though, that cross-country running took dedication and commitment. When we first started, our practice route was to jog from the athletic field down Union Street to Oak and then go around the Veterans Hospital Grounds by way of Park Road to Richmond Avenue and back to school. Being high school kids and thinking we were smarter than the coach, some of us would cut through an Oak Street back yard, climb the hospital fence, wait in the woods a while to equal the time, and then cut through to Richmond and finish.
It only took the coach a few days to figure out that we were coming back not out of breath and hardly sweating, so something was amiss. After many extra laps around the field in his plain sight, we learned our lesson, as always - the hard way. Fortunately, the more devoted and capable members of the team had not gone along with our deception anyway.
Harrier History
I continued as a cross-country team member through my junior and senior years and earned a school letter in both years. Starting in 11th grade, we had a new coach, Pete Corbelli, whose day job was being a U. S. mail carrier, and what he delivered and put his stamp on the team was a mix of seriousness combined with fun. Our practices switched to the State (now Centennial) Park, which was about half a mile east on Richmond Avenue. This had three advantages: it was a good warm-up exercise to jog there and back to start and end practice, it had hilly terrain more similar to where our meets would take place, and we were mostly in view of the coach, so there would be no shenanigans.
Our local meets were run at Terry Hills Golf Course on Clinton Street Road. Most of our away races took place at Delaware Park in downtown Buffalo. Back then, Notre Dame, being part of the Diocese of Buffalo, participated mostly in leagues with teams located in Buffalo or to its west. Some of our opponents were St. Mary's of Lancaster, Our Lady of Victory, St. Francis of Athol Springs, Father Baker, Cardinal Mindszenty of Dunkirk, and Saint Mary's School for the Deaf in Buffalo.
We had a good team in my junior and senior years, with some of my classmates earning most of our meet points. Dan Martin, Mike Palloni and Jim Heatherman were the stalwarts, with Ron Hermance and Mike's younger brother John pitching in too. In junior year, our record was 5-3, and we finished fifth out of 13 schools in the All-Catholic meet. Senior year our team went 5-2 and ranked sixth among 18 in the year-ending championships. I say “our,” realizing that my contribution was more of being a good team member and providing laughs on the bus and at practice more than actually earning any points. Coach Pete's assessment of my running skills was, “Reilly, you run like a horse!” and he didn't mean a thoroughbred. More like a Clydesdale pulling a beer wagon.
(To Be Continued: in a future edition, I will detail my high school forays into basketball and track or “Getting Splinters and Eating Cinders.”)
