Before war, there was baseball.

Dear Grandaddy:

I’m your awkward granddaughter, all knees and elbows until about age 17. I’m the one who loved to read, and nursed serious allergies to team sports. I watched you over the top of my book when you watched baseball on TV with my dad and my brother. How you talked about the good old days, playing in the yard with your brothers, and later, in the pros. 

Before you went to war, you played baseball. 

I can picture you in the dusty yard of the farmhouse in Greensboro, in dungarees and work shirts, knees stained from Carolina red clay. The six of you, lean little boys and young men, stacked like Russian nesting dolls, sweating your hearts out under a clear blue sky. Even after a hard day of work, no matter how tired and worn you felt, there was baseball.

You shot up from skinny kids into strapping men. You four middle boys, in particular, took to sports like ducks in water. At Bessemer high school, you all excelled in sports. All four of you went on to Elon College, where you dominated the baseball team for a decade and set records that still stand today. After college (which you all attended in varying lengths due to the Depression), you went on to the pros.  

Lefty, the tallest of you four, seemed to be made of nothing but knees and elbows, with a lantern jaw and a serious brow. But on the pitching mound, he was explosive, as all that bone and sinew came together to make magic. He became the winningest pitcher in Elon’s history, and played professional baseball in Pennsylvania in the summers under the name Lee Edwards, because it was against league rules to play pro ball while still in college. Eventually, he was bought by the Detroit Tigers, though he never played in the majors. There was no money in baseball then, so he returned to North Carolina to play for the Reidsville Luckies, a semi-pro team, and to work in the tobacco factory that bore the team’s name, Lucky Strike. 

Howard was a right-handed hitter, one of the best in Elon’s history, with an astounding .410 batting average. Howard, too, was bought by a major league team, the Louisville Cardinals. Like Lefty, he returned to Reidsville to play for the Luckies. He was the best second baseman in the league and earned a spot on the bi-state All-Star team each year he played. He has a Louisville Slugger model bat named after him.

You, grandaddy, only played one year at Elon. It was the Depression, and your family was too poor to send all the boys to school. But during your one year you stood out as an outstanding pitcher, winning five games and losing only one. You also proved versatile, playing second base, shortstop, third base and left field. You played for the Luckies for just one year, but your brothers considered you the best natural athlete in the family.

Mike, younger than you by a little over a year and your best friend, followed at Elon and nearly bested Lefty’s pitching record. He tossed one no-hitter, against Johns Hopkins in 1936. Reports read that “except for hitting one batter, Mike had a perfect game.” I’d like to know the story behind that one batter he hit. I picture an uppity Yankee making fun of you country boys, and Mike taking care of some trash talking. I bet you knew the story. I bet it was a good one.

I have books of clippings from the 1930s. You cut out every single box score where your brothers’ names were mentioned. I picture you with your paper each morning, scanning for a mention of one of the Briggs boys, your scissors in had, pasting each clipping carefully into a notebook. Even as the newspaper yellows and crumbles, I can still sense the pride you felt for them. The love.

What really gets me about all this athletic achievement is how much you all wanted it. You were poor farmers. Yet you played. You couldn’t afford college, yet you went. One of my favorite clippings describes how in the absence of basketball teams for you to play on, the brothers formed one of their own and challenged others to do the same. You created your own basketball leagued in Reidsville, just so you could play. 

I never understood your love of sports and box scores until I was 28 years old. I was at a conference where I’d been sitting inside all day, idle. Restless, I went for a walk around a small lake on the campus. At the entrance to the mile-long trail stood a memorial to World War II veterans and I thought of you. “If he can go to war, I can sure has hell run a mile.” So I did. 

I kept running after I got home. I found my lankiness and love of solitude lent itself well to this particular sport. I entered a 5k, then a 10k, then a marathon, the Marine Corps in DC. When a Marine helped me untie my laces at the finish line because I was too exhausted to bend over, I cried from the tenderness of it.

I imagine you were the kind of soldier who would help a woman in distress. After that marathon day, I understood you better, both as a soldier and an athlete, and I understood the deep, pernicious longing that pushed you to play ball through poverty and fatigue, pitching that baseball endlessly in the shadows of the setting sun.