A walk down the Hall of special memories
It was midnight as I began my walk down 2nd Street in Natchitoches Saturday night. The excitement of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, which happened across the street, was long gone as I walked with an old friend back to his hotel.
From there, I had a walk of three blocks and a left turn to get where I was staying. In no way was I expecting the scene that was unfolding before me.
Nothing.
Absolute, total nothingness.
No one has ever confused the Natchitoches Historic District with the French Quarter but I was struck by how blank the canvas was before me.
Not a car. Not a person. Not a cricket. Not a sound. Not even a breeze.
Everything was completely — and magnificently – still. It was as if this had all been created just so I could have the opportunity to reflect on what I had just been involved in.
Being inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame is amazing, but I discovered a whole lot more than I expected. There were nine other inductees present and eight of them I had never met before. I was anxious to get some more quality time with Mike McConathy, who everyone in Northwest Louisiana knows, but also to interact with each of those I had only heard about.
The midnight walk gave me the chance to look back at what I got to experience and most of it had nothing to do with being given a plaque in front of a crowd of more than 800.
** I thought about getting the chance to get to know LSU legend Warren Morris and far more of our conversations had nothing to do with him hitting the greatest home run in the history of college baseball. It was truly as if I had known him all of my adult life.
** I thought about how fascinating it was to hear the conversation between Todd McClure (14 years in the NFL) and Jonathan Lucroy (12 years in MLB) as they compared notes about what life is like at the highest level of their sport.
** I thought about the how I talked sports with Dewain Strother, the Florien girls basketball coach who has won more game at that level than anybody else in the state (and he’s No. 2 in the country). But the sport we talked about wasn’t basketball. We talked golf and we compared notes on courses we have played and/or want to play.
** I thought about watching as Pat Williams, a giant of a man (6-3, 317) who played defensive tackle for Minnesota and Buffalo, showed a tender and lovable side all weekend long, especially with his 2-year-old granddaughter.
** I thought about being in a van with the rest of the inductees as John Brady, coach of the 2006 LSU Final Four team, was asked by other professional athletes about the most important quality of a coach. The answer, Brady said, was having the respect of the players. “If they don’t think you are being honest, they’ll turn on you in a second,” he said.
** I thought about comparing journalism notes with Gil LeBreton, a noted Dallas-Fort Worth sportswriter, who leads me in covering Super Bowls (26-0), Olympics (16-0) and World Series (13-0).
** I thought about being around trail-blazing coach/administrator Kathy Holloway, who I knew the least about before the weekend started. After being on the same bowling team for a couple of hours, that instantly changed.
I love behind-the-scenes tidbits, and my favorite came from Lucroy about an incident when he was a rookie catcher for the Milwaukee Brewers. Cincinnati’s Brandon Phillips hit a home run and from behind home plate, Lucroy hung his head as soon as the ball was hit. Not a big deal, or so Lucroy thought, until the game was over. Teammate Trevor Hoffman, who was in the final year of his Hall of Fame career, found Lucroy in the Milwaukee dugout and told him “don’t ever do that again.”
Probably no one else noticed Lucroy’s subtle action on the home run, but the TV camera caught it. Hoffman let Lucroy know that, even though he didn’t realize it, the rookie was showing up his pitcher.
“I never did that again,” Lucroy said.
There were other stories gathered and thought about on that short walk Saturday night. Mostly, though, it was about how fortunate I was. There was no Manning or O’Neal or Saban, but I got a chance to be in an induction class full of accomplished athletes and coaches who were, more importantly, Hall of Fame human beings.
That thought has been with me ever since, long after the Saturday night walk ended.
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com