I turned eight years old in the summer of 1967, which wasn’t one of those milestone birthday years except for one thing, two actually.
That was the summer I began to play baseball in the city of Tupelo’s Parks & Recreation League. I was assigned to play for the Astros, which was a bummer since the real Astros were one of the worst teams in the major leagues.
That was only a mild disappointment, though, one more than made up for by the opportunity to wear a real baseball uniform — mid-calf length baseball pants over stirrup stockings, baseball cap and T-shirt top with “Astros” on the front and “Palmer’s Big Star” (our team sponsor on the back).
Like most kids of that era, I had been playing a form of baseball for years, mostly with neighborhood kids in the empty lot next to our house.
Here’s the other reality: By then, I was well on my way to being the sort of benign racist that white kids of my era learned mostly through osmosis rather than instruction.
The summer of ‘67 marked not only my introduction to organized baseball, but Black kids.
There weren’t any Black children in my neighborhood and very few in east Tupelo where I grew up. If memory serves, there were only three or four Black kids at my elementary school and just one of them in my grade.
I don’t recall his actual name, although I’m sure the teachers used it in calling roll and through the course of the school day.
He was known more generally as “Tar Baby,” a term that makes me shudder today, but at that time rolled off my tongue with ease. He answered to the name and never seemed at all offended.
Then came the summer of ‘67, when I joined the Astros and found myself playing alongside four Black teammates. I remember two, specifically. One was Ricky Douglas. The other was Wayne Hereford.
If you have ever watched WTVA for the past 30 years or so, you recognized Wayne Hereford as a newscaster and anchor.
Back then, he was just this really, really big kid playing first base for the Astros.
As we were sitting in the dugout one night, I happened to mention something that had happened at school a few months earlier, It involved my Black classmate.
I remember the words as they left my lips:
“Then Tar Baby said….”
As I was saying this, I happened to look in Wayne’s direction. He fixed me with a murderous glare. If looks could kill. I fell silent and drifted off toward the far end of the bench, as far away from Wayne as I could get, hoping that he would not follow me and whip my butt.
That was my first real introduction to the concept of racism and my participation in it, an important moment, if not an transformative one.
Over the course of the ensuing years, I got to know and respect my Black peers, almost entirely through sports. Some became friends, at least casual friends. Almost all of those friendships were formed on the baseball diamond or football field. If I hadn’t played sports, I wonder if I would have made a single Black friend before the end of high school.
Sports didn’t cure me of my racism, but it certainly exposed it. Every day for me is a journey to escape the racist culture I was born into. Sports helped kick-start that journey.
Here in Columbus, there has been much recent talk of coming together as a community. The most obvious place to start, based on my experience, is the playing field.
Five years ago, the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors voted to unilaterally leave the Columbus Lowndes Recreation Authority. As the county begins work on its own multi-million-dollar sports complex west of the river, it’s likely that Columbus Parks and Recreation programs will become almost exclusively Black while the county’s parks and recreation program will become almost exclusively white.
Our churches are segregated, as are our public schools.
The one place where Black and white children had any real meaningful exposure to one another was on the playing field.
Now, that appears to be on the way out, too.
We are only going to grow more divided as long as that persists.
But there remains a glimmer of hope.
There is new leadership in both the country (Trip Hairston has taken over as Board of Supervisors President from Harry Sanders) and the city (Keith Gaskin has succeeded Robert Smith as mayor).
The decision to dissolve the CLRA was heavily influenced by the clash of personalities between Sanders and Smith, but no such animus appears to exist between Hairston and Gaskin.
Both have said they want a harmonious relationship between the county and city.
There is no better place to start that with sports.
A diverse, inclusive youth sports program brings both kids and their parents together in an atmosphere conducive to relationship-building, empathy understanding — even friendship.
How can that not be a priority among people of good will?
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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