Baseball:
When I was 10 I made the Little League baseball team. The 12 year olds on the team were big and good. I was scared of them. I was happy that I got to wear a uniform and my own hat with a big "O" on it for our team, the Oilers, to school. Late in the season, my coach, Mr. Bob Kinnear, told me he wanted me to start in centerfield. I told him I had a sore arm and didn't want to play. I had six at bats for the season. Five strike outs and hit into a double play.
Having gained confidence in my ability and playing regularly, I came to bat in a teenage league with a runner on third. My coach gave me the suicide squeeze bunt signal with a runner on third. I squared around to bunt and when the pitcher threw the ball I panicked and took the pitch. The runner was easily tagged out at home.
Later, in high school I made the varsity team as a sophomore and started at first base. Being the only underclass man on the team, I was the only object of the hazing. After walking home after practice and finding out they had put analgesic balm in my underwear, I learned to check them and go commando if necessary.
My junior year I was playing first base when we had a road game against Orange Stark. There home field was poorly lighted and fly balls looked like half moons when they were in the air. As fate would have it a high fly pop-up was hit in my direction. After running around trying to get under it, I missed the ball and it hit behind me. The next day my Dad told me I needed to get a hard hat if I was going to play first base.
Football
My junior year I had played offensive and defensive end. My senior year I played only offense. In the last game of the season we were playing Beaumont High in the final game. They were not that good and we were handling them quite easily. With less than two minutes to play in the game we were leading 28-13 and they were backed up to their own two yard line. I talked the coach into letting me go in on defense. BHS was running a wing T offense. The wing back was lined up on my side. My job was to hit the opposing end, check WB and cover the flat on a pass. At the snap I felt the wingback start to drift to the flat. Instantly I sensed a screen pass to him and positioned myself perfectly to defend the play. The quarterback dropped back, faked a pass downfield and turned and threw it directly to me. All I had to do was catch the ball and fall down for a touchdown. The pass went right through my hands. The WB caught it and ran 98 yards for a TD.
Basketball
My sophomore year in high school, the varsity basketball team won the state championship. They were big with several players going 6'7" and two more at 6'4". The next year I was moved up to the varsity. I had played post in Junior high and on the JV team. But hadn't grown beyond my 5'11" but still playing post position. Since all of the "tall" seniors had graduated, we were rather small. Our two tallest players were 6'2". One was pretty good and the other was big and strong. I was riding the pine most of the time. Coach Jimmy Anders liked me to sit next to him on the bench. Probably because I would agree with him. We had these warm up jerseys that had a zipper part way down the front. One game wasn't going too well and Coach Anders got mad at one of our post players. He jumped up and said, "Wright get in there for Etheridge!". I stood up and was trying to unzip the warmup, Coach started pulling it over my head and telling me to hurry. I finally gave up with the zipper and he dang near ripped my ears off. Although we were defending State Champions, we didn't have a very good year.
Track and Road Racing
Speed I did not have and had no intention of running track. The junior high track coach convinced me I could be a hurdler. We had some other good hurdlers but he wanted depth. We won the junior high championship without my help. I thought that would be the end of my track career, but Coach Martin convinced me to run junior Olympics in the summer as it would help me in football. We had a meet in Houston. About 8 or 9 of us drove over in his station wagon. We were running late and had to change on the run. I got there just I time for my heat. It turned out there were only two of us in the last heat. The winner went to the finals. The loser went home. The guy looked beatable. The gun went off and I'm ahead at the first hurdle. My opponent hit the hurdle but kept going. When it was all over he had hit every hurdle and lost his shoe. AND, still beat me.
Later in my adult life I started running to improve my endurance for off road motorcycle racing. Unable to shake the competitive spirit from within, I had started entering 10K road races. I was usually in the middle of the pack of my age group. Since the results were published in the Sunday Chattanooga paper, I competed against people I didn't even know who they were, but showed up in the paper. One race was scheduled in Athens, Tennessee. They had a two mile race before the 10K. I decided to go "trophy hunting" and run the 2 miler since most of the better runners just ran the longer race. There were several guys that looked like they may be in my age group. I started out pushing the pace much faster than I normally ran. As I entered the final stretch with perhaps a quarter of a mile to go, one guy thought to be in my age group was ahead of me. I was gaining on him, but I was really suffering. As I got closer I noticed a handful of my Chattanooga friends that were going to run the 10K standing near the finish line. My thoughts were they would cheer for me and it would be just enough motivation to pass the guy in front. As we got close to the finish line they started cheering. Only problem it was for the other guy. I didn't catch him.
Racquetball
When I moved to Chattanooga I was working shifts. I had joined the local YMCA and liked playing racquetball. It was hard to get a court at night and I started going to the court in the mornings. I played some older guys that weren't too good. One time I was there looking for a match and a woman asked me if I wanted to play. Not having anyone else to play I said sure, figuring I would beat her easily. After she took off her warm ups, I couldn't help but notice she had legs that would make Earl Campbell proud and biceps I envied. She beat me like a drum. While reading the Sunday paper a month later, I noticed a full page feature on a female Georgia State water ski champion. Yep, it was her. It was then I realized she was the one that found the "huckleberry".
Off Road motorcycling
While competing in a motorcycle enduro in Anderson, SC, I was doing quite well. I was positioned to finish high, perhaps win. With less than ten miles left in the 80 mile event, I was riding up and down hills on a power line right of way. The hills had erosion ridges that, if hit correctly, made it easy to jump down the hill. I had passed a Honda at the top of one such hill and just sticking those jumps.
As I hit the front end of a hump I noticed there were two. The second one would normally been easy to clear while airborne. I must have panicked before my rear wheel left the ground and I cut throttle, causing the front end of my bike to take a nose dive and flip me over the handle bars. It must have pretty spectacular as the guy I had passed earlier stopped and asked if I was OK. While gasping for air I said yes. He started back up the hill. In the meantime I started my bike and continued. At the bottom of the hill I managed to submerge my bike in a small stream filling the cylinder with water.
After pulling it out with an aching rib, I noticed an ambulance coming down the right of way. I met them, they put a band aid on my nose and I continued on. Needless to say this was not a trophy run.
Now in my seventies, I'm still competitive, but at a much slower, calmer pace. Now it's just a lot easier to look back at previous failures.
I'm sure that I could come up with some more favorable athletic moments. But it's always the "Do Overs" that come to mind first.
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