When I was growing up in Anacoco, Louisiana, a small West Central Louisiana town in Vernon Parish, one athlete stood out as superior to all. His name was Jimmy Hawthorne, who in later life became the radio broadcast voice of the LSU Tigers from 1979 to 2016.
Our school in Anacoco was a small class B school, that included grades 1 through 12 when Jimmy and I went to school in the 1950’s and 1960’s. A typical class had roughly 30 to 32 students, so the entire high school student body was only around 120 to 128 students.
It was always difficult to field an entire basketball team, the only sport that most people and students in town attended. We had summer league baseball from Little League, Dixie League (middle school) and Pelican League (high school). Most every athlete that played basketball also played baseball. Because of our small student population we were not large enough to field a football team.
Jimmy was four years older than me, so we never played on the same team. Even if we did, I would be the one riding the bench or keeping the score book. Jimmy was not only my hero, but he was also the hero and idol of every young boy in school that wanted to play baseball or basketball. Jimmy was so good and so athletic he excelled in both sports.
When Jimmy played baseball, it always seemed like he would hit at least one home run per game. That may not have been the case, but he was certainly the Babe Ruth of Anacoco baseball. I will never forget how me and three or four of my friends would watch an entire game from outside the left field fence, hoping we would be lucky enough to catch or chase down a Jimmy Hawthorne home run.
On one occasion Jimmy hit a home run about 75 feet over and beyond the left field wall. I chased the ball down and when I picked it up it had a giant scorched brown whelp on the cover. It was at least 2 inches long and an inch wide. Me and my buddies readily concluded that Jimmy hit the ball so hard it burnt the leather cover of the ball. Who knows whether that is what caused the large brown mark or not, but in our young eyes we just knew that had to be the case. We told everyone in school about it the next day, and Jimmy’s legend grew even larger. I’m not sure if Jimmy ever heard that story or knew about that ball having a burnt leather whelp. Our poor baseball program had no significant finances, so we had to throw every ball we retrieved back into the field — to be used again in the game. Otherwise, I would have kept and displayed that ball forever in my trophy case. It would have been my “Babe Ruth” ball (or the nearest thing to it).
If Jimmy was an all-star on the baseball diamond, he was a superstar on the basketball court. Jimmy was so good he routinely scored 20 to 30 points a game. Although he was probably only 5 ft. 10 inches tall, he could jump like a jackrabbit and dunk the basketball in a New York second. His jump shots were pulled off in perfect form. Jimmy was no Pete Maravich, but his dribbling skills were awesome nonetheless. And if you were from Anacoco, he was the second best thing to Pete Maravich, who was actually three years younger than Jimmy.
My favorite Jimmy Hawthorne sports moment took place when I was in the eight grade and Jimmy was a senior in high school. He was playing in a basketball tournament held on our home court. It was the annual Anacoco High tournament. My recollection of this event, which took place in 1962 (maybe late 1961), was that Jimmy was playing guard. He was bringing the ball down the court, seconds were ticking down as we neared the end of the game, and we were trailing the other team 64 to 62. I’m no longer sure, but I think we were playing either Simpson or Pitkin, Louisiana.
Jimmy gets fouled before he can take a shot. We were in a 1 and 1 foul shot situation, meaning Jimmy has to make the first shot in order to shoot a second shot. There was only 4 or 5 seconds left on the clock. Jimmy goes to the line and everyone is on their feet, praying he makes the first shot. Jimmy shoots the ball — whoosh, nothing but net. The first shot is down. The Anacoco student body present at the game were either holding each other’s hands or biting their nails, praying that Jimmy will make the second shot, sending the game into overtime. Jimmy dribbles the ball slowly several times, then in one swift motion he throws the ball as hard as he could in a straight line, straight at the backboard — about 18 inches above the rim. The ball comes flying back at Jimmy, who jumps up, catches it in mid-air and launches a jump shop, stripping the net, scoring two points instead of one, and we win the game 65 to 64. Note: In 1961-1962, rules were not in place that required the ball hit the rim, as has been the case for many years. This play was not called by our coach, it was just Jimmy being Jimmy. He had such a high basketball and baseball IQ, it was uncanny.
Now fast-forward three more years. I’m a Junior in high school. We are playing tiny Evans, Louisiana in their annual tournament, held on their home court in Evans, a small town not far from DeRidder, Louisiana. It must have been a Saturday game, because both my mother and father were present, sitting right behind the Anacoco player’s bench. My girlfriend at the time, the principals daughter Deborah Parker, was sitting in the stands, behind our bench and near my Mom and Dad. I was playing my favorite position, keeping the bench warm for our first sting players. I knew my role, I only played in two scenarios. When we were 35 or more points up, or 35 or more points down. The game was late in the fourth quarter, my time to play was getting close, as we were over 30 points behind. Coach Coburn tells me to take off my warm-up’s. My father, who was always the loudest mouth in any stadium, said aloud, “Well it’s about damn time!” My face immediately lit up like the Amsterdam red light district. Bingo! We fall 35 points behind, Coach calls time out, lets the bench warmers take the court.
Most people I have known for years but didn’t know me during my high school days will find it hard to believe that I only weighed 115 pounds. An at 5 ft. 8 in. tall I was was the shortest and smallest guy on the team with a Marilyn Monroe 28-inch waist. That meant I only played one position, guard. After the buzzer signaled it was time to take the court, so me and my fellow guard went down to the opposite end of the court to take the ball in. He passed the ball to me and I started dribbling the ball down the court. To this day I can still dribble the ball fairly well with both hands, but for whatever reason, when it really counted the most (meaning when I was in a live game), I was a basket of nerves and was butterfingers when and if I ever tried to dribble the ball with my left hand. So I had this cheesy fake dribble where I would move my left hand up and down like I’m dribbling an invisible ball, yet still dribbling the ball underneath my left hand. Trust me, I know how ridiculous this sounds (and it was), and to this day I have no idea why Coach Coburn even kept me on the team. Since I only played in the two scenarios I mentioned above, I think he just always felt like, “Surely he will eventually quit and I won’t have to hurt his feelings.” Eventually I did early in my senior year and became our manager, but that’s for another funny story, as I was a worst manager than I was a player. Getting back to this story . . . At any rate, somehow, I had actually swallowed my own BS and had convinced myself that I was so good at this magic dribbling act that no one in the gym could tell that I was dribbling with only one hand. I guess you can call me the David Copperfield of Anacoco basketball.
Looking back, the only person in the gym that believed it looked like I was dribbling with both hands was me. Like I said, it was cheesy, and ridiculous. But on this particular day it paid off, sort of . . .
As I’m taking the ball down the court, one of the guards from Evans ran towards him, hoping to strip the ball away. He went to slap the ball out of my right hand just as it crossed under my fake dribbling left hand, and ended up slapping me on my left wrist. The referee immediately called the player for a foul, and told the crowd we were in a 1 and 1 situation. Now keep in mind, there is probably less than 2 minutes in the game and we are down 35 points. Back in those days with my immature naive 11th grade mine, I’m thinking “I believe I can start us on a run here! This is my chance to shine in front of Coach Coburn, in front of my girl friend and in front of my folks.”
I approached the line, was preparing to dribble the ball a couple of times before my first shot, when suddenly, Déjà vu baby! I happened to recall the spectacular play made my Jimmy Hawthorne 3 years earlier. My first thought was, “If I can pull this off, it will really impress my parents and girlfriend, and I can narrow the score, making it a 32-point game.” By now, you should have concluded I was a beyond naive and immature, and a beyond just being a USDA Grade A Hopeless Romantic, because this is the stuff movies are made of, not the stuff that ever happened in Craig Whitley’s life. But luck of all luck, a miracle took place. I made the first shot! Probably one of only 5 points I made the whole season.
Now I’m really pumped, but extremely nervous. I must have dribbled that ball 8 or 9 times before the second shot. I finally stopped dribbling, then sprung into action, throwing and overhead pitch ala Jimmy Hawthorne that was thrown far too hard, and way too high up on the backboard. The ball came back at me like it was shot out of a cannon, and so high that I wasn’t tall enough to jump up and retrieve it. In less time than it takes to say “Jimmy crack corn” it had bounced all the way to the opposite end of the court, bounded off the opposite wall and rolled back on the court. Now I need to slow this scene down for, describe in slow motion what took place in those brief couple of seconds.
I was so nervous I didn’t take enough time to think the whole thing out, and ended up stepping across the line before the ball physically left my right hand. So as the ball was traveling towards the goal, out of my peripheral vision I can still see in slow motion the ref blowing his whistle and yelling “STEPPPPPINNNNNGGGGG OVVVEEERRRRRR THEEEEE LINNNNEEEEEE!, I’m leaping in the air to catch the ball an in slow motion I see it clearing my right hand by 18 inches, and in mid air I do a quarter turn to see the ball hit the opposite wall. When I landed back on the court my red-face spins around to look towards our bench, and I catch Coach Coburn, my girlfriend, Mom and Dad in what is the craziest fixed picture that to this day has ever been burned into my brain.
My locked-in eyes caught Coach Coburn literally at the peak of a giant frog-leap onto the court, landing at least 9 feet from where he was sitting on the been. He giant leap was akin to a huge bullfrog jumping onto the court, landing squarely on both feet, and breaking his jump as his butt hit the back of his thighs. He was screaming, “Whitley!!!!!! Get your taillll over hereeeee!!!!” He followed that up by yelling, “Time Out! Time Out! Time Out!” – making the time out sign by constantly jamming his right fingertips into the palm of his left hand. That walk back to the been was both the longest and shortest walk of my life. I wasn’t just red-faced, my entire body had turned red. My ears were literally burning from the warm blood that had rushed to my head in embarrassment
No sooner than I turned to run over to Coach, my Dad was yelling at the top of his lungs, “Take him out of the game! Take him out of the game! Take him out of the game.” (I left out the profanities). I looked at my girlfriend and she was bent over, face in hands, totally embarrassed, because the entire crowd was laughing their ass off. But before their laughter, the whole place got deafly still, as everyone in that stadium wanted to hear the ass-rimming I was about to get from Coach. Mom had a sheepish look on her face and was trying to say, “It’s okay Buddy, you’ll do better next time.” But it wasn’t okay, in those two split second I had become the laughing stock of the entire crowd.
As I approached Coach Coburn he yelled, “Whitley, what in the hell were you thinking about, what in the hell were you doing?” Stop here for a minute and think of what Coach and everyone in the gym had just seen. For them, I had to have looked like I was on medication, had some sort of disability or was the biggest smartass in the place (which was more true than not true). I immediately became a spin master and turned on my personal BS stream, but this time I realized it had to come from a fire hose. I said, “Coach, you remember in 1962, when we were trailing in the Anacoco tournament by 2 points with just seconds to go, and Jimmy Hawthorne pulled the same play off and converted what everyone was hoping to be a two-point play into a three-point play? Well, that was what I was trying to do!” I swear, every artery and vein in Coach Coburn’s neck and head were protruding and throbbing, as if they were going to burst. For a second he looked totally dumbfounded as he tried to erase what he just saw on the court and process my response. All of a suddenly he throws both hands up and away from his head, gets almost nose to nose with me, and yells out, “Whitley!!! You’re not Jimmy Hawthorne and you’ll never be Jimmy Hawthorne!!!!!!! Now get back on the bench!”
I didn’t realize it while he was screaming, but the entire crowd had gone from laughing their butts off to total silence so they could hear what Coach and I were saying. Even my teammates were listening intently. When Coach Coburn dressed me down and let me know I would never be Jimmy Hawthorne, the crowd broke out in unison, laughing their butts off once again at my expense.
The ride back home on the team bus that night was a hard pill to swallow. I couldn’t wait to get back home and away from the team. Everyone was teasing me, giving me a hard time. Did I have any long-lasting regrets of this incident. Heck no! Just the opposite. It provided me one of the funniest moments of my life. I’ve told this story over and over throughout the years. You have to learn to be able to laugh at yourself to be able to drive over some of the speed bumps and potholes you face in life. Every failure I’ve ever had ultimately taught me how to handle adversity better and led to even bigger successes.
My wife has always wanted me to call or write Jimmy Hawthorne and tell him this story. He was already away and in college when this famous sports moment <wink> took place. I’m pretty sure Jimmy would still remember me. The story might even bring a smile to his face. But a better call would be one to simply check on him to see how he’s doing, to let him know how proud I am of the great career he had in broadcasting, and how I still remember his times as a high school DJ at KLLA in Leesville, times we spent playing Rook with my Mom and Dad at our house, etc. Ahhh, those were the days. I would do it all over again, but the next time I wouldn’t throw that ball quite as hard.