Louisiana Voice

If I may impose on my readers to allow me to move away from politics for just a bit, I’d like to invoke personal privilege to write something that I should’ve written a long time ago if for no other reason than to illustrate that there are still some wonderful people who walk among us. I hope you will indulge me as I pay a long overdue tribute to a great person and a wonderful friend. Plus, it’s important to let friends know how you feel about them.

I owned and coached an adult sandlot baseball team for about ten years. Well, I didn’t really coach because the players knew a lot more about baseball than I did. Basically, I made out the lineup and just let ‘em play.

When I reluctantly decided to finally give it up, I went to our last meeting of league coaches. I brought along with me the owner and coach of Ruston’s black baseball team, the Black Sox, comprised largely of Grambling University players. The purpose of having him attend as my guest was twofold: to submit my resignation and withdrawal from the league and to sponsor the Black Sox for membership. My motion to accept them met with crickets. My motion died a quiet death for lack of a second. But I consider those ten years to be among the richest of my life because of the friendships made and kept.

There were many: Dean Dick, Renny Howard, Glen Trammell, Randall Fallin, Gene Smith, Reg Cassibry, the three Barham brothers, Curt, Cecil and Steve, Woody Cooper, Gene Colvin, Gary Crawford, Bill Duncan and Wayne Baxter, to name only a few who wore the uniform of the Ruston Ramblers. There were others but those were the ones who made up the core, those who played for me the longest.

But one person stands out in terms of being one of the finest human beings I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. Jack Thigpen, who now lives with wife Ann in Monroe, wasn’t a heavy hitter and he didn’t have the strongest arm but he was a smooth infielder, playing both second and shortstop, depending on who was available. He was one of several of the Ramblers who played for Louisiana Tech.

I remember so clearly the exhibition game we played against the Black Sox. They had a fireballer for a pitcher who threw what only sounded like strikes to us (I say “us” in the collective sense; certainly not as a player. I played only if we were shorthanded. I do still hold the league record of 17 consecutive strikeouts – as a hitter). But in that game, Jack stroked two opposite-field triples and drove all three of our runs and we somehow won, 3-2.

Jack also pulled off the most memorable play of my entire ten years “coaching” the team. I don’t even remember who we were playing but I know it was a tight game and the other team had runners on first and second with no outs. On the pitch, both runners broke on what I can only surmise was a double steal. With a left-handed hitter batting, Jack, playing short, came over to cover second in case the catcher tried to throw out the runner coming from first to second.

As he approached second, the batter, perhaps not seeing the steal sign didn’t take the pitch but instead, hit a screaming line drive right up the middle and over second base. Jack instinctively jumped up, caught the liner and landed on the bag. The startled runner from first, apparently unaware that the ball had been hit, came sliding into second and Jack reached down and tagged him and rolled the ball toward the pitcher’s mound and started running off the field.

And alert as always, I had not realized the runner going from second to third had been doubled off when Jack landed on second so I started screaming, “Jack! Jack! What’re you doing?”

Never missing a beat, he nonchalantly replied, “I don’t know what everybody else is doing, but I’m coming to bat. That’s three out.” He had pulled off an unassisted triple play, one of the rarest plays in baseball.

He would later coach his alma mater, the Ruston High School Bearcats to a state championship in basketball. In doing so, he would join the late Chick Childress as the only RHS alumni to win state titles as a player and later as a coach at the same school.

There was another memorable play that did not involve Jack but I’d like to share it. We were in the field and the other team was at bat. They had one particularly large and ill-tempered player who was at bat. They had runners on second and third with two out. This was his opportunity to tighten the game if he could get a hit or even better, take the pitcher, Cassibry, deep. Instead, he popped the ball straight up and as our second baseman camped under the ball, the batter (did I mention he was ill-tempered?) cursed and hurled the bat over his team’s dugout – and through the windshield of his own car. No one on either team dared to laugh.

Jack wasn’t – and isn’t – one to draw attention to himself. He’s just not one to seek the spotlight. I attended the wedding when he and Ann were married back somewhere around 1968 or 1969. I forget the precise year but one thing I’ll never forget. Sitting behind Betty and me at the wedding were Tech football players Larry Brewer and Terry Bradshaw (yes, that Terry Bradshaw). Midway through the ceremony I overheard Terry turn to Larry and ask, “Who did you say was getting married here?”

But his hits against the Black Sox and his unaided triple play and his state championships are not what Jack Thigpen was about.

How many of us can say that we know someone who has never been heard to say a negative word about anyone – ever?

That’s Jack Thigpen. In all the years I have known him – and that’s for more than 60 years, I have never once heard him utter a disparaging remark about anyone. That’s the greatest attribute anyone could ever possess. If you can’t say anything good, don’t say anything at all is much more than an empty slogan to Jack. He’s the consummate diplomat. And get this: he comes by it honestly. He’s like his dad that way. The two men were cast from the same mold.

The memories of having friends like Jack and his father have, in the words of Bob Seger, “made me a wealthy soul.”