Another one bites the dust.
Or more appropriately:
Dust in the wind.
Saturday marks the 114th renewal of the annual tackle football game between the University of Oklahoma and the University of Kansas.
And I am sad.
This is probably the only Big XII series I will miss.
Of the 155 Oklahoma football games I have attended, I have seen eight OU vs. KU football games and I’m a perfect 8-0.
And Oklahoma is 80-27-6 all-time so it’s hardly the rivalry that makes one sentimental.
No, this one is close to the heart for several reasons.
I attended my first Oklahoma vs. Kansas football game on November 10, 1979, at Owen Field in Norman.
A high school senior looking for a post-high school home, Norman seemed like as good a place as any.
I had already been to the home opener in September.
My neighbor Chris Benge and I drove from Tulsa to Norman in his dad’s small Nissan truck.
We parked where Headington Hall is presently located and walked two blocks across the street to the stadium.
Iowa and a young safety named Bob Stoops were formidable, but Billy Sims and the Sooners prevailed 21-6.
I actually met Bob Stoops 37 years later and told him about my first OU game and his cameo.
I attended the Colorado game later with my friend Richard Chandler.
This time I drove.
Richard’s sister was at OU working in the Athletic Department and had us set up for dinner with Billy Sims.
That’s Billy after the game talking with Tulsa World Sports Editor Bill Connors.
However, Billy didn’t “recognize” us yelling “Billy, Billy, Billy” after his chat with Bill Connors with us clinging to the 20’ chain link fence outside the home locker room underneath the west stadium stands.
Oh well.
At least she hooked us up with recruit passes.
We got to tour Bud Wilkinson Hall, which housed the Oklahoma football players, and acted like we were special on a Sooner Game Day.
So up next was Kansas.
Troy Miles was a “super scout” from Tulsa who recruited high school baseball players to area colleges including Oklahoma.
He watched our Tulsa Western/Heitgras team in the Oklahoma Southside Mickey Mantle League at Mason Park in the summer of ‘78!
Fortunately, we won the state championship, and I was the starting catcher as we went something like 50-11.
So, when Troy Miles was taking Tulsa high school baseball players on recruiting trips to Oklahoma football games in the fall of 1979, I made his short list.
Along with former teammates Mike Robinson (1st row, 5th from L,) Kelly Bell (2nd row, 2nd from L,) and Scott Logsdon (1st row, last from L.)
That's yours truly on the back row 5th from left!
Bell and Logsdon were named to the first team All-City Baseball Team by the Tulsa World in May of 1980.
Robinson and I were named to the 2nd Team.
Troy drove us from Tulsa to Norman for the Kansas game with Mr. Robinson.
We exited Lindsey Street and pulled right into the stadium grounds onto the Oklahoma baseball outfield and were ushered into a small trailer underneath the south end zone.
Yes, back in the day the OU baseball field used to be located on the football team practice field behind the south end zone called Haskell Field.
It was where we were to meet Enos Semore who was the Oklahoma baseball coach.
We thought we were getting the red carpet treatment and were big shots!
Or so we thought.
We entered the trailer and the secretary told us that Coach Semore went duck hunting and our tour guide today would be Donny Graham a junior outfielder from Moore.
Right there I immediately knew that was the end of my Oklahoma baseball career.
But hey, at least we got to see the Sooners win 38-0 over the Jayhawks.
I’d take my catcher’s gear north to Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas the next fall and play baseball for the NAIA Division II Wildcats!
Baker was located about 10 miles south of Lawrence.
And if you have ever been to Baldwin City, Kansas you know where this story is going.
I mean little Baldwin City could barely compare to big college town Lawrence.
I describe Lawrence as a little oasis in the heartland.
A little bit quirky.
It's a granola town full of health enthusiasts, bicyclists and joggers who treasure living off the land.
Nothing compares to avocado toast and a smoothie at a health food breakfast diner on Massachusetts Street in downtown Lawrence.
Plus, you are in the middle of a college campus that is full of beautiful co-eds who love their sports.
I made weekly trips to Lawrence to just hang out.
And at night, I had a KU Library card with full access to the stacks deep within the Kansas Library on Jayhawk Boulevard.
Several baseball teammates and I even saw the band "Kansas" play at historic Allen Field House located on what else?
Naismith Drive.
Named after the founder of basketball James Naismith who spend time in Lawrence coaching the Kansas basketball team.
After a year at Baker, I really set my sights on Lawrence.
And more than just a sightseer.
We had played Kansas four times that fall and again in the spring.
In between games, I squeezed in the Oklahoma vs. Kansas football game in Lawrence.
On Saturday November 8, 1980, almost to the day when I saw the OU/Kansas game in Norman the year before!
My fourth OU football game and two times it was against Kansas!
The Sooners won a tight one 21-19 and afterwards I experienced The Wheel for the very first time, which was located up the hill from Memorial Stadium, for post-game refreshments and frivolity.
The funniest thing that happened while I was at Baker was when my friend Richard Chandler visited me for the weekend.
A high school senior, he wanted to check out what college life was like in Baldwin City.
You know, to compare to our Norman experience the year before.
So, of course, I took him to Lawrence and The Wheel.
The last time I saw Richard he was green about the gills recovering!
By spring break at Fayetteville against Arkansas and my former teammate and Oklahoma/Kansas attendee from the year before, Mike Robinson, I made my first start at catcher.
We lost the first game of a doubleheader, but we made the Tulsa World Sports page, and my name was in the box score battery.
My dad saved the article and mailed it to me at Baker.
I still have it today.
So, I thought I could walk on at KU and have a pretty good shot at making the team if not starting.
I drove to Lawrence that summer and enrolled.
Got an apartment with some fellow Kappa Sigs and was trying to decide between Norman and Lawrence for my future.
Unfortunately, two things happened that summer of 1981 that would change the trajectory of my young life.
First, Floyd Temple, the longtime Kansas baseball coach since 1954, retired after 28 years in Lawrence.
Ruining my baseball plans.
Hard to walk-on a team when the coach who was familiar with you having played against him five times within the last year, just up and retired!
Kansas then hired a new coach from Dodge City Junior College.
Marty Patton was a former pitcher for the Kansas City Royals.
He was hired as head coach at KU and brought most of his team from Dodge City JUCO with him to Lawrence.
Including his catcher.
Secondly, I came down with a mysterious stomach ailment that August that ended with a brief hospital stay.
Suffice it to say the baseball God’s had intervened in my summer plans and said, “Son, you’re going to the University of Oklahoma!”
So, I listened and drove to Norman to begin classes at OU.
It was meant to be.
I had played Stan Musial ball that summer in Tulsa.
Our games were at Haikey Creek Park in far eastern Tulsa.
I worked for a plastering company that summer from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., then hurried home changed and drove to Haikey Creek Park 2 or 3 times a week for a baseball game.
The other nights I was an umpire in the Tulsa Prep Minor league at Turkey Mountain.
We won our division and made the State Championship Tourney at O’Brien Park in far north Tulsa.
My team had won the Babe Ruth State Championship after a summer of playing at O’Brien Park the summer of 1977.
Except this time, my old coach Bob Duncan from the Tulsa Western/Heitgras Mickey Mantle State Champions, showed up for the first game.
And took over from the assistant coach at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M JUCO in Miami who had been coaching us all summer.
Coach Duncan promptly benched me in favor of some player from NEO who had been playing in a minor league somewhere else all summer.
So, after driving to Haikey Creek all summer and starting every game, in which some games we barely had nine players, I sat there the first game and watched from the bench next to Coach Duncan as we got beat.
And went home and never put on a baseball uniform again.
Between the Kansas vs. Oklahoma decision, stomach mystery illness and this lineup shenanigan, I had had enough baseball for a lifetime.
So, I enrolled in Norman and the rest is history.
I’d attend my next Oklahoma vs. Kansas football games in Norman in 1981, 1983 and 1985.
All wins
Then another one in 1986 in Lawrence.
My friend Andy Rubin, a New Yorker from Brooklyn, was the Sports Editor for the Oklahoma Daily student newspaper.
He was a spotter for the ABC national telecast of the OU/KU game in Lawrence.
Andy didn’t own a car.
He needed a ride to Lawrence, and I obliged.
We ended up sleeping at the Kappa Sigma house up the hill from the stadium.
Andy went up to the press box and spotted plays for Keith Jackson and Frank Broyles.
I bought a ticket and sat on the press box side by myself.
At halftime it was 20-0.
Oklahoma scored 37 points in the third quarter.
I looked behind me and saw my former, fellow Oklahoma Daily staffer and summer tennis buddy Lucy Wolcott.
She had graduated from OU law school and ended up practicing law in Kansas City.
We watched the second half together and then I walked up the hill in the snow to The Wheel.
I told Andy to meet me there after the game.
Unfortunately for Andy, I ran into a fellow Harold’s employee Ginger Fore and some of her former sorority sisters.
Ginger had graduated from KU and was a Pi Phi if I remember.
Any-Hoo, we ended up in Mission Hills in Kansas City and the snow turned into sleet.
By the time I made it back to the Kappa Sig house in Lawrence it was nearly daybreak.
I had no idea where Andy was or if he had even made it back to the house.
But when the sun rose, I spotted his head buried beneath the covers a few bunks away.
We were in a cold sleeping porch full of bunk beds and this one meant they slept with the windows open all night.
Andy and I headed back to Norman when about an hour from Wichita I asked him if he would drive.
He said he didn’t know how to drive a stick shift, so I pulled over on I-35 and showed him how to start the car and got him to fifth gear.
He said now what?
I told him, “Whatever you do don’t stop and wake me up when we hit Norman!”
And that’s why I will miss the Oklahoma vs. Kansas football series.
Memories.
That snowy day in Lawrence, OU held a 64-0 lead right up until the final minutes when Kansas kicked a field goal to spoil the shutout.
Sooners 64 Jayhawks 3.
I made two more victorious KU games in 1993 and 2016 both in Norman.
Maybe we will play Kansas in football again someday.
Until then, a fare adieu old friend.
And thanks for the memories.
#Boomer
