If you have never been knocked out, you don’t know what you are missing! It’s like instantaneous sleep ... one second, you are standing there doing whatever and the next second, you are asleep, hopefully not injured from a fall.
Four times in my life, I have been knocked out. It really wasn’t all that bad, either. Each time it involved either a girl or a stupid act on my part. Once in the ninth grade, Marion (Stony) and I were playing catch during lunch break. A beautiful female calls my name and I turn to see who she might be, and ‘blap,’ I take a hardball to the head and am out for three hours.
Another time, I had borrowed my girlfriend’s weed sprayer. Not being particularly educated in how to spray weeds, I had a little trouble with the sprayer stopping up the hose ... so, I managed through sheer force to get the top of the pressurized can off, and you can only imagine what happened.
That top drove my fist right into my face, breaking my nose and knocking me out on the kitchen floor. Then there was the time I hit myself in the face with my tennis racket instead of slamming the ball back across the net!
Well, this leaves the notorious game, which is what this story is all about.
In 1955, Pampa High School Basketball was in a dogfight with San Angelo for the Bi-District ranking to see who would go to the state playoffs in Austin. This was my senior year. Pampa is the two time defending champions in the 5-A division, and it is down to this one game to see who will continue on to Austin for the final four.
San Angelo had a really big dude, 6’7”, and probably weighed 220 pounds. I stood 6’5” and weighed in at about 180 pounds. It was my job to contain him. Contain??? I knew this evening I would have my job cut out for me. Two things were in our favor ... 1) we had two years of playoff experience and 2) we had the home court advantage.
In the first half of the game, those advantages didn’t seem to help us all that much, as the score was never more than two to three points difference. Well, about one minute before the end of the first half, that’s when IT happened. The big dude caught me on my chin with his elbow and that’s the last thing I remember. The rest of this story is taken from what my teammates, girl friend, and the film of the game told me. This is one of the most unbelievable games of my life and I don’t even get to enjoy it!
