Playing football with Frank

I don't know if I have written about this before, but I was thinking about the only time that my brother, Frank, was allowed to dress out on the same team as me and play at the same time in a football game. Frank is three years younger than me and there was rarely a time when we were roughly the same age and could play together on the same team.

During our little league years, the leagues were divided up by age and weight. Being three years younger than me, Frank was never in a position where he was old enough or heavy enough to play with me. It was only when I was a senior in high school at Dunwoody and Frank was a freshman where he became legally eligible to play on the same team as myself.

You may remember that there have been several significant brother acts in football over the years. When I was younger, the Selmon brothers at Oklahoma and the Hannah brothers at Alabama were notable. There were three Selmon brothers who played at Oklahoma, although the oldest was too old to have played with his younger brothers. Apparently, the Hannah brothers at Alabama had titanic fights with each other when they were little. I remember how big John Hannah was at Alabama and later with the New England Patriots. His little brother, Charlie, was about the same size. That must have been something.

When I was a senior at Dunwoody, Coach Jackson and Coach Sparks decided to dress Frank out for the Johnson High School game in Hall County. Unfortunately, the score of the game was so tight that the starters stayed in the game for its entirety. I know that I only came off of defense for one play when Coach Jackson wanted to yell at me for knocking the ____ out of the punter and being called for roughing the punter.

I will never understand why Coach Jackson did that the way he did. In that game, I had noticed that the Johnson punting formation had a lot of space between the blockers. The snapper had his head between his legs. I felt that if I tried I could probably blow past the personal protectors and block a kick. At the end of the second quarter, and holding onto a 7-0 lead, we held Johnson's offense on downs and they lined up for a punt. On the snap, I blew past the blockers and threw my body in the air toward the punter. My uncle, who was at the game with Mom and Dad and Aunt Meg, thought that the ball went right between my hands as I soared toward the punter. As the ball soared downfield, I slammed my helmet into the chest of the punter. A yellow hankie fell to the ground and the punter got up and said, "Way to go, 65." I realized what had happened and walked back to the huddle, fifteen yards downfield from the previous down.

On the next play, I was so upset with myself that upon the snap, I threw the center to the side and grabbed the quarterback for a five yard loss. I jumped up and stormed back to the huddle for the next play. As I looked to the sideline for the defensive signal, my breath snorting out of my nostrils like a bull, Chris Eidson came in from our sidelines and told me he was taking over for me on the next play. I trotted over to the sidelines to receive the comeuppance Coach Jackson thought I deserved. I never was quite clear why he wasted the sense of self-criticism and anger that I had worked up inside me by taking me out. I was a senior; I knew what I had done.

The same thing had happened in the second game of the season. When I was a junior, I had played both ways and all the kicking teams. Basically, when I came on the field for the opening kickoff, I didn't come off until the end of the game. Except for halftime. I was in the best physical shape I have ever been in in my life.

But when I was a senior, Coach Jackson decided that he wanted me to only play on defense. So, in my senior year, my former life as an offensive guard came to a halt in favor of Tim Evans. Despite this, in the second quarter, Coach Jackson put me in the game for a series. Without having practiced all of the plays with the first string, some of the plays had been changed between my junior and senior year.

On second down, Rik Smith called a play which had been drawn differently in my junior year. The play when I was a junior called for me to pass block on my side of the line. Unbeknownst to me, the play had been changed to require me to pull out in front of the bootlegging quarterback as protection on the pass.

Rik called the signals, the ball was snapped, and I jumped back to block. As Rik faked a running play to my side, he turned to get smashed by the defensive end on the opposite side, who had no one blocking him at the time time.

We returned to the huddle and one of the linemen whispered to me that I was supposed to pull and block the guy who had made the tackle. As that piece of information melted into my brain, Rik called a screen pass to my side.

We broke the huddle and I was trying to listen for the signals through the inner monologue of self-loathing I was running from the previous play. The ball was snapped. We held for three counts, then ran over to the right flat. Rik threw the ball to Gary Defillipo behind me, and I slammed my body into the cornerback and safety who were coming up to make the tackle. As the two defenders went flying out of bounds from my block, Gary cut past me and ran about forty yards down the sideline, to be tackled by the free safety inside the ten. As I trotted down toward the new huddle, Tim Evans returned to the huddle to take my place.

When I got to the sidelines, Coach Jackson grabbed my arm and blistered my ears for missing the block on the bootleg play the play before. There wasn't anything to say.

At any rate, the Johnson game came and went, we won on a missed two point conversion by Johnson in the fourth quarter, 7-6. After the game, we celebrated messing up their Homecoming game, only to find the hot water in the visiting lockerroom showers had been turned off. It didn't matter. We later went to the Golden Rule restaurant and ate fried chicken and peas and mashed potatoes and greens and drank sweet tea. I remember Mr. Burns, the vice-principal, asking me if I thought I got fifteen yards' worth out of that punter. Under the circumstances, I was willing to agree that I did.

But Frank didn't get into the game that night. It would be later in the last game when Frank would get in the game with me. Ironically, when he got into the game, I didn't even know he was in the game until after the play was over. It was only later in the game, when the decision was no longer in doubt, that Coach Sparks put Frank back into the game and we were able to play together as the team we were.

That is a fond memory. Too bad there weren't any other games when we could have played together. Of course, I went off to W&L and Frank finished his football career at Dunwoody. I will say it is nice to know that for almost ten years, only a Baynham wore the number 65. Even that changed after awhile, when someone else was allowed to wear 65 other than Frank or me.

I guess neither Frank nor I made enough of a splash to make anyone remember the Baynham brothers at Dunwoody High School.