The Hot Corner
With the temperatures dropping like they have over the past few days, I am reminded how happy I am that it is basketball season.
We get to avoid battling the cold while the local teams face off on the basketball courts inside those nice, warm gyms.
There is something special about sports in the cold however.
Some of sports’ greatest moments come from battling freezing weather, whether it be the Ice Bowl — the 1967 NFL Championship Game between the Don Meredith led Dallas Cowboys and the Bart Starr led Green Bay Packers — or the infamous New England Patriots and Oakland Raiders “Tuck Rule” game in which Adam Vinatieri nailed the game winning field goal in a blizzard.
I have some fond memories of playing in the cold myself, albeit none even a little bit as exciting as those legendary games. But they remain memorable to me. The first that comes to mind is playing high school baseball in the cold.
You have not experienced true baseball pains until you have hit a fast ball with an aluminum bat on a cold day. I typically did not wear batting gloves in my playing days, but on colder days, you almost had to in order to avoid that awful experience.
I also vividly remember walking out to the fields after school and breaking ice puddles on the water fountain and around the bases.
Being from Central Texas, I never experienced the joys that playing football in the snow brings, but I have played in cold weather. What is unique about football is that while you are on the field, you don’t notice these things.
After the kick-off and once the pads start colliding, the weather and the crowd noise fade away. Of course, there is still some high school football to be played here in Texas.
The state championship games are set to be played later this week, but players are missing out on battling the elements in those big games nowadays. Jerry World, or AT&T Stadium, is home to the UIL State Championships and the closed stadium keeps the players out of the elements.
I am sure the players and their fans appreciate the indoor facility, but it would be cool to see a snowy championship game. Maybe I need to move to another state if that is something I am itching to see.
I think my favorite cold weather sports experience came from my years at Texas State University (SWT). In my first few years there, I played a lot of intramural sports, including softball and flag football.
My junior year, I was on a softball team with my two roommates and a group of their friends and we had a blast.
All of us had athletic backgrounds and our team featured several solid athletes, so we finished as one of the top three teams at the end of regular season play and advanced to the semi-final game, which was basically our championship.
Awaiting the semifinal winner in the championship was a team of former college baseball players. So, this game carried significance, because we all knew it would be our last victory.
When Britton, Brandon (my two roommates at the time), and I arrived at the fields just across the street from Jim Wacker Stadium, the university’s football stadium, sleet had already begun to fall. The game was set to start at 9 p.m. and the low that night was either in the low 30s or the high 20’s, setting the stage for a chilly one.
I played third base and right field and we went on to win that game, but every swing of the bat was painful and players avoided diving for balls in the outfield because the grass had essentially been turned into a Slip ‘N Slide by the freezing rain. While it was miserable, it was an experience I will never forget.
Embrace the pleasant conditions while you root for your favorite basketball teams in local gyms over the next few weeks, because right around the corner looms the spring sports season, which will put us back out into the elements.
Reed Graff is the sports editor for the Snyder Daily News. Comments about his column may be sent to sports@snyderdailynews.com