Lucky or Good?

I’ve never believed in luck. What is luck anyway? A football that takes a funny bounce? A baseball that takes a bad hop? A ball that just barely catches the out of bounds line? If those events go your way, you’re lucky. If they go against you, you’re unlucky, right? Nope. Those things are going to happen every game,that’s just sports.

The year was 1966. We were playing a sophomore football game at Glen Oak Park in Peoria, Illinois against Spalding Institute. I didn’t start that day and was getting limited playing time. I played a little corner and a few plays at running back. It was about the middle of the third quarter and we were trailing 14-0. Spalding had been running a little counter play that was killing us. I remember our coach just kept yelling at our linebackers “Stay home! Stay home!” He was so frustrated and started looking up and down our sideline. He looked at me, grabbed me, and spat out the words, “Grant! Get in at linebacker and STAY HOME!” I asked no questions and hustled in.

Now you have to remember from some of my previous stories that I was bit undersized for linebacker (5’4”, 120 lbs.) but Coach knew I would hit and not back down. I had never played nor practiced linebacker but I figured what the heck, “I’ll line up where I would in a sandlot game, find the ball and tackle the ball carrier.” That’s what you do on defense, right? But I remembered the “stay home” part and I would delay just a bit before getting on my horse and running down ball carriers. Finally, they ran a counter back to my side. Now, you tell me, was I lucky or was I good? I saw the ball going away but I delayed a count or two. Just as I was getting ready to pursue a ball carrier came right back at me from the other way. No one blocked me and I was just kinda standing in the seam that he had been hitting on the counter all day. He was so shocked to see me he almost fell down by himself. We collided and went down in a heap. I was as surprised as he was that we had come face to face. Coach was screaming on the sidelines, “That’s how you play the counter”, over and over. All my teammates were hitting me on the helmet and back congratulating me on such a fine play. Heck, the guy RAN INTO ME! They tried one more counter later but they couldn’t run it.

Yeah, we ended up losing that game 20-0 as we did most of our games. Coach gave me a pat on the back at the end of the game and just kinda chuckled. And I’ll ask again, “Was I lucky or good?” I don’t believe in luck and I really don’t think I was that good. I’ll just say I did what I was asked to do and then just played football. I tackled the ball carrier. Chiefpigskin.com