Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [11]
Over on the white side of town, young boys were being introduced to the joy of organized sports. There was Pop Warner football and Little League baseball. On spring and summer evenings, parents and kids alike congregated at Columbia City Park, an oasis of manicured grass and neatly placed dirt where the echoing of cheers could be heard from far away. Participants were supplied with bright red and green and yellow and blue uniforms, with names like PANTHERS and TIGERS and REDS screen printed across the chests. Afterward, everyone would retreat to Cook’s Dairy Delight on High School Avenue, where Lucille Cook (known to all as just “Miss Cook”) served up her renowned dressed jumbo hamburgers and fresh-squeezed lemonade to the white boys and girls. Were the day especially hot, some might stroll to the town pool, cleaned daily and exclusively white.
Most black kids did not feel slighted, mainly because they knew no better. Cook’s Dairy Delight? Little League? Did those things even exist? What the black side of town lacked in grassy knolls and new bats and mitts and helmets, it made up for in spirit. Instead of wallowing in self-pity over what they understood to be shoddy conditions, black teachers and coaches encouraged their kids to combine the resources at hand with the power of youthful imagination. Jefferson’s playground was limited to a slide and the remnants of a wood swing. But running space was plentiful. “We didn’t have any feeding systems,” said Charles Boston, Jefferson’s varsity football coach. “We didn’t have junior high ball or Pop Warner—the white kids had all of that. In fact, we barely had enough equipment to field a high school team. What we did have was that when the bell rang at eight o’clock in the morning, and then two hours later again for recess, all the boys would end up in a football game.”
“We all played football in the yard,” said Edward Moses, Walter’s childhood friend. “We used to go run in the woods, jump over ditches. We’d run straight down a row of corn in a cornfield, and when the corn was dry it’d really test your balance. If we were missing out on anything, I don’t think we knew it.”
In the spirit of his father, Walter remained mostly quiet during his first few years of school. Though occasionally mischievous, he mainly sat in class, capably doing his schoolwork and pining for recess. He wasn’t one to sit up front, or raise his hand, or jump at the chance to show off his smarts. Nor was he one to fire spitballs at the blackboard. He was, in all senses of the word, ordinary. “Eddie loved school and he loved football,” said Alyne. “Now Walter, he was different. He never let you know what he was interested in. He’d watch people, and then do whatever that person did better.”
In 1963, when Walter was ten, a man named Ezekiel Graves spearheaded a movement to bring organized Little League to Columbia’s black children. “Every year a couple of black families would come to the town’s Little League sign-up day,” recalled Colleen Crawley, a white contemporary of Walter’s. “And they’d always be turned away.” The local government denied Graves’ request to have the games played at Columbia City Park, so he settled on a field outside the poorly maintained Duckworth Recreation Center. Walter was drafted by the team sponsored by Columbia Electric, a little store located downtown. The uniforms were green and white, and Walter wore No. 11 and played first base. His best friends were his teammates—Michael “Dobie” Woodson at second, Moses (who went by “Sugar Man”) at shortstop, and Johnson in right field. The team played against other black Little Leagues in Marion County, and Walter fit right in. “I was OK in the field, but I couldn’t hit the ball,” said Johnson. “But Walter could hit the ball hard, and he was a good fielder. He looked athletic, even when we