Standing by the Side of the Road (A Baseball Story)

Former U of L basketball player, Bill Kidd, coached basketball and baseball at Clinton County from 1954 through 1957. He believed in the strictest of discipline and allowed no talking during practice. On away games, he had a "point of no return," which meant players could not talk out loud until the bus was a certain distance from where it had taken off. After passing Waterview enroute to Tompkinsville for a district tournament baseball game in May of 1955, two players in the back of the bus, which happened to be Sid Scott and my dad, Darrell Speck, thought they had gone past that point of no return and broke the silence by singing a song. As it turned out, they were mistaken about where the point of no return was. Coach Kidd stopped the bus and left both of them standing by the side of the road. Lucky for them, J.R. Craig, who was on his way to the game, stopped and picked them up. There is that shortcut to Tompkinsville that most locals know about and J.R. took it. They arrived at the game before the bus, which infuriated the coach even further. Sid and Darrell were ordered to sit in the stands in their street clothes and were not allowed to come onto the field. During the fourth inning, our team found itself trailing by one run with two outs and a runner on first. It was at that moment that Coach Kidd decided it was best to rise above his principles for the good of the team. He called time-out, walked over to the grandstand and motioned for Sid to come down. Sid stood at attention as Coach Kid instructed him to go bat. Still in his street clothes, he hit one into the outfield that earned him a double and the runner on first scored, which tied the game. Well, we ended up winning and two days later we won the first district baseball championship in school history by defeating Glasgow 15-to-12 in eleven innings.

(Sid, left, and Darrell)