Sports outlook 8/17

Sunday, August 17, 2003

If you are among the 10,000 or so persons who was a friend of my father, Joe Bradham, there are only a select few, like maybe John Atkinson or possibly Harold Scism -- or could be Willard Bond or even John Byers who, if asked the question, "What was Joe's favorite sport?" might say something other than golf. For unless you knew Joe as few did, you would not know that the answer is not golf. Never was. At different points in his life, Joe was the quintessential sportsman. There were few sports indeed, he didn't embrace at one time or another. Take hunting. My mom didn't want guns in the house until she figured I was old enough to act sensibly around one. So, Joe's .22 Marlin pump rested in the corner of his darkroom at the studio for many years until he figured I was old enough for it and could actually hunt. He was, however, not all that proud of my hunting feats, which included bagging rats by the hundreds at the old City Dump. Back in those days you called the police for permission and they'd let you perform a public service. Joe also frogged -- a short career as though ditches in the Bootheel are fraught with cottonmouths -- big, mean cottonmouths with long fangs dripping venom. Joe was a fisherman and Judge H.A. Kelso used to laugh about his personal stump. But Joe eventually got too old to drive out there and gave up fishing at age 75 or so. Joe played football and basketball in high school and would have played baseball had it been offered. Then, golf came along and dominated his life from the late 1940s until his death in 2002. But golf was not Joe's favorite sport. It was a favorite participation pastime. He preferred watching football. Chiefs, Razorbacks, Tigers, you name it. If there was a game on TV he watched it. As long as I had my Chiefs' season tickets he got a game each year to take his buddies to. But none of those ranked No. 1. Joe's favorite all-time sport was horse racing. Thoroughbreds at Hot Springs or quarter horses at Jefferson Downs. He loved it. If a race was on TV, and he always knew when one was, he left Nevada Country Club and went home to watch -- in order to be able to watch it, undisturbed. Joe loved horses, period! As a kid he had a paper route, which he threw on horseback. He always had a horse until it became painfully apparent to him that those days were over. There is a photograph of me, maybe a year old, on the back of his horse, Friday, which was quartered by Ralph Hardin, whose barn and pond have been replaced by a housing development at Ash and Highland. His military discharge papers in 1945 listed his profession as stock-buyer. And we're not talking stocks and bonds. Here was a guy who never missed a western and took the whole family to watch "Tombstone" and listen to the thundering of horses' hooves. Favorite actor, John Wayne. Surprise. The highest compliment Joe ever paid was to say of an athlete, "He was a good one." We had this racing game as kids and he looked it over, finger tracing over the names of Gallant Fox, Man O' War, Whirlaway, until he came to Seabiscuit. "There was a good one," he said. Oh, went to the movie for sure. But it wasn't the same because it is the one movie Joe would have gone to this year until they release the Kevin Costner-Robert Duvall western later on. But it won't be the same because Joe won't get to see it. I find that to be very sad.

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