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Selling The Out

Memoirs from Solana Beach, CA circa 1969

By Mike BallPublished 3 years ago 9 min read
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We played a lot of street football in my neighborhood. I say neighborhood, but it was really just us and the Proctor kids, our nearest neighbors, playing on the semi-rural road between our driveways. Sometimes some other kids might play, but it was pretty much the next-door-down Proctor kids and us, the Balls. That’s right, the Ball kids, mostly my brother and I, were referred to as “The Balls.” And Steve, my beloved “big ball” brother, and I (yup—“little ball”) would play street football with the Proctor boys, Jim and Bruce. Now Jim, the older brother was slim as an eel in Winter— he could have been in our family; Steve and I were always thin, long before our distance running days— and Bruce was much the opposite, and as it turns out, the only actual football player of the lot. We would choose sides, filling in with whatever sisters were around, and play till we couldn’t see the last game-saving long bomb.

Now, before I move on to more important things, I want to tell you a little about our street football games. Like most streets in the area, ours was not level. It sloped downward from our driveway to the Proctors’. The driveways were the end zones and were about 50 or 60 yards apart. Whoever got the ball first, the other team chose their direction, uphill or down. Now you would think that the downhill team would have the advantage, running downhill to make plays—and you’d be right. The faster players like the big brothers, Jim and Steve, would be able to run under anything Bruce or I might be able to loft down the street toward the Proctors’ house, but as it turns out, the uphill team seemed always to be victorious, at least in my memories of the times I ran the “out-and-up” to score an easy touchdown.

The “out-and -up” is as basic to football as the “pick-and-roll” is to basketball. Pro teams from both sports regularly benefit from using these moves. San Diego had an AFL team back then. The San Diego Chargers had just moved down from LA, and we were all huge fans of the game—to us it was as enormous as the NFL is today, but in reality it was much, much smaller in popular appeal back then. and better in so many other ways, as well— and I can still see Jim Proctor prancing on his toes like Lance Alworth to make a grab for a touchdown…they called Alworth, “Bambi,” we called Jim, “Twinkle Toes.”

The out-and-up works like this: the receiver runs a post pattern; that is to say, he (or she) runs straight downfield. If you were to draw this on a play sheet it would be a straight vertical line, like a post. From this post, the receiver can break in any direction, beating the defender, who is running backwards mostly, to a designated spot where the quarterback knows to throw the ball, based on the play called earlier in the huddle. We drew plays on our hands or a teammate’s chest, in the huddle before each play. My apologies to anyone who has played street football as a kid and knows this stuff, but you never know, some bloke from England who grew up playing cricket or some other lame game for kids might not know what the hell I’m talking about, if he (or she) were to stumble across… but I digress. We are only half way through the explanation of the immortal out-and-up pattern. So the receiver runs a post pattern, breaking either right or left across the field from his vertical post route (this is the “out”). The quarterback then fakes a pass , convincing the defender to break toward the receiver, at which point, the receiver cuts upfield (the “up”) getting behind the defender for a pass that, if he (or she) catches it, will most likely score a touchdown. Our touchdowns were seven points not six, as there were no extra point kicks through the non existent field goals, naturally.

By the way, when I put the “or she” into these explanations, I am not being politically correct, more like historically accurate, because Martha Jo, or Jo Jo as we called our little sister, was able to master most aspects of every sport we played. Even she knew how to sell the “out.” That is, the receiver had to convince the defender that he was going to catch the ball in the post pattern. Otherwise the defender would just lay back and defend the deep route and break up the play. But it’s the quarterback that really has to sell the “out.” Pass defenders run backwards a lot in order to watch the quarterback and read his intentions, so the QB has to “pump fake” to get the defender to commit to the “out” route. The rest is easy—like playing catch. Of course, we all knew how to lead the receiver and catch a throw on the run, which makes football really fun at any level.

But it’s this selling the “out” route by the quarterback that reminded me of how well me and my brother used to run this play. Let me set it up for you: Street football was two hand touch, naturally. Sidelines were clearly marked by the pavement’s edge as there were no curbs or gutters. Our football field had no yard markers or any other demarcations save the aforementioned driveways. So, first downs were determined by receptions. You had four downs to make three receptions for a new set of downs… or punt the ball to the other team on fourth down. It was actually pretty easy to inch your way down the field hiking the ball and then catching a mini-pass because the defender rushing the quarterback had to count to three before crossing the line of scrimmage. So if it is third down and you have two catches already, you really have two more downs to make just one more catch for a new set of downs, because no one ever punted on fourth down. So, say you have two receptions and it’s third down. This is the perfect time for the out-and-up, especially if you are going uphill. If you are the receiver, your opponent has to guard you tight to defend against a third catch for a first down, and it’s especially hard to reverse direction when you are caught off guard while running downhill. There was no better feeling than turning up the sideline, wide open, seeing that the defender had fallen for the “out” fake, and then seeing your QB releasing his pass over the defenders’ heads.

My brother is a tongue biter. What I mean by that is he pushes the middle of his tongue forward out of his mouth and bites it between his teeth whenever he is giving something his maximum effort. He doesn't know he is doing it. It’s his go-to face—the one you make when you are beside yourself in some way. The great baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan is a tongue biter, too. I know this because I saw a still frame of the famous fight when Robin Ventura rushed the mound after getting beaned by a pitch from the hall of fame hurler. Ryan had Ventura in a backyard-brawl-style headlock and was repeatedly landing uppercuts with a raised upper-middle finger knuckle extended (another backyard technique) as the benches cleared. But If you saw the paper and you looked at Ryan’s mouth, he’s doing the tongue biting thing exactly like my bro. Michael Jordan has his own famous tongue thing. He doesn’t bite his, though. But whenever he is airborne, he just sticks it waaay out like Alice Cooper. He doesn’t know he is doing it, but if you were in the NBA back then and you saw the tongue, you knew you were getting dunked on. I only bring the whole tongue thing up because it has to do with the out-and-up plays in our street football games.

We always chose sides and always mixed things up. It was brothers against brothers only sometimes. When I played against Steve, I noticed something. When he would fake a pass, he didn’t do the tongue thing. So, if he was quarterback, I never was fooled by the pump fake. Then, when I was on his team one day, I mentioned it to him, and he started biting his tongue on his fake throws. It worked great… until I was on the opposite team one day, and he used it on me for a successful out-and-up to one of the Proctor kids for a touchdown. I felt like he shouldn’t be able to use my coaching against me, but I quickly got over it. What goes around comes around in life… and street football.

This all seems so insignificant now that it is said, but I want to somehow impress the reader with the magnitude of the experience of growing up in post-war black-and-white TV generation America—well, California really, which was, I found out much too late, not at all the same thing. When I compare our experiences as kids back then to what I see children today enduring, I am forced to conclude that ours was the end of a long run of childhood innocence and joy that has now been smothered to extinction by over-parenting. Our Southern California universe has become much more populated and frightening, so naturally, our kids must be constantly supervised. Kids left to their own devices as we were, today would no doubt find much more frequent association with undesirable elements… freaks of nature that we called, “psychos.” Hitchcock’s influence, I suppose. But back then we were pretty much left to fend for ourselves— be home when the street lights turn on, or some such. It was the way kids were raised back then. Parents were more indulgent I think than the generations preceding them, but our parents still pretty much followed old adages like, “Children are to be seen, not heard,” as well as, my favorite, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” And I’m sure that most of America was the same in many ways to our North County San Diego life, though I’m sure our specific locale had a charm all its own.

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About the Creator

Mike Ball

Mike Ball has recently started self-publishing short stories and longer work fiction. He is excited about exploring new publications and seeks your response to these first efforts. Bon Appetit!

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