RANDY DICKSON: Trading playing fields for battle fields
I saw Josh Yost at the Rocky Bayou Christian-Baker basketball game last week.
Most of you probably remember that Yost was a standout point guard on the basketball team and second baseman on the baseball team at Baker who graduated last spring.
Yost has traded his Gator baseball and basketball uniforms for a uniform of the United States Army. By now he should be at Fort Campbell, Ky., or maybe even making his way to Iraq or Afghanistan, where he’ll be deployed for the next year.
Too often sports writers, coaches and fans like to use military metaphors to describe a game and the action taking place in that game.
We call the court or playing field a battleground. When a player hits a long shot on the basketball court, throws a long pass on the football field or hits a home run in baseball, we say it was a bomb.
A kid with a strong throwing arm has a cannon. A big, powerful running back is a tank. The list could go on and on, but you get the picture.
I don’t know why Yost’s deployment hit me in the peculiar way that it has. He is one of the hundreds of athletes I have dealt with in the last several years. I know Yost better than some of the kids I’ve covered, but not as well as some other kids.
I can think of at least a half dozen kids that I’ve covered that received an appointment to one of the military academies. Some of those former players – former Fort Walton Beach running back Tony Dace at Army to name one – have played ball collegiately. They too, as Yost, have taken an oath to protect and defend our freedoms against all enemies both foreign and domestic.
Maybe it was seeing Yost at the basketball game dressed in his fatigues that reminded me of how quickly most of us forget last year’s seniors as the members of this year’s graduating class take their places.
Perhaps we assume that those graceful young athletes will attend college or trade school. We really don’t want to think about the sacrifices so many of them make at this dangerous time in history.
I pray the grace under pressure Josh Yost learned while running the Baker basketball team’s offense will serve him well in the desserts of a far away land. I hope he can find Army teammates that will have his back like the Gators he played ball with all those years.
If I think about it, I’ll probably sleep a little better knowing Josh Yost, and other young men and women from our area, have volunteered to step into harm’s way to keep us safe.
Yost is scheduled to be overseas a year.
When I told him to stay safe, he assured me he would and that he’d be back in time to see Gator junior center Jarrod Batson graduate next spring.
God speed Josh, and the same to all of our young men and women serving our country.
My prayers are with you all.
