Ghosts of Baker Field

Forty years ago, on a cold November night, I played my final snap of high school football.

            The Bermuda grass at Owensboro’s Rash Stadium had turned a muddy brown and it was a meaningless football game between two .500 teams. There was really nothing memorable for the scattering of fans – mostly family and friends — spread out along the metal bleachers. The game was one of those “three handoffs and a punt” and the final score was 7-0.

            But the memories of that game, and others before it, remain all these years later.

            Tonight, on a cold November night, my alma mater will try to do something that’s never been done in the school’s 60 years of existence: advance to a state championship football game. Not just win a state crown, but to actually make an appearance in the title game.

            That’s pretty heady stuff for a Western Kentucky community of 16,000 mostly made up of farmers and coal miners. Good country folk, you see.

            From afar, I’ve followed the fortunes of the 2024 Union County High School football team as they’ve marched to an 11-2 record and an appearance in the Class 3A state semifinals. Many could argue tonight’s home game at Baker Field vs. 11-2 Belfry is the biggest in school history. You can view and see the game live via local radio station WMSK’s Facebook page.

            You ask a former football player what’s their one wish and most will answer quickly: One more game.

            Just give me one more game.

            There’s something about football that sticks with you. Something that makes those hot August practices, that cleat drug across your shin, a dislocated finger, all worth it. Maybe it’s that smell of fresh-cut grass, that rhythmic drum beat from the marching band, the feel of the leather football on a crisp fall night.

            It’s pure adrenaline. The Calloway Special. A pancake block and a hole wide enough to drive a tractor through and 45 open yards to the endzone. It’s an airborne opponent reaching for an errant pass and you poised and ready to deliver the hit.

            It’s a feeling many of us will chase long after we’ve played that final snap.

            Any one of us former players would love to be in that locker room tonight. Fingers and feet tapping in anticipation, stomach in a knot. Forty years later and I can still see my own teammates, waiting, ready. Frenchy. Big Tim. Duck. Barry. Word. Burgoo. Danny. PeeLo. Jarrod. Omaha.

            You see. It’s not just yourself you’re playing for. But it’s also for a community, a school, your teammates and all those ghosts of Baker Field who put on the pads and walked the turf you walk tonight.

            Go, Braves, go!

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Editor’s Note: Michael Banks was a member of the 1982, 1983 and 1984 varsity football teams at Union County High School. None of those teams advanced to the state playoffs, but he made some lifelong friends along the way.