One Shot at Forever (14 page)

His dad had half a mind to do some marching in of his own, as did Dwight Glan. Ernie Miller was ready to bypass the diplomacy and move straight to the ass-kicking. It was Dick Snitker, Brian's father, who prevailed upon them to take a more measured approach. Unlike some of the others, he had a cordial relationship with McClard. Tall and solid, with a wide chin and thinning brown hair, Dick was well liked and universally respected in Macon. He'd worked for twenty years as Illinois state manager for Pabst before becoming a distributor for Jim Beam, a position that made him quite popular around town and earned Sweet's “everlasting respect.”

A personable, welcoming man, Snitker was also close with Britton, who was the one who had persuaded Snitker to run for the school board the previous fall. Now, in his first term as a board member and secretary, Snitker took his responsibility to the community seriously. And in this case, he felt it important to go through the proper channels. He suggested to the parents that he take down their feelings, and those of the boys, and present them to the board.

Replacing a coach as beloved as Lynn Sweet was no easy feat, and the closer it got to the season, the more second thoughts Schley had. Schley came from a conservative background, and when he looked at Sweet, with the hair and the peace signs, he at first saw someone who “looked like he was un-American or unpatriotic.” That Sweet had been fired as baseball coach didn't exactly surprise Schley.

As an assistant during the football season, however, Schley had gotten to know many of the baseball players, and the more he talked to them, the more he wondered about Sweet. The kids spoke of the man so highly, and trusted him so completely, that Schley figured the strange-looking coach must be doing something right. For his part, Schley's instincts ran closer to Burns—drop the hammer, instill discipline—and he feared that approach would backfire on a team built by Sweet.

Then there were the baseball parents. They were nice enough to Schley, and many knew him from football, but it was obvious they wanted Sweet as their coach. This put Schley in a tough spot.

Besides, he was worn out. Between teaching and coaching junior high basketball, he was never home. He wanted to spend more time with his new wife, to be home on time for dinner once in a while. Two weeks before the season, he approached Britton in private and told him he'd be fine not coaching baseball.

A few nights later, the Sweets heard a knock on the door of their trailer. Unaccustomed to visitors so late, they ignored it at first. But the knocking persisted.

Finally, Lynn turned down the stereo, the one they'd bought on Jack Stringer's credit at Goldblatt's, and walked over to the door of the trailer and peeked out. There on his steps, breath visible in the February night air, stood Bob Glass, the board president.

“Hi, Lynn, I'd like to talk to you about something,” Glass said.

Sweet invited him in. With his square head, bristly flattop, and wide jaw, Glass gave the impression of a man who should have a whistle in his mouth at all times, and indeed he'd once led the Macon High basketball team to the regionals. Wearing a suit and tie and carrying a clipboard, he looked comically out of place in a trailer that was only a lava lamp away from a college dorm room.

Jeanne offered Glass a cup of coffee and the three of them sat around the small kitchen table. Sweet figured Glass could only be there for one of two reasons: to offer him back the baseball job or fire him once and for all.

Glass wasn't in any hurry to tip his hand, though. Slowly, methodically, he began to interview Sweet. He asked about not returning the uniforms, about team protocol, about meeting school standards, and about Sweet's idea of a proper educational culture.

Sweet considered being contrarian and challenging Glass. Had it been McClard in his living room, he might have. Instead, he was cordial and diplomatic. Sweet said that he felt bad about the uniforms, and that he understood that the boys looked up to him and it probably wasn't the best thing in the world for the players to see their baseball coach rebelling against the school. After forty-five minutes, Glass rose, shook Sweet's hand, and left.

Watching Glass walk out into the night, Sweet tried to read the man but failed. For the life of him, he couldn't figure out if this meant he would be coaching again.

A week passed and still nothing. The first baseball practice was two days away. Dennis Schley started drawing up a roster. Some of the seniors resigned themselves to yet another new coach.

And then, at 7:30
P.M
. on the evening of Monday, March 1, a day before the first practice, the school board convened for another special meeting. After roll call, Dick Snitker stood up. He looked around the table. As usual, all the board members were there, but one man was curiously absent. For reasons Sweet would learn in time, Bill McClard was not in attendance.

Not given to digressions, Snitker likely got right to the point. They'd all heard Bob Glass' report. They knew what the parents thought and they knew what the kids wanted. They knew that while the Ironmen had a chance to be good, there was plenty of work to be done, work Dennis Schley wasn't qualified for, no matter how nice a guy he was. In the end, it came down to this: Who were they really punishing by firing Sweet—the coach or the players?

Then Snitker moved that Lynn Sweet be reinstated as the Macon High baseball coach.

For the motion to go to vote, it required a second. Snitker looked around the room. Finally, a hand went up. It was Neal Lentz, whose daughter Terri had taken Sweet's English class when she was Macon High valedictorian in 1969.

As the board readied to vote, the men had to weigh a number of factors. There were the words of Snitker and the feelings of the parents and players, but there was also Sweet's track record and reputation, as well as the lingering bad feelings from the previous fall. In essence, what the board needed to decide was whether Sweet had changed. For years, he had been viewed as a renegade, someone who lived
in
Macon but was not
of
Macon. Now, whether the men liked his methods or not, it was clear Sweet was having a positive effect on their children in both the classroom and on the field.

Perhaps the vote would have gone differently had McClard been there. Perhaps not. As it was, based on the evidence and the presentation of Snitker, the men were united. As was recorded in the official school board minutes: “Upon roll call it was found that all members voted ‘Yea' and no member voted ‘nay.' The motion carried.”

Sweet doesn't remember how he found out. Maybe it was Bob Shartzer who called, or Dwight Glan who stopped by, ready to start discussing lineups, or perhaps Dick Snitker with a bottle of Jim Beam. He does remember the feeling, though. Ever since he'd lost the coaching job, Sweet had been perplexed as to why he was so damn attached to a team no one else wanted to coach. Now he understood that his bond with the Ironmen went far beyond baseball.

Given another shot, he intended to further push the boundaries of what was acceptable in coaching. No doubt he'd piss off plenty of people but, as Sweet saw it, that merely meant what he was doing was working. Yes, he had big plans for this team.

Even so, not even Sweet could have imagined what the next season would hold.

(From left to right)
John Heneberry, David Wells, Dale Otta, and Sam Trusner
cheer on their teammates during Macon's 1971 playoff run
.

Courtesy of Dale Otta

The spring of 1971 dawned as a dark, messy time in America. The economy faltered as unemployment rose and inflation kept pace. Abroad, U.S. troops continued to die in Vietnam while at home protests intensified. In March, behind the rallying cry of “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote,” the Twenty-sixth Amendment was introduced, allowing anyone over the age of eighteen to vote.

Around the country, alternative voices arose: A new radio venture going by the acronym NPR took to the air, and an environmental group called Greenpeace was founded. In June, the
New York Times
published a story called “Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces Three Decades of Growing U.S. Involvement,” the first in a series that would change the course of American history.

In central Illinois, the national pessimism was compounded by local anxieties. Here in farming country, where thirteen-year-olds routinely drove tractor loads of grain to be processed, the entire community was in some way dependent upon any given year's crop. Weather was not a matter of small talk but rather of grave importance. Most everyone worried about it, and with good reason. If local farmers suffered a down season they spent less money, which meant local businesses suffered, which in turn meant tax collection faltered.

In the spring of 1971, what kept farmers up at night was a sweet corn disease called southern corn leaf blight. It arrived on the air, blown all the way from Florida and Georgia, and transformed corn stalks into ghostly apparitions, the leaves turning white, then curling up as the plant died. A year earlier, southern blight had reduced corn production in Illinois by an estimated 25 percent, and there was worry that the damage would only intensify Adding to concerns, the spring of 1970 had been a relatively dry one. Those same clear March days that allowed Sweet and the boys to practice in 1970 had also set back the farming schedule. No one wanted to imagine what another down year of crops would mean.

So instead, in towns like Macon people searched for reasons for optimism. Or, better yet, to celebrate.

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