This story was too good not to tell. The year is 2002, the team is Edmond Santa Fe, the time is a Saturday afternoon. We are due to go to Stillwater for the finals of a tournament against the Jenks Trojans. The late morning is comprised of our regular pregame routine of batting practice and pregame preparation before we load up and make the hour long trek to Stillwater. We load up on the bus and begin our journey North with coach Burleson at the wheel.
Here’s the layout, the players are all seated in their normal spots, coach Burleson is driving, I’m sitting directly behind him, coach Cobble is standing in the stair well with one leg up on a step like Captain Morgan, and coach Bryan Colley is sitting directly across the aisle from me with headphones on with his head down. As we pull out on Edmond road and head East, coach Burleson’s attention is caught by a moth fluttering in the driver’s side window. He attempts to shew it away a few times but his efforts are in vain. Seeing his struggles, I decide to raise up and help him try and eradicate the hinderance. So now, Burly and myself are opening and closing the window and swatting at the flying creature. It’s at this point coach Cobble takes interest and steps up to the top step to lean in and see what’s going on, meanwhile coach Colley has no idea what’s going on due to his head being down and listening to his music. This scenario played out for what seemed minutes but in actual time it had to be seconds.
Unbeknownst that while we were trying to exterminate this moth, no one was paying attention to where we were going on the road. Thankfully, we missed a telephone pole but drove straight into the curb of a driveway of a strip center of businesses. We hit that curb doing about 40mph and those that saw the video from the bus say that everyone flew up out of their seats in terms of feet. I can still remember the look on Burly’s face in that mirror and the panic as he grabbed the wheel. Of course there was immediate shock and awe from all of us swatting at the moth, coach Burleson quickly regains control of the bus and we make an immediate right turn and pull the bus up behind the strip center where we park. We quickly exit the bus to survey potential damages. As we are walking around the bus, we can here a loud hissing noise and soon come to realize that the outside rear wheel had popped and the wheel itself was bent. The air was flying out of that tire like it stole something. Meanwhile, we have players hanging out windows in amazement with their mouths wide open and we also had players, Kody Kaiser being one of them, that never missed a beat playing the game catch phrase.
Coach Cobble being the quick thinker he was says “quick, back on the bus and back to the bus barn.” The bus barn was about a half mile away. During our short trip back to the barn, we figured we better come up with something better than a moth we were concerned with while driving so we decided a pesky wasp was to be the culprit of the incident. We manage to get the bus back to the barn and park it. Coach Cobble finds the on duty maintenance guy and tells him that we just had an encounter with wasps on the bus which caused us to hit a curb and blow the tire. The maintenance guy replies “oh yes, we’ve been having trouble with them building nests on the busses.” We were beyond relieved when we heard those words. He proceeded to to get us a new bus and we were back on the road to Stillwater where we would claim a tournament championship that evening. WHEW!!
I think it took the entire trip to get ourselves collected to coach that game. We have laughed at that story for years and it continues to get told to this day.
Burchy and Big Guy 