Big Randy Melton was just getting some off-season conditioning in on Tiger Drive when he was gobbled up by a school bus. Up the hill, all we baseball players could do was watch as the whole episode went down.

Randy Melton was a football player at my high school alma mater. He didn’t play a spring sport, so he engaged in off-season weightlifting and conditioning in preparation for football season on spring afternoons. The other baseball players and I would often see Randy faithfully running laps around the school driveway that encircled the football field.

The baseball field sat on a hill, so we could find plenty of diversions from the grind of practice. Coach Charlie Butts would often call us back to attention from watching traffic passing on the street beside the field or gazing at birds or planes fl...

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