30 Life Lessons - Streetball and Mailboxes

Douglas McCall
Oct 6, 2024
4 min read

There were few sports I enjoyed growing up. Sure, I would occasionally go out on the driveway and attempt to put the basketball through the hoop. I have always argued that marching band counts as a sport or, at the very least, a strenuous activity. Anyone who has spent all day in the hot summer marching on blacktop knows how grueling and physically demanding that can be.

However, that was it, except for streetball. From late elementary until early high school, I would spend many days during the summer over on Crego Street. When I was young, I was fortunate that every family in the four-block region of my childhood home got pregnant at least once, sometime between 1974 and 1978. There were many children my age, so we could usually field not one but two street ball teams. I don’t know if it was the allure of playing in the street or worrying about whose house we might hit, but we would play streetball for hours. This was also the time I got closest to being an athlete, for I also would play summer baseball on a real team. There was a benefit to being a lefty: we were often picked to play first base or pitcher. But even though I never played baseball beyond middle school, we always played stickball.

It was a day during the fall of my eighth or ninth-grade year, and we were playing streetball. I don’t remember who was a bat, but if you weren’t at bat or on base, you were fielding. The ball was hit, and it was a pop fly. I got my glove and eye on the ball and started running. What I didn’t do was look where I was running. After a few moments, I was no longer running and did not have the ball, but I stopped. I don’t remember what happened to stop me. Once I got my bearings, I saw it in front of me, a mailbox. I had run face-first into a mailbox. Surprisingly, nothing hurt. I would later learn that nothing hurt because I was in shock.

The game stopped, and my friends looked at me. I stood there, and everyone was staring at me. Someone uttered, “Doug…your lip…” Apparently, since I still didn’t feel anything, I was bleeding profusely from my lip. I had evidently caught the handle of the mailbox and split my lip (I would later need many stitches to correct the injury, and you can still see it today, some 35 years later). The decision was made that I should walk home and tell my mom. So, my friends escorted me most of the way back to my house, and as I walked in the door, I said, “Mom, I had a little accident while playing ball.” My mother, always very calm in emergencies (which comes from raising three boys by yourself, I guess), handled the situation and gave me the care I needed. Other than some temporary damage to my pride and a week of no limited playing in marching band (although I did figure out how to lay trumpet with one side of my mouth only), my run-in with a mailbox had no lasting physical effects.

Looking back on the streetball incident, there are a couple of valuable lessons from the whole ordeal.

Look where you are going. I was so hyper-focused on getting the ball in my glove that I neglected to stay aware of my surroundings. Yes, it is important to focus on goals, but not at the expense of everything else around you. Ultimately, I did not catch the ball despite my laser focus on seeing it. My lack of awareness of other factors prevented me from attaining the one goal I was so focused on.

Stay calm. While my mother was very calm when I arrived home, so was everyone who witnessed the accident. It would have been just as easy for all my friends to freak out as I stood in the street, bleeding from my lip. However, they didn’t panic. Most of them stayed with me. One person ran into their house and got a towel with an ice cube in it, and they calmly suggested I go home and escorted me. Some might argue they should have had me sit down and gone and gotten my mother, but no matter. Everyone was calm through the entire event. That calmness encouraged me not to lose it as I dealt with the situation. In most situations, staying calm and even-keeled is essential. Even in the most dire of situations, having a cool head will usually help the situation more than anything. Assess the problem, develop a plan, and execute it.

Even when you have a setback, keep playing the game. That was a reasonably traumatic experience. It would have been easy not to play streetball again. Who wouldn’t be a little afraid of running into a mailbox again? However, the following weekend, I was back on the street, stitches and all, playing streetball with everyone. However, I assure you that I was much more aware of the location of mailboxes! The point is that just because you have a challenge or a setback doesn’t mean you have to stop playing the game. Learn from your mistakes, and keep playing.

I learned many valuable skills running up and down the “baseball diamond” on Crego Street. When I am back home and drive down Crego, I still smile at that mailbox, or at least where I remember the mailbox was located. The families have changed for the most part, and I don’t see kids playing streetball anymore, but if I pause, I can still hear us all playing.

Be well!