![]() Both could have been lost long ago, a midday shadow gone in sunlight, but on this day they still linger. As they watch this arcane game, sometimes talking to each other in their mother tongue few fully understand anymore, they reconnect to an older time as well. ![]() ![]() And the people, Doc’s people, sitting in the stands, are quiet, too. Like the game, the drum is from an older time, before Europeans came to this continent, made of hickory and deerskin. Behind the clash of sticks and sounds of competition, there is a drumbeat, thump, thump, thump, a steady cadence in the background, like a memory nearly lost. Neither do his worries, that the game’s traditions are slipping away, even as his people reach out to seize them.ĭoc is silent for a moment. There’s a spirituality to the game and the way it is played, but that doesn’t make it into the spoken word of his play-by-play commentary. He will tell you players carry two sticks instead of one, and use a buckskin ball that should never be touched with a bare hand. He’ll tell you it’s an old game, older, and far more violent than lacrosse. He helps to preserve the game as it once was, explaining its purpose as he watches, demystifying strategy and untangling points of dispute in the game’s history, a history he has both lived and learned. In this tidy but unswept press box, above the concession stand and butter-popcorn air, he’s both an announcer at the games, and a custodian, of sorts, a keeper. He scans rosters for the players’ names as the action unfolds below, squeezed onto the Swiss Army knife playing field designed for soccer, football and track, but sometimes he’s too slow, missing his moment as he slowly inhales and exhales. The Choctaw World Series of Stickball has been played here, at the Choctaw Central High School, as long as he can remember. He speaks in a gentle voice that is never in a hurry, as timeless as the game he has played and watched his whole life. The guy known to everyone as Doc sits upright, almost statuesque, scanning the field, stretches of silence interrupted by his soft, grandfatherly voice. The big man in the creaky office chair hasn’t always been here, but he’s here now and will be here as long as he needs to be.
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