Dust Off the Old Hat

By Darrielle Williams

I wish I had some compelling story about how sports changed my life. How I won a championship game against the best team in the league for a home team that never even thought they would make it to the championships. 10 years ago I sat on the bench the whole season for the town’s baseball team, the Fire Ants. Bottom of the ninth, “Billy the Kid”, the best batter on the team, gets injured…what a name for a girl. 2 batters have fouled out, and the bases are loaded. It’s all up to me now. I barely batted in practice let alone at a game. I step up to the plate, palms sweaty. I’m gripping the bat so tight, my fingers are getting numb. We can’t have another incident of flying bats into the infield happen again. I swing too late…foul. I swing too high…foul. I take a deep breath remembering all I was taught, close my eyes and swing. Going, going, gone! I won the game that day for my team, and that is the moment sports truly changed my life.

Like I said, I certainly wish I had a phenomenal story like that to tell. The truth is my love of sports came through my father. And it all started with the Knicks.

My father, raised in New York, has always been a huge Knicks fan. Between me, my mother, and my sister, he was the only man in a house of 3 girls, none of which were into watching sports. I liked to play sports but never watched them on television much. Mostly, I was into arts and crafts, sewing, and anything creative. One night, feeling a little crafty, I decided to make my dad a good luck hat. I figured he could watch it during his Knicks games and show even more team spirit. First I took some pumpkin orange colored fabric, the closest color I could find to the Knicks’, and sewed two large triangular pieces together. The hat looked like a long elf hat or Christmas hat that draped to one side. I could have at least decorated a baseball style cap, but no, this thing was hideous! I sat for hours hot gluing all kinds of buttons, bottle caps, pins, broken costume jewelry, and trinkets all over the hat. What do you expect from an 8 year old? When I showed it to my father and told him I made a good luck hat for his team, he was so pleased. Do you know my father really wore it? As embarrassing as it was when his friends came over to watch the game with him, he wore it anyway. It wasn’t until about two years later when basketball season was starting up again, that I saw him go in his closet, dust off the old hat, and perch it on his head. It was then that I noticed how much the little things that I thought were insignificant meant so much to him. And I decided that anything he loved, I would love too. I made it a point to watch the game with him that night, and every game there after. Though by now, all the trinkets have fallen off of the hat, and no one knows where it is, watching basketball with my father has become tradition. My interests have expanded to other sports over time, but I’ll never forget how watching basketball with my dada made me feel. Go Knicks!