(Publisher’s NOTE: Below you will read the continuation/completion of Chapter II (“Edwards Park”) of SPORTS, SIN AND SUBVERSION, a book I wrote ten years ago. In our Tuesday issue this week, we began the said Chapter II with the purpose of paying respect to Denton “Sharkey” Fairweather, who has been living in Belize since December last year.
In the first part of Chapter II, our discussion focused on the spectacular Dunlop football team of the late 1950s. These young men also played junior basketball (Fireball), in which they were captained by Sharkey Fairweather, who was not a player on the Dunlop football team. In the early 1960s, however, some of the Dunlop superstars moved to BEC, where they became Sharkey’s football teammates. In the photo of the 1963 BEC squad which accompanies this column, Sharkey Fairweather is seated on Chico Ellis’ immediate left in the front row.)
Attila was the first Dunlop superstar to leave the scene. I met him in New York City in 1965. Pine, Reds and Chico all played for BEC during the early 1960s. Reds had also migrated to New York by 1965. He had become a preacher in a church. Pine and Chico ended up in Chicago.
Only Mugger remained, and when I wrote that he never played for BEC, the team owned by the sawmill which represented British colonialism in Belize, I was corrected by Michael Finnegan. Finnegan said that Mugger played a single season for the ‘millers. Finnegan claims that Mugger didn’t like to work. Don’t mean nothing to me.
I know that before I left for the States in August of 1965, I saw an unforgettable game at the MCC Garden between Independence and Brodies. Independence included Serapio “Big Mole” Alvarez, John “Gas” Dougal, and Randolph “Cocoa” Young, for sure. Mugger was over the ball. Brodies featured Pops Hamilton, Winston “Fry” Michael, and Frankie Clarke. Brodies had brought in a new goalie from Cayo. I think his name was George Wagner.
The three MCC stands were jammed to capacity. Electricity was in the air. The whole of Yarborough (Independence fans), including Johnny Moss, had come out for this game. I realize, or I believe, looking back, that big money was bet on this game. What I remember vividly was early in the game, a fan next to me (must have been a Brodies man), said, “Mugga no gat no right foot.” Just a couple minutes after that, Mugger entered the eighteen attacking the old Seaview goal. He had this unique style of running with his palms parallel to his legs. Shifting the ball from his left to his right foot, Mugger fired a rocket into the southeastern pigeonhole. The crowd, including yours truly, went crazy. I was too small to say to the fan nearby what went through my mind. The Mugger had spoken for me!
Writing wise, I was supposed to be at Edwards Park still, strictly speaking, but that’s one of the things about sports. It’s a form of obeah or voodoo: you’re transported to another world. And so I flew from Edwards Park to the MCC Grounds, from the swamp to the sea, in the so-called twinkling of an eye.
William Elijah Coffin, also known as “Lloyd Coffin,” loved baseball with a passion. He also admired Fidel Castro, so he almost always wore the military uniform and cap favored by the Cuban guerrillas. Coffin had spent some years in New York City, so his name does not come up in the political tales of the early 1950s. But it appears, according to Nick Pollard, Jr.’s story of the August 1956 power struggle in the People’s United Party, that in that year Coffin was on Richardson’s and Goldson’s side – the losing side. No matter, when I was thrust into public life in 1968/69, William Elijah was a hard core PUP Pricista. Coffin was the chief blue campaigner in the old Collet constituency.
Coffin started baseball at Edwards Park. I don’t think more than two seasons were played originally. The problem was the baseballs. Everytime a ball was fouled out of play, the game had to stop so people could go looking for the ball. In poor British Honduras, we couldn’t afford to be losing expensive baseballs one after the other.
For sure I know a season was played with home plate where it is now (southwestern quadrant) at Rogers Stadium, but there was also a season where home plate was in the northwestern quadrant (near the building and the basketball court).
Coffin’s baseball seasons definitely ended with Hattie in 1961, but baseball may have crashed before that. An American Peace Corps by the name of Gene Adams, who had played minor league baseball in the States, revived the sport in Belize City. Was that ’62 or ’63? Adams was also an outstanding basketball player, and a really nice guy. He also started high school baseball, but that’s another story.
The athletes in British Honduras payed all the sports. Chico Ellis, for instance, not only played football, basketball, and baseball, he was also an outstanding cricketer. In those days of the fifties and sixties, even seventies, before scheduling confusion entered Belizean sports, football started in October, basketball started in February; cricket and baseball were played in the dry weather – April, May, June. It would rain in July and August, so not much sports. The athlete could share himself.
In fact, the stars of the same Dunlop football team I idolized at Edwards Park, started playing basketball. This is a part of sports history in Belize that I am only guessing about. There was a junior basketball team named Fireball which upset the S.J.C. teams on a couple occasions. But I never saw Fireball play. You see, in the middle and later 1950s, St. John’s College still dominated junior basketball. S.J.C. had two teams – the “Externos” were the students from Belize, and the “Internos” were the students from the Central American republics who lived on the Landivar campus in the buildings which became the first S.J.C. Sixth Form buildings in January of 1964. Until the emergence of Fireball, the Externos and Internos would generally run one-two in the junior seasons.
In basketball, I was all Holy Redeemer Credit Union. I am floating away from Edwards Park again, but several of the Dunlop football stars played for basketball teams led by Denton “Sharkey” Fairweather and Sydney “Stretch” Lightburn in the early 1960s. These Dunlop players included Chico, Pine, and Bembe. There was a guy named “Toothpick” Miller who hung out with Dunlop, but couldn’t play football well enough to catch the team. But he got into games with the basketball versions of Dunlop.
HRCU was the great Sonny Meighan, Reynaldo “Mawga Joe” Martinez, Bernard Aguet, and Henry Cleland. I was HRCU to the bone. Funny, eh? I was riding against Dunlop in basketball. But my Dunlop youth were all grown men by then.