COLUMN: Orangeburg’s ‘biggest baseball fan’

Orangeburg attorney Harry Bryant, who died June 4, did not make frequent contact, but when he did, it was usually about baseball. You see, if there was, is or will be a bigger baseball fan than Harry, he or she has not been among those reaching out. His request: Include the box score from every Major League Baseball game in the pages of The Times and Democrat, every day.

Learning of such a request by Harry does not surprise his wife, Bettis, and son, Jack.

“He has loved baseball since he was a tot,” Bettis said, noting that Harry played pickup games in his Orangeburg neighborhood as a 5-year-old, then went on to play baseball at levels from Little League to American Legion.

An Orangeburg native and South Carolina Newspaper Hall of Fame member, the late Doug Donehue began his newspaper career in 1948 as sports editor of The T&D. When he moved on to Charleston as sports editor of the Charleston Evening Post and the News and Courier, Donehue did not forget Orangeburg. He wrote about Harry and his older brother Tom (Orangeburg attorney) in a column surrounding the district Pony League Tournament being held in Charleston when Harry, a pitcher, was “one of the key men” on the Orangeburg team.

“There was hardly ever a sports event of any kind in Orangeburg to which T.B. Bryant (Tom and Harry’s father) didn’t take those two boys,” Donehue wrote.

“At that time, Tom and Harry were exceptionally keen on baseball. The Orangeburg Braves were going strong and the semi-pro Palmetto League was in full bloom. Orangeburg was a consistent league leader and the Bryant boys knew every player on the team.”

When Donehue wrote, Tom was already a student at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. The focus was on Harry.

“I was genuinely impressed by the way Harry worked against East Cooper. He has a fine right handed delivery and combines good speed with a better than average curve ball for a Pony Leaguer. He also handles himself well defensively. And good-fielding catchers are hard to come by these days …”

Donehue quoted legendary Orangeburg recreation director Don Yongue: “Harry is developing into one of the finest athletes in Orangeburg.”

The love of baseball didn’t stop with local games and players.

Again quoting Donehue’s column: Tom and Harry “were ardent fans of the major league teams. They knew practically every player’s first name if he was with a team in the first division. And I’ve actually heard those two youngsters discuss strategy in a way that would have put most bleacher wolves to shame.”

Harry’s wife Bettis picks up the story.

“His introduction to Major League Baseball occurred at an early age listening to the Detroit Tigers on radio.” Harry and Tom kept after their father about going to see the Tigers. Dad listened and lined up a trip in 1950 to Detroit to see the Tigers play the New York Yankees.

“Nothing was more special to him than when they turned the corner and he saw the stadium,” said Bettis, who understood Harry’s love of baseball.

They dated in high school before becoming engaged while Harry was a law student at the University of South Carolina. In planning a honeymoon, “he thought it would be a good idea to see the Washington Senators in Washington.” So they did. The honeymoon game featured the Senators (today’s Texas Rangers) vs. the Minnesota Twins.

The Milwaukee Braves’ move to Atlanta in 1966 opened a new chapter.

“We made the trip to the Atlanta stadium. We made the trip and came back in the same day. Crazy. We decided we could never do that again.”

“Altogether he has seen at least 12 stadiums,” Bettis said. “Anywhere we would go on a trip, he would go see” the baseball stadium: San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, Texas and Atlanta.

Candlestick Park in San Francisco was the coldest, she said. ““We were not prepared for the cold.”

Bettis also recalls a trip to Florida in 1967 when Harry was in law school. Sparky Anderson, later to be famous as manager of Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine,” was coaching with St. Louis. Anderson had his signature silver hair as far back as then, she said.

Harry also took trips with longtime friends to games in the Northeast, including a visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. The trip included five games in five days.

Son Jack, an Orangeburg attorney, says Harry was instrumental to his baseball life.

He was coached by his father, who did stints as a coach with then-Dixie Youth Baseball and junior varsity at today’s Orangeburg Prep.

“He made me the catcher for whatever reason,” Jack said. “He started it all,” with Jack going on to play catcher at Wofford.

“I had a lot of great coaches along the way, but I wouldn’t have been the baseball player I was without him,” Jack said.

Harry attended all but two of Jack’s college games his senior year, traveling to Wofford and also going on the road.

At one game in Spartanburg, pro scout Jimmy Fairey (also from Orangeburg) was in attendance and sitting with longtime friend Harry. Jack is quick to say Fairey was not there scouting him.

But the game against Presbyterian produced some surprises.

“I was more of a defensive player than a hitter. I had never hit a home run over the fence in any league. I hit a legitimate home run.” AND, in the same game, he hit a second ball over the fence.

Jack said Harry told Fairey: “Jimmy, you can go ahead and call Dukes-Harley (funeral home), I’ve seen enough.”

“That was 33 years ago. My number was 33,” Jack said.

Jack and Harry also had their MLB experiences.

They went to the World Series in Atlanta in 1991 when the surprising Braves met the Twins.

“He did not spend a lot of money,” Jack said of his father on baseball trips. But this was different.

“World Series merchandise was everywhere,” Jack said, who was shocked when his father told him, “Get whatever you want.”

The offer was a first, “a huge deal,” Jack said. “I still have some of the stuff.”

In the early ‘90s, Harry and Jack drove to Cincinnati to see the Braves face the Reds, whose lineup included Orangeburg native Herm Winningham.

“Our primary reason to go was to see Winningham and the Braves. The game was tied in bottom of the 9th. Bases loaded. Two outs. Winingham came up and struck out” and the game went to extra innings.

“Dad worried about getting home, so we left with the game still going on. In the 11th with the same situation, Herm came up and got a hit and won the game. We missed it. We used to laugh about it a lot.”

Harry was loyal to the Braves and baseball to the end, Jack said. And he didn’t lose any of his ability to strategize and get inside the game.

“We would be watching baseball and he would say, ‘Most people don’t know the subtleties.'”

BTW: My answer to Harry about box scores was that, even as far back as the ‘80s and ‘90s when there were many more printed pages of the newspaper than today, using so much space for box scores was not serving the sports audience well as doing so would eliminate sports stories. He was not satisfied with the answer but seemed to understand.

To this day, I cannot look at a baseball box score without thinking of Harry Bryant – who makes a 45-year newspaper editor’s list of memories as “biggest baseball fan.”