My Friend Tommy Wall

A long time ago, I had a friend named Tommy Wall.

In Jack Marshall's photograph, above, taken in the summer of 1963, my friend Tommy Wall is standing confidently in the back row, second from the left, with his hat cocked just so. Tommy Marshall is the one just in front of him, leaning in to hold the bat with my right hand. We were playing for our first baseball team, in the South Shreveport YMCA. I recall we chose the name "Tigers" for our team that long-ago season. We were 9 years old.

Tommy Wall lived on the same street as I did, just a couple of blocks away. Tommy was his family's only son; he had 5 sisters. From kindergarten through eighth grade, we played together on all the same sports teams. Usually we played for teams sponsored by St. Joseph's Catholic Church. We played football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball in the spring and summer. When we were kids, there was a perfect symmetry to the seasons of sport, because those three were the only pursuits available to us. There was no such thing as soccer or lacrosse or any of the other more exotic sports that kids play today.

In our corner of Shreveport, Tommy Wall almost always was the best athlete on our teams. And even when he was challenged for athletic superiority -- which was rare -- Tommy Wall was our undisputed leader. It was never questioned. He just led us, and we followed.

Chances are you knew someone like Tommy Wall.

Have you ever seen the Disney movie, "The Sandlot"? It's about a group of boys who spend an early 1960s summer playing baseball together. Tommy Wall reminds me of the Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez character in that movie, the kid who is the fastest and best athlete on the team, and also the undisputed leader of the group.

At St. Joe's, whenever the nuns let us troop outside for recess, Tommy Wall was the kid who was organizing a game of some sort. Choosing up sides and playing whatever sport was in season.

All these years later, the most amazing thing I remember about Tommy is not how well he played the games of our youth. Instead I remember him most for a certain innate skill he had from the earliest age of being that game organizer, and more importantly, the one who made sure everyone was included, and that the teams were fair.

Tommy Wall was the one who switched teams to even up the competition. Or who played catcher for both teams when no one else wanted the job. Or who coaxed the shy or unsure kid from the sidelines into the game.

I was that kid on the sidelines once. Though never shy (ask my family and friends about that), I never was a very confident athlete. I played on all the teams, and I had a great time with sports, but I just didn't feel I had the same skills as many of the other kids.

That didn't matter to Tommy Wall.

He wanted everyone to play, and in a prescience beyond his years, I believe he understood that we were better as a team than he ever could be as an individual player.

The most special thing that Tommy Wall ever did for me happened at recess one day at St. Joseph's, during our third grade year. We were playing baseball, and Tommy was the catcher for both teams. Since it wasn't an official practice there was no real equipment, just a baseball and a bat someone had brought from home. And no protective gear for the catcher.

When it was my turn to bat, a kid named Danny Brooks was pitching. Danny wound up and threw a fast, hard pitch, right down the middle. I closed my eyes, took a mighty swing and hit a foul tip that changed the ball's course just enough so that Tommy Wall was not able to catch it in his glove. Instead, the ball plunked loudly into his ribs, and he rolled onto the ground in obvious pain.

Everyone gathered around, waiting to see how badly he was hurt, what he would say, what he would do. I was in the crowd, half expecting him to come up ready for a fight. After all, I had injured the great Tommy Wall! Slowly he rolled over, grimacing from the pain. And then he said words I'll never forget: "That's all right, a lot of batters do that." The best athlete in the school had just saved my life, I thought, and on top of that, he had called me a "batter." On that day, Tommy Wall set for me an example of leadership and fairness among peers that never would be surpassed. I felt I owed him a debt I never repaid.

Throughout our elementary years, our St. Joe's teams won and lost games, but due to the skill of Tommy Wall and several other good young athletes, we won far more than we lost.

In the middle picture above, Jack Marshall's camera caught Tommy Wall scoring a run in a seventh-grade baseball game in 1967. Immediately below is our 6th grade football team, in November 1965. Tommy Wall is in the front row, No. 18, our quarterback. The picture at the bottom of this post is our 5th grade basketball team, celebrating one of several city championships. If you don't recognize him by now, Tommy is 3rd from the right in the front, smiling and reaching out to touch our plaque.

After St. Joseph's, I went on to Jesuit High School, and Tommy Wall went to a different high school. Somewhere over the next few years, we lost touch as we finished high school and enrolled in college.

For my freshman year in college, I lived at home and went to Centenary College, where Jack Marshall received his education. Tommy, like so many other young Shreveporters, headed down to Baton Rouge for college at LSU. One weekend during the fall of that 1972 freshman year, on an infamously treacherous road between Shreveport and Baton Rouge, Tommy Wall was tragically killed in an automobile accident. I never got a chance to thank him for how he treated me on that 3rd grade playground.

Because of the memories inspired by Jack Marshall's photographs of our glory days at St. Joseph's, today my sister Mary and I went for a run on a chilly, breezy morning in Shreveport. Our route took us to Forest Park Cemetery, where we found the shaded gravesite of a boy who died too young, just 18 years old, on September 14, 1972. We wiped away the fallen leaves from the small marker, and when I saw the name Thomas Charles Wall, Jr. etched in the cold, hard stone, it brought tears to my eyes. Tears I never shed for a friend to whom I never said goodbye.

So today, finally, I stood quietly for a moment and said goodbye to my boyhood friend Tommy Wall. And, most importantly, I whispered a silent prayer of simple thanks, remembering a wonderful act of genuine sportsmanship bestowed upon me nearly 50 years ago by a young athlete and forever friend. And for which, to this day, I remain grateful.

--Tom Marshall, New York City

Written while visiting Shreveport