The Glory Days of Warming The Bench
On today’s episode of KFC Radio a discussion was had about the good times of youth and high school sports, particularly the sport within the sport that was sitting on the bench. KFC had a friend on the baseball team who’s stakes with the snacks he brought rose every week. He started small with sunflower seeds and by the end of the season he was chowing down on a filet mignon on the bench.
This is sport dependent because sitting on a cold bench in late fall for soccer or football can get fucked, but I think that for some sports being on the bench was better than playing. On the basketball team, I went into every game knowing that if it wasn’t a cupcake game I was gonna be playing 1 minute MAX. For the other 31 minutes I’d be on the end of the bench bonding with my fellow benchwarmers, shooting the shit (A far better use of my time than trying to break a press) on the most comfortable padded seats in the land.
You had to be smart about it, though. Just because you took pride in being a benchwarmer didn’t mean that the common folk in the crowd would appreciate the art form like you did. A little trick of the trade to get around this was to pop the warmup off in the locker room at half whether you played or not. Nobody really remembers that last minute before half anyway. “Did he get in and we just missed it?”. No. No I didn’t. But all I need is for you to think I did.
Speaking of halftime, that was a benchwarmer’s time to shine. Just sitting in the corner splashing threes and letting the crowd know that you could be out there playing if you really wanted to…you just choose not to.
I think I had one of the most unique benchwarmer journeys in all of high school sports for my basketball days. Warmed the bench the entirety of sophomore year, got sent down to JV as a junior (Captain of the team, no big deal.), and then returned to my throne that was the varsity bench with a force for my senior season. Imagine warming the bench so hard to a level where you're recognized as a waste of space and sent down to JV to free that space up. That's more impressive than 1,000 career points.
Tune into today’s episode of KFC Radio to hear the bench warming talk in addition to an interview with M00bie!