BASEBALL TAB: Davis' value of hard is cornerstone of CBA baseball

By Justin Hayes
Published in Sports on March 10, 2017 10:01 AM

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jhayes@newsargus.com

PIKEVILLE -- He's an easy smile these days, loose.

And his thoughts, which range from old-school education to a grimy pair of channel-locks ahead of a recent Saturday drive through his hometown, drift in and out of the baseball lockers he helped build, and that he works to fill now with his players' laundry.

They also tell you much of what you need to know about Charles Davis -- the powder-blue ball coach whose Hall of Fame resume is, quite possibly, the least impressive thing about him.

*

He's the son of Black Creek -- always.

On the surface, it's a parcel of vine-ripe freshness that stretches 0.7 miles in all its glory.

To the north, along Highway 117, a governing-body water tower keeps an eye over the town. On Church Street, the good folks of Lee Woodard Elementary School take care of the rest.

It's the type of place today's most popular country singer-songwriters would like to hail from, but can't -- because Nashville's office of central casting doesn't have property rights in God's country.

"You knew everybody, and everybody knew you," Davis reflected of his formative years there. "The school was the centerpiece of the community, and whatever the teachers said was the gospel... if you messed up, you were gonna get it."

That discipline was also a staple of his home life, where two up-by-the-sun, devout parents raised Davis and his sister to mind proper things. It was far from a monastic upbringing, but certain principles had to be given due observation -- and hard work was atop the list.

"It's what was expected of kids back then," the coach recalls. "You get out of school during the summer, have a couple of weeks off... and then tobacco season started."

He spots a barn in the distance, still standing after all this time, and points. Repeatedly.

"We'd get there at 5:30 in the morning," he said. "And take out these barns of tobacco, just do what you were supposed to do... It would be a hundred degrees in the fields, and guess what -- nobody even said anything about it."

Davis had his share of fun times, too, collecting bottles along the railroad track in exchange for a scoop of Dip ice cream at the Centre Street filling station -- a place where townsfolk often gathered to gossip, gab and go wily about the business of Black Creek.

Homespun wi-fi, if you will.

But all of those times paled in comparison with the games Davis and his army of Lee Woodard pals staged behind a run of live Oaks near the corner of Centre and Cemetery Streets.

Roughly the size of a football field, "the big yard" was a vacant lot that hosted a weekly symposium of grade-school luminaries. Every Sunday after supper and a lightning-quick change of clothes, the gang would gather en masse -- sometimes in excess of 20 heads -- to recreate what they'd read about all week in the daily rag or witnessed on a recent "Game of the Week" telecast.

And come rain, shine, tobacco-barn heat advisory or frost, they played.

*

He's the son of the truth, as seen fit by his daddy.

A small business owner who made a living with his hands, the elder Davis stressed a great many lesson to his only son before passing in 2008 -- rules of a God-fearing playbook to stretch across all seasons.

"He was a man's man, I guess you could say," Davis recalled of his pops. "His sole purpose was to raise his children to the best of his ability and provide for his family... and that's what he did."

Which meant simple things.

There was church in regular doses at First Presbyterian, where his mother still worships, and ball games -- a ton of them, together, by radio or television -- because one Yankee fan per household simply wasn't enough.

Later, when teenage responsiblities became a part of his life, there was the punctuality talk -- one that still carries with Davis, who often quotes his favorite line to a willing listener.

"If you're early," he says with a joke's-on-you smile, "then you're never late."

*

He's the son of responsibilty, end of story.

The carousel tour is over and Davis lumbers alone back to the field house on Aycock's campus. He gladly would've talked more, and probably waxed humbly for a good while about how nothing is perfect and how he's been incredibly lucky all these years in Pikeville -- but his son has a doubleheader in Greenville, and time is ticking.

And by degrees, with each step, he gets smaller. Eventually, he passes the football gate and disappears for good. He'll probably check the laundry again before leaving town.