There were times when I chose to be the lazy kid and wouldn’t bother. And there were other times when I decided I really wanted something, so I’d grab the lawn mower and head down the street, knocking on doors.
When I was in third grade, my parents moved us to the Dallas area. Dad sold his sporting goods business and wound up landing a good job with American Airlines. It was a real corporate kind of a job, but my dad still managed to put his family first. He’d be home around five-thirty every night, and right after dinner he’d be out in the driveway shooting hoops with my sister, who was into basketball. Sometimes they’d play until nine or ten o’clock at night.
When I got a little older, I really took to baseball, and Dad did the same thing with me. Every night and every weekend, he’d be out there pitching balls to me and teaching me to field grounders.
The thing is, I started to get good at it. Dad got a bit of a gleam in his eye, thinking I might be some kind of a star player. I loved seeing him get so excited about it, and that made me try even harder.
For my dad, achieving goals was basically a mathematical equation: “If you hit a hundred balls a day and you work out this many hours, this many times a week, then this is what happens and you win state championships.”
I followed his advice and, lo and behold, A plus B really did equal C for me. If I did this, then I achieved that. I started to become the star player he envisioned. I received all sorts of accolades, and everybody thought I was the greatest thing ever.
In some ways it was easy. It was just this mathematical thing. It would help keep me on the straight and narrow as I got into high school too. When a buddy was going off to a party, I could easily walk away by saying, “Man, I’d love to go and have a few beers—I’m not gonna lie to you. But jeez, I gotta go take a hundred ground balls. If I don’t take a hundred ground balls every day, then I don’t make the state tournament, and then I don’t get a scholarship to go play ball in college.”
Being a star athlete in high school sort of automatically buys you a lot of friends and attention. I was always the guy who had funny stories to tell, so when I walked into the cafeteria at Grapevine High School, everybody was calling me to come over to their table and eat with them. I just led a charmed life.
But somehow, instead of taking that and just running with it like some kids do, I never let go of that spirit I had when I was little—that desire to lift people up along with me and help them out if I could. I made friends with a kid who had Down syndrome, grabbing him to come play football with us on a Saturday afternoon. One of my friends was an Asian boy who’d been adopted from Vietnam. I just always loved getting to know people, all kinds, even if they weren’t athletes or in the “popular” crowd.
Some of these friends of mine lived in the same neighborhood I did, so naturally we all became close. It was easy to make friends with the kids who lived close by, but I didn’t forget about them in the cafeteria or in the hallway just because things were “different” at school. It was just never like that for me. I didn’t like being put in a certain box, and I didn’t appreciate people doing that to my friends either.
Being a popular guy in school actually had its downside. Sometimes I just wanted a day off. I felt a lot of pressure to show up to friends’ parties, and people were let down when I didn’t make it or even if I left early. It was actually a lot to live up to.
He’s not a bragger, so he won’t say these things if I don’t speak up here, but Chip was the football captain at the same time he was playing scholarship-worthy baseball in high school. He was also voted “Most Likely to Succeed,” “Most Likely to Be the Next President”—whatever you think a charmed-life kid would have, he had it.
I did. That’s true. But the pressure of being Mr. Perfect, Mr. All-American, Mr. Most-Liked, and Mr. Well-Dressed was a lot to take, especially since my grades weren’t very good. I became sort of addicted to the applause and praise, even from my parents, and I just felt awful anytime I let anybody down. Honestly, when I didn’t play so well in a game and I saw the disappointment on my dad’s face, it was hard. He had such high hopes for me, and I wanted to live up to them.
In some ways it’s as if I was the Zack Morris character in that teen series Saved by the Bell. I was that guy. And our school was that wholesome in a lot of ways too. When we got in trouble, it was for TP’ing the vice principal’s house or something. It was all “Come on, guys; let’s win a state championship” or “Do the right thing.”
There were nearly seven hundred people in my graduating class, but there was very little in terms of drugs, at least as far as I was aware. There was plenty of alcohol around, but I was scared to death of getting caught, so I pretty much steered clear. I seemed to have this innate ability to do the right thing and somehow make it look cool simultaneously.
Then I wound up playing baseball at North Lake Junior College, and going to that school was just a complete culture shock. A lot of the kids who went to that school came from very different backgrounds and seemed to have very different worldviews. I was used to being around disciplined athletes who dedicated themselves to being the best they could be on and off the field. But at North Lake some of the best athletes on the team were the rowdiest dudes. Athletes who were much better than I was were doing all sorts of things they shouldn’t have been doing at the parties we went to.
Interestingly enough, girls hung around that team almost like groupies, and I hadn’t expected that kind of thing at a junior college. It was eye-opening. I felt like I was an innocent Leave it to Beaver character from the 1950s watching this wild spectacle from the sidelines. I went on dates with pretty girls, and I hung out at the parties, but I just never got into the whole scene. I never fit in. That was a weird position to be in after feeling like the king of Grapevine High.
I did manage to make friends with a couple of guys who were more like me, and those friendships helped get me through that first year, but my heart just wasn’t there. I got this little notebook and started journaling, writing songs, and sketching out business plans in it. I’d spend hours in my apartment writing down my thoughts and ideas in that thing. I’d never done that before, but it was strangely therapeutic. I wish I could actually find that notebook. I would love for Jo to see it since that’s so fitting in her personality.
That was the only season in my life when I ever tried to do any of those artsy-type things. I was just trying to express something that needed to come out, I suppose. And I’m sure it was one way of dealing with my loneliness.
I wanted out of that junior college. And luckily enough, a recruiter for Baylor happened to be in the stands when I made one of the greatest plays of my entire baseball career. I was playing second base, and I made this diving grab on a shot hit between first and second base. Then somehow I twisted around as I slid through the dirt to make a monster throw and get the runner out at first.
That recruiter offered to get me into Baylor and to make sure I would have a spot in the athletic dorm. I honestly couldn’t even tell you if they covered my books, because I didn’t care. I took it. I was ready to leave North Lake and start fresh.
As it turned out, I loved Baylor. I loved being around all those rich kids, even if I was nothing like them. I loved the girls. I loved the campus. I wasn’t a very good student, and I struggled to pass every semester. But I did fall in love with the city of Waco and started to see myself staying in that town pretty much forever, especially once I started mowing lawns.