The second version of how E. H. Holmes got to be known, to all and sundry, as 'Bear'.

Daddy loved outdoors stuff; hunting, fishing, golf, baseball, football, camping, stuff like that. He told me a story once about playing baseball as a young man. In this story I think you'll find that he became the center of attention, while he'd just as soon have foregone that dubious pleasure.

Baseball season was almost over, and the Lincoln High team was in a tie with another school for the county title or pennant or whatever it is that they (you know, 'THEY') give to the winner of auspicious events. Why that's important is because Daddy was (according to this story, which was told as much to inspire as to amuse me, a rather inept athlete, if a stronger term would be unkind) the star PITCHER in this particular year of baseball at Lincoln High School.

The season hinged on this final contest, and it had been a particularly hard fought defensive game, and in the bottom of the ninth inning the score was tied, the opposing power hitter and potential winning run was at the plate, but daddy had a slight advantage.

Two outs, nobody on, the count was two and two, and the outfield was deep, because this particular hitter was a threat to homer, and since his team was visiting, a single run would knock Lincoln High off the bubble and into the second place slot, a one-game underdog. And EVERYBODY knows the underdog is, after all is said and done, just a DOG.

Three hundred pairs of eyes captured every move daddy made on the mound. He leaned over and grabbed a handful of red dust, massaged it between his palms and dusted himself off, exuding confidence, mastery and calm.

Now about this time in his youth, daddy was known for slipping off and firing up a Camel from time to time, and like many of his contemporaries, he kept his matches dry and handy. Which is to say, in his right front uniform pocket. You never know when you'll have to light a lady's cigarette, and it's a good practice to be prepared.

Another point of importance is this. Daddy was born in 1913. At this time, age 16 or 17, it would have been, at the latest, 1930. Now, in 1930 the matches were way different from those we are accustomed to using today. In fact, 1930 matches are so dangerous by today's standards, that a company manufacturing them would get slapped with so many OSHA inspections and lawsuits, they'd go out of business before they got started real good. A 1930 match would ignite if the wind blew across it just right. Why, you could strike one with a thumbnail or a sharp stroke across the tight denim covering a thigh or buttock. Keep that in mind.

At the plate, the power-hitter pawed the red Alabama clay in the batter's box impatiently, while looking at daddy with determined purpose. He intended to take this next pitch and hit it clean to Harpersville, and then saunter casually around the bases with the aire of superiority attendant to such vaunted feats of athletic prowess, all the while basking in the inevitable adulation of the well-represented student body of his alma mater.

Daddy reached up and pulled the mitt out from under his right arm. The ball was tucked safely in the pocket of his favorite baseball glove, a glove lovingly oiled and burnished to a rich leather patina by hours of care punctuated by intense and expert handling in competition. He grasped the ball in a split-finger two-seam grip, checked the signals from the catcher, even though he knew it was going to be a fast ball low and inside, because that was the hitter's only real weakness. He was a known sucker for that pitch, and daddy was confident, if not to say assured of the call 'STRIKE THREE, YOU'RE OUT'.

In one swift and fluid motion, daddy shifted his weight to his right side, raised his left foot, his arm a spring compressed to the uttermost extent, ready to unleash a powerful pitch the batter wouldn't even SEE, much less HIT. That was the plan. Except, of course, for the release of the ball, which was slightly amiss. It was a fast pitch. It was a low pitch. It was an OUTSIDE pitch. Oh hell.

Things sort of seemed to go into slow motion, kind of like the Baywatch girls running to rescue a drowning man. The ball slid casually up to the plate, about 18 inches off the ground and a tad on the far side from the batter, whose bat was a moment early getting down into its power zone, low and away.

The ball met the bat slightly below the center of mass and consequently, instead of taking off in a one 'G' arc to downtown Harpersville, raced back to the pitcher's mound in a bee-line for daddy's box of matches, conveniently suspended on his right thigh in the pocket of his uniform pants.

The ball hit the box of matches dead-center, and they, being 1930's matches and unaccustomed to such harsh treatment, immediately obliged by bursting into flame. This got daddy's immediate attention. And, as it worked out, everyone else was suddenly aware of the fact that daddy was rather frantically disrobing on the mound.

Even the stunned batter, who had taken maybe three strides toward first base, paused and by that time the pants had come off, more or less completely.

No one knows the outcome of the game. It's not recorded.

What is certain, however, is that daddy earned the nickname 'BARE', that fateful day.

But daddy, never a Nobel Prize winning speller, cleverly transposed the letters into an arrangement more befitting his own self-assessment. Hence 'BEAR'.