Pete Adkins is the greatest football coach you’ve never heard of. When I tried to tell that to the people who knew him best, boy, did I get in a lot of trouble. The time was 45 years ago. The place was a town in central Missouri not south of any border called Mexico. The population today is close to what is was (about 11,000) and it once proudly called itself “The Saddle Horse Capitol of the World.”
As sports editor of the Mexico Ledger, I wrote stories, headlines and captions, took photographs, edited my own stories and pasted the offset printing type on the sports page 6 mornings a week. It’s also where I invented my nom de plume: Mexico Moe.
Moe predicted NFL games every Friday and held a contest to see if Mexicoans (that’s what they called themselves) could outguess him. Moe’s post-weekend wrap-up would lament each of his losses squarely blaming a player, coach or referee for his imperfections. Each Mexico Moe story had a picture of me, shot from behind, sitting with my feet stretched high on the desktop, wearing a fedora to hide my head that was turned slightly to the side so my face wasn’t visible but the long stogie in my mouth was. My mother hated that picture.
Mexicoans loved Moe. What I didn’t know was how much they hated me.
Mexico High School was a medium-sized school that played in a conference with many bigger schools. They had talent, a small-town, farm-area attitude of not giving up and wonderful coaching, but couldn’t compete with perennial state champ Jefferson City, which was bigger, badder and coached by Adkins.
As a preview to the Friday night game, I sought out Adkins, got an interview, put together a story and even got a picture of him from his mother, who lived a half- block away from the newspaper office. Yes, Pete Adkins was a born and bred Mexicoan. It was a nice article detailing his many accomplishments, his nice thoughts about Mexico and how we wanted to coach there earlier in his career. He said many complimentary things about the Mexico football team and coaching staff.
What could go wrong? By 8 AM the day of the game, less than 3 hours after Ledgers landed on driveways, I knew. The town hated Adkins with a passion. Many readers called the managing editor to complain and alleged Adkins smacked his players on the helmet when coaching nearby Centralia High School earlier in his career. He’d wanted Mexico, but Mexico proudly wanted no part of him.
In the supermarket later that morning and the football field when I arrived at the game, all my small-town friends turned cold. They pretended not to see me. The supermarket’s owner, whose son was the team’s best lineman, approached me and told me to buy my food quickly and get out of his store.
Jefferson City defeated Mexico that night, but not soundly. The Bulldogs fought proudly and gave the winners a challenge for the first time in 2 decades. As the teams left the field and I went to the Jeff City school bus to interview Adkins after the game, several Mexicoans let me know what they thought of me. At least, I thought I knew.
I found out the whole truth a year later. When I finally got a new job in Bucks County, Pa., the first person I called to tell the good news was a man who was like a father to me in town. His name was Bud Hotop. He was a kind, jovial man who sold insurance. His two sons, Doug and Chris, were among the better players on the team. Bud immediately asked me to come to his office.
I’d never been there before. I’d been the basement in his house on many, many Saturday nights while his children were out roaming the town square. We watched “Mary Tyler Moore” and drank Harvey Wallbangers. For introducing him to HWs, as we called them, Bud would drive me to all the away football and basketball games so that I could claim the driving expense money. Most of Mexico’s road trips were really long and this helped supplement my $105 (pre-tax)-a-week paycheck.
In the office, Bud got right to the point with me. “Remember the weekend of the Jeff City game last year?” he began, “well, you don’t know how close you came …” And his voice trailed off.
“You were going to be tarred and feathered. Really tarred and feathered. I’m not exaggerating. The night after the game there was a quickly called town meeting. It was like a lynch party. Many of them wanted to get you. They finally settled on tar and feathering you. That’s when I got up and spoke. Several of the other football fathers (including the supermarket owner) backed me up and everyone settled down and nothing happened.”
I was so in shock that I’m sure the magnitude of what almost happened never really settled in my mind as Bud was talking. Before it did, he continued. “I’ve lived my entire life in small towns,” Bud continued, “in fact, Mexico is by far the largest town I’ve lived in. And if I learned something about life in a small town it’s that once your name is mud, once you’ve made your way into the gutter, no one gets out. I mean no one. “Until you,” he said. “You are the first person who got a bad, bad reputation in a small town and within a year did so much that the people in this town love you. Many are going to be upset when they hear that you are leaving. I can’t wait to go to the coffee shop tomorrow morning and tell the people who wanted to tar and feather you and see the sad looks on their faces. You earned their trust by writing about their children with warmth and appreciation like we haven’t seen before and we’ll never see again. “You did something I never thought I’d see happen. You should be really proud.”
Bud hit me with a gut punch that almost floored me and followed with a blow to the head that woke me up. Looking back at it I wonder what kind of a reporter I was to not know that I was a) hated so much and b) admired so much. (Aside: I did call Adkins the week after the game and said the Centralia story was a lie that grew out of proportion because he went to Jefferson City instead of Mexico.)
What might have changed the tide was a couple of weeks after the Jeff City loss, Mexico went to Columbia Hickman High School and pulled a major upset. After the game, Hickman students threw eggs at the school bus as it pulled away. I included that in the game story and the headline was: “Mexico upsets Hickman; the yolks on them.”
After I left Mexico, I didn’t go back until a baseball stadiums trip I took with my son in 2006. On our way from St. Louis to Kansas City we spent an afternoon in Mexico. At the office, a football field from the former home of Pete Adkins mother, I stared in awe at the place that hadn’t changed and met the current sport editor who had replaced me 35 years earlier. He told me the stories about all the players and coaches I could remember and some that I didn’t. Bud had moved away about 8 years earlier to live with his older son, and died a couple of years later.
But Chris, who I got named to the All-State team, was managing the Sears store next to the Dairy Queen we’d already chosen for lunch. We stopped by and told Chris the whole story. He’d never heard it. He promised to tell it to his brother and sister and to let them know that for 3 decades I’d carried the goodness of their father within me.
My son and I went to the Dairy Queen, ordered and sat down in a booth opposite each other. A minute later we were both sobbing, just like I am now.
Pete Adkins facts: retired as winningest high school coach in U.S. history with a record of 405- 60-4. Currently he’s eighth all-time. Centralia 51-12-2; Jefferson 341-18-2 from 1958-93 with 14 perfect seasons, one losing season and eight state titles.
Mexico, Mo., facts: Founded as New Mexico in 1836 as a stop for settlers heading to Texas. My boss at The Ledger was Robert M. White, who was MacArthur’s press liaison during WWII, one-time editor of New York Herald Tribune and accompanied Nixon on ground-breaking trip to China. His father said this about the naming of the town: “The first settlers found a wooden sign along the trail. It pointed southwest and on it had been painted Mexico. To avoid unnecessary labor, the sign was left in place. “It was easier to call their town ‘Mexico’ than to take down the old sign.” Let’s talk sports! Contact me at [email protected].
