Stratford community remembers coach Bubber Adams

Bubber Adams was part of the life of hundreds of people, from those who played under him — and their parents — to those who coached with him and against him during nearly five decades at Stratford.

He wasn’t even fully out of college yet when he started working at Stratford.

So when he retired from coaching around the turn of the century, it was good news for opponents but a time of adjustment for Stratford.

Few know that better than Mark Farriba.

“It goes back even before I was in eighth grade,” said Farriba, who spent most of his adult life at Stratford as a player, assistant coach in multiple sports, head football coach and athletic director. “I got a photo of me on first base in a Little League All-Star game. I’d gotten a hit and I’m on first and (future Mount de Sales star) Ben Zambiasi was playing first for the Warner Robins All-star team.

“The story in the paper was written by Bubber.”

Farriba and many of his former classmates and teammates were among those mourning Adams’ passing on Friday. His service was held Tuesday at Macon Memorial Park Cemetery.

The Lanier High alum graduated from Mercer and got his Masters at Georgia College. He started helping out the new Stratford program while in college, and took it over two years after its inception, in 1969.

Adams spent 33 years in the job, and most of the time his right-hand man was Bobby Hendley, also a Lanier and Mercer grad. After Hendley’s pro baseball career — highlighted by throwing a one-hitter and losing when Sandy Koufax threw a perfect game in 1965 — ended, he returned to Macon and eventually ended up with Adams.

After winning nine GISA state titles and seven top coaching honors, Adams became Stratford’s director of alumni relations for about a dozen years.

The list of Stratford standouts who played for Adams is long and impressive, with dozens playing in college and/or the pros: Jeff Battcher, Joe LaBanz, Jay Cranfrod, Joey Hiller, Joey Cranford, Russell Branyan and Kyle Johnston, to name a few.

Farriba went against his old coach as the head baseball coach at FPD, for whom current Stratford athletics director and head baseball coach Barry Veal played.

When Adams decided he was done, after 543 wins and state championships and players moving on to the next levels, Farriba was promoted from the Stratford junior varsity job.

So Farriba is in a unique position to have been around Adams in just about every possible mode: player, coaching rival, assistant, successor and co-worker, covering around 60 years or so.

“I had a great time playing baseball for him and coaching with him,” said Farriba, in his fourth season as an assistant football coach at ACE Charter. “He was a funny guy. I always thought he made the game fun.

“I had a great time playing baseball for him and coaching with him, too. Just a real good personality, would talk to you. Talk, talk, and talk. Just a real lovable guy.”

And like most folks and just about all coaches, he had a quirk or two.

“He’s the most superstitious guy I’ve ever met in my life,” Farriba said. “One year, we were undefeated. He refused to wash his uniform. The shoestring on his shoe broke on time and he wouldn’t replace it.”

But there was another version of superstition that’s basically legendary. Even Veal, who didn’t know Adams all that well, knew about it and laughed about it.

Farriba certainly won’t forget when Stratford was at the plate and Adams went to the third-base coaching box.

“He would mix it up, depending on how the inning had gone before,” Farriba said. “He would rub his foot in each corner of the box, and he would change the pattern up if the inning before didn’t go well.

“Then he’d walk over to third base and kick third base three times.

“Every single time.”

It clearly didn’t go unnoticed.

“To the point where people got to where they wouldn’t complete the third-base coaching box,” Farriba said with a laugh. “They’d leave a line out, or they’d draw a circle over there, or they wouldn’t put anything down.”

No matter.

“He would still go through the same thing, every single inning.”

Adams’ legacy remains two-fold with the Stratford baseball complex. It’s named after him, and the field after Hendley, his pitching coach for decades.

Hendley was well known, more so by adults in Macon, for his part in a legendary pitching duel with Koufax.

Once his major league career ended, Hendley became head coach at River North Academy and built that into a small-school powerhouse baseball program until it folded in the early 80s.

Rather than parlay that success and his background into a search for another head coaching job, he joined Adams at Stratford as an assistant.

The coaching setup was rare, but just about perfect. Gregg Doyle, a nationally-known sports columnist with the Indianapolis Star, played at Stratford, and wrote a column celebrating Hendley’s 75^th birthday in 2014, noting the connection.

“They were a team, Bubber and Coach Hendley — that’s what we called them: Bubber and Coach Hendley — and we won state titles in 1986 and ’87.

“Back then we’d caravan to road games, four or five players to a car, and Coach Hendley was somewhere up front, driving that ridiculous yellow Volkswagen station wagon.

“…When Coach Hendley retired a few years back, Stratford did right by Bubber — and by the guy who threw all those batting practice sessions with the destroyed elbow: The Eagles now play at the Bubber Adams Baseball Complex, and on Bobby Hendley Field.”

Hendley’s humility and Adams’ unselfishness made for a remarkable staff.

“I always give him credit for that,” Farriba said. “A lot of coaches would never, if they were in his shoes, they would never hire Bobby Hendley. They would never do that. They would never share that.”

Farriba lent a helping hand a few times over the summer as Adams’ physical decline grew, but only a physical decline.

Adams had fallen twice at his home, and his wife Cheryl called Farriba and another former Eagle for help the first time, only Farriba the second time.

“I went over there and I was like, ‘Man what’re you doing down there?’ ” Farriba recalled. “Because he was just sitting in the bathroom, sitting on the floor, just resting, sitting up.”

The exchange: “Well, I fell.”

“Do you want to get up?”

“I’d like to. I’ve been sitting here for about four hours.”

“Well, let’s get you up then.”