Randy Smith
About a year ago, members of the Chattanooga TSSAA Umpires Association voted to honor two schools in the area we serve with the Terry Cordell Memorial Sportsmanship Award; one for baseball and one for softball, named for the long-time assigner of games in the area. The 2017 winners will be announced soon, but today I wanted to let everyone know about the man the award is named for.
Terry Cordell was a football official for many years and also was the assigner of games for the Chattanooga area for 22 seasons. An assigner makes sure every baseball and softball game on the schedule has two umpires. Even without the use of computers in the beginning of his tenure, things were as perfect as they could be, but his influence on his umpires was simply amazing. I don't know a single one that didn't absolutely love the guy.
And when you talk about competitive nature.....Terry was one of the best bowlers to ever take up the sport in Chattanooga. He very seldom ever smiled, preferring to keep a more serious and even a gruff approach to things. And everyone who knew him, wanted to stay on his good side, because to be on his bad side could be particularly unpleasant.
Before the season started Terry would lead weekly meetings beginning in early January and lasting until the season started in mid-March. He went over rules, proper mechanics, and umpire conduct issues that made us all better umpires. When things would wrap up near the start of the season, Terry and other members of the board would host a banquet for every umpire in the association, feeding each ump and his or her significant other. The board gave away cash door prizes for them and current assigners Ralph Chambers and Larry Bateman still do things the same way to this day. That's part of the Terry Cordell way of doing things.
At the end of the banquet each year, Terry would send us off into battle with these words. "Remember, make each game as important as the seventh game of the World Series, because to these kids, it's that important to them." That's the Terry Cordell way of doing things.
Another example of the Terry Cordell way was the day he died suddenly in 2012. He had been mowing a friend's yard who had been ill for quite awhile and unable to mow on his own. Terry mowed the person's yard in the stifling July heat, when he started having chest pains. He passed away from a heart attack that same day. The Chattanooga umpires association remained in shock for months, not knowing what to do next. When the bitter realization that Terry was gone finally sank in, the guys went to work and kept things moving; on time and on schedule. Even though Terry was no longer there, that would be the way he would have wanted things to go.
So when the winning teams accept their very first Terry Cordell Sportsmanship Awards this spring, I want them to know a little bit about him. I want them to know that he loved them and worked hard for them for a very long time. I also want the umpires to know how much he loved them and how important they were to him. That gruff appearance he would show was nothing more than the Terry Cordell way of doing things.......which is something we all miss very, very much.
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Randy Smith has been covering sports on radio, television and print for the past 45 years. After leaving WRCB-TV in 2009, he has written two books, and has continued to free-lance as a play-by-play announcer. His career has included a 17-year stretch as host of the Kickoff Call In Show on the University of Tennessee’s prestigious Vol Network. He has been a member of the Vol Network staff for 30 years. He has done play-by-play on ESPN, ESPN II, CSS, and Fox SportSouth, totaling more than 500 games, and served as a well-known sports anchor on Chattanooga television for more than a quarter-century. In 2003, he became the first television broadcaster to be inducted into the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame. Randy and his wife Shelia reside in Hixson. They have two married children, Christi and Chris Perry; Davey and Alison Smith. They have five grandchildren, Coleman, Boone, Mattingly, DellaMae, and CoraLee.