Butch Duhe represented character all players need

Larry Gibbs arranged with the city’s administration to hold a day of remembrance for the playground’s namesake, Herman “Butch” Duhe, a name neither the youngsters in attendance at the special event nor their parents who had not been born when Butch Duhe died 50 years ago, can remember. 
    

Gibbs wanted to introduce the young baseball players who will be the future of the program to the man whose name and legacy identifies the facility.
    

More than 100 attendees became aware of the former Holy Cross and LSU quarterback, who was on the verge of a promising athletic career when he suddenly and shockingly died of a floating tumor in his brain before the start of his junior year at LSU. 
    

Duhe’s death enabled his backup, Bert Jones, to embark on a Hall of Fame career as a collegiate quarterback.
    

At Holy Cross, Butch led a team laden with juniors to a Catholic League championship that included 10 consecutive wins before the Tigers were eliminated by eventual champion Broadmoor in the AAA semifinal playoff round. 
    

Duhe led that 1966 squad in rushing and passing. He averaged 6.2 yards a carry and completed 59% of his passes. Oh, yes, and he kicked 25 extra points to finish his senior year as the city’s leading scorer with 85 points. 
    

Duhe ended his prep career with the MVP Award at the prestigious East-West All-Star game in July 1967, just days before entering the athletic dorm at LSU.
    

But to Gibbs, who spearheaded the East Bank’s move to the Kenner playground as its home facility, Duhe was much more. And he wanted those who would come after him to understand who Butch Duhe was through speeches by the U.S. House minority whip  Steve Scalise, Kenner Mayor Ben Zahn, members of the city council and a few of Duhe’s former high school teammates.
    

“I knew Butch Duhe when he and I were at LSU,” Gibbs said. “And he was an absolute rock star: a great athlete, a great person and kind to every person he met. And that’s the reason this playground is named after him.”
    

Gibbs knows something about baseball and facilities. As the founder and former CEO of a successful commercial construction company, he built the baseball stadium at Mike Miley Playground. Having secured contracts for many of the area’s most successful businesses, he is quite acquainted with winning teams.
    

“There are two parts to baseball,” he told the gathering. “There’s the physical skill part – how fast you run, the velocity of your fastball. Those things we teach you out here, and that makes for good baseball. But there’s another component that flies under the radar. And that’s teaching character.”
    

To illustrate his point, Gibbs continued, “If we put up a big sign that said, ‘Send your kids to Butch Duhe Playground for the summer,   and we’ll teach them for two hours, four days a week, how to have more character … how to have more courage … more resiliency … more love in their hearts … how to understand defeat and get over it … and how to have more dignity and be a team player,’ do you know how many people would show up? Zero!
    

“Who would send their kids anywhere to learn those things from people you don’t know? 
  

 “But the reality of it is that’s exactly what baseball does. It’s a wonderful sport that teaches all the character traits that will last a lifetime. And when baseball’s over, the character that’s in your hearts will remain.”
    

And that is unerringly what the East Bank Little Leaguers exhibited during their odyssey though the World Series tournament.
    

“When we won the world championship last year, I received several phone calls of congratulations, not for anything I did,” he said. “But (callers) told me they were impressed by the character of the players on the team, and the way they conducted themselves.”
    

Gibbs noted, “If you recall last year, we lost the first game of the tournament – pretty decimating to small boys. Then we came back and won the rest of them through the championship series. And did anyone talk about resiliency? No, but it was there.”
    

We know about resiliency in this area. It was here when the area was devastated in 2005 by a killer hurricane and came back better on the backs of its determined citizens; and it will again triumph over a pandemic because of those same men and women who know how to bend and not be broken by emotional and financial setbacks.
    

The four age groups of young East Bank Little Leaguers that aspire to be great players may not yet relate to Butch Duhe’s name, and their attention span might have expired long before Gibbs’ address had concluded, but this once derelict playground has been given a new direction and purpose as a proving ground for a new era of Little League baseball in this area, thanks to the teams that passed before them and the support of the organizers.
    

They may one day come to know and appreciate the life and legacy of Herman Duhe Jr.
    

Ron Brocato can be reached at [email protected].