Stan Huff (Huffy we called him) was a good catcher and a big dipper. I remember the first time I ever tried Copenhagen snuff. He gave it to me on a bus. We were both playing for the Marion Mets in '75, and on this particular day we were rained out, so the team was driving back home (must have been from Appleton or Wiscy Rapids) in the pouring rain. (In those days minor league baseball wasn't as sha sha as it is today. We would drive to and from some road games in uniform. Clubhouses were dark and dingy and running water wasn't alway available. The clubhouse in Marian was like being in an overcrowded section of a submarine.)Anyway, Huffy was sitting next to me with a spit cup in his hand and a lump for a lower lip. I said: "Huffy, what is that stuff?" He took the silver tin cover off his can of Cope and offered me some, and I stuffed a pinch between my lower lip and gums. In less than 30 seconds I was tossing my lunch out an opened window of the bus, my head soaking in the rain. See, I was from Jersey, and had never seen a can of Copenhagen let alone dipped. Huffy laughed that funny laugh he had, soundless but red in the face, almost like he'd gotten the wind knocked out of him.
I tried it once or twice after that, but never got the hang of it. It always felt like a vice was clamped to my temples in a matter of seconds. Stan always had a can in his back pocket. I admired his ability to dip that stuff.
I got the hang of Days Work plug tobacco by the end of the year in Wausau, but that's nothing compared to Copenhagen.
Stan was from Waco, Texas. (You can imagine the ribbing he got for that, and this was even before the wild scene with the Branch Davidians, or whatever that crazy group was called.) Stan was also a bone fide "red a**." He would get pissed off and you'd think he was a rattlesnake. Could also fight with the best of them.
We also called him "Gumby" because of the way he walked. He also wore a cowboy hat on occasion.
Stan was a good guy, and I believe he is still in professional baseball somewhere.
Also had my first (and only) experience of shooting a handgun with Huffy. He had a silver .44 magnum and we went out somewhere in the wooded outskirts of Jackson, Mississippi. (This is now '77 in the Texas League.) Thought my arm was gonna fly off. He was a good shot, though. Seemed to me at the time that growing up in Central Jersey (no Cope, no handguns, no cowboy hats (although Urban Cowboy started a short lived fad), was a bore compared to growing up in Texas.
Stanley Hough (he hated to be called "Stanley") stands out in my mind as a real baseball character like the characters of old. Old time baseball, like Clyde McCullough and Mo Hill. Legendary!
