Breeden has to laugh. When the ballpark became desegregated and he could play there, he was one of the few to hit it over the fence and did it twice. Only a few years later, but an eternity. By then, Quick was there sitting on the fence and then running after the ball because he was a little kid who simply didn’t have the money to get in.
Quick was next in in the line of the quiet but thunderous progress. Breeden remembers how Teddy and Mutt and Boot and Bull just didn’t get quite get the same chances he did. With the Vietnam War heating up and the post-World War II boom cooling, guys like Sam Breeden signed up for the military before the call came.
Things were better for his younger brother Louis playing for Hamlet’s first integrated teams. And, college was an option. But Breeden didn’t play much football before his senior year and didn’t get one offer. Tiny North Carolina Central gave him a chance and he became one of three from the historically black school to make the North Carolina Hall of Fame.
While Breeden didn’t know anyone who had gone to a large university, Quick came out of Hamlet’s new consolidated county school a decade after Charlie Scott, and he joined the growing number of black players at North Carolina State. If he had been the age of his hero Louis Breeden?
“I would have gone to an HBCU or been one of the first somewhere else,” says Quick, a first-rounder five years after Breeden went in the seventh round who had an astounding 17.8 yards per his 363 career catches.
But Breeden isn’t thinking only of his Monroe Avenue heroes. Because the Rockingham Speedway burst on the scene 15 minutes away when Breeden was 12 years old, he fell in love with NASCAR and fervently followed idols like Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough. Petty was “The King,” even then.
When a friend invited him to the Kentucky Speedway a few years ago, Breeden, still a race fan, couldn’t resist. When they got to the track, Breeden was floored when his buddy drove him up to Petty’s mobile home.
“I loved this guy growing up. He was great. We sat down. We probably chatted for about 25, 30 minutes. He signed a hat for me I still have,” Breeden says. “We had a conversation like we had known each other because I’m from North Carolina and he’s from North Carolina.”
Breeden is honored to be walking among a King, but he’s bringing those guys into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame who are a lot bigger than that.
Sam. Teddy. Mutt. Boot. Bull.
“I never even thought I’d grow up to be as tall as them,” Breeden says. “To me, they’re still bigger than me. Giants. I’d never dream I could do what they did.”