(BENTON, Ky.)-The folding table looked smaller in person.
Greg Leath had been thinking about this table for approximately eleven days. He had described it on-air no fewer than four times as “the arena.” He had told Sandra from Symsonia it would be “the site of a historic reckoning.” He had told Dale it was “where legends are made or, alternatively, where legends are made.” Dale had asked him to clarify the alternative. Greg had said “there is no alternative.”
The table, for its part, was a six-foot plastic folding table from the WCBL supply closet that still had a masking tape label on the leg reading CHURCH POTLUCK — RETURN TO BARB. It had a paper tablecloth on it. Intern Caleb had weighted the corners with rocks because it was breezy.
Greg walked out to it at 12:47 p.m. wearing his peeling t-shirt, carrying a bottle of water, and moving with the measured, deliberate energy of a man who had absolutely not eaten anything since the scouting potato at 8:15 and was perhaps beginning to feel that this had been a tactical error.
The crowd was, charitably, mixed.
There were perhaps forty people clustered around the banner, which was holding up well in the wind. About a third of them appeared to be genuinely enthusiastic — Graves County people, mostly, plus a contingent of WCBL Bargain Line regulars who had driven over specifically for this. The remaining two-thirds were Marshall County residents who had wandered over from the actual festival with the careful body language of people who wanted to watch something go wrong without being implicated in it.
A child in a Tater Day t-shirt pointed at Greg’s chest and asked her mother what “Raves County” was.
Greg did not hear this. He was adjusting his chair.
Jeff Waters, WCBL Sports Director, materialized from the direction of the funnel cake booth with a look on his face that Dale had last seen when the Kentucky Wildcats season came to a close. It was a look of professional composure over a deep and personal distress.
Jeff had not wanted to be involved in this. Jeff covered sports. Jeff had opinions about offensive line depth and double-doubles. Jeff had been recruited to serve as “official competition judge and timekeeper” at 9:15 this morning when Greg had knocked on his office door, handed him a legal pad with the word REFEREE written on it in all caps, and said “I need a man I trust” before Jeff could say anything.
Begrudgingly, he didn’t agree, but didn’t say “no”, either. Just a couple of words that we will leave out of this report.
He soon set up his judging chair. He wrote “0” on a whiteboard. He clicked his stopwatch once, experimentally. Then he looked out at the crowd and the table and the banner and back at Greg and he had the expression of a man doing math that is not coming out right.
“Greg,” he said. “How many potatoes are back there?”
From behind the curtain — a fitted sheet zip-tied to a volleyball net standard, which Caleb had also done — came a reply from a woman named Brenda who worked festival hospitality and had been told Greg was “a special guest competitor.”
“Thirty-two,” said Brenda.
Jeff wrote “32” on the corner of his whiteboard, looked at it, erased it, and said nothing.
“That’s a warm-up number,” said Greg, from his chair, rolling his neck.
“That’s a county fair number,” said Jeff.
“Jeff.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Jeff.” Greg turned and looked at him with great seriousness. “Do you know what they said to Roger Bannister before he ran the four-minute mile?”
“They probably didn’t say ‘please eat thirty-two sweet potatoes.'”
“They said it couldn’t be done.”
“Roger Bannister was running, Greg, he wasn’t—”
“Same energy,” said Greg, and turned back around.
Dale, standing behind the judge’s table with a clipboard and the expression of a man who had made his peace with God sometime around the third commercial break, wrote please pray for me (updated) on a new sticky note and affixed it to the clipboard.
Greg ate the first potato in four minutes and twelve seconds and the crowd made a noise.
It was a good noise. Encouraging. He had technique — or something that looked like technique from a distance — and he worked through it with the focused expression of a man who had, genuinely, thought about very little else for nearly two weeks.
He pointed at the crowd. The Graves County contingent cheered.
He ate the second in five minutes and change. Still respectable. Jeff wrote “2” on the board. The child in the Tater Day t-shirt had climbed onto her father’s shoulders to see better.
The third potato took seven minutes. Something in Greg’s jaw had begun to develop an opinion about this situation and was in the early stages of registering it formally.
The fourth potato took nine minutes. A man in a Marshall County cap crossed his arms with the satisfied energy of someone watching a weather forecast be correct.
Halfway through the fifth potato — at approximately the eleven-minute mark, with Greg’s movements having slowed to something that could generously be called deliberate and less generously called a man who has remembered that he is sixty-three years old — something shifted.
It was subtle at first. His chewing became more considered. His eyes, which had been locked on the horizon with the thousand-yard stare of a competitor, drifted down toward the table. He took a long drink of water. He looked at the potato. The potato did not look back, but there was an understanding between them.
“You good?” Dale called from the side.
“I’m thinking,” said Greg.
“You’re not supposed to think. You said thinking was the enemy.”
“I’ve revised that position.”
Jeff Waters leaned forward in his judging chair. “Greg. Bargain Line Master, how are we doing?”
“I need a minute.”
“You said a minute costs momentum.”
“I’ve revised that position also.”
The Graves County contingent had gone quiet in the particular way of people watching a balloon begin to lose air. The Marshall County crowd had not gone quiet at all. They were, in fact, getting slightly louder, in the pleasant way of people whose county is being vindicated in real time.
Greg stared at potato number five for a long moment.
He picked it back up.
He took one more bite.
He set it down.
He looked at the sky.
“Dale,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“What is this potato made of.”
“Sweet potato.”
“It’s like — it’s like it keeps going. You eat it and there’s more. Where is it coming from, Dale.”
“That’s — that’s how food works, Greg.”
Greg picked up the potato again with the specific energy of a man renegotiating a contract with reality, took another bite, chewed it for a duration that Jeff, on his stopwatch, would later report as “medically notable,” and then with great dignity set the potato down, placed both hands flat on the table, and stared at it for a while.
The crowd waited.
Greg did not pick the potato back up.
“I,” he said, and stopped.
“Greg,” said Dale.
“I’m regrouping.”
“Greg, you’ve been looking at that potato for four minutes.”
“I’m doing reconnaissance.”
“You’ve already eaten part of it.”
From the back of the crowd, someone — it was later confirmed to be a man named Harold from Calvert City who had driven specifically for this moment — called out: “HOW’S THAT RECKONING GOING, GRAVES COUNTY?”
The crowd laughed. Not meanly, but thoroughly.
Greg looked up. He had the expression of a man who had been mid-sentence when the teleprompter died.
“I,” he said, “am pausing for—”
He stopped again.
The wind picked up. The banner — THE GRAVES COUNTY GORGER VS. THE POTATOES — WINNER TAKES TATER DAY — flapped once, hard. One of Caleb’s corner rocks skittered away. The paper tablecloth lifted at one end and Greg put his elbow on it reflexively, which meant his elbow was now in potato residue, which he noticed, and which did not help.
“Jeff,” said Greg.
“Yeah.”
“What’s the world record.”
A long silence.
“Greg,” said Jeff, carefully, “the world record — and I want you to hear this in the spirit it is intended — the world record for competitive sweet potato eating, which is held by a man in Ohio who does this professionally and has a training regimen, is twenty-one potatoes.”
A pause.
“In one sitting,” Jeff added, in case that was unclear.
“So thirty-two was—”
“Ambitious,” said Jeff. “The word is ambitious.”
“How many have I eaten.”
Jeff looked at the board. He looked back at Greg. “Four and a half.”
From the back: Harold, again. “FOUR AND A HALF, GRAVES COUNTY.”
What happened next has been described differently by everyone who witnessed it.
Brenda from festival hospitality, who was watching from behind the fitted sheet, said later that she “saw it coming from the third potato and frankly was surprised it took that long.”
Caleb said he “thought Greg was going to turn it around” right up until Greg stood up.
The child in the Tater Day t-shirt told her mother that the man looked “like our dog when he gets in trouble.”
What is not in dispute is that Greg Leath, at 1:34 p.m. on Tater Day, rose from his chair at the folding table, looked out at forty-some people who were looking back at him, looked down at four and a half eaten sweet potatoes, and looked at the hand-painted banner.
He opened his mouth.
He closed his mouth.
He picked up his water bottle.
He sat back down.
Then stood back up.
Then appeared to be working through something internally.
Dale, very quietly, said “Greg.”
“I know,” said Greg.
“Do you want me to—”
“I know, Dale.”
He turned to face the crowd. He squared his shoulders. He began to speak.
“People of western Kentucky,” he said, and his voice had the quieter, more dignified register he used for newscast obituary readings, “I came here today — from Graves County — to eat more sweet potatoes than any man in recorded history, and to bring Tater Day home with me.”
He paused.
“I have not done that.”
Harold did not say anything. Nobody said anything.
“I have eaten four and a half sweet potatoes, which is — which is a number—” He paused again. “It’s fine. It’s fine potatoes.” Sadly, eating a half of a potato is as if you ate none of it, so he officially ate 4 sweet potatoes.
He looked at Intern Caleb, who looked back at him.
“Caleb, you made a really good banner.”
Caleb nodded.
“Marshall County,” Greg said, “Tater Day is yours. It was always yours.” He looked at Dale. “It’s a great festival.”
“It really is,” said Dale.
“The potatoes are excellent. I want that on the record. These are exceptional potatoes. I was not defeated by weak potatoes.”
“Noted,” said Jeff.
Greg picked up potato number five. He looked at it for a moment with the expression of a man saying goodbye to a rival he has come to respect. He set it back down.
“All right,” he said, quietly.
He pushed back his chair.
It was Jeff Waters who had the pie.
Nobody — not Dale, not Caleb, not Brenda, not the forty assembled spectators — had seen it coming. Jeff had disappeared around the back of the fitted sheet at some point during Greg’s farewell address and had returned holding, with calm purpose, a small sweet potato pie that he had purchased from the Tater Day pie booth at some point in the preceding hour. He was holding it in both hands like a man who had made a decision and was at peace with it.
Greg turned to shuffle off toward the station entrance with the quiet dignity of a man who had said what needed to be said and was prepared to go inside and play Roy Orbison until he felt better.
He did not make it three steps.
The first pie hit him square in the left shoulder.
Greg stopped. Turned around very slowly.
Jeff Waters had a second pie.
“Jeff,” said Greg.
“You came to my county,” said Jeff Waters, Sports Director, WCBL, Marshall County resident, “and you ate four and a half sweet potatoes and then made a speech.” He looked at the pie in his hand. “I have feelings about that.”
“Jeff, those pies cost—”
The second pie took Greg in the chest, directly over the iron-on letters, which was either a coincidence or the most accurate throw in the history of western Kentucky athletics.
The crowd made a sound that was not a cheer and not a gasp but something purely its own — the sound of a moment that people were going to describe for years.
Caleb, behind the fitted sheet, was laughing so hard he had to sit down.
Dale had his face in his clipboard.
The child in the Tater Day t-shirt said “HE THREW A PIE” with a pure, clarifying joy that briefly made everything make sense.
Greg stood there in his peeling t-shirt with sweet potato pie on his shoulder and sweet potato pie on his chest, and he looked at Jeff Waters, and Jeff Waters looked back at him with the composed, even expression of a man who has discharged a professional obligation and is ready to return to his normal duties.
“You feel better?” Greg said.
Jeff considered this seriously. “Yeah,” he said. “A little.”
“Good,” said Greg.
He turned back around. He shuffled toward the door with the careful movements of a man navigating pie physics.
“Greg,” Dale called after him.
“I know.”
“We go back on air at two.”
“I know, Dale.”
“What are you going to say?”
Greg stopped. He looked up at the sky, which was still the same dignified blue it had been that morning when he hadn’t yet eaten four and a half sweet potatoes and gotten hit with two pies in front of Harold from Calvert City.
“I’m going to play ‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot,'” Greg said, “and then I’m going to play ‘I Fall to Pieces,’ and then I’m going to do a segment where I admit that Marshall County has genuinely very good sweet potatoes and Jeff Waters has a strong arm.”
“That’s—” Dale paused. “That’s actually not bad.”
“And then,” said Greg, “I’m going to play ‘We’ll Meet Again.'”
“Because?”
“Because,” said Greg Leath, the Graves County Gorger, four-and-a-half-potato man, with pie on his shirt and a peeling iron-on G and the dignity of a man who has chosen to go down swinging even after he had in fact already gone down, “because next year, I’m coming back with a strategy.”
He pushed open the door.
Harold, from somewhere behind him, called: “TATER DAY STAYS IN MARSHALL COUNTY.”
Someone who had been rolling his eyes while watching the proceedings in a Luche Libre mask and called himself “Kreskin” yelled, “Stick to pickleball!” And then said, “nevermind, you aren’t any better at that, either!”
OUCH!
“For now,” Greg muttered, to nobody in particular, and went inside.
At 2:04 p.m., Pat Benatar came on the WCBL airwaves, and western Kentucky knew that Greg Leath was back at the microphone, that Tater Day remained in Marshall County, and that Jeff Waters — who Dale was already calling “the greatest sports moment this station has ever broadcast” — was quietly eating the third of what would turn out to be four pieces of sweet potato pie in the break room and reading nobody’s email at all.
The banner stayed up.
Caleb forgot to take it down.
By 3:00 p.m., three people had asked if they could have it.
Happy 182nd Tater Day from Benton, Kentucky.
