Baseball was my first love, but by high school it was football. I was not a “natural,” but I played in hundreds of practices and games and read hundreds of books and magazines looking to improve my game.

(In college, at then-tiny UC Riverside, a bunch of us shaved our heads before a Saturday game; Mike and Marlin McKeever, identical twin All-Americans at USC, had been featured in a Sports Illustrated photo, bare-chested and powerful, with scarred shaven heads.)

I’ve been to only a handful of college games since, and only one pro game. But I have watched decades of local high school football.

When my son Matt was a senior at Joseph in 1992, they brought former pro player and coach Leonard Younce in to energize a failing program. Some will remember Leonard’s smiling face at Safeway or on the golf course or over a bridge table with his wife, Zel.

A few will remember a summer Forest Service work camp at Billy Meadows for local students in the early ‘70s. Bob Palmer at USFS helped arrange that camp and Elizabeth Oliver –– before her teaching days –– was the girls counselor in what was probably a landmark co-ed work camp. Most didn’t know –– and Leonard never advertised –– that he had played football at Oregon State and for the New York Giants.

Leonard took over a Joseph team that had won one or two games the previous year, taught fundamentals and provided inspiration, and Joseph went on to win six and lose a close one to powerful arch-rival Enterprise.

For me, it also opened the door to Len’s football past. We talked. He said more than once that he and his Giant teammates of the ‘40s could play with and beat modern pro teams with one rule change –– no free substitution.

“Those 300 pound linemen wouldn’t make it through a half if they had to play both ways,” said Younce, who had been a 215-pound offensive guard, defensive linebacker, place kicker and punter and could still hurt your hand with a handshake at 75.

My flagging interest in pro football tumbled, and about 10 years ago, I wrote a piece for a magazine quoting Len and chronicling my own football career, from 165-pound high school center to 190-pound college center and linebacker, from helmets without face guards to college practices that taught us to use the helmet as a weapon.

“Spear” blocking and tackling, they called it, before it was outlawed. I wrote that football had become a game of size, specialization and using equipment –– helmets especially –– as weapons.

The magazine piece traveled and landed with a guy named Marcus Koch, who had played special teams in the NFL for a few years and was then a players’ rep. He wrote to say that I didn’t know the half of it, that things were about to explode with helmets and concussions, and that the only way to make football safe would be to follow Leonard Younce –– make players stay on the field both ways. Oh –– he added –– “leather helmets would be safer too.”

I started following and liking eight-man football watching Terry Crenshaw’s teams in Wallowa, when Enterprise and Joseph were still playing 11-man. It occurred to me then that eight-man, with a vigorous junior varsity program, should be extended to bigger schools.

In order to play 11-man and field a JV program, you need enough student body to turn out 40 plus for football every year –– the 100-pound freshmen should not be banging with 200 pounders, even in practice.

Although there are a few 200-plus pound players, eight-man football rewards speed, quickness and execution. And overall athleticism: most of the kids play offense and defense, and stay in for the kickoffs.

You cannot (and probably should not: that’s another column) legislate against all danger, but I applaud the rules against spearing and refs for calling it. I am also convinced that young kids should not play tackle football –– even in my day we played flag in junior high.

The leading neurologist on the current concussion studies say that it’s all dangerous, but kids under 14 just should not play tackle football.

Me? I’m back on the football sidelines, watching my grandson and his teammates at Joseph. It’s been a disappointing season for them –– injuries, freak plays, missed opportunities and being underweight on the line have all conspired to rob them of wins. But a few good tackles and touchdown catches have got my grandson in love with the game.

And I’ve come to think that the eight-man football that he loves is more like the game I played and loved 60 years ago, even the game Leonard Younce played 20 years before that, than it is the college, pro or big high school football of today.

Rich Wandschneider lives in Joseph and writes a monthly column for the Chieftain.