Brooks Run on Bermuda Grass

Lyrics

[Intro]
Seven PM in Reynoldstown.
Sun's still burning through the summer haze.
Day's not done. Not for them.

[Verse 1]
Here they come.
Not on a charter bus, not in a line of German cars.
In a ten-year-old Corolla with a cracked windshield.
In a Ford F-150, drywall dust still on the dash.
They smell of the site, of the kitchen line, of the office park out on 285.
They trade steel-toed boots for cleats right here in the gravel lot.
Lacing them up while the cicadas start their evening shift.

[Chorus]
This ain't the Benz.
There's no roof to unfold.
Just a humid sky turning purple over Cabbagetown.
This is Brooks Field on a Tuesday night.
This is a day's wages in athletic tape on a bad ankle.
This is a run on Bermuda grass.
Just because you have to.

[Verse 2]
No seventy-thousand screaming.
Just seventy souls, maybe.
The girlfriends who do the laundry.
The dads who coached their U-12 teams.
You can hear the MARTA train rattling past the Krog Street tunnel.
You can hear a coach's voice, already hoarse, cutting through the thick air.
Every tackle on the ball sounds like a car door slamming shut.

[Chorus]
This ain't the Benz.
No halo board for the replay.
Just a humid sky turning ink-black over Cabbagetown.
This is Brooks Field on a Tuesday night.
This is a day's wages in athletic tape on a bad ankle.
This is a run on Bermuda grass.
Just because it's in you.

[Bridge]
I remember that summer, 2022.
Felt like every game went to the wire.
No one wrote about it.
No cameras came down from the big stations.
Just us, on the metal bleachers, watching them leave it all out there.
For a conference title nobody outside this fence would ever know.
For the right to be tired and bruised and do it all again next week.
That was something.

[Outro]
Ninety minutes are up.
The lights click off.
They pack their bags.
Drive home.
Alarm's set for five AM.
The Bermuda grass keeps the sweat.
It'll be here.