(ET) Battery reversal

["Jim (Cape Cod USA)" <fiskfarm mediaone net>]

Had a friend buy a golf car and found one battery reverse charged. He
then forgot my advice (discharge it and forward charge the sucker) and
went ahead and reversed the leads and charged it along with the rest.
Worked fine in reverse and took him 2 days to run it dead enough to
reverse the leads back to normal.

Dumb question; does it matter which way they are charged? I never ran
into this before although I remember one of you talking about it. He
asked me if it hurt the battery and I said "hell it might have been just
the kick in the ass it needed"

Jim