Renovation

Muscle Confusion. Or is it just exhaustion?

Got on the treadmill today. Spun it up to max incline. Got soooooo dizzy I got off after 70 minutes and did not get back on. Found some old files my best friend ever sent me about full body exercise. Did those for one hour to help muscle confusion. What did you do for you today? According to my calculations I have actually burned more calories this week than I have ingested. Considerably more calories.

My Goal

   Since July 19, I have gotten in 15.5 hours of workout. According to the various machines I suffered on, I have burned just better than 22,000 calories in these workouts.

   My immediate goal is to get on the plane for Israel and have my body say, "Oh, man, thanks for sitting down."

  My intermediate goal is to be in some decent shape when Abry gets here in early September. My kids (all of them, not just her parents) have decided to call her Abry-Jo, thus including her middle name. 

   My semi-long term goal is to be very ready, cardio ready, when the season starts. Heart readiness is the first thing to go, for me, and the hardest thing to get back. I did two hours on the treadmill today, corrected some errors in my workout, varied the speed and incline better and very nearly expired.

   Long term, I want some adventure(s).  Adventure requires some discomfort. I don't want to die on the sofa. I don't keep a recliner at my Brock house.

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

My Diet and Welcome to It

   Everyone has a diet. Your diet is what you eat, how much eat, how often you eat. Your diet is a habit.

   My good news is I am regaining weight. I have discovered, however, insubtantial eating has cost me in various ways. Therefore, I am partaking of some lean meat and getting some calories from fats.  I am trying to get my body out of the starvation mode I put it in for some years when food just stopped being attractive to me. 

   I look forward to the challenge of mid-eastern food for a couple of weeks. This will be a big test. I am on a pretty good schedule now, except for sleep, and I want to keep it up.

 

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

My Workout and Please Do Not Freak

Writer's Note: The duration and intensity of the workout described below are considered intense by some. A sane person would probably avoid it or at least work up to it. I do have some breathing issues during the workout and my heart rate is somewhat high for some time afterward. I do not recommend you jump right into this or any other workout without a doctor's release. 

 

 

 Over the years I have had some minor physical ailments resulting in a few procedures. My workout has suffered as a result. There are days when I drag myself down to the gym. There were a lot of days I did not drag myself down to the gym for awhile.

   Last week, after a procedure for which I  refused anesthetic, I decided the gym was a large part of my happiness. I returned to the gym. 

   As previously reported, for the sake of my distressed gastro-intestinal area, I eat a soft protein bar (350 calories) and drink eight ounces of water before each workout. There have been a couple of days when my stomach would not tolerate all that activity, so I work on the protein bar throughout the exercises. 

   I get on the treadmill, a device I have shunned for years. I do a warm up, then progress to a maximum of 3 MPH and take the incline up to 25, which is the maximum incline. In about fifteen minutes I am sweated out and heart pounding. I still get nauseated but I am  able to tolerate the discomfort.

   I have it broken down this way. I do one hour at the 25 incline, then take a bathroom break. I suck down some serious water at the fountain and refill my eight ounce bottle. I get back on the treadmill and do 45 minutes at the same 3 MPH and 25 incline. Then, I repeat the bathroom break and water. Afterward, I do my cool down of 30 minutes on the treadmill again, at 2.5 MPH and an incline not higher than 20.

   After the procedure last week, my BP was 124 over 71 with a Heart Rate of 63. This was in mid-day, after the procedure. I was convinced by these good readings that I could handle exertion if I did not jostle too much.

   My goal is to be in decent enough shape in muscular/skeletal and cardio to do up to 150 games in the coming UIL season. In order to make this work I will need to regain some muscle, so I will have to increase calories and proteins. My upper body needs serious work.

   The weight room hurts more than the treadmill, hence the incline work. I keep some light weights by my bed and desk. I hit them for awhile in the morning when I get up. When I feel stress during desk work I hit them again.

   I try to keep my shoulders down and work all the way through each repetition, as my trainer showed me years ago. How I do miss my trainer.

   I have paid my dues to the chapter and to the UIL. I want to be ready for Evaluation Camp in September, though the camp is scheduled for the weekend Abry is due to be born. I also intend to savor the experience of grandfatherhood again.

   Time takes things from us. Time will have to come and get what it wants from me. I do not intend to mail it in.

 

 

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Sleepin' Under the Bar at the Rustler's Roost, Part Two

   My Dad could play skins (drums), piano, saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, guitars of various kinds and could piddle with most other musical instruments. If not for the crippling arthritis in his hands, I think he could have played anything with strings.

   His fingers bent at the first joint, where fingers grow out of the hand into useful digits. The four fingers of each of Glen's hands bent severely, as if cringing away from his thumbs. It was painful to watch him shake hands with voters when he ran for public office. He was elected to fourteen two year terms as Constable of Precinct Two in Johnson County, Texas. He shook a lot of hands during those fourteen races. Glen got religion every two years, months prior to election time and lost it just after the votes were counted. 

   He got religion for real one night when he was 57, the age I am right now. I mentioned his conversion in the first post of this series. If anyone was ever converted, it was Glen. He was never the same again after that night. I wish my conversion had changed me as much as his changed him, but, then, he was a more accomplished sinner.

   I missed his baptism, though my memory tricks me about that often. I clearly remember the morning of his baptism, the funny look on his face when he stepped down into the baptismal pool. I plainly recall we could not hang an adult size baptismal robe on him because he was so small. The after affects of childhood rheumatic fever, war wounds and forty years of addiction had wasted his tiny frame. We used a Youth Medium on him. It was slightly large for his shoulders and hung down over his ankles to his feet. I feared it would trip him.

   He submitted to the indignity of baptism by immersion at age 57 Tthoroughly infirm in body,  he was a local businessman, an elected official, a grown person. Salvation is for all but the cost for one fellow is the same as for another. Glen gave in to the indignity of public immersion.

   There is n0 way to look dignified during immersion. You can look forgiven, reconciled, joyous, embarrassed or some combination of these mixed with other things like determination, resignation or fear. I have baptized a lot of people who were scared of crowds, heights (baptismal pools are often elevated) or water. You can appear as if you are all of these things. 

   You just cannot look dignified. 

   I remember Glen's baptism very clearly. I can play it back in my head and see every image. 

   This is impossible, of course. I was not even in town the morning he submitted to baptism. I was more than 100 miles away, speaking in another church, asking others to submit to God and then to baptism. I could not possibly remember anything about his baptism. I did not see it.

   Yet, I can remember every detail. I do remember it all, everything about the day, sunny, but not too hot, with a rare eastern breeze for cooling in a land that usually heats with a wind from the Southwest. I think about his baptism almost as often as I think of him.

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

 

 

Sleepin' Under the Bar at the Rustler's Roost

   My dad was a self-taughte musician. He could play 13 instruments if you count drums. July 30th is the 18th anniversary of his death. For some odd reason I miss him more this year than last year or the year before or the year before that.

   I went to his grave, the one next to my mother's, in the little graveyard in Cleburne, Texas. My friend Leon and his son Collin took me down there when they were in town last month. We spent an hour in the hundred degree heat looking through the cemetery for Ken Russell, Debbie Spruell, John Kane and Steve Commons. 

   Ken was sixteen when he died. His was the first funeral I ever officiated. I was fifteen.

   Debbie was our high school classmate. She died making hand grenades in the Go-Ex bomb factory underground near Cleburne. Debbie was 18 when she died, violently, the first casualty of our class in the Viet Nam conflict. The war killed brown-haired Debbie nine miles from home and two months between high school and college.

   Steve was nearly 22, I think, when he died. He was a physical fitness maven. The people who discovered him found his body at a place where two running paths converged in a wooded tract of land near Ft. Worth. He died of "Natural Causes," as most of us do.

   John Kane drowned in the Brazos River near Bee Mountain when he was eleven. I was the only one at the church the day he drowned. Two ladies came to the church looking for someone to go tell John's parents. I was sixteen then.

   My parents are laid next to one another just west of the Masonic Lodge Memorial, though my Dad was not a Mason, nor my mother of the Eastern Star. I find them by going to the south edge of the Lodge table and counting west one dozen steps. If you look west over the railroad track and south over toward the Owen-Corning plant you can see the sky over the Go-Ex plant, where Debbie died in a burst of quick fire futility.

   Glen Leland Davis was a little Welshman with a serious love of music, sports and alcohol, like all the Welsh. He left off the alcohol at age 57, the same age I am now. I wonder if it is reaching the age he was at when he and I became allies for the first time wtat makes me miss him more this year.

   Glen became my ally, as I call it, the night he got gloriously saved in the First Baptist Church of Joshua, Texas. I was in church, like I was always in church, the night he came down the aisle.

   I remember standing in the center row of seats in the church in one of those interminable revival meeting we used to have when all the world was white. White people would sit in neat, straight rows, all dressed pretty much alike, and pay close attention in those days.

    Jesse Powers, the Southern Evangelist, finished an hour long sermon, cut short by some malfunction in his microphone. Jessed went into his invitation appeal early, with some unhappiness, because he had not got to the inevitable poem at the end of his three points.

   We did not even get the usual warning about what happens to people who wait on answering God's call. I don't remember why. Maybe the microphone.

   Except for the people who were going forward, the congregation was in the Baptist "Every Head Bowed, Every Eye Closed" posture of the Invitation. I was fastidious at this time, as if even briefly opening one eye to the width of a hummingbird's wing might cause someone to miss Heaven.

   This night someone from the row behind me kept pulling at my elbow. I was the gawkiest teenager ever, all knees and elbows and long, wavy, dark hair, a gift from my mother's side of the family. I did not wish to be pulled along by the elbow, or anything else, while the instrumentalists were playing the ninth or tenth verse of "Just As I Am."

   This Unknown persisted, however. At length I turned around to find out what was so important my effectual, fervent prayers during the Invitation had to be interrupted.

   Glen was there in the row behind me. He had slipped in at some point during the Worship (Two) Hour(s). 

   He had the bluest eyes of any person I ever saw. His eyes were bluer than robin's eggs but the same kind of soft, natural blue. He could not speak, just then. He looked up at me with pleading eyes, as if he wanted desperately to do something but did not know just how to do it.

   "What do you want?" I finally thought to ask him.

   No answer.

   "Did you come to church?" I persisted.

   He nodded.

   "Do you need something in church tonite?" I asked.

   He nodded.

   "Do you want to get right with God?"

   He nodded.

   "Do you want to go down there to the preacher?" I asked and pointed to the short aisle, which must have seemed like the Grand Canyon to him  just then.

   He nodded.

   "Ok, go ahead. Just go to James. You know him," I told my own father. James was our preacher.

   Glen shook his head. He still had not spoken.

   "No, really," I said, "it will be ok."

  He shook his head, again, blue eyes pooling now.

   "Do you want me to go with you?" I asked him. I was not the brightest child but even I could get the idea eventually.

   He nodded.

   We walked to the front of the church, my little, Welsh dad and me. When we got there, I nodded to James, who picked my father up off the floor and hugged him tight. 

   We became allies that evening. Yes, I wish I had been a better son.

   I started out to tell you the story of falling asleep under the bar at the Rustler's Roost when I was actually too young to be in a bar. Maybe tomorrow.

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

 

 

Top Ten Best Sermons

   So, while it is yet summer, and I am ranking things for us, let me give you a ranking of the Top Ten Sermons I have heard. I will list them by Preacher, talk a bit about the event where I heard them but not try to recount text and points. I will try to say in the description why I thought the sermon was good.

   Please note these are sermons I heard in person. I may not remember the titles.

 

Top Ten Sermons I Ever Heard

10. "Skunks in the Walls"-W. A. Criswell, SBC Pastor's Conference. I was always bothered by the way he could go from laughing to the sound of crying in his voice in a nano-second. I felt manipulated by him often. However, the guy was funny, prepared, polished and effective. I was one of the skunks he was talking about in the walls but his presentation made me feel like a good skunk.

9. Miss Bertha Smith, SWBTS Chapel-Miss Bertha was not allowed to preach, she being a woman, but as a missionary she could "testify." And testify she did. I do not remember much of many sermons, I mean "testimonies," but I remember when Miss Smith said, "Some of you are thinking of being missions volunteers. Do not do it. We have all the volunteers we can ever use. They last until about noon. We need people called of God to missions work. If you are not called, stay home."

8. John Bisagno, SWBTS Chapel-Please do not get the idea I went to chapel a lot. I had heard Mr Bisagno on tape and wanted to see him in person. He did not fail to deliver. He came across as very humble, focused and ready to preach. His natural gifts as a speaker were combined that day with a  careful use of his text and some wry comments on why churches fail. He actually said, "Churches often fail because they treat their pastors like hired salesmen. That is what they expect the preacher to be; a salesman. This is why we do not get prophets any more."

7. Natalie Webb, FBC, Brownwood. Natalie was a student of mine and a staff member with us. There were many, many times I wanted to swat her with a fly swatter or something larger, like a bludgeon, or a mallet of some kind. I would have done so if not for all those pesky laws. Yet, we worked over her sermon together, she did all I asked her to do and for that one message she was absolutely everything I could have wanted. I thought she had and think she has all the potential in the world. And, yes, it was a sermon, not a testimony, as we had moved on a bit from Miss Bertha's time. Well, at least I did.

6. John Sullivan, Texas Evangelism Conference-He was pastor at Broadmoor in Shreveport in those days. I got to know him personally later and loved him. I never actually got to work for him, though we tried to get that together, but I loved the man, every day after I heard him preach his message on the sovereignty  of God in evangelism. I loved him in the way you love someone else's child, because they are so...so....well, someone else's. I never had to live around him. I just know he absolutely won me over with this one erudite, calmly presented message.

5. Nat Tracy, Chapel, Howard Payne University-Please do not get the idea I went to chapel a lot. I would have gone anywhere to listen to Nat Tracy. He was the deeper life kind of preacher before anyone knew what that meant. He spent his time talking about the nature of God as love, service, other-centeredness and utter self-giving. He was a great man and a good teacher/preacher. He was a lousy marketer/promoter who made me suspicious of good marketer/promoters to this day.

4. Charles Wade, Bosque Associaton Meeting-When Charles wanted to he could keep himself on task, communicate clearly and make a valid point. Then, drat him, he could lapse into some "look at Charles" nonsense that would make your eye's bleed. He could make you want to follow Zoroaster. I do not review here his whole body of work. I would not cross the street to hear him and he would run from me if I did. For this one night, talking about the church, and under some of the greatest strain of his premiership, Charles delivered. 

3. Daniel Vestal, Ellis County Men's Fellowship Meeting-Daniel spoke eloquently, as ever, about the role of God in a man's life, a man's role in the life of the church and the role of the church in a man's family. He was direct, clear and brilliant. He was obviously the smartest guy in the room but he did not make any of us feel stupid at the moment. 

2. Daniel Vestal-First Baptist Church of Midlothian, Texas-First Morning Service-The morning after his Men's Fellowship presentation, I asked Daniel to stay and preach our three morning services at FBC, Midlothian. He preached in the first gathering on the Tabernacle, about the presence of God in the room. He made me see the presence of God in our church that day.

1. Daniel Vestal-FBC, Midlothian-Third Service of the morning-Daniel preached three different messages the one morning he was with us. That is correct, three different messages in three consecutive services. People who had heard him the first and second services hung around for the third. He preached on this question, "How Do You Pray?" I have been trying to answer his question ever since.

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Religion, Politics and Why We Need to Take a Look

   Governor Rick Perry, R-Texas, reportedly had a meeting in Irving with big-time preachers Joyce Meyer, James Robinson and Kenneth Copeland. No, though I am a huge big-time preacher, I did not attend. Apparently, my invitation was lost in the mail.

   Out of this great meeting came the notion that Rick Perry would be a better candidate than either of the Mormons the GOP seems to like. Gasp.

   Here is the dilemma. The GOP cannot win without the Religious Right and Rick Perry, R-Texas, has stiffed the Religious Right for a long time. To have a prayer (see how I got that in there?) he must show he can mobilize the RR. Hence, the Great Prayer Meeting called for Houston, the one the other Tea-Kettle governors cannot seem to make.

   Please. How long will you let this happen to you, Oh, Religious Righters?

   Get real. Demand something up front. Don't just show up and bow, expecting the GOP candidate to be a little less liberal (LLL) than the Donkey-Kong party candidate.

   This country (USA) has some issues to confront. Religious people of all varieties are helpful. However, my dear friends, do not turn a blind eye to how you have been treated in the past. Do not say, "Well, we just have no place else to go."

   Make a place.

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

Why Do Athletes Dope, Politicians Get Religious and Tabloid Reporters Hack?

   The North Korean women's soccer team has been penalized by FIFA. Apparently, five athletes were found to have Performance Enhancing drugs in their system. They are from North Korea and apparently believed the illegal drugs were food, which they do not get much.

   One of Lance Armstrong's best friends has tearfully admitted seeing Mr. Armstrong doping during his long reign as king of the Tour De France.

   Various baseball players with gaudy career statistics are being told they will not be first ballot Hall of Famers because it is commonly believed they doped.

   Why do athletes dope?

   Would you like to be the only one not cheating? Imagine you are a gifted, talented, winning athlete. You train, deny yourself a normal life, never cheat on your diet but you have guys you know you can beat suddenly go by you like you are standing still. Are you willing to be the only one not cheating?

   Well, apparently not. 

   Governor Rick Perry, R-Texas, was recently outed as a (gasp) former Democrat. He has won election as Texas governor six times as a Republican but he started his life as a Democrat. Oh, my, Why would he change from Democrat to Republican?

   I believe there are two reasons. Mr. Perry wished to be elected to public office and did not wish to move to New York, where he might have a hard time gaining political traction against long-time New York residents, like Senator Hillary Clinton.

   We should remember that Ronald Reagan was a Democrat for many years. Also, he was an actor, who starred in movies with monkeys. He also fronted a Western TV series sponsored by a soap company and starring a team of mules.

   Only in America, my friend, only in America.

   What is more egregrious is Mr. Perry's sudden concentration on religion. He has called a prayer meeting for Reliant Arena. Other conservative governors have responded en masse telling Mr. Perry they support his event but cannot come because of "prior commitments."

   In politics, prior commitments can be translated best as, "We know you are running for something else but do not think you can win."

   Seriously, when is the last time you saw a politician run away from someone he thought could win? Prior commitments? Really?

   What is egregious about all this is that Mr. Perry has had six terms to convert to Christianity but could not see over the gambling and liquor lobbyists. The late Phil Strickland, head of the Christian Life Commission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, told me Mr. Perry's governorship was the least Christian of any he had ever lobbied.

   Politicians get religious when they need to mobilize a base of voters. They conveniently ignore these voters until they need them and then after they use them. How long will religious people let themselves be used?

   Apparently, quite awhile.

   And, finally, the Rupert Murdoch Media Empire has admitted to hacking the phones, computers and other electronic devices of crime victims, hoping to find some lurid detail they could use to sell papers. Imagine, a Tabloid with enormous resources, plentiful personnel and powerful public allies using all its influence to victimize victims.

   Now imagine the griminess reaches across oceans and touches as high as the editorship of the Wall Street Journal. Why would responsible, mature, fabulously wealthy businesspeople allow villiany to run rampant?

   Well, I have one idea of why it happens and one suggestion as to how we might curb this nonsense. 

   I think Tabloid kings like Murdoch bully people because they can.

   And, I think the way to stop them is to stop giving them money. Do  not buy their stuff. Put a fence between the hog and the trough.

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.

 

 

Baseball: The Game, Dads and Sons

   Sports never matter. Relationships always do.

   I grew up in Texas, near Arlington. My father would take me to minor league baseball games in the old stadium that became the first home of the (very bad) Texas Rangers, who had been the (very bad) Washington Senators. You remember the Washington Senators slogan:

   Washington, first in war, first in peace and last in the American League.

   Texas started to go Republican the year the Senators became the Rangers. We have not trusted anything we got from Washington since.

   When  I say my father took me to games, I really mean he dragged me to games. I was a pencil-necked geek. I kept a book handy at all times, my runny nose stuffed in it whenever possible. I was painfully thin, more painfully shy and so near sighted my glasses had to be special ordered from an observatory.

   My various maladies were undiagnosed in those days. My parents found out I was near sighted when I was sent home from school with a note saying, "Has trouble paying attention when teacher is writing on the board." In truth, I navigated mostly by sonar before my first pair of glasses. When my teacher stopped talking to write on the board I was lost in a deep, dark cave. I believed the Rapture might have actually occurred, uncertain until I heard the voice of my friend Leon. I knew he wasn't going anywhere.

   I had acid reflux the doctors thought was ulcers and treated with charcoal. I had allergies the doctors thought were colds and treated with citric acid, which aggravated the reflux. I had headaches the doctors believed were imaginary. I spent some time sneezing, a lot of time puking and the rest of the time reading and clutching my gut.

   There is no sport where these are required skills.

   So, I did not willingly go to sporting events. Before I had glasses there was no good reason to go. After I got glasses, it was apparent to me I would never, ever, not in a billion years, be able to do what those guys down there were doing. 

   My father persisted. We sat in the stands at the old stadium in Arlington, watching the Double-A branch of the Baltimore Orioles learn their trade. Bobby Grich came through there on his way to the Hall of Fame. Paul Blair, the Center Fielder came through briefly. Pundits used to say two-thirds of the world was covered with water and the other third was covered by Paul Blair, so fleet afoot was he.

  Roger Freed came and stayed forever. He would hit home runs to Grand Prairie. Then, he would get called up to the majors, someone would throw a curve ball to him and Roger would be back in Arlington, hitting mammoth blasts and dreaming of what he could have done if not for the major league breaking pitch.

   My father was of the Old School, the University of Hard Knocks, the only school he ever finished. His dad died when my dad was nine, leaving him to work a  mostly useless  farm in Iowa with his brothers and sisters. He was a little guy, never more than five and a half feet, cursed with the after affects of rheumatic fever, in love with baseball, musically gifted and a pick-up-the-tab, falling-down-drunk most of his life.

   Dad was a funny guy. When someone tried to tell him he was an alcoholic, he would tell them he was a drunk, not an alcoholic, so he did not have to go to all those meetings.

   I was tall, over six feet, which he equated with big, which he thought meant sports-worthy. He wanted me to carry our banner on the field of battle. I would have done so had I been able to see the field and if the banner could have been carried with one arm. I needed the other arm to clinch my heaving gut.

   Fathers and sons, oh my. Actual maturity occurs for us when we comfortably differentiate from our parents. I ran to differentiation. 

   We would sit in the tenth row of the lower bowl of that old stadium in hundred degree heat. My father had his beer, I had a Coke. Of course, the burn of the Coke shot through my stomach, the pain in my stomach aggravated the headaches, the misery of being at a ball game irritated everything and so we sat, in uncompanionable silence. He nursed his beer and I nursed a grudge.

   Then, one night, in the spring of some year or other, before the wind burned hot on the Texas prairie, he looked up and said, "Well, they ought to play the infield in here because this guy is going to bunt."

   Miraculously, the corner infielders came creeping in to the grass, the second baseman took a step laterally toward first and the hitter squared around to bunt. He fouled off that pitch and one more before he fouled out to the catcher fifteen steps behind the plate.

   "How did you know he was going to bunt?" I asked.

   "Oh, no outs, a good runner on first and a strong hitter coming up in a tight game," my Dad said. "This is the way the game is played."

   Really. The way the game is played. The Spirit moved upon the waters and order descended upon chaos. There was a meaning to The Game. One could think.

    I put down the book I had with me at the ball park, adjusted my glasses and asked, "What will they do now?"

   "Well, this manager, y'see, likes to stay out of the double play. He will probably put on a hit and run to make a hole for the hitter."

   The pitcher offered to the plate. He was a retread, not a young guy trying to make his way, an older guy trying to hang on for another year in Double-A.  Perhaps he thought he would get a call-up in September, one more chance at the Bigs.

   He could not bring heat anymore. His best pitch was a slow breaking, over-hand curve, which he offered now. The runner got one of those old walking leads from first, the kind now lost to history, and was off when the pitcher's front foot cleared the rubber.

   He was in full gallop after two steps. The shortstop came over to cover second on the steal attempt, the over-hand curve hung and the batter drove the high, inside pitch hard through the hole the shortstop left. The runner rounded second and kept going. Somewhere in the ninety feet he ran between second and third, I decided my Dad was a genius.

   When I played Little League the next year, my coach told me I was the best bunter he ever saw. There are faded, old pictures of me in my thick, flannel Tiger uniform. I had a shaved head, a prominent Adam's Apple, giant ears and thick, thick spectacles with black, horn-rims. I looked like a big bug.

   The picture I treasure is the team photo taken after we lost our last game The Year After I Found Out You Could Think Through Baseball. We lost a lot of games that year. I was in the back row, taller than any of the others guys. I was standing next to our coach, a short, rheumatic Iowa farm boy who thought I was a great bunter. He seems to be leaning toward me in that picture and I toward him. I don't know if we are leaning together or if the photo is just distorted.

   I like to think we were leaning together.

   Football has its violence. Basketball has its squeaking sneakers on a hard wood court and the swooshing sound the ball makes at the bottom of a nylon net.

   Baseball? Well, as long as they play baseball in a field with three bases arranged in a path that leads home, baseball, you know, will always be The Game.

 

 

Opinions expressed here are mine alone.