My Dad said remember the good times

In his Wood Box there were only a few sports related newspaper clippings. The picture of his teammate's leaping fingertip grab for a touchdown against LSU, the article from Alabama about him playing in the upcoming Gator Bowl and me (legging it out)! The articles from my baseball career were a real surprise. During my freshman through senior years of high school I played a lot of baseball and my parents came to almost every game. In the summers I played in two leagues, the county league (Mon., Wed., and Friday night games) and the American Legion select team (Tues. and Thurs. nights with double headers on Sat. and Sunday), that's nine games a week.

These articles chronicled my career pretty well. From the bottom up, we were "Challenging the Establishment" my sophomore year, I can't believe I was batting .533 half-way through  the season. I remember batting in clean up that year with our lead off batter hitting .900! I made the Legion select team that year and we went to the State Playoffs. The middle article was from my junior year and brings me to another dumbdumbdaddyoism, "You're gonna wanna remember that one forever!" He said you have to remember the good times and do your best to forget the bad.

The articles chronicle a day where me and two teammates won the Legion county championship sending us to the state playoffs for the second straight year, jumped in our cars, rushed across town and then won the county rec. league championship! I remember him clipping it, saying you don't see that every day, you're in two articles winning two championships on the same page of the newspaper.

The article below is from my senior year, we had just won our third straight American Legion League Championship. In the article I am described as unheralded, because mt senior year I was recovering from a nasty post surgical staph infection in my knee. On the first day of high school ball I went into the emergency room at Holly Cross and didn't leave the hospital for 31 days. Almost lost my leg. I remember during try-outs for Legion that year my coach, Coach Bovelo, said, "You're so slow you're going to get a sun burn running to first!" I limped along that season as a platoon starter and did some relief pitching, but was a shadow of my former self. I would have forgotten this if it wasn't for my Dad clipping it and stashing it in the bottom of his Wood Box, my last at bat in my baseball career was as a DH and I hit a three run homer over the left center field fence at the University of Maryland to tie the game in the league championship! "THAT ONE you're gonna wanna remember forever!" Thanks for helping me remember the good times Dad.

I was twelve when I started throwing 80+ mile an hour heaters and that's when I realized my Dad wasn't exactly young anymore. He would get so mad when I would zing one in there on him hurting his hand. He say something like, "Take it easy on your dumb dumb daddy-o, I'm too old to ketch the heat!"