Sendoff

Sendoff

Our daughter was not a happy camper the twenty-four hours before Senior Day.  Sometimes, it’s best just to let them be.

In high school, Senior Day hardly fazed Clare because she knew it wasn’t going to be her last.  Four years later, all she can do is look back, like the time Coach had her sacrifice freshman year in a 1-0 game against Carthage; we needed a sweep against Carthage to make the CCIW tournament.  Clare got the bunt down, and we lost anyhow; in her first at-bat the second game, against the same pitcher, she homered.  That’s one of the things I remember.  Lord knows what Clare has been going over.

Maybe I’m wrong to say Senior Day is all backward looking.  Senior softball players can see the future, and it doesn’t have much softball in it.  Anyone can play 16-inch, but to play 12-inch (or baseball) well requires practice, and who has the time come graduation?  I have no idea how college-done athletes make the transition into everyday life.  I guess we’ll see.

The good news is that no one in the Bukowski family had a breakdown during the ceremonies.  Mother, father and daughter stood at the pitcher’s circle while the p.a. announcer read off the career stats—most homeruns in a season and a career, second-most career rbi’s and extra-base hits.  Those last two are within reach, or would have been had Mother Nature cooperated.  Oh, well.

Clare had a sizable cheering section—my sister and brother-in-law, roommates and people out of her past.  Tom Eukovich, her high school coach, came because he’s a secular saint, and so did three teammates from freshmen and sophomore years.  They were the ones shouting “Clare!  Bear!” rather than “Boo-kow-ski!”  It must be hard to go back to the old field but Genesis, Julie and Rosie did it for a friend:  Bluejays forever.    

We hosted Millikin University, a school with an absolutely atrocious home field; I swear gophers go there to practice tunneling.  And the dugouts are more of a pillbox with the machine guns taken out.  Players have to get in and out via a narrow stairway at one end; the stairs, at least in the visitors’ dugout, are no more than sagging wooden planks.  Four times in two years Clare’s Bluejays have visited, and not once did they come away with a win.  This is what you call payback time.

In the first game, Clare was nervous but still managed an rbi single (eight away from a new record) in an 11-6 win.  Game two she started off with a triple and finished in the seventh with a double off the right-field fence, scoring what proved to be the winning runs.  She is now six away from a new record.  I’m not sure which is the bigger delusion, that the weather will let us play the last three games on our schedule or that we’ll get a miraculous at-large NCAA bid.  But with that double I can dream.