Getting to look a lot like Christmas

 Nothing like waking up to a dusting of snow, and this a day before we go to Valparaiso to watch Clare work her magic, e.g., charting pitches, in the dugout.  How I love springtime in the Midwest.

Depending on what happens in the next 24 hours, it could be worse.  Clare’s sophomore year of high school, she opened the season in 38-degree weather; that was the day that taught me to combine long underwear with a winter coat and a minimum of two sweatshirts.  Five days later, I helped Euks shovel snow off the field at Morton.  Maybe I should mention here that a March sun can be deceptively weak when it comes to melting the white stuff.

But the winner for softball misery—again, tomorrow notwithstanding—happened on a Wednesday night in more-or-less late April Clare’s freshman year at Elmhurst.  The Bluejays played at Judson University, forty miles north and west of Chicago.  The game-one temperature topped out at 40, which wouldn’t have been bad but for the wind and the time; the game started at 5:30.  In the top of the first, Clare hit a ball on the line to dead centerfield.  Anywhere else and it’s gone, but the Bandits also played at Judson, and they wanted a roomy outfield.  So, the ball hit off the fence at 230 feet, giving Clare a double.  There’s the highlight of the evening, unless you count watching your daughter splash through the standing water in right field.  The second game started around 7:30, by which time the mercury was going into freefall, along with the Bluejays.  On the plus side, I’ve never been back to Judson in the four years since.

       And I don’t need tomorrow to “top” that.