Seasons

The calendar and its “muscle,” aka the weather, will dictate how much longer I’ll be biking.  Already on the lakefront, beach sand is creeping onto the bike path, and my Schwinn does not like sand; it makes the tires go drunk.  And when the wind starts blowing hard out of the east, the waves have a nasty little habit of reaching Lake Shore Drive around Ohio Street.

The young whippersnappers may feel different, but I won’t bike in November cold or December snow.  It’s like the Bible says, as did The Byrds, to every thing there is a season.  Well, there was until television took over professional sports.

My freshman year of college in 1971, the Bucks swept the Bullets to win the NBA championship on April 30; this year, the Cavaliers beat the Warriors in game seven of the finals on June 19.  Again in 1971, on May 18 the Blackhawks lost to the Canadiens in seven games in the Stanley Cup finals.  This year, the Penguins topped the Sharks in six games to win the Stanley Cup on June 12.  (How do they keep the ice from getting soft with a summer sun beating down on the facilities?).  Super Bowl I took place January 15, 1967.  Super Bowl L was played February 7, 2016.

Thanks to TV, one season bleeds into another.  Anything more than five games and this year’s World Series goes into November.  Sorry, the only baseball that should be played in November is the Arizona instructional league.  Anything else constitutes a bad joke, most of all on those fans sitting out in the November chill—at night, of course—to watch the boys of summer do their best with winter closing in.