Marking Time

Sports are and always have been a primary memory aid for me.  I can remember being seven because of the 1959 Dodgers-White Sox World Series.  In the same way, I have a distinct memory of being eleven, sitting in the backseat of the car and listening to the Bears beat the Giants for the NFL Championship.  Anything I can recall from the summer that followed is set against the backdrop of the 1964 White Sox.  Oh, what could have been.

I can recall high school and my undergraduate years; there are any number of baseball-infused memories; the Bulls of Jerry Sloan and Norm Van Lier also help.  I started Ph.D. school as the South Side Hitmen started to sputter and was deep into my dissertation the day of the Bears’ Super Bowl parade in January of 1986.  Parenthood came nearly six years later, in November 1991.  Trust me, a child helps you remember things on an altogether different level.

Clare generated sports’ memories, so everything starting to reinforce itself starting in the late 1990s, after t-ball.  Then comes grade school, high school and college, some of the memories sports-connected, some not, but all of them tied to an athlete.  I may even come to see 2017 through the lens of the “great rebuild.”

The one thing I can’t remember is the Beatles playing two shows at Comiskey Park fifty years ago this week.  I can definitely remember the second-place Sox trying to catch the Twins, and I know I was dreading the start of eighth grade, where a not-too-friendly math teacher awaited, but the Beatles?  No, not a thing.

I guess it’s because I wasn’t really into pop music then; that would only come later, towards the end of high school.  Did I mention that Walt Williams had five hits and five runs scored in a game against the Red Sox on the date of my high-school graduation, May 31, 1970?

How could I forget?