Coach Dan

Coach Dan

 

I hate dogs because I love them, and they die before their time.  I was reminded of that last October, when we lost her highness, aka our basset hound Thelma.  There are no replacements once an animal has become a central part of your life.  But, through no fault of my own, we ended up with an eight-month old basset in December.  She goes by the name of Penny, though I have been known to call her Satan.

 

Our first dog was Martha, who I’d put on my lap to read the box scores to when she was a puppy; that worked so well we decided to try and do the same with a child, hence, Clare.  That one learned to read box scores all on her own, if only to check for her name.

 

Lymphoma took Martha from us when Clare was only six-months old.  So, it would have been during the time of Patsy, the psychotic basset, that our daughter met Coach Dan.  She had him for two years of Tee-Ball followed by two years of Mustang Ball.  Dan always treated Clare like she was one of his players, not his only girl player as she was for all but her first season with him.  When Dan stepped down from coaching and the team went to another father (and not me, as originally planned) and Clare somehow ended up on a different team, we learned all about how other men can treat female athletes.

 

Yesterday, we took Penny to the vet to be spayed.  I was more than a little nervous, what after losing a dog in October and a sister two months later.  But everything went fine, and the vet told us Coach Dan had stopped in for some reason, and they both got to talking about Clare.  (Dr. Mark is a big baseball fan, and he’s known Clare since she was a pup.)  It seems our old tee-ball coach had kept tabs on this one particular player.  “She hit more homeruns than my son,” he said about seasons now too long past, for fathers if not players.  And Coach knew that Clare had the homerun record at Elmhurst. 

Now, if we can just teach Penny how to bark after White Sox homerun.