What Goes Around...

Outside, the weather is November frightful, raw, cold and wet.  In a way, I feel good about that.  Finally, high school and college football players can see what it’s like to play spring sports in the Midwest.

Today might be too wet for softball, or not.  If I live to be a hundred and they bury me in Death Valley, my body will still be shivering from that game Clare played freshman year at Judson University.  There was enough water in right field for regular barge traffic, I swear.  And nothing like starting a doubleheader, with March barely in the rearview mirror, at 5 PM.  By the time the second game was over, 40 degrees would’ve felt warm.

This spring/fall weather of November, then, is a staple during the Illinois state high school playoffs.  Technically, yesterday’s Prep Bowl doesn’t count; it’s more of a grudge match rooted in the animosity that Chicago Catholic and public schools once had for one another.  Lo and behold, my alma mater St. Laurence (a suburban school that now qualifies for the Bowl because, well, rules change) won the Bowl yesterday in a 35-34 squeaker against Simeon.  Too bad it was just cold and gray.  Drizzle can really help cement memories.

In which case, it must’ve rained most of my four years at St. Laurence.  As God is my witness, the football coach recruited players in the corridors between classes.  “Hey, kid, you got a pulse?  Why don’t you try out for the team?”  I got asked once early sophomore year while waiting for an admission slip to my second-period class.  I made sure never to miss the bus again after that day.  There was no telling if I could decline such an invitation twice and live to tell the tale.

I went to a few games freshman year and a lot of games senior year.  Early my freshman year of college, somebody I knew from St. Laurence stopped by the house to see if I wanted to go a game with him.  I’d moved on, he hadn’t.  No, I said, offering some kind of excuse.  And that was the last I saw of Stan, going on fifty years now.

But here I am, looking out the window to see weather that reminds me of my daughter in spring and my life an eternity ago.  It must be all that turkey I ate on Thursday.