Well, Major League Baseball may began a very short season this Friday. I’ve always liked, though not loved, this funny game on the “diamond”. I viewed my first professional game at Yankee Stadium on a hot July Sunday. My Dad bussed to NYC from the Joisey Shore with our Little League (not the Bad News Bears by the way). I think that the Bronx Bombers hosted the Washington Senators in that summer spectacle. We sat so far up in the center field bleachers than even the brobdingnagian Frank Howard appeared tiny at home plate!
Legendary journalist David Halberstam wrote a few great sports works after examining the Vietnam War and politics (including my favorite – The Amateurs – published just before the summer of 1996). Yet back to baseball and his perennial favorite, The Summer of ’49. Some KABOOMERS either learned at very young ages, or heard from those in the Greatest Generation about: DiMaggio and Williams, BOSOX and YANKS, rivals and heros. [I lean toward Ted Williams, the pride of San Diego’s Hoover High School and a decorated Marine flyboy.] True, Joltin’ Joe is dead and gone away, and the Graduate is a cinematic favorite of mine. My point is that we can emulate heroes. As you may have read in KABOOMER, a hero of mine is another Marine wartime veteran and Crew Coach, Carl Ullrich. Here’s to our Red, White and Blue for finding heroic men and women who shape our own deeds!
How ironic and sad that Don Henley sang [in 1984 after the boys of summer were gone}:
“nobody on the road, nobody on the beach, empty lake, empty streets”
Empty… I hope that you are coping with Corona fatigue. That has found me, as some summer days I feel that my performance is running on less than a full tank!
Nobody… Perhaps you, like I, have seem more critters out and about as we continue our extending clamp down. Cleaner air and more wild things – a nice unintended consequence of a global virus, I suppose. Empty roads, beaches and streets cited by Henley do seem to have a bit more biocentrism these days! Note to selves – get out and see those critters (as in-mask human raccoons of course)
Back to The Boys (and Girls of Summer)… Leading edge KABOOMER Don Henley placed this Billboard song first on his album titled, Building the Perfect Beast. Such a prescient cover song for us Medicare-aged folks, and for us getting through lockdown as best we can. Genius.com offered that Don explored “concepts of aging and questioning the past. The subject in the song reminisces about past summer love and things that he has lost as time wears on.”
As your Koach, I agree with Don about part 1 (challenging concepts of aging). Let’s awaken the Athlete (or Beast) within us.
I diverge slightly on his second theme about “things lost as time wears on.” As written in KABOOMER,for most activities of daily lives, we can be as good once as we ever were. Yes – thank you, Toby Keith for those uplifting lyrics, too! My top takeaways from Henley and Keith?
- Use it or lose it as a Perfect Beast!
- Be good, by setting stretch goals, as you ever were – for most Stamininety activities.
- Remember, aging is part of our lives. Get OLDER, not OLD!
Do build something special this summer, despite CoVid fatigue!
Koach Dave
postscript: Happy Birthday KABOOMER Don (tomorrow – July 22).
Recent Comments