Curveballs

Back in the day, the rap on me as a hitter was that I did not handle the curveball well. I don’t care who you were, how well you threw (ok Mike Lentz at the time could get it by me) I ate your fastball for lunch. But curveballs, off speed; well I hadn’t figured those out. And surprise, surprise after a while (with later maturity and wisdom) I noticed that they became a larger part of my diet, and that batting average and batting success wise, I was losing weight.

But the biggest curveballs that were ever thrown to me happened at just twenty-one years of age. In the midst (junior year) of my budding college baseball career I was faced with the challenge of fatherhood. That was some curve. And by the end of that summer I learned that I was to be the father of two, which was a bigger curve. And two weeks later two live curveballs were staring me in the face. These were big time game changers. These were big time life changers.

In retrospect, I am glad there was more than one curveball. One curve ball might have just sent me back to the dugout with my bat in my hands. Odd to say, but one might have beaten me, two made it better for me. With two I was needed. With two I was in the game. With one, I quite possibly could have been ignored, pushed aside and regulated to remote back-up status. With two I became very involved from necessity and then became very involved by enjoysity (my new word). Parenting was fun, it was joyful, it was incredibly rewarding.

Much later, after my skills had eroded by age and forced exile from the game I began playing baseball again. Older, slower, wiser I now enjoyed seeing curveballs and off speed pitches, heck I preferred them to the fastballs that now tended to beat me. Perhaps a lesson with curveballs or two at age twenty-one was just what I needed.

Well life still throws curveballs and I sometimes hit them and I sometimes fail. YESTERDAY was Melissa and Kelsey’s birthday and while I did call Kelsey early in the morning (heck perhaps even at the time of her actual birth) it was to co-ordinate a time to come visit. And much later in the day when she called me back, I had three people in my office asking questions and needing answers and the call was short and confusing. And then this morning (and I can indeed go days without knowing the date, and this month has flown by; and I got probably 10 more lame excuses) I saw the date and said “oh shit”.

I can only hope for forgiveness.