I’m off to join the old ballplayers

I had that chance to chat with a few old teammates over the weekend, and even our old coach. We exchanged ancient yarns, of course, some of which approached the truth. Nobody, however, remembered my stunning heat of 1964. Only one even remembered the specific meet in question, where he suffered a disastrous equipment malfunction in the pole vault, but he recalled no desperate temperature. He also described my two-mile as a nail-biting, lead-changing affair. Until last week, I would have described it as nerve-wracking but undramatic. Now? I obviously have only the most tenuous grip on what I thought was my past. Clear, embedded, virtually tactile memories seem to have been false. Maybe I really was involved the race of the century, slicing through balmy zephyrs to overcome the team tactics of the evil Coventry boys. But nobody forgets youthful glories, and I’d surely remember that.

Wouldn’t I?



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.