Sports: I've played a lot, and I've watched a lot.

 Hey! The Old Man here.

Like most kids of my generation, sports played a huge part in my life, and in my adult life as well. While growing up in Putnam County, the smallest county in the state, outdoor activities was all of the entertainment any of us had. Our schools had no football or wrestling, so baseball and basketball were in the forefront. Basketball started in 5th grade and while I liked playing, it just wasn't my favorite activity.  I don't know if it was because it started a few years after I started baseball, or because at the time I just wasn't very good.  I started playing baseball when I was 4 years old, turning 5 during the season. I don't remember much about my first year, except one game when we were playing a team from Cedar Point. I went to bat against a pitcher who looked like he was at least 20, but I sent his first offer right back at him. He caught it, as I'm sure my 4 year old self didn't have any power yet, but I remember being so excited that I actually made contact in a game. Back in those days there was no T-ball, pitching machines, or coach pitch. You faced a live arm, usually the biggest kid on the other team who could throw at least 96 mph, and you either struck out, ground or flied out, got beaned, got a hit, or walked. For a few years, it was mostly striking out and walking, with a few terrifying hit-by-pitches as well. I don't remember anything at all about that first season, but I do remember hitting the ball back to that humongous pitcher in Cedar Point during the summer of 1970.  

Putnam County has six towns.  Granville is the largest with a population of around 1400. Then comes Hennepin, the county seat, with 900. McNabb and Magnolia both have around 350, and Standard and Mark both have about 200 each.  Every town had a Little League team except Granville, they had two.  Granville and Hennepin were the rich kids, and by having larger populations, had more talent than the rest of us.  I don't remember beating them very often, but they didn't like playing us because we were scrappy as hell.  The rest of the teams varied from pretty good to downright terrible.  Some towns had to use girls (GIRLS!!) to round out their rosters because there wasn't enough boys. There was enough teams that we had our own leagues for farm team (ages 5-8), and Little League (ages 9-11). When you played in McNabb like I did, once you made it to Little League, your coach was a guy named Ted Morgensen.  Ted knew everything there was to know about baseball, and he coached Little League for McNabb for decades.  He had the ability to take a team with 2-3 good players and make it very competitive.  There was one thing about Ted. He was stricken with polio as a young man and wasn't able to walk.  Every game or practice, one of the fathers would go to Teds house, wheel him out to the pristine 1950's green and blue car he owned, lay him down in the back seat, and drive him to the ball park.  When he arrived they would get this wooden barstool, set it by the fence in the dugout, and help him get to it. Ted took it from there. He always had his lineups ready, and the scorebook was given to one of the parents who he trusted to keep score.  He would set his butt on the edge of that stool, hang on to the fence, and run the game from there.  When you're a kid, practice sucks. Ted's practices were fundamentals from start to finish, but he taught them in a way that it didn't seem all that boring.  This is where my absolute love for the game came from. Ted loved the game of baseball, and that was obvious in the way he taught us how to play,  It was infectious.  I took my glove with me everywhere I went and wore my blue hat with the red bill and red "M" at all times.  I threw tennis balls against the side of our house for hours on end working on my fielding.  I would throw balls up on the roof of the house and hit on the first bounce when they would roll back down.  This practice came to an abrupt halt when I hit one through one of the windows on the front porch, so I started rolling them off of the roof of the milk barn.  All of this was so when I went to practice, I could do my best to impress Ted. He is a huge reason why I love the game of baseball, and I could never thank him enough.  Ted passed away in 1984. We were living in Oklahoma at the time, so I didn't get to go to his funeral, but I try to visit his grave when I'm in Putnam County.  They named the ballfield in McNabb after Ted, which is the perfect way to remember him and all of the kids he taught the game of baseball to.  May he rest in peace. 

In 1978, we moved to Magnolia, and my life moved from a pretty solitary life on the farm, to living in a town with a bunch of kids around.  Since we all went to the same elementary and Jr High, we all knew each other, so that was nice.  Even better, my best friend Todd, lived 3 blocks away.  We had dreamed of this since we were in kindergarten. Doug Hauger lived a few blocks away as well. The best part was all of the kids were as crazy about baseball, and other sports, as I was. The gathering spot was the Smith's house. They had about 139 kids from the ages in their 30s down to grade school for the youngest.  The three Smiths who were my age were Shawn, and the  twins: Pete and Paul. They had a big back yard, and we had a baseball field set up with the street running through part of the outfield.  There was a huge oak tree across the road towards the back of the lot that was an automatic home run if you hit it on the fly.  We would play baseball from sunup to sundown. The Smith family was well known in the area for being athletic and physical freaks of nature.  In the winter we played football. There was always pick-up basketball games at the park, tennis during Wimbledon, that's when we weren't down at the Little Sandy Creek hunting, fishing, and camping out. It was a great place to grow up, and I'm still close with all of these guys. I'll go more into depth about my time in Magnolia another day. It deserves a post or two of it's own.

I remember when I was almost 5 years old, Grandpa and Grandma V had given me a pair of St Louis Cardinals pajamas with the number 5 on the back. At the time, it meant nothing to me, but through the years, the subject of the Cardinals would cause me both headaches and hilarity.  In the state of Illinois there is a line of demarcation somewhere around Bloomington, that actually determines which baseball club you cheer for. From the Wisconsin line south, the Chicago Cubs are the majority of fans, with a smattering of White Sox fans here and there. The further south you go, the more Cardinals fans you begin to encounter. Once you're south of Bloomington, it becomes a seething cauldron of Cardinals fans. Pop and Grandpa V were born in southern Illinois and both were huge St Louis fans. I was also born in southern Illinois, but somehow, I became a Cubs fan. Grandpa was a man a few words, so he never said much about who I rooted for. Pop, however, was quite a different story.  Everyone knows about the 108 year span between the Cubs World Series victories. Sadly, Pop died two years before the Cubs won it all again, so we missed out on what would have been some juicy banter.  Up to that point, it was decades of "I can't believe you root for those losers" or "the Cardinals have lost more World Series games than the Cubs have played in", and so forth. Before 2016, all I could do is just sit there and take it. He would always ask how I became a Cubs fan. The truth is, I never had a chance to be anything else. We lived in the northern part of Illinois, and one of the TV stations out of Peoria always played afternoon games from Wrigley Field. Jack Brickhouse, Ron Santo, and Billy Williams helped make me the Cubs fan that I am today. Even though Todd was a Cardinals fan, and Paul rooted for the Sox, I stayed true to my Loveable Losers.

 Baseball aside, Pop and I liked the same football teams: the Chicago Bears, and the Oklahoma State Cowboys.  The Bears have quite a history in that they are one of the original teams in the NFL. They started off in 1920 as the Decatur Staleys, then George "Papa Bear" Halas bought the team, moved it to Chicago, and changed the name to the Bears. In the years before the Super Bowl, the Bears won 9 NFL Championships. The Super Bowl era has not been kind to the Monsters of the Midway. In the 60s and early 70s they had 2 Hall of Famers in Dick Butkus and Gale Sayers and couldn't win anything.  It wasn't until they drafted a running back from a small all black college, Jackson State, in 1975 that they began to be competitive. For his first few years, the Bears were still bad, but at least Sweetness made losing somewhat fun to watch. He could do it all. Besides being one of the greatest pure runners in NFL history, he was amazing catching passes out of the backfield, an amazing blocker, and he could throw or kick a ball a mile. Slowly through the early 80s, the Bears got better and better. On offense, they drafted offensive linemen, recievers, a QB, and unbelievable defensive players. Throw in Mike Ditka as head coach and Buddy Ryan as defensive coordinator, and by 1984, the Bears were ready to destroy the world. The Bears 1985 season is considered by many to be the greatest ever played. The defense was unparalleled, then and now, and Walter had enough left in the tank to make the offense good enough. That defense though. They literally beat the shit out of everyone and, except for a letdown on Monday Night Football against Miami, they cruised through the season and playoffs with ease.  The Super Bowl was in New Orleans that year against the New England Patriots. Somehow, the Patriots scored first, then the Bears came alive and just manhandled the Pats in every phase of the game on their way to a 46-10 ass whipping. It would be the only Super Bowl victory to date. There have been great players and great teams, just not great enough. It was fun while it lasted, though. 

Growing up in Illinois in the 70s, college football was not a real popular event. The U of I had terrible football teams and other than Red Grange and Dick Butkus, wasn't known for much. A lot of people in that area were fans of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, because they hated Michigan and Ohio State too much to like them, and Notre Dame wasn't in any conference at the time, so they could play whoever they wanted to. Needless to say, I wasn't a college football fan at all when I was a kid. Then we moved to Oklahoma. Population wise, Oklahoma is way down the list and is a very rural state. They did have one thing: the Oklahoma Univeristy Sooners football team. We moved there in 1981, and they had won 5 National Championships, had 3 Heisman Trophy winners, and countless All-Americans. You would think it would be easy to jump on the Sooners bandwagon and just enjoy the ride. Not for me and Pop. As we began to meet more and more people and go to a few games, we noticed that most of the OU fans were absolute douche canoes, and were just flat out ugly when games were going on. Then we met the Oklahoma State Cowboys fans, and knew we'd found our people. I'm not going to say that OSU fans are angels, but I'll hang out with them any day. The thing was, OSU wasn't very good. Jimmy Johnson was the coach in 1981 and the Cowboys started improving. In 1983 they finished 8-4 and beat 20th ranked Baylor in the Bluebonnet Bowl. Then Jimmy got hired away by the Miami Hurricanes, and made that team an absolute powerhouse. Pat Jones was selected to be head coach  in 1984, and had some very nice seasons during his tenure. However, he could never beat OU or the Nebraska Cornhuskers. He did coach two players who would be elected to the NFL Hall of Fame: Thurman Thomas and Barry Sanders. Their quarterback was the current head coach at OSU. Mike Gundy. Gundy has, without a doubt, been the best and most successful coach in OSU history. I'll go more into depth on these guys another day, but Pop and I became huge Oklahoma State fans, and I still am today. 

Well, I think this a good stopping point, as I will talk more at length about all of the subjects I have covered today in other blogs. 

Until next time.....

The Old Man