Sheesh! I just can't seem to get out to a game these days. I was wanting to get to some football playoff games, but I haven't been able to find the time. It's o.k. because I'm really intending this blog to be about basketball, but I hate that it has been dormant for nearly three weeks. So, I'm whipping out a re-tread of something I wrote a little more than a month ago.
My friends Russ Cummins and Danny Brown are the broadcast team for Fern Creek High School in Louisville. They do a fantastic job of calling and describing the games each week, and what is even more amazing is that they had zero broadcast experience prior to getting behind the microphone for the first game last season. Fern Creek is mighty lucky because they are very professional.
This year, Russ and Danny decided to include a weekly segment that featured a short essay from your's truly. They called it "Trace's Soapbox." I'd write something each week, and Danny Brown read it on the air. The funny thing about this is that I'm an alumnus of one of Fern Creek's rivals, Louisville Male High School, and we've always teased one another about our different loyalties. I had a blast coming up with something new every five or six or seven days, and there were times when I had to get a prompt from them for a topic. There were other times when I'd get an idea in my head and could not wait to write it and send it to them.
After being on the road on a couple of different Friday nights, I came up with this:
People always want to romanticize baseball. I have no problem with that because I love that sport along with football and basketball. I divide the year into three seasons: basketball, baseball, and football. I don't pay much attention to the seasons dictated to us by the revolving of Earth.
I find romance in all three sports. Basketball is full of electricity, and it would be impossible to live in a state with college teams like Kentucky, Louisville, and Western Kentucky without having some lusty draw to the traditions and history of that sport. I remember driving across Kentucky one cold January night and finding Cawood Ledford's soothing voice on nearly every radio station. He was like a warming beacon guiding me through the darkness. I remember stopping for gas at one point during that trip and the service station had the Kentucky game on the loudspeaker by the pumps. The attendant had the game on inside, too. I didn't miss a minute of the game and didn't miss the Mrs. Grissom's commercials either.
How did she make those salads taste so fine?
I was born into a baseball family, so that sport has a mighty tug on me. All the movies, all the novels, all the drippy sports writing done about baseball are true for me, too. My grandfather played baseball, and an abiding love of the sport has been handed down to me.
That leaves football. I don't think many people find romance in the game, but I do.
My wife and I love to travel. We find any excuse to take a trip. We just sort of wander the highways, and we have to explain why a trip to Tennessee found us in east Kentucky. Never mind that. A few weeks ago, we were heading back to Bowling Green on a Friday afternoon that crept into night. Out on a lonely stretch of the Cumberland Parkway I discovered a caravan of cars and two school busses from one of Kentucky's too many counties. No doubt, the rolling assemblage was heading for some contest one or two or more counties away.
I wanted to pull into the "rocking chair" of their convoy and go wherever they were headed to watch some high school football tilt. As I passed them, I wanted to give them some sort of sign that my heart was with them. I wanted to be them and watch their boys go nose to nose with their opponent.
Later on our journey, when it was dark, we passed a town, and from the highway I could see the burning lights of six light standards glowing down on a football field lost down behind the tree line. I felt a pull. I had to fight the urge to exit and meander my way through that dark town and sit in the cold to watch football. My wife and children would've rebelled at such a spur-of-the-moment switch in our plans. Plus, we didn't have the warm clothes to endure a chilly night.
I don't know why but I looked at those Friday Night Lights for as long as could. I even checked my rearview mirrors so I could watch them fade as my Ford tumbled over the horizon. Finally, all I could see was their bright shaft shining into the heavens stirring the souls of guys like Lombardi and Landry to sit at the brim of Valhalla and watch another high school football game.
I find romance in all three sports. Basketball is full of electricity, and it would be impossible to live in a state with college teams like Kentucky, Louisville, and Western Kentucky without having some lusty draw to the traditions and history of that sport. I remember driving across Kentucky one cold January night and finding Cawood Ledford's soothing voice on nearly every radio station. He was like a warming beacon guiding me through the darkness. I remember stopping for gas at one point during that trip and the service station had the Kentucky game on the loudspeaker by the pumps. The attendant had the game on inside, too. I didn't miss a minute of the game and didn't miss the Mrs. Grissom's commercials either.
How did she make those salads taste so fine?
I was born into a baseball family, so that sport has a mighty tug on me. All the movies, all the novels, all the drippy sports writing done about baseball are true for me, too. My grandfather played baseball, and an abiding love of the sport has been handed down to me.
That leaves football. I don't think many people find romance in the game, but I do.
My wife and I love to travel. We find any excuse to take a trip. We just sort of wander the highways, and we have to explain why a trip to Tennessee found us in east Kentucky. Never mind that. A few weeks ago, we were heading back to Bowling Green on a Friday afternoon that crept into night. Out on a lonely stretch of the Cumberland Parkway I discovered a caravan of cars and two school busses from one of Kentucky's too many counties. No doubt, the rolling assemblage was heading for some contest one or two or more counties away.
I wanted to pull into the "rocking chair" of their convoy and go wherever they were headed to watch some high school football tilt. As I passed them, I wanted to give them some sort of sign that my heart was with them. I wanted to be them and watch their boys go nose to nose with their opponent.
Later on our journey, when it was dark, we passed a town, and from the highway I could see the burning lights of six light standards glowing down on a football field lost down behind the tree line. I felt a pull. I had to fight the urge to exit and meander my way through that dark town and sit in the cold to watch football. My wife and children would've rebelled at such a spur-of-the-moment switch in our plans. Plus, we didn't have the warm clothes to endure a chilly night.
I don't know why but I looked at those Friday Night Lights for as long as could. I even checked my rearview mirrors so I could watch them fade as my Ford tumbled over the horizon. Finally, all I could see was their bright shaft shining into the heavens stirring the souls of guys like Lombardi and Landry to sit at the brim of Valhalla and watch another high school football game.
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