The Dodgers Ride Again

My experience watching the Dodgers - my Dodgers - play in their first travel baseball tournament in Smyrna on Saturday perfectly encapsulated the long, strange trip we're on right now.

The boys are playing travel baseball mostly because our home league - West Nashville Sports League - hasn't started yet because Nashville remains in "phase 2" as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The only way for the boys to play 12U baseball is to travel to outlying counties and play teams that have been practicing and playing a lot more than we have.  

I didn't coach any of our three games on Saturday.  Instead, I sat away from everyone - distancing - and watched the games with Glenn Brown.  In 90 + degree weather, I wore a blue mask almost the entire day, sweating the entire time.  

Why?  Because during a mediation at work on Thursday, one of the attorneys I was mediating for got a telephone call from one of his law partners, who had just learned that he had tested positive for COVID-19.  The attorney got tested on Friday but didn't have hit test results back by the time we played our first game Saturday morning.  

Although it was unlikely that I had been exposed to COVID-19, I had been in an enclosed room with this attorney - who is a friend of mine - for 1 to 2 hours Thursday morning.  As a result, I didn't feel comfortable possibly exposing the boys or their parents to the virus if, by chance, I had it.

So, I sat in a camping chair along the fence and occasionally shouted instructions and encouragement to J.P. and his teammates.  

It was surreal, to say the least.  

In my heart, I wasn't sure if the boys should be playing baseball again, with the number of positive tests for COVID-19 ticking upward in Nashville rather than downward.  And, of course, there was little or not social distancing among players and families, other than the fact that there weren't to many spectators.  I was one of, at most, five people wearing a mask.  

On the other hand, watching the boys together, especially in between games, laughing and well, just being 12 year old boys reminded me of how much they had missed being with each other.  These boys - my boys - have missed out on so much the past three months because of COVID-19.  Baseball, yes, but so many other things.  School, friends, and what in all likelihood is the last vestige of their childhood.  

In a way, what remained of their innocence has been stolen by the virus, right at the point in time where they're about to be teenagers.  Life was already about to become a lot more complicated for them but, in my view, they had another spring and summer to be boys.  COVID-19 stole what remained of their youth from them, it seems to me.

That's precisely why I enjoyed watching the boys in between games, spending time with each other, as much or more than I enjoyed watching them play baseball.  I didn't much care that they lost 5-3, 6-3, and 12-2.  What I cared about was watching them sit in a circle, under the tent, and talk and laugh with each other.  Seeing that made my really, really happy.

Afterwards, I asked J.P. if he enjoyed his first travel baseball tournament.  

"I did," he said.  "But you know what I really enjoyed?  Just hanging out with the guys in between games."  

I couldn't have said it any better myself.

J.P.

When I posted this picture on Instagram, taken after J.P. and finished a run a couple of week ago, a friend of mine I've known since junior high school commented that he looks just like I did at that age.  

Brothers

These guys.  

Five the First Time

Saturday morning, J.P. ran 5 miles for the first time in his life.  And I was with him every step of the way.  

Blakemore Avenue to West End to Elmington Park to Fairfax Avenue and back home.  J.P.'s first 5 miles run.  I mean, damn.

This running thing with the two of us.  It's hard for me to put into words how much it means to me.  Even if it's only for a little while, to share with him something that is so special to me means the world.

When we run together, it's almost like we're not two people, but one.  Running together, fast, not effortlessly but not working too hard.  Often time, he runs just off my shoulder, slightly behind me, always close.  It's a beautiful metaphor for our life together, in some ways.  He's my guy.

I've been running for almost 30 years.  J.P.'s just started running.  Still, he runs with me almost effortlessly.  For now and for now only, I'm a stronger runner than him.  I know that and he knows that.  But, damn, I know - I mean, I really know - that if he sticks with running for the next few months, he'll be holding himself back when we run so I can keep up with him.  He may not know that, but I do, for sure.

I feel so close to J.P. when we run.  Closer than father and son, somehow.  It's almost like our age difference melts away and we become friends or peers, running together.  We're sharing something - a run - that really has nothing to do with who we are.  It's something we're doing.  Together.  We leave ourselves or, at least, I leave myself, for a few minutes, anyway.

As we finished our 5 mile run, I was so proud of him.  8:18 per mile, running at a conversational pace.  Not racing.  Not by any stretch.  We could easily have run 7:40 per mile or, maybe, even 7:30 per mile.  

J.P. has natural, God given ability when it comes to running, or so it seems to me.  Where will it take him?  Who knows.  In truth, I'll be happy if he takes up running as a lifelong activity like I have, because it's something we can share.  Now, and always.       

The kid after his first ever 5 mile run.  Thankfully, he got his first haircut since the pandemic hit later Saturday afternoon.

Bookends

This morning - the Sunday before Memorial Day - J.P. and I went for a 3 miles run in the neighborhood while Jude and Joe went for a hike at Radnor Lake.

I've really been enjoying running with J.P. lately and this morning was no different.  We stretched in the living room, walked out the front door, stretched a little more, then off we went up Linden Avenue toward Belmont Boulevard.

I map out in my head what route we're going to take before we start the run.  Because Jude and I have lived in the neighborhood - in two houses - for almost 20 years - I have a million routes we can run, or so it seems.  I vary them for J.P. and since his running regularly with me is a fairly new thing, it's fun introducing him to new routes.  I think he enjoys seeing the neighborhood from a different vantage point - an new one - as we run through it.  

Today, we ran down Belmont Boulevard to Portland Avenue, then curled back around to Belmont University and ran through campus.  We followed one of my oldest and most familiar routes down Acklen Avenue and turned on to Elliott Avenue, where ran up the alley behind our old house.  We laughed together as we looked at the tiny garage with a chain link gate and the small backyard.

We ran up the hill on Douglas Avenue and turned onto Tenth Avenue, where we marveled at the vacant lot where a church sat until vary recently on the corner of Douglas and Tenth.  Apartments - and more traffic - on the way, I'm sure.  We turned onto Halcyon Street, ran by Hal and Kim's house, and stopped at Portland Brew on 12th Avenue for hot chocolate (J.P.) and coffee (me).  Afterwards, we sat on a picnic table outside Ember's Ski Lodge - the dumbest bar in 12South - and talked quietly for a few minutes.

As J.P. and I sat and talked, nodding or waving to pedestrians who walked by, some pushing strollers and others with dogs on leashes, I was struck by an overwhelming sense of nostalgia.

Like yesterday, I recalled walking down 10th Avenue with J.P. in the City Elite stroller - more than a decade ago - and waving at Ronnie Henderson as he drove by in his old, beat up pick-up truck.  It was one of my first walks with J.P., maybe the very first one.  Later, on a different day, when I ran into Ronnie, he shook his head and laughed when he told my how proud I looked that day he saw me strolling J.P. on 10th Avenue.  And you know what?  I was proud that day.  Damn proud.

Today, as J.P. and I ran down the hill on Acklen Avenue, we saw Allen McCrary sitting on a wall abutting the sidewalk in front of his family's house.  Allen is what I call a "neighborhood friend," whose father happens to be one of the original members of the Fairfield Four.

Beaming, I'm sure, as we ran by, I yelled to Allen.  "Look at this guy!?!  Can you believe how tall he is?"  Allen laughed and waved at us.

Later, as J.P. and I ran up Halcyon Street near the end of our run, we saw my longtime friend, Joan Curry.  "Hey, Joanie!"  I yelled.  "Hey, Phil!  Hey J.P.!" she responded.  I smiled to myself, my heart filled with pride as my son ran along beside me.

So, that's what I was thinking about as J.P. and I sat on the picnic table, sipping our drinks, after our Sunday morning run.

From the first stroll with J.P., when I saw Ronnie Henderson, and from so many, many strolls through the neighborhood over the next few years, to this morning.  The same baby I had strolled through the neighborhood so many times so many years ago was running in the neighborhood, right beside me.

For so long, I've deeply missed those fleeting years of strolling through the neighborhood with J.P., then Joe.  I thought they were going forever and, in a way, they are.  And that's a bit sad.

What I didn't anticipate, though, what I couldn't have anticipated, is that one day J.P. would run beside me through the neighborhood, literally tracing my steps from so many years ago, back to the very first walk I took him on down 10th Avenue.  That we would run together, side by side.  

Bookends.

12 X 12

Yesterday, J.P. suddenly expressed a strong desire to go on a run with me.  He's run with me before but not often.  Over the years, I've made a point not to try to talk him into running with me.  He understands what an important part of my life running is, for sure.  But I want him to come to running  on his own, if at all.  I don't want him to be a runner because he thinks its something I want him to do.  It's got to be something he wants to do.  That's my view, anyway.

He ran cross county for USN last fall and, actually, was quite good for never having seriously run before.  He placed in the top 10 - around 5, 6, or 7, as I recall - in the four or five meets he ran at the 1 1/2 mile distance.  I was very proud of him but after the brief cross country season ended, he didn't express an interest in continuing to train so I left it alone.  For him, it was off to fall soccer, then basketball.

I think the reason for his sudden interest was that he learned from Jude that his good friend, Cooper, had been running three miles a day in his neighborhood.  J.P. is nothing if not competitive, and I love that about him.

So, in typical J.P. fashion, he asked me five or six times last night if he could run with me this morning, what time was I going to run, etc.  And, sure enough, he appears at the foot of my bed about 7 a.m. and asked, again, if he could run with me.  We agreed I would get my longer run in, then run an extra mile with him after I finished.

I left the house about 7:30 a.m. and ran four miles while listening to one of my favorite podcasts - I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats.  An easy run down past USN and back un 21st Avenue.  When I finished my cool down walk in front of our house, he was out the front door and ready to go.  J.P. has has a one track mind when he decides he wants to do something.

We ended up running two miles together at about 8:14 per mile.  A conversational, nice training pace for him, I think.  I enjoyed every step of the run immensely.  He asked questions about running, training, why I run, etc.  I answered his questions and shared with him some of my general thoughts about running.  Not too much and nothing too intense but just enough, hopefully, to whet his appetite.

We finished our run at Portland Brew, so we could get coffee and hot chocolate.  As we walked, a young man I recognized drove up on a motorcycle.  I smiled as he took off his helmet and said, "Anthony!  What's up!"

Striking handsome, with a huge smile spreading across his face, Anthony Woodland walked over an gave us fist bumps.  He told us had been in Bowling Green, Kentucky,  yesterday on a modeling short for Eddie Bauer.  He showed us a video on his cell phone of him riding his motorcycle down a runway and a small airplane roaring up behind him and taking off just over his head.  "That's cool," J.P. said.  And it was cool.

I bought Anthony's Iced Dirty Chai, whatever that is, and talked with for a few minutes while we waited for our drinks.

What I learned and what was a gut punch, in some ways, is that Anthony turns 30 years old this week.  30!  Where did his 20's go?!?

When Anthony as 12 years old - the same age as J.P. is now - I hired him to cut the grass in our old house on Elliott Avenue.  He was a neighborhood kid who, I knew, had a difficult family situation.  I drove him home a time or two to his house across Wedgewood Avenue.  That area of town has changed a lot in the last decade but it was rough at the time.

Anthony always had the best personality, just as he does now.  Always smiling, always happy.  To me, and I've written this before, he was like a flower that somehow, miraculously, grow to it's full height out of a crack in the sidewalk.  That was him.  That is him.

 Anthony grew older, went to high school, first at Hillsboro HS, later at Nashville School of Arts, a magnet school.  I stumbled into taking him there for his in person interview, which is another story I think I've written about in this space, years ago.  He occasionally stopped by our old house, and our new house, and I'd see him from time to time in 12South.  I picked up his tab a time or two when I used to frequent Edley's, when he was on a date or there with a friend.

And now he's about to turn 30.  And J.P. is 12, the same age Anthony was when I first met him.

Time is strange thing, as one of my barista friends at Portland Brew said to me this morning when I told her why I was buying Anthony's drink.  And she was so right.

Time is a strange thing.

God's Gift to a Friend

A lifelong friend of mine - one of my best friends - is going through with his mother what we went through with my mother before she died.  His journey is different from mine, of course.  All of our journeys in that way are different.

Still, there are similarities.  Sticking with the journey analogy, he has passed some landmarks that are familiar to me and not necessarily in a good way.  We take a lot and he's shared with me his thoughts and feelings as his mother's health and cognitive functioning declined over the past several year or so.

My heart broke for him, for example, when he called me one day a while back and told me that for the first time, his mom hadn't recognized him when he went to see her earlier in the day.  It's not often in life you can tell someone you know how they feel, and mean it, but that day, I could and I did.

His mother's health has declined significantly the last couple of weeks.  Last weekend, one of the hospice nurses told him she thought the end was near.  His older brother made arrangements to travel from Jacksonville, FL, ostensibly to say goodbye.

And then something amazing happened.

While my friend was visiting with his mom last weekend, she looked at him and said, "Hi, Mike," more lucid than she had been in months.  She talked with him about his life, and his children, and told him she was sorry things had been hard for him.  He hadn't been able to talk with his mom like that in many, many months, probably more than a year.  And he had never expected to be able to again.

Now, I believe things like this just don't happen on their own.  I believe this is precisely the kind of thing that God has a hand in.  I really do.

Mike is one of the kindest, most patient, best people I know.  He's the classic middle child, it seems to me.  He took care of his father and visited him often, for several years, at the assisted living facility where he lived before he died.  He's done the same with his mother with little or no help from his siblings.

I believe God knows that.  Of course that's what I believe.  And I also believe that God's gift to Mike was a few stolen moments and a quiet, lucid conversation with his mother.  What greater gift?

What greater gift indeed?