Traveling Man

JP leaves for Tasmania today and I feel lost already.  

As someone who sees no need to travel any further than 30A or Sewanee, this is a tough one for me.  Of course, I'm happy for him.  Still, Tasmania?  I mean, damn, it's a 25 to 28 hour trip.  I'll worry every minute until I know he's safely on the ground on this island off the coast of Australia.  I mean, what in the hell?!?

Truth be told, I'm very proud of him.  The trip to Tasmania is part of an exchange program at MBA and to be one of two boys in the entire school selected to participate is quite an honor.  JP will stay with a family in Tasmania, attend school, and return home on July 10 (the day after his old man turns 60).  In January, our family will, in turn, host the young man whose family JP is staying with in Tasmania.  Pretty cool, actually.

It's winter in Tasmania, as I understand it.  Temperatures in the 50's and 60's, which sounds kind of nice, actually, compared to the mid-90's we have been experiencing in Nashville lately.  Summer in Nashville, of course, is my least favorite time of year, so I'm jealous of the weather in Tasmania, at least.  

As I think about it, JP taking this trip probably is good for me, as it gives me a tiny bit of a preview as to what it will feel like when he leaves for college next summer.  JP is 18 and, in reality, he could decide to skip his senior year at MBA and move to Tasmania if he wanted to.  He won't but he could, which is the point, right?  Legally, JP is a grown up.  A man.  

What was I like at 18 years old?  I wonder about that sometimes.  I had been working full-time hours at Wal-Mart for more than two years when I turned 18 in July 1984.  I worked too much during high school, actually, but I liked having my own money and a different identity than I had at school.  I liked it that people at Wal-Mart depended on me.    

When I graduated from high school, I was still 17, as my birthday wasn't until July.  Still, I already had traveled on my own - no chaperones - to Daytona Beach, FL, for Spring Break, in what turned out to be one of the most memorable weeks of my life.  There were 28 of us, as I recall, and in a stroke of serendipity, it was a perfect week.  

After I graduated from high school, I went to Panama City Beach, FL, with my girlfriend at the time, Debbie Billings, and another couple.  Because I was young, dumb, and arrogant, I told my mother I was going on the trip, rather than asking her.  That, of course, was one of the benefits of having my own money, a car I was paying for, and the ability to be relatively self-sufficient.  It was a precursor, I suppose, to how much I enjoyed, and thrived, on my own in my freshman year of college in Knoxville.

Is JP ready for this?  I think he probably is.  He's mature, confident, and driven.  He'll be fine.  Still, I will be glad when he texts us to confirm he's on the ground in Tasmania.  That's for sure.

Memories of Baseball (Vol. 1)

Recently, Thomas McDaniel and I had a telephone conversation, followed by an e-mail exchange, about how much we have enjoyed coaching our sons and their friends over the years.  Thomas in basketball with Pike, Joe, and their crew, and me in baseball, first with JP and, later Joe.  

The Bucket Squad and the Dodgers.  It was quite a run for both teams.  

I have been feeling especially nostalgic lately, as Pike, Joe, and their teammates have begun to wind down their time playing together on the Bucket Squad.  More and more, I have found myself missing my baseball coaching days tremendously.  Right about now, we would be in the middle of all-star baseball, playing every weekend at a quaint old ballpark in another small town.  Donelson.  Mt. Juliet.  Lawrenceburg.  Lewisburg.  I loved every one of those ballparks.  We'd be practicing two or three days a week, too.  All baseball, all the time. 

My friend, Audrey, sent me a photo of her son, Huck and Joe, with me, after the boys won an all-star tournament title in Donelson.  They played for Scott McRae, who died this winter, far too young.  I love the photo.  Huck and Joe are so happy and so innocent, as they point their championship rings toward the camera.  

I telephone Audrey after she sent me the photo to thank her for it.  I told her how much I had enjoyed coaching Huck.  One of my all-time favorites.  Emotional but, damn, he cared so much . . .  about how he played and how the team performed.  I'll take a kid who is emotional and cares every time, because that's coachable.  I can teach him how to dial it back but it's much more difficult to teach him to care and to compete.  

Audrey told me that on several occasions, she has overheard Huck telling his travel baseball teammates on the Redbirds, "Coach Phil would never let that happen."  Or, "here's how Coach Phil would do it."  

I mean, damn.  That made me so happy.  

All the practices in the spring, summer, and fall of years past.  All the baseball games.  All the e-mails to parents.  All the conversations with my assistant coaches.  It was all worth it.  Every single second I spent coaching baseball.  All of it.  It was all worth it.

I only wish I could do it again.  

Maybe it's the time of year or the fact that a couple of weeks ago, I watched so many of the boys I coached graduate from high school.  Maybe it's that JP is 18, a rising senior, and leaving on Monday for three weeks in Tasmania as part of an MBA exchange program.  Maybe it's because I turn 60 years old in less than a month.  

For whatever reason, I find myself longing for another baseball season to coach my sons and their friends.  One more season.  It's like an ache that won't go away.  It's palpable.  Lately, once a day something will remind me of one of my teams, one of my players, or call up a memory of a long ago baseball practice or game.  A win.  A loss.  A lesson learned, by a player or more often, by me.

Every boy I ever coached taught me something and enriched my life in some way.  Every single one.  And I'm grateful for the memories.  So grateful.

 

  

 

The Kid 2.0

A couple of weeks ago, Joe told me he wanted to run cross country this fall, as an 8th grader at MBA.

I was skeptical at first, for several reasons.  Joe didn't seem to enjoy cross country that much when he ran at USN as a 6th grader.  He didn't seem to be very interested in putting the work in to be in the kind of shape he needed to be in to race comfortably.  He also had some breathing issues when we ran that were a little bit concerning, although I was never sure if they were related to, perhaps, a touch of exercise induced asthma or not having the cardiovascular fitness that he needed to run two or three miles in the heat.  Mostly, I didn't think he really enjoyed it.  

I also didn't want Joe to run cross country simply to follow in JP's footsteps.  As I have told Joe repeatedly, it's important to me for him to strike his own path, not just at MBA but in life.  I want his experience at MBA to be his experience, not one he's trying to fashion after his big brother's experience at MBA.  I think that's really, really important.

I've always been hands off when it comes to running and my boys.  Obviously, running has been one of the mainstays of my life for 40 years.  It's my north star.  No matter what is going on in my life, I have running.  Work can be crazy, like it is now.  I can be stressed, like I am now.  I can be sad, as I have been at different times in my life, like when my mom was fighting Alzheimer's or when she died, and I still have running.  Running never leaves me.  It's my constant companion, always there, always waiting patiently for me to return.  In some ways, running is my best, my loyal friend.

I want my boys to have that kind of a lifelong relationship with running or, at the very least, with some type of a physical fitness related activity.  How do I help them find it?  I do that, I think, by letting the boys come to running and by me not taking running to the boys.  This is the way.

Slowly, I've come around to Joe running regularly again.  Slowly to him, that is.  Inside, when he told me he wanted to run cross country, my heart was jumping for joy.  Still, I am easing into it with him.  At his request, I sent JP with him to Team Nashville and Terry hooked him up with some running shoes.  I'm going to get him a watch, too, because he'd like to be able to monitor his pace and, more importantly, know how far he is running when goes on runs.

Yesterday, I worked from home.  Joe asked me if we could run in the morning. "Of course," I replied, and we did.  We ran up Belmont Blvd. to Belmont U., around the grassy area, back down past our house and over to Hearts in 12South.  Two miles for him and three miles for me, as I ran one mile before I picked up Joe at the house to get two miles in.  We sat at the bar at Hearts, talked about real estate, and had a nice breakfast, then walked home.  A perfect summer morning for me. 

Last night, he asked if I was going to run this morning.  "Sure," I said.  "Can I come with you?" he asked.  "Of course," I replied, again.  Of course he can run with me.  

We ran a bit of a different route, up to Belmont U. again but, this time, down and around to Portland Avenue and back home.  I dropped him off at the house, then I ran down to 8th & Roast, my current favorite coffee shop.  

In our run, I think a saw something today.  A glimpse, maybe, of little of that joy in Joe.  The joy of running.  Of feeling good.  Feeling strong.  Feeling confident.  That's what running can do for you.  That's what running will do for you if you commit yourself to it.  

Every run with one of my boys is a gift.  A true gift and something I never, ever take for granted.  

      

A Week in DC and Another Close One

Joe returned home Saturday evening from a week away.  He had been on a Wilson Grant trip, with 14 classmates, to Washington D.C.  It was a great experience for him - one that JP had in seventh grade, too - and one that we're grateful MBA provides through the Wilson Grant Program.  Joe got to spend time and become friends with some of his classmates that he didn't really know well, before the trip, which is kind of what it's all about.  

It was a trip packed with sightseeing with a historical emphasis.  One of the chaperones on the trip was Mr. McMurray, Joe's history teacher last year in a class that he thoroughly enjoyed.  It all worked out very well, actually.  Joe's favorite things to do were going to the Washington Nationals' game, where the boys took off their shirts in between innings and were shown on the Jumbotron, much to their delight.  He also was really taken with the Spy Museum, which I had never heard of.  An intern who is a graduate of MBA and working for Senator Hagerty gave them a tour of the Senate Chamber, which Joe enjoyed.

JP tried one final time to qualify for New Balance Nationals in Philadelphia by running the mile in a Toad track event at Green Hill High School in Mt. Juliet.  He ran hard, set a new PR at 4:20:12, but came up a little more than two seconds short of the 4:18 time he needed to qualify.  He was disappointed, of course, but seemed a little more philosophical about it than he was after the mile race at Lee University a couple of weeks ago.  

JP was in the second heat when, in reality, he should have been in the first and fastest heat.  Two of the other competitive runners in his heat didn't show up, so he led wire to wire and won his heat easily.  The problem, though, was that after the pacer left the track after two laps, it was harder to maintain the pace he needed to run a 4:18.  If he would have run in the first heat, chasing faster, collegiate runner, might have helped him run just a bit faster.  That's track, though, so we'll never know.

He ran the 800 a little more than an hour after the mile race, and clocked a respectable 1:57 +.  It was slower than the PR he ran in the 800 at Lee University (1:55:02) but still impressive, as he raced the 800 after having just raced the mile a little earlier.  My guess is he would have been close to sub-1:55 had he run only the 800.  

In the big picture, JP finished the track season strong, I think, setting PR's race after race.  Yes, it's tough to wonder what might have been had he not been hurt early and missed more than one month of training time.  But, again, that's track.  I'm proud of how hard he worked to get back and how he's performed since he got back.

Sunday afternoon, Joe played in a couple of tournament games in Donelson with his Bucket Squad basketball team.  Nash was in California, but Thomas McDaniel picked up three boys from the Stars' Gold team.  The boys won two games on Saturday to gain the top seed in their pool.  Through the grapevine, I heard that Pike had broken out of his Stars' shooting slump and was raining 3's during both games on Saturday.

Sunday, it was the same thing.  Pike looked like a different player, and not just because he was sporting a summer crew cut.  In game one, he hit 3 after 3 to the point that the other team's parents were talking about what a pure shooter he is.  Joe hit a 3 early then, later, hit a step back 3, which I didn't know he had in his bag.  A little James Harden.  He made some nifty passes, as well, and ran the offense with confidence.

I left partway through the final game, which the Bucket Squad won by 5.  Joe played okay, although not as well as the first game.  He thought he was fouled on a 3-pointer early in the second half and complained to the referee in a way that I am not comfortable with.  Private school basketball, I call it, when a young player doesn't get a call, turns his hands over and palms up, whines and complains to the referee.  

A play or two later, a kid came over Joe's back to get a rebound and, again, Joe didn't get the call.  Why?  Because he complained so much about not getting the previous call.  That's how it works.  We talked about it afterwards and, hopefully, Joe will clean that up in the future.

It was a good tournament title for the Bucket Squad.  It reminded me of how much more free and loose the boys play when the coach is relaxed and not uptight.  I was proud of Joe and all his teammates.  

Bucket Squad.  Joe, Thomas McDaniel, Pike, Rex, Cole, Elliott, Aaron, and Chandler.

One Damn Second

Cross country and track are strange sports.  I love them both, although at a certain level they're designed to break your heart. 

At Lee University yesterday evening, JP ran in the fist of two heats of the mile.  It's not a distance he has raced often because, in high school meets, the 1,600 is a much more common race.  As far as races go, the mile is 9.334 meters longer than the 1,600.  Actually, that's something I didn't know until this weekend.

JP's goal was 4:19, which he felt was fast but doable.  His thought was that running a 4:19 would qualify him for New Balance Nationals in Philadelphia in late June.  

JP left the starting line running a fast pace and settle in behind the leaders, in third and, later, fourth place.  I was standing not he far side of the track, so I could encourage him at roughly the 200 meter mark of each lap.  He looked good and, by lap three, was doing a good job of staying connected with the lead pack of three runners.  

The same was true on the final lap, although JP appeared to tire ever so slightly in the last 100 meters.  A runner nipped him at the finish by less than .30 and took fourth place.  He finished in 4:20:52, so very close to running a sub-4:20, which was hi goal.

Afterwards, when he realized he had just missed a sub-4:20, JP was disconsolate.  I was on the infield with him and tried my best to console him.  He knew he had missed by a second, probably less, and there wasn't anything I could say that really mattered.  Not in the moment, anyway.  I hurt for him, terribly, because he was so disappointed.  

He's worked so hard to get back to where he was - and where he expected to be - before he was injured.  And he's made it, almost.  JP ran a PR in the mile yesterday, just as he did in the 800 the day before. That's something, for sure.  He continues to improve, to run faster.  Still, it wasn't quite good enough, at least not in his mind.   

Less than one damn second off.  So close.  

Before JP ran his cool down, he was talking to one of the McCallie runners, a senior.  The McCallie runner was talking about how tough the conditions were for the race.  Hotter and more humid than expected, with an annoying headwind on second 200 meters of each lap.  

"No one ran their best today," he said, somewhat philosophically.  "But, that's track."  

Truer words have never been spoken.

That's track.  Indeed.

JP and I talked about it later.  I reminded him of the importance of keeping things in perspective, in track and in life.  I also reminded him that God has a plan for him and for all of us.  This is just part of it.  I hope our conversation helped.  

Later, I picked up takeout burgers and we ate dinner together while we watched Game 7 of the Spurs - Thunder in the Western Conference Finals.  Honestly, those are the moments I will treasure when JP leaves for college in a little more than a year.  Holed up in an unfamiliar town after a baseball game or race, eating dinner together, and just hanging out.  The two of us.  

Sometimes, like now, it seems to me that JP's entire childhood has passed me by in a few seconds.  

Some Can Whistle (Again)

As I write this, I'm sitting on the front porch of a quaint house in downtown Cleveland, Tennessee, a city that strangely enough, I've never visited in my 50 + years of living in Tennessee.  

Why I am here?  That's a difficult question to answer, existentially. 

JP is running in a track meet at Lee University this weekend.  I was able to find an Airbnb a few short blocks away from campus and a five minute drive from the track.  It's a quite a nice, older neighborhood, tucked away away between downtown, historic Cleveland on one side and a series of strip malls on the other.  A bit of an oasis, it seems to me.  Some smaller, modest houses and a few larger, almost antebellum houses on Ocoee Street.  

It's strange to me that I've never been to Cleveland, particularly since I have several fraternity brothers from here, a few of whom I was quite close to during college.  Speaking of which, on a lark I decided to try to track down Greg Mooney, my little brother in the fraternity, as I drove into town late yesterday afternoon.  I was successful and on the eve of his older daughter's wedding, we had a nice chat on the phone.  

JP ran the second heat of the 800 last night.  He finished 5th, I think, in a fast race, clocking a 1:55:02.  That's another PR for JP by more than a second almost a sub-1:55.  JP was pleased, I think, as he's beginning to feel like himself on the track again, which is nice.  H runs the mile tonight, in about an hour and a half.  I hope he has another good race.

To close out May and "Larry McMurtry Month" - self-designated - I just finished "Some Can Whistle" (1989), a sequel to "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers" (1972).  Both of the novels are semi-autobiographical, particularly "Some Can Whistle," as the protagonist is a novelist and, later, a television producer, Danny Deck.  Neither are particularly uplifting - actually, they're kind of bleak - but Larry McMurtry is one of my favorite writers and, as always, these two novels are well written a resonate with me.

What's really strange, though, is I had a fairly vivid recollection of reading "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers," and Danny Deck as a young man is a character who always stayed with me.  The scene at the end, when he drowned the manuscript of his second novel in the Rio Grand, was a memorable one, and something I had never forgotten.

When I picked out "Some Can Whistle" from the bookcase in my office upstairs at home, I assumed it was a book I had purchased sone ago but never read.  It wasn't until I opened it and turned a few pages that I saw I had finished reading it - the first time - on February 4, 1993, more than 33 years ago.  I would have been in my last year of all school in Knoxville when I originally read it.

What's really strange and, honestly, a little troubling, is that I had absolutely no independent recollection reading "Some Can Whistle" the first time.  When I re-read it, nothing at all was familiar to me.  Not the story, the characters, the plot, or the ending.  Nothing.  Still, I wouldn't have dated it and put my name in it in February of 1993 if I hadn't read it.  Weird.

Maybe it hit me differently now because I am older and Danny Deck in "Some Can Whistle" is closer to my age.  Danny Deck in "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers" was closer to my age, then, when I read it for the first time.  

It reminded me, too, that I read fiction not necessarily to remember what I have read, because often times that fades.  I can't recall the details of "Cold Mountain" (Charles Frazier) or "American Pastoral" (Phillip Roth), although I loved both of those books.  I read fiction because I enjoy it - in the moment - and simply for the love of reading.  That's the takeaway for me, I think.  

Now, it's off to the track to watch JP run.

Going to State!

I've not written about too much but track season has not been what I hoped it would be for J.P.  The injury that kept him from running for six weeks derailed his season before it got started.  Although he cross-trained his ass off while he couldn't run - elliptical, stationary bike, weight lifting, swimming - it turns out that you can't get in prime running shape without . . . running.  

Since he's been released to return to running, he's been running on alternate days for the most part.  He's not doing too much distance, weekly or on any given run.  He's still cross-training, too.  

When I saw JP run in the Scott Hartman Invitational, I knew it would be a longer road back than I had hoped.  He didn't have the sustained, top level speed and stamina that he normally would have.  Late in the race, runners passed him, which is not something that ever happened before.  To me, it was like watching a sports car drive that didn't have a fifth gear or a bird try to fly with a damaged wing.  

It was incredibly painful for me to watch runners pass JP at the end of races - at MBA and Harpeth Hall for the Metro Championships - when he ran out of gas.  I was emotional and my heart hurt for him as I watched him struggle.  Runners, from his school and other schools, passed him late in the 3,200, 1,600, and 800.  JP's was still posting respectable times in these races, particularly compared to an average high school runner.  What is hard for him, though, is that he's never been an average high school runner.  He's always been outstanding.

When he ran in the 3,200 last Monday in the Region Track Meet, the hope was that he would qualify for State.  He ran with his teammate, Gabe, the entire race.  On the last of eight laps, however, Gabe outkicked him and won the race, as JP finished in second place.  Again, the fifth gear was missing.  The next night, after West and East Tennessee ran their Region Track Meets, we learned that JP had finished in 9th place in his division, one spot short of qualifying for State in the 3,200.  Still, JP's 9:29:38 was a PR for him in the 3,200.  

He was very, very disappointed.  Again, my heart hurt for him.  It was small consolation, really, that the runner who grabbed the eighth and final spot beat him by seven or eight seconds.  That's an eternity, really, in a race like the 3,200.  On Friday, he still had the 1,600, followed by the 800.  I was hoping for a miracle of sorts.  And that just what I got.

JP and Gabe quickly moved to the front of the pack in the 1,600, with their friend, Clark S. close behind.  The three of them ran together for the first couple of laps before it became clear that the race was between JP and Gabe.  JP actually took the lead, briefly, in the third lap.  When the boys hit the first turn on the final lap, though, Gabe surged ahead and stayed ahead.  JP just didn't have the last lap speed to stay with Gabe, who crossed the finish line more than five yards ahead of JP.  

What was encouraging, though, is that JP's 4:19:17 was  PR for him in the 1,600.  Not the 4:18 he was hoping for but still damn fast and still a PR.  The question, though, was would it be fast enough to qualify him for State?

A few minutes later, JP walked up to me on the infield at MBA with a huge smile on his face.  "I'm in," he said.  "Qualified eighth."  

"Are you sure?" I asked.  "Yes, Coach Russ said I'm in," he replied.  My heart soared as I hugged him.  My heart soared higher, if that was even possible, as I watched teammates walk up and congratulate him.  Coach Perry walked up to me and gave me a hug, too, then told me how proud he was of JP.  "He's such a great kid," he said, which meant a lot.  He knows how hard JP has worked to get back to some semblance of his running self. 

How did I feel?  Relieved for JP, of course.  Proud.  Mostly just incredibly happy for him.  His hard work had paid off.  At last.

An hour and a half later, JP ran the 800.  Surprisingly, he stayed right with the leader, Ryder O., for the first lap, which they ran in a blistering 55 seconds.  As they started the second lap, Ryder hit the gas an pulled away, finishing just over 1:51, which is a smoking fast 800.  JP ran through the tap, which we had talked about leading up to the race, and finished second in 1:56:78, just slightly off his PR of 1:56:52 from last year.

For the night, JP ran two PR's and almost had a third.  He's not there but he's getting there, I think.  It looked like he raced with joy again, with a little more confidence.  He  ran free, especially in the 800.  No pressure.  He just . . . ran.  I hope that continues next week at State.  I think it will.