The journey to my old college town...

It is Friday, just two days shy of Easter Sunday, and my family is in town and will be taking a short two-hour trip to a location new to them, but very nostalgic for me. We're packing up and heading 128 miles to the southeastern part of Arizona to the small farm town of Safford, or, to be a little more specific, the college town of Thatcher, home of Eastern Arizona College. Would you believe that I graduated from Eastern 46 years ago? And now, in just a few minutes, I'll be heading out of our driveway enroute to EAC with my grandson (with the same name as me: Danny Price) and by late morning he should be signing on the dotted line and will officially become a Gila Monster (that nickname will never change...still, it is a lot better than the Artichokes from Scottsdale Community College,which is located just outside of Phoenix). What is so ironic is the fact that I played baseball at Eastern Arizona and graduated from there in 1965. It was that spring when my collegiate team and I played two games against the Arizona State Sun Devils freshmen team, which by the way had a very fast, very athletic home run hitter named Reggie Jackson. Jackson hit a couple of home runs off of us and stole at least one base while I was playing second base. The young Jackson slid into base and spiked me. He also knocked the ball loose...and was safe! Every once and a while, I look at my left ankle to see if the little scar is still there. Talk about reliving the past. And now my grandson will be playing baseball for the next two years under the direction of EA head coach Jim Bagnall. My grandson will be housed in a dormitory, which is within 200 yards of Mark Allen Hall, my residence in 1964-65. My grandson currently lives outside of Grand Junction, Colorado (town of Parachute) and is finishing up his senior season at Grand Valley High School, a 2A school, located about midway between Grand Junction and the town of Rifle. Danny plays third base and pitches for the GVHS Cardinals. He's currently batting .400 on the season and has an ERA of 2.0. By the way, he's 6 feet 2 and weighs in the neighborhood of 200 pounds. For the record, I was 5-8 and 165 pounds when I played for the Gila Monsters. Danny has black, curly hair. I'm, of course, a little on the grey side...more like white. We, my family and I, will then meet up with my former baseball coach, Dalton Overstreet, for lunch at his Mexican food restaurant, The El Charro,in Safford. It should be a fun day!