The Day After...

The day after JFK was shot, I crammed for a Zoology test. I quickly memorized fifty words which would help me dissect a question and come up with a reasonable answer and help me gain a C- on an exam -- resulting in a passing grade on a topic which I would never use again in my lifetime.

I was a freshman in college, just six months out of high school…a child if you will. I knew very little about life at that moment, but I was learning fast. The president of the United States was gone and every black and white TV in the student union building was blaring away, giving us bits and pieces of what had transpired the past 24 hours.

I would tuck away, in the back of my mind, one of the most dramatic, earth-shattering moments of the 1960s and go on with my young life. Within a year, I would be married and have a kid on the way. (My goodness, that kid is now 49 and will turn 50 in 2014!). Somehow, someway I got something right as my first born is now a Captain with the local fire department and goes about his daily routine of answering emergency calls and saving lives.

Less than four years later, I would be the proud papa of a second son, now 45, a mountain of a man who lives in Colorado and at one point during his high school days, averaged 20 points a game for his basketball team and once struck out 13 in a high school baseball game.

I'm 68 years old now with six grandchildren and a lifetime of memories. I've made my share of mistakes, made some good decisions and my share of bad decisions.

I've tried to recall why I even took Zoology, back in 1963, and why I had to cram for that test on the day after JFK was shot. Chances are, I was to board the college school bus later in the day and head for a basketball game at a community college in Phoenix.

I was the school's sports publicist and I was on the road a lot, traveling to football games in places like Trinidad, Colorado, or basketball games in St. George, Utah, or, my most fondest memory, not only writing about, but playing on the college baseball team and going up against the one and only Reggie Jackson on a Saturday afternoon. The site: Eastern Arizona College in Thatcher, Arizona. The game: the Eastern Arizona Gila Monsters vs. the Arizona State freshmen baseball team.

Oh, how things have changed in 50 years. I'm a gray-haired old man now, still trying to play baseball as a member of the Tucson Old Timers (TOTS) -- the oldest old-timers baseball team in the country.

My teammates on the TOTS ( they range in age from 60 to 88), if they were so inclined, could sit down and type away, recalling in print their life experiences and most of them can recall their moment in time when JFK was shot.

Why, am I rambling this morning? Well, it has been raining for hours -- probably the biggest nonstop rain shower Tucson has had since 1963. Our TOTS' baseball game was cancelled yesterday and…if I keep hearing that pitter-patter on the roof of my house, then chances are next week's games will be cancelled as well.

But, it is also the week before Thanksgiving. Time to sit back and relive a lifetime of memories and be thankful I'm still alive and kicking…still able to pull a baseball glove over my Arthritic thumb joints and play the game of baseball.

It's been almost six years since my quadruple bypass, since that moment in time on Jan. 2, 2008 when the doctor stood over me and told me my widow maker was 99 percent clogged, and if I wanted to keep on plugging with my life, they would need to open up my chest and go to work.

I battled for months, first with baby steps, followed by a walk in the park, then months of rehab…and finally, believe it or not, by late April I was playing with the TOTS…and haven't looked back.

I'm upright and kicking and I think about the little things in life and I'm thankful to be alive and can still move my fingers across a keyboard and can still enjoy playing America's favorite pastime at the age of 68.

There may come a time I can't play baseball anymore. And there may come a time when I can't type away on my old laptop. But for now, I can do both and I'm thankful for that.

As for the sign of the times, a lot has happened since Lee Harvey Oswald took the life of John F. Kennedy. There has been war, continuous war…we have lost Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and a little over a decade ago, there was 9/11.

An endless stream of tragedies...somehow we are still here, and I for one, can listen to the raindrops on the roof.