SAFE!

My desk is right in the middle of the office, next to the door to the restrooms and stairs. The office is carpeted, except for a tile walkway. Yesterday Renee was wearing boots with heels. She slipped on the tile, and fell right next to my desk. I quickly saw that she was ok. Instinctively, I spread out my hands and loudly declared “SAFE!” The office cracked up.

Tuesday I left work at three, drove home, changed, grabbed the baseballs, picked up Will at Living Science, and went to Mt. Paran to pitch him some BP. Beautiful day, but his practice had been cancelled because of “cold weather.” Sprayberry was practicing when we drove past. Hit him a bucket of grounders, then pitched him two buckets in the cage. He hit at least four hard line drives just past my head, that struck the opposite end of the cage. Even though the netting was loose, each time the ball caromed back to my feet.

My pitching accuracy was better than normal, despite my aching hip/leg. I’ll be going to the doctor soon. Though it felt great last night, this morning I can tell I worked it out. Mt. Paran tore down the old outfield fence and built a deeper, wooden fence. Looks great. Hopefully they’ll paint it dark green.

Found two old high school friends on Facebook. I had looked for my buddy Tim, who worked on the newspaper staff with me. He and his two brothers played football with me. Older brother Danny was a squat guard/linebacker who walked on a North Alabama. He looked just like the clerk on MASH, so we called him Radar. Taller brother Ricky was a tackle who liked to block low, so we called him Sonar. Ricky kicked, but when he got tired he wasn’t as consistent as me. Tim wore glasses, so they called him Quasar.

Also found golden boy QB Randy. Blonde haired, good-looking, got a Trans Am when he turned sixteen. We were football buddies. As a sophomore he quarterbacked the first two victories of the 1975 state championship season, while senior state player-of-the-year to-be Mike Jolly was out injured. Before Randy turned 16 I often drove him home from practice, since we lived near each other. I’ll always remember the home run he hit in Little League, a deep fly that cleared the backstop on the next field, behind the leftfield fence. Quotable coach McWilliams once called him the “Golden Turd”. Both Tim and Randy looked well. Both appear to be Georgia fans.