Sat On The Can And Ended Up A Jacket

     "I'll take the shortstops and third basemen, Murray's got the second basemen," instructs Coach Zerilla as I jog to short with the two other guys at my position. "Here we go again," groans senior Brett Goff already dripping in the afternoon heat of late August on the University of Louisville baseball field. "It's a clusterfuck when they alternate right and left side infield practice."      He was right about the complexity of simultaneous grounders with two receiving first basemen. It took concentration to follow the baseballs criss-crossing the grassy infield. Fortunately, intense focus was one of my strengths.       I’d had a similarly complicated first practice two days earlier on the football field. I'd joined the line of receivers, thinking there'd be a better chance of making the team at that position even though I'd been a running back in high school. The first few drills found me matching the five other freshmen on post ...

      "Did you do anything in high school?" queries Coach Jim Zerilla from behind an old wooden desk scattered with papers and books in the baseball office of the University of Louisville field house. "We played in the state final," I begin, hoping team accomplishments might trump personal ones like it would have for my coaches at Bound Brook High School back in New Jersey.      I was relieved he didn't ask why I was leaving a disheartening freshmen football camp. The first day consisted of the passing out of red shorts and white tank top t's followed by the showing off of some muscle. I'd trained all summer on my high school's Universal Gym and was confident with a bench press maximum of three-hundred and twenty pounds, not bad for a seventeen-year-old weighing in at one-sixty-five fully clothed.  "We'll start you at two-eighty and work up to your max," proclaimed the graduate assistant in charge of weight training.       I dropped...