"Maybe it's better he didn't take me on that road trip," quips Steve Keller when I tell my teammate down the hall about the midnight antics of Coach Zerilla.
"Yeah, and good thing I got it down first try,” I mull as he slips an Earth Wind & Fire album onto a turntable tucked into a wooden bookshelf/desk in his tiny dorm room. “I’m not sure what I would have done if he cursed me out.”
"Well I know I’m not going back out in the spring," Stevie continues as the guitar riff for Sun Goddess kicks in. "I need to ace Bio to have a shot at pre-dent."
In that fall of 1976 classes were in full steam with mid-term exams and papers due in early October. My report on Hoover and the FBI was turning up controversies I hadn’t imagined when I applied to criminal justice programs. Nepotism, persecution of political enemies, and homophobia among homosexuals were the headlines of the day for the agency I had imagined joining after college. What’s worse, the Criminal Justice professor was a retired prosecuting attorney who didn’t seem to care. My reason for going to Louisville was disappearing even as my star might have been rising on the baseball team.
Steve and I were a freshmen double play duo at second base and shortstop on that team, and we were also bonding off the field. He had an urban music esthetic from high school years in Cincinnati. I brought my eclectic interests in psychedelic rock at its ending and heavy metal at its start. On late nights and weekends we shared albums on his dorm stereo system or eight-track tapes in his little red Mazda. The space he shared in Belknap Hall with roommate Dave Perry was becoming my haven of escape from the chaos of rooming with a big freshmen football player from Oyster Bay, Long Island. His enthusiastic play at fullback and linebacker was rivalled only by his all-night partying, academics be damned.
“I’m not sure about staying in criminal justice,” I muse over dinner and pinball at the Cardinal Inn, our sleazy and preferred off-campus eatery that accepts U of L dining plans. “I just don’t know what else to do.”
“Take Bio with me,” he suggests, slamming the paddles for a little extra carom. “You never know where the sciences will take you.”
“I aced it in high school,” I ponder over a forkful of mostaccioli, “but I thought it was because the teacher was also my baseball coach.”
“Dude, you’ve found your new major!” he exclaims with a thigh check into the table.
“Nah, better stick to something employable.”
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