Postscript: Last Licks

      My year as a shortstop and criminal justice major at the University of Louisville became a false start for the post-secondary education that would define the rest of this life. In January of that first college year I discovered an intense dislike for 5am indoor baseball practice and left the team before the grass started to green. 

     Lost without a sport or a major, I visited Stan Redwood at Randolph-Macon College over spring break. At a meeting with football coach Ted Keller I was offered a general scholarship if I maintained good academic standing for the transfer. As the meeting ended Coach Keller said "Dave, there's a spot on the Yellow Jackets if you work hard." We shook hands and I refrained from belting out Tony Valenti's bastardized baseball practice chant.

     A 40-yard sprint at my first Randy-Mac football practice was a dead heat with senior tailback Mike Woolfolk who was about to break the school's career rushing mark previously held by Howard Stevens. Running backs coach Ed Poole was surprised and exclaimed "who's that burner?", but Keller, who had lost Stevens to U of L, laughed about the "Louisville reverse" between the big-time school and little R-MC.

    I contemplated a two-sport career at Macon, but indoor winter baseball tryouts dissuaded that path. I'd seen myself as a shortstop since early childhood when a love of balls and a big brother on the high school team created that identity. It continued in a lesser way after Louisville with intramural softball during the rest of college and an occasional faculty-student game during a medical education career. 

     My trusted infielder's glove, a stubby Wilson A2000 from the 1976 high school championship run, finally gave up the ghost in a double-header in 2020 with multiple torn leather laces from fielding all the student grounders. The next winter I laid it onto a brush burn and stared, rapt, as sixty years of fielding rose heavenward and pigskin ashes sank into the earth. 

     In my very last at-bat in that double-header the pitch was high and tight, my swing uncoiling perfectly. The thwack drove the ball in a long arc toward the brick wall beyond left field. I was rounding second base at a fast clip when a student reached up and made the catch in front of the red monster. Two weeks later I retired from teaching and settled into the private practice of osteopathic medicine, a path that emerged after I sat on the can and ended up a Jacket.