t-ball story

[Vander]

I'm an old fart for a dad. 48 years old and my oldest son is now 5. I'm an asst. coach on his first t-ball team of 5 and 6 year olds. Despite being only 5 he was the tallest kid on the team. Till yesterday. A new kid shows up and the coach introduces him as Champ. Then introduces the rest of the team to him. We split up and start working on some fundementals while trying to keep them somewhat focused on playing baseball instead of wrestling and chasing each other. My eyesight isn't that great anymore, but I notice what appears to be Champ's dad about 200 feet away. These 2, father and son, are easily the best dressed 2 here. It is only t-ball practice. The only other thing I noticed was that Champ is big, a good 4 inches taller than my son who was the tallest on the team. Champ worked with the other coach so I didn't get to see how good he might be, however after practice the other coach comes over to me and says, hey you know who Champ's dad is? No, I give up. It's Bob Love. The Bulls all time leading scorer before someone named Michael Jordan came along. Now Bob Love has to be in his 60's by now, so he's starting fatherhood even later than me. I just can't believe I'm coaching and my son is playing with the son of someone I watched on tv and was a big fan of for many years. We had some very good teams back then with many 50 win seasons. We just couldn't beat the Lakers with Wilt the Stilt or the Bucks with some guy named Lew Alcinder. Bob Love was the corner stone of those teams along with Chet Walker, Jerry Sloan, Norm Van Lier, and over matched by the great centers Tom Boerwinkle. Sorry for indulging in this little story. Just thought some might find it interesting. I'm still trying to get over it.