Crazy what you sometimes dream when you’re actually sleeping. . .
and then it drives you even crazier when you try to figure out
JUST WHY DID I DREAM THAT?
. . .I blame it on a local sports talk radio station
that had a Twitter Tuesday question of
WHO HAS THE WORST OFFENSE:
THE INDIANS
THE BROWNS
THE CAVS
and it was an overwhelming landslide vote of
THE CLEVELAND INDIANS
who currently seem to have great pitching but horrible
h i t t i n g. . .
THE DREAM
was I was actually playing for them
CENTER FIELD
and it took me back to one of my worst
little league moments ever. . .
We were playing our local rivals and my grandfather, who loved baseball and taught me a lot of what I knew about it;
bought me my first glove, ball and bat
and actually took me to the backyard
and showed me how to use them;
to catch
to throw
to hit
and. . .well,
playing catch in the backyard isn’t the same as playing
Centerfield in a live game. . .
A N Y W A Y
I was in Centerfield for the Tribe
and a ball came sizzling my way
and before I could blink
it was way, way past me
(JUST LIKE THE REAL LIFE LITTLE LEAGUE GAME)
and before I could react
(JUST LIKE THE REAL LIFE LITTLE LEAGUE GAME)
I felt all of the embarrassment of
THAT MOMENT
magnified with all of the other embarrassments
over some 55 years
surging through me
AND THE PLAY WAS LIKE ON A REPLAY LOOP
it just kept being played over and over and over again
until I woke up
W H E W
(love the promise of a new day)
but the Dream hung with me
until I spilled it out here. . .
I remember that was the end of my days as an outfielder;
they moved me to third base
and I was like a vacuum cleaner
. . .in fact they nicknamed me
HOOVER
. . .I sucked everything up that came my way
and even did decent job at the plate
batting third in the line up
u n t i l
I took back to back shots to the head
and that pretty much ended my baseball career

I went from HOOVER
to
“Good field.  No hit Chuck”
 When I was growing up it was the way to describe a baseball player who was good defensively but terrible with the bat.   . .
and it came to me when I flinched at every pitch that sizzled my way;
S O. . .
not an outfielder
not a pitcher
no way a catcher
but a decent fielder
(long before the designated hitter was even imagined)
It was done
NO MORE DREAMS OF BEING A MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYER
(the dream literally became a nightmare that I had the other night)
and I wholeheartedly put all of my efforts into basketball
. . .little did I know that would somewhat be the metaphor for the way I approached things the rest of my life:
try your best at something
from every position necessary
and when the path dead ends
LOOK
to where you may want to start
A NEW PATH

THERE IS ALWAYS A NEXT STEP
to take
and sometimes the
BEST ROAD
is not the one that
IS
or
WAS
but the One
you have to create. . .
Maybe we are being given that challenge
right now
as we all cope with
the next normal
provided by this
terrible pandemic
the political unrest
the violent and deadly protests 
the natural disasters. . .
Let’s all start asking ourselves
and all whose lives we touch and impact
to realize we CAN see things differently. . .
do things differently. . .
succeed differently

WE ARE NOT AT SOME SEEMINGLY DEAD END
. . .we are at the
BEGINNING
of something we can create and better still
CO-CREATE
with others
. . .and maybe
just maybe this time when I come up to bat
it won’t be so much about getting a hit
as
BEING A HIT

YOU’RE UP
(it’s not the time to take your ball and head home)