Never Look Back

“Don’t look back, you can never look back.” (From The Boys of Summer by Don Henley)

With the sixth, and perhaps last game of the World Series, being played, I am still stuck on America's national pastime. Granted, Don Henley didn’t write this song about baseball; it was a look at the youth we left behind, growing older and wondering “what if”. The title, though, reminds me of the book of the same name by Roger Kahn, which looked at the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team. But it all comes back to being a kid, goofing around, feeling freedom from your very belly. It is summertime and you don’t have to answer to anyone.

Unfortunately the seasons change, the boys of summer hang up their gloves and their bats, kids go back to school, black bear stock up for hibernation. And the rest of us try not to look back with melancholy. Can’t look back, never look back.

It does seem fitting with all that depth I’ve written so far that I should close with my other favorite baseball quote. “There’s no crying in baseball.” (Tom Hanks in “A League of Their Own”)