Win just one - for who?

“Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, ask them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper.”

As most men and women, my husband and I have different views on how to enjoy vacation. We agree on quite a few things, but one of my favorite vacation activities is looking at old buildings. This is a pastime which I think the hubby could take or leave, so I hate to overwhelm him with it and try to rein myself in.

On vacation in Michigan’s UP last week, I found a map of historic Laurium. I thought it would be awesome to walk those residential streets and identify all the old houses and businesses. The hubby, I could tell, saw little entertainment value in that idea. Until I asked him who George Gipp was.

“Look, it’s the Gipp Memorial,” I said, pointing to the city map. The hubby is a huge trivia buff and especially delights in sports trivia. I suspected who George Gipp might be, but thought the hubby would relish biting this one off. He didn’t let me down.

As it turns out, George Gipp was a football player for Notre Dame from 1917 through 1920. He played several positions under the famous coach Knute Rockne. The movie “Knute Rockne: All American” featured a young Ronald Reagan playing George Gipp, who recited the now immortal words above.

There is a lot more to the story. Hmm? Too bad it has already been done, but I bet I could find something there to use some day. 

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”)