Late yesterday morning - Saturday morning it was - I carried my happy lumpy self over to the baseball diamond to watch a game. If you don't know me very well, you won't find anything odd about this - just another red-blooded American guy off to have some fun. If you do know me, you might wonder about this weird behavior. I never go to games.

But here's my dirty little secret: I have always loved baseball. I loved to play it in the neighborhood. I loved my old glove and that smell everybody always remembers. I loved that most perfect ball as it arced toward my outstretched glove and sometimes landed right where it was supposed to land. I loved the batting, the hitting and even the missing - though I didn't know I loved that then. I loved the running and standing on base, sweating, eager to know whether I'd go or stay put at the right time.

I never played the game outside the neighborhood, never joined a team. I wasn't any good at it; I just loved it. I didn't seem to love it in the same way other boys loved it. They loved it by practicing, I guess. They loved it by learning everything they could about their favorite team - maybe the White Sox, maybe the Cubs. They loved it by signing up for the summer leagues, by playing on the team at school. Now well into their middle-age, they love it by watching their sons and daughters play, by watching their Cubbies or White Sox on TV, by reading the sports page religiously. I don't know why I never took that route.

I don't care much for just watching, but yesterday I watched a good chunk of a game - maybe six innings. I was not surprised to recognize most of the visiting players, while I was a little disappointed to know so few of our own Carmel team. This was the first game of a double-header with Joliet Catholic Academy. Their varsity leans heavily toward seniors whose faces graced my classroom last year. Johnson, Sopko, Wagner, VanTassel, Maher, Nielsen, Jaworski, Sicinski.

Sometime near the bottom of the sixth with Carmel down by a few runs, I wandered over to visit with Mrs. Voss, the coach's mom and my former colleague at JCA. What a good person. We talked for awhile, some trouble came up on the field - one of JCA's players was called out for bad language, then some heated words among coaches and the ump. (Oh, the arguments, did I love the arguments of neighborhood baseball? No, I never did. I hated the way they could end the game so suddenly.) Well, then I chatted a little with Mrs. VanTassel who wondered how I liked Carmel and what I was teaching and all.

I came back home after that without having said anything to any of the JCA players or their coach - they seemed kind of preoccupied with the game for some reason. But I hope they knew I was there and that I was happy to see them again...happy to see them doing something that they seem to love so much...here at my place.