Monday Morning Quarterback

I was never what you would call a "jock."

As a boy, I played baseball, basketball, and football. I got out of school in the fourth grade for the Cincinnati Reds' opening day game at old Crosley Field. (I can still remember in the late '50s when they were known as the "Redlegs.") At a winter scout camp, we played football out in the pasture one afternoon, as the Milford (Troop 120) Sewersuckers flushed out the Goshen (Troop 732) Greasers. It was a blast. Later, in high school, I went to Cincinnati Gardens, and watched a kid from Atlanta named "Pistol Pete" do his razzle-dazzle style of basketball against the Royals, before the latter went on to Kansas City.

But while I enjoyed playing, I was never that good at it. Not that I didn't try at one time or another. But some things just take a "fire in the belly," and I didn't have it. Nor did I have the aptitude to keep up with the scores, the stats, the major debates of the day. It also didn't help that I lacked a certain, uh, social grace.

There were other kids in my hometown of Milford, Ohio, who went on to play professionally:

* Barry Bonnell would play for the Phillies, the Braves, the Blue Jays, and finally the Mariners. He retired in the mid-1980s. Last I heard, he devotes his time to charity work. We were about the same age, but he went to the public school and hung with the cool people. What can I tell ya?

* Randy Haefner went on to Notre Dame, where for the first time in his life everyone around him was taller. He played pro basketball in Europe, got a position as a player-coach for the national sports federation in Saudi Arabia, and at last report, he was living in Gibraltar. Our families were actually very close for years.

* Steve Sylvester played for the Oakland Raiders from 1975-85 and was a three-time Super Bowl winner. He was several years older than me, so I knew very little about him. It's safe to say he knew even less about me. But we went to the same Catholic grade school.

Those are just a few of them. There were at least two others from Milford who went on to the Olympics. I knew them as kids; popular, never at a loss for female companionship (whether they knew what to do with them or not). But I was never really one of them. And to this day, when the Super Bowl is on, I might watch for a little while -- this year I caught several minutes of the fourth quarter -- but if I ever watch at any length, it's for the commercials. I saw them on the web this year, on the morning after (with h/t to Allahpundit of Hot Air). None of them compare to one I saw in 1984.