The Thrill of Victory
It was the Summer of 1977, and the Mt. Calvary Reds 12-and-under baseball team chewed up the competition with Yankee-like effficiency.
For this 11-year-old first baseman, the only thing left to cap off the perfect summer was the end-of-season awards banquet, at which I would receive my first trophy.
But I took my eyes of the prize ever so briefly when I heard we were going on vacation from our Maryland home up the East Coast. The prospect was thrilling, until I started counting the days away and seeing that we would be arriving home the same day as the banquet -- but maybe not in time for the actual event itself.
I recall my mother trying to talk me off the cliff of distress I perched upon as the station wagon hoofed it home. Secretly, I hoped my father understood it all. I had for years played with his old golf trophies, so much so that the clubs the trophy man was swinging had long snapped off. The trophy man looked like he was swinging not so much a 3 wood as he was a conductor's baton.
We made it to the awards banquet. I got the trophy. It sits still on my bedroom dresser.
All of which brings us to the other night, when we took our daughter to her first end-of-season awards banquet for her swim team. The coach called her name. She walked up, reached out her arms and pulled back her first trophy. She beamed.
Once the polite applause subsided for her and her teammates, she walked over to me with an earnest request: "Dad, when we get home, can you polish it?"
Polish it? I was already thinking of building it a cabinet.
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