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Port Hope – This fall, there’s nothing much to get excited about on the field in Port Hope. The stars of the past are off in Yellowknife and Moose Jaw, chasing down pennants and enjoying still another day in the sun. At Battery Park the sun isn’t shining yet, not on this group of youngsters still cashing, many of them, their first big-league paychecks.
So I expected a quiet autumn, thinking about the CFL and boning up for next year’s CBL preview, which due to time constraints I haven’t been able to do for a couple of years. And then this, of all things.
Journalist of the Decade? Me?
I got to watch when Chris Jones was named Owner of the Year, and he was ecstatic, jumping around and doing little cartwheels like a ten-year-old. I couldn’t do that. What I did was mist up and try hard not to break down in tears. This is the only award I ever really, really wanted to win. It is also the award I was most certain I couldn’t possibly have. I’m amazed, and flattered, and practically speechless.
One owner mentioned that 17-inning game report I did about four seasons back. That was some game. I had never seen anything like it. But it meant something to me, that incredible game, and though I had written articles before, that was the game that the entire experience came alive for me. I could see the ballplayers, smell the hot dogs and feel the breeze blowing in from center (costing Riggs Babiarz a game-winning homer in the bottom of the 13th). That was important to me to capture, and to know that that article is still remembered is quite a thing for me.
All I can really say is thank you. I’ll try to write more, because the league means so very much to me, and the stories are there to be written. Sometimes, with some players, I feel very much like I know them, and like characters in a book they are begging me to make them real. To know that that effort is appreciated, well, it’s indescribably great.
Bless you, all of you. May your teams live up to their promise, and may your lives permit you a few moments every day for this wonderful game we play.
This is the Chris Jones Family photo. Chris is the little one in front.
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