Hurricanes and Softball
by Mike Walker

Just sitting here over the weekend looking at fallen trees, downed power lines, missing roof shingles, broken windows and people without power made me think of how much fun softball was back in the old days.

You tend to think about a lot of things when you don't have cable TV for weeks. I was thinking about how we tend to take simple things in life for granted like fresh water, food, shelter, hot water, lights, air conditioning, and gas to drive our cars to work and back. These things seem to always be there except when things like Hurricanes Charlie and Frances take them away.

While I was fortunate not to go without any of these during the past month I can't say the same for many of my neighbors. I feel very lucky to have only lost half my roof, one window, the fence, and to have only minor water damage. My luck even allowed me the opportunity to re-experience a time long gone when all of these basics we now take for granted were not so common.

Now some of you go back further than I do but I do remember the days when electricity wasn't so reliable, before every house had A/C in the window, when you had to use outdoor facilities, and baths were taken in large water bugets out in the yard on weekends. Some of you may actually consider those to be the good old days. Until the past month I probably would have even agreed with them but not anymore.

You see there are a lot of things that have changed in life and slowpitch softball since the good old days. We now expect to have A/C when we buy a house. We expect to have lots of places to buy gas. We expect to have a nice hot shower every day.

In softball we expect to have nice softball fields to play on. We expect our bats to be the very best that money can buy. We expect the best softballs to play with. All of this is what we expect today unlike what we came to expect years ago.

While many of my softball friends have stated that they wish we would just go back to playing softball the way we use to play it in the good old days. They say that would eliminate all the problems we have today right?

While not everything that has changed in life and softball is for the better, I say that I don't want to ever go back to the way it use to be with softball or the day-to-day basics of life!

Mike writes for the Florida Senior Sports Association Newsletter - Senior Softball Newletter