SPORTS STORIES FROM THE STEPS, SEASON 1, GAME 1, IDOLS & LIVING DANGEROUS: “…Heroes I wish I’d never met, but he ain’t naming names…”
~Kenny Chesney~ “If this bus could talk”

As I get older, I realize that a lot of invested hero worship from my youth is wasted. Still, I’m always curious to know & I’ve come to embrace, in hero worship or any other endeavor,  the words of the late football coach Mike Leach. “You’re going to be dead in 100 years, might as well live dangerously“. Today, I lived dangerously & risked meeting a hero, a hero that I might regret meeting. I saw him about 75 feet from me & just knew it was him, whether it was his gait, or his athletic shoulders or whatever it was, behind his shades, I knew it was him. I relayed this to my youngest son & he asked how I knew. I told him I just knew & he responded, “oh, like Ray knew it was Shoeless Joe”. Exactly. Now I’m not going to tell who him is. He didn’t bargain for that when he gave up 15 minutes of his valuable time for a granddad with a stomach full of butterflies in touch with his preteen self. He couldn’t have been more gracious & I couldn’t have been any more sky high afterward or grateful that I wouldn’t regret the meeting & that I’d lived dangerously…