Ballgames now and for the future

You would think since I was reared in a very small community tucked away deep in the Eastern mountains of Kentucky that my exposure to sports would have been somewhat limited. Not so.

We had a very proud high school basketball team with none other than Wah Wah Jones as one of our players. If you don’t remember him look him up.

He was a terrific big man way before having a true big man who knew the sport and who played as if every score was important to him in some way was the way to go.

We also had The Smokies, a for-real professional baseball team that moved in and played every summer.

Most of the teenaged girls had a crush on her certain favorite.

It was almost a rite of passage.

Besides that they played well, won lots of games and provided us with a super reason to sing “Take me out to the ballgame” with great gusto.

My people, the men, I mean, were super baseball players, and we even had a big-leaguer to call our own.

He wasn’t up there long, but he made it and made all of us very proud.

Even today we have kids in our clan who play the sport with finesse.

It sort of runs in the blood, I guess. But all this is just prelude to what we have just witnessed in our state the last few days.

We have lost two top flight coaches, one to Arkansas--who saw that coming?--and even, sadly, one to Marshall in West Virginia.

Coach Julia Fulks at Transylvania with her two Harrison County stars and the rest of her amazing girls piled up victories and records that will stand the test of time across the sports world where such things are held in great regard.

There was also a third, but she had some bad luck after leaving the assistant position, and we were all kind of expecting that she would move on.

So what happened Sunday was not all that unexpected -that Rupp Arena was totally filled with folks who just came in to say “welcome” to the new men’s coach, who by the way, is Kentucky tested and is Blue enough to have earned the job even though it was pretty much a surprise. He cares about Big Blue and will do his darnest to lead us to the kind of glory we after all expect of teams dressed out in UK Blue.

While we wait for this Pope and his new team to get up to speed, we will have the Reds, who are off to a great start, and the Thorobreds, Fillies and Stoop’s troops as well.

We will have plenty to yell about and bore all those who are not in the loop with us.

By the way, thought I would report that this week in the middle of the night my yard filled up with hail. It looked as if there had been a snow storm.

No one in my small circle mentioned it happening in their neighborhood and it made me wonder if I was the only one blessed with ice in the middle of the night.

Last time this happened I lost a roof, but luckily all I got was ice that lingered until morning. What a sight!