The names are not quite the stuff of legend, but we’re getting there. Oscar, Radar, Wilb, and good old Lance who was often called “Disco” in college at SIUE, but who just as often was known as Lance Romance. Neither of them stuck. He’s just Lance. As in Lance McCord, the pride of Highland, Illinois. Go Bulldogs!

Greetings from Woodbury one day early, in terms of my blog day. I need to post this on Wednesday because tomorrow will be a long travel day. I’ll spend the morning on Delta flight 2096, with nonstop service from Minneapolis – St. Paul to Tampa, Florida. We’ll be cruising at an altitude of 33,000 feet heading south. More importantly, I am personally going to be traveling from piles of snow taller than I am to the Sunshine State, where the extended forecast for the next week is for sunny days and temps in the mid-80s. I might melt. Yesterday, it got “up” to 15 in Woodbury and I did indeed see kids walking home from school carrying their jackets. T-shirt weather!

If you read my book “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” you probably remember the name Larry Eberle from the early chapters. He got a lot of ink in the book because of how important he was to me as a young lad. I don’t think I fully appreciated his impact on me until much later in life, maybe even as late as when I was writing about him in the book. He changed me, and that’s not necessarily something we expect out of 12-year-olds.

Hello blog faithful. Just a quick one today because we all have better things to do on February 14th. Happy Valentine’s Day. It’s a unique holiday in so much as it’s completely contrived and based on nothing more than a chance to sell a lot of cards, chocolates, and flowers, but most of us go along with it. I tell my wife I love her every day of the year, and this day is no different.