Three Beautiful Things 01/30/19: Hall of Fame Friends, High School Tournament Programs, Johnnies and a Pork Roast

1. Several friends helped me today with words of reassurance and helped me get a better perspective on my missed lay up to open the January of 1972 basketball game between Wallace and Kellogg -- a game we lost 83-67. I'll just say that it's bewildering to me how that one moment from a basketball game forty-five years ago had grown so huge in my mind and how much the sight of my lay-in spinning out of the hoop has punishingly flashed forward into my consciousness.

To a person, each teammate I heard from doesn't remember that game's opening 10 seconds. No one remembers my missed lay-in. And, I'm relieved to say, no one thinks that my miss set the doom in motion that our team experienced that night.

I'm glad I fessed up and wrote about the haunting I've experienced all these years and that today my friends and I worked together to strip that memory of its dark power. As Byrdman put it, "This is what Hall of Fame friends are for."

Amen.

2. I'm back in touch with Little League foe and Little League All-Star teammate, Hugh Crozier, after fifty-three years of no contact between us. After reading about the January 1972 Wallace-Kellogg game, he wrote to me about basketball and his high school experience. Hugh wasn't a member of the Hazen Highlanders team when they finished second to the Richland Bombers in the Washington State AAA championship tournament. After he told me this, I did a little clicking around and found a great website called Tacoma Sports Museum, here. At that site, I found the program for the State Tournament Hugh wrote about. It's here. I also enjoyed looking at the 1970 program, mainly because University High, which had two former Kellogg kids on its team, Craig Lenhart and Joe Bascetta, was a part of that state tournament. It's here. If you'd like to see a list of all the high school programs at this site, just click here.

3. It was a pleasure to see the St. John's University Red Storm fire three point shots from east, west, north, and south, make a ton of them, and play harassing defense on their way to an 83-67 win over Creighton to snap a three game skid. When this game took time out breaks and at halftime, I braised a pork roast, experimenting with making a lemony marinade and then a lemony braise. I'll know better on Thursday how it worked out.