Thanksgiving...and missing someone

Thanksgiving is around the corner and you're probably busy getting ready for a houseful of family and friends. Maybe you celebrate at your own home; perhaps you go to someone else's house.

As a child, Thanksgiving was always one of my favorite holidays. For one, it meant my grandmother's turkey. I can still remember the frosting on the windows of my grandparents' house when we'd get there, and the smell of that turkey in the oven. There was nothing quite like that feeling when we were all around that table. My grandparents are no longer with us, but those memories....

A couple of friends of mine recently lost a parent, and this Thanksgiving will be the first since that happened.

There is no instruction manual for that first year after the death of someone close to you...especially a parent.

My Dad, age 10

We lost my Dad 33 years ago last night; it was less than a week before Thanksgiving. Needless to say, that Thursday was an emotional rollercoaster. Turned out he had also started to do some Christmas shopping before he died so on Christmas morning, my Mom gave my sister and me a couple of presents from him. Again, the emotional rollercoaster.

The whole first year is full of those moments - the first birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc. - and in some ways you say to yourself, "Just get through it." Even all these years later, I still have those moments when I say to myself, "I have to call my Dad and tell him about...." Usually it's regarding something one of my kids has done/accomplished. I remember saying to my wife after one such moment, "It's been all these years...when does that stop happening?" She thought a moment and replied, "Maybe it's not supposed to stop. Maybe that's how you know he's still with you."

I don't just try to get through those moments anymore. I treasure them. My son is the spitting image of my Dad from the shape of his face to the color of his hair and eyes. I think of all the times I was a little kid and wished I could have had him as a playmate. I've had that chance with my son.

Please know that parent will be with you in numerous ways this Thursday. Hold onto those moments...smile if you can...I'm sure a tear will fall too...but know he or she will be there.

How I've Spent My Summer Vacation

I turned to my wife Lauren last week and said, "I think I finally hit my limit."

Since March, I've been coaching 8-year olds for the equivalent of four seasons. My son Matthew played for a town recreation team this spring, along with a more advanced travel team sponsored by the training facility I work at. That travel team continued into the summer; we have a playoff game tomorrow and if we win that, a championship game on Thursday to finish up the season. Without sounding too much like one of "those" parents, he had a remarkable spring. He was one of the better pitchers in his town league (8 and 9 year-olds) and gave up only three hits all spring. So when it came time to put an 8-year old town travel team together for a local summer tournament, he was one of the first kids chosen. That in itself was fine, except that the other coaches unanimously asked me to be the head coach which I knew was going to present a conflict or two with two full-time jobs and the other travel team. However, the other coaches pledged full support and delivered BIG TIME (thanks Rich & Larry!). So for the past six weeks, it's been 6 to 7 games a week split between Matthew's two summer teams. Matthew has given up just two or three hits all summer on these two teams and has really blossomed as a pitcher. Lauren and I are already looking for ways to spend his signing bonus when he gets to the Major Leagues (I say, that's a joke son, and by the way, he gets the talent from my Dad who was scouted by the Red Sox while in high school.)

One other thing - you don't know just how hard an 8-year old boy can throw a baseball until one of those kids hits you in the face with a fastball. One of Matthew's teammates hit me on my right cheekbone last Friday night during a warm-up drill. I literally never saw the ball coming. All I remember hearing is another kid yelling, "LOOK OUT!" before everything went black for a second. I never lost consciousness, but I've had a pounding headache for more than 72 hours and there's some swelling, numbing and discoloration around my right eye. I'm lacking some of the better-known symptoms, but I'm pretty sure I suffered a low-grade concussion. (Side note - I suffered what the doctor called a "minor concussion" about 9 years ago and if these two situations are minor, I can't even begin to imagine what a serious concussion must feel like. Both times the headaches have been brutal and I have a reasonably high threshhold of pain.)

Matthew's travel team has a playoff game Tuesday night. If they lose, they're done; if they win they play for their summer league championship on Thursday. Either way, the season ends no later than this Thursday. By the time all is said and done, it will have been about 60 games since March. As I said, "I think I finally hit my limit."

Thank God!

And I wouldn't trade a minute of it for anything.

Happy Father's Day

When I was a kid, I thought my Dad was the coolest person on the planet. And I remember saying to him on more than one occasion, "I wish you were a kid so we could play together."

He did some amazing things in his lifetime. He was an All State high school basketball player. He was scouted by the Red Sox based upon his high school baseball career. He served his country in the United States Navy in World War II. He was the first male in his family to graduate from college. He married a girl from Brooklyn and raised a family in places like Richmond Hill, Elkins Park, King Of Prussia and Basking Ridge.

We used to play catch all the time, until a tear in the rotator cuff in his throwing arm simply made it impossible to make more than a few throws.



Those are his three grandchildren; unfortunately he never got to see them which means they were never able to meet the man I thought was the coolest person on the planet. There isn't a day that's gone by in the last 28+ years that I haven't thought about him. In the faces of those three kids, though, I see him. And while I never got to be a kid with him, I got to play catch with all three of them. And I swear, there are moments when we're doing it that I just KNOW he's right there with us.

Happy Father's Day.

Athbhliain faoi Mhaise Duit ("Happy New Year" in Irish)

It's New Year's Day
Just like the day before
Same old skies of grey
Same empty bottles on the floor
Another year gone by
And I'm thinking once again
How can I take this losing hand
And somehow win

Just give me one good year
To get my feet back on the ground
I've been chasing grace
But grace ain't so easily found
One bad hand can devil a man
Chase him and carry him down
I gotta get out of here
Just give me one good year

I'm burning oil
Engine's running rough
I drive from job to job
But it's never enough
I can't find the will
To just up and get away
Some kind of chains holding me down
To make me stay.

Just give me one good year.....

It's a bitter wind
In your face every day
It's the little sins
That wear your soul away
When you start giving in
Where do the promises all go
Will your darkest hour
Write a blank check on your soul

Just give me one good year
To get my feet back on the ground
I've been chasing grace
But grace ain't so easily found
One bad hand can devil a man
A good one can turn him around
I gotta get out of here
Just give me one good year
I gotta get out of here
Just give me one good year

Slaid Cleaves - "One Good Year"

Merry Christmas 2008

I'm a little late doing this - two days to be exact. But I have an excuse...and a written note from my Mom, too!We tried something a little different at the Monaghan household this year - we started cleaning the house for Christmas before Thanksgiving. OK, so that's not exactly how it happened. Let me 'splain, Lucy.

Over the past couple of years we've had not one, not two, but three different episodes of the Dreaded Flooded Basement. I can't tell you how much memorabilia from my WNEW-FM days was completely destroyed in the process. The most recent episode happened in the fall. I woke up on a Sunday morning and went down into the basement/family room to check something before coming into the radio station to do All Mixed Up. As I moved around, I noticed that my socks were starting to get wet. And that's when I realized that water was coming out of the laundry room, and up through the French drain, through the rug and into everything that was on the floor.

I ran upstairs and told my wife what was happening. The two of us spent the better part of a half hour trying to pull buckets of water out of the sump in an attempt to get the water flow under control. With both of us having to go to work later that day, we ended up having my sister-in-law come down to keep an eye on things and empty the sump when needed. I borrowed a pump from my friend Bob and the Monaghans spent the next couple of days turning it on every couple of hours in an effort to make sure that no more water came in. No one was spared; even my Mom and our two younger children were put on pump duty. So what does this have to do with Christmas? Hang on.

The damage was extensive. All the carpeting downstairs was destroyed. Everything that was in the basement had to be moved upstairs. The house looked as if a bomb had gone off. In the process of replacing the basement rug, my wife and I decided that maybe we could afford to get new carpeting in the living room, too. After 12 years, three kids, and a dog it was time. I mean, Dad IS working two jobs, right? Maybe we could actually swing this financially. But if we were going to put new carpet in the living room, it meant that the living room also needed to be painted. So for three consecutive weekends, I had "help" from my wife's parents. In the interest of One Big Happy Family, let's just leave it at that. We made the appointment to have carpeting installed in both rooms and moved the living room furniture into the dining room. The house now looked as if a second bomb had gone off. What does this have to do with Christmas? I'm getting there.

To top it off, Daughter #1 had asked a few weeks earlier if, instead of driving into the city to have Thanksgiving with my sister and her husband as we had done for the past couple of years, we could have everyone come over to our house. You know, freshman year of college and all; she wanted to really feel as if she was home. That meant that all the painting and the carpet installation and moving of furniture and whatever had to be done by Thanksgiving Eve. The race was on.

Somehow we managed to get it done. All of it. The house (or at least the family room/basement and first floor) was done. And it was clean. Spotless. And with Thanksgiving a little later this year it meant that if we could keep an eye on things, we might actually be able to not have to scramble to get the house ready for Christmas.

For three and a half weeks my wife was positively relentless. If something was left on the kitchen counter for more than three minutes it disappeared. Our two little ones felt as if their parents had turned into Marine drill instructors. But the bottom line was that on the morning of December 24th, outside of wrapping some presents and making sure that we got the kids to church on time to sing at 4 PM Mass, we had very little to do.

Christmas Eve meant the Invasion Of the In-Laws. Santa made his phone call from somewhere over the South Atlantic. The kids were bouncing off the walls. In other words, business as usual around the Monaghan house.

2008 has been a strange year. The economy is an absolute disaster. We watched a historic presidential primary campaign turn into an even bigger historical election. As a country we're still mired in a war we can't seem to find an end-game to. But we're together. As dysfunctional as we all are sometimes, we're still together. Amid the chaos of flooded basements, and rugs, and painting, and the usual holiday stress, and whatever else gets thrown in our midst, we're still together. And THAT'S the point. THAT'S what this has to do with Christmas.

Christmas Day, I was nodding off on the couch in my in-laws' living room. Every so often I would wake up to hear someone laughing as stories about Christmases Past were being told. Funny, but in none of those stories were any presents mentioned. It was always about the idea of a family being together, working together, just trying to get through the day to day nonsense that attempts to drag us down. Think about that First Christmas - a young couple struggling against pretty heavy odds along with a rather unexpected baby, but together.

I hope you've been able to spend these past few days together with people you care about...together with people who care back.

Merry Christmas.

Take this silver lining
Keep it in your own sweet head
Shine it when the night is burning red
Shine it in the twilight
Shine it on the cold cold ground
Shine it till these walls come
Tumbling down

David Gray

John Farrell - Take A Look At This!

If Clay Buchholz and Manny Delcarmen had this kind of form, the Red Sox pitching might be in MUCH better shape! By the way, he's not even 7 and a half yet!

Vacation!?!?!

So let's see if I have the head count correct.

Five adults, four teenagers, two smaller children, and a kennel's worth of dogs. All packed into one house for the better part of a week.

What have I gotten myself into?

Congratulations, Daughter #1!

Softball Dreams Do Come True!

She was three years old when that picture was taken. Her 7-year old brother likes to tease her that she didn't get her hips to the ball and she was swinging underneath the ball (he's right, btw).

This past Monday, my now-18-year old completed her scholastic softball career. Though she was a four-year varsity player, this was the first time that Courtney actually got some serious playing time.

Freshman year, she felt lucky to just make the team. There were a some starts at DH, and some pinch-running assignments, and with a bunch of other freshmen on the team, there was a sense that this team was going to be good in a couple of years.

Sophomore year brought a new coach and some new challenges. Playing time was reduced a bit, but when her team beat our local town high school for the first time in at least four years, it was Courtney who pitched the first two innings, holding her opponents to a single run until the regular starting pitcher could get to the field. I will never forget the look on my daughter's face at the end of the game - "We won...and I had something to do with it!" The team's record was awful, but they played hard every game for this new coach, and the feeling from freshman year about how good this team was going to be was looking like a reality.

Junior year was almost a complete waste of time. Yet another new coach, and that meant having to prove herself all over again. Playing time was very scarce and limited to an occasional late-inning replacement in right field or second base. One disastrous pitching outing doomed her from ever getting back into the circle for the remainder of the year. One bad practice (a practice for goodness' sake!) and her playing time went down to almost nothing. She was hurt. She was angry. And she was determined to prove EVERYONE wrong.

Heading into her senior year, Courtney started going to a local gym. She ran. She lifted weights. And every Sunday for the better part of six months, she had me train her. As we got later into the winter, she upped the workouts to twice a week. We played long toss until I thought my arm would fall off. She did ground ball drills on her knees until they ached. I can't begin to count the number of swings she took. I told her again and again, "Hard work pays off." The last Sunday before tryouts, I looked her in the eye and told her, "You're ready." I don't think I've ever been more sure of anything in my life.

Trouble was, the one person whose opinion really mattered - her coach - wasn't convinced. Despite being named a co-captain by the coach, and showing VAST improvement in pre-season practices (she was the only infielder to reach 1st base from 3rd on the first day of throwing drills), she started the season on the bench. We continued to work out. We would go to outdoor fields and I would hit her ground balls over and over. I started to doubt my own ability to teach the game and evaluate talent. After one particularly strong workout in which she made play after play, I threw my arms out in desperation and pleaded, "What am I missing here? I don't understand why you aren't playing." Was it personal between her and the coach? Was I biased because this was my daughter?

Shortly after that day she got a start at second base. By Courtney's own standards, she had just an OK day. One routine ground ball out, a miscue on another ground ball, and a loss to the big local rival. Convinced she wouldn't play the next day, we were all stunned the next morning to find her back at second base in the opening game of an annual tournament at one of the local Catholic high schools.

Her team fell behind early (the coach chose this game to start one of the younger pitchers and by the time she made a change to the regular starter, it was 8-1). But something odd happened. The other team stopped playing well, Courtney's team scored a few runs, and all of a sudden the score was 8-6 and this game was actually within reach.

Enter the defining moment of her season.

Leading off an inning, the coach noticed a look on my daughter's face and asked her what was wrong. Ticked off by what had happened her junior year and frustrated at having already struck out in this game, she looked the coach straight in the eye and told her, "I'm frustrated by striking out and I am afraid you'll take it out on me and sit me." She then went out and drilled a single past the pitcher's head into center field to ignite what would be the tying rally. She also made two brilliant plays at second base and when she was injured on another play covering first, she waved off her coach - "I wasn't giving her the chance to take me out," she would later relate. Her team ended up losing by a run in extra innings, but the die was cast.

In the second game, she made a couple more great defensive plays and beat out an infield hit that drove in the go-ahead (and ultimately winning) run. All that work...those hours of ground balls...those stupid drills...all of it was finally paying off! "Are you crying, Dad?" she said to me after the second game. "Maybe a little bit," I responded. Shortly after that in the post-tournament award ceremony, she was named to the All-Tournament Team.

Vindication.

Courtney started almost every game the rest of the season. In another tournament, she once again sparkled with both her bat and her glove. Over the course of the rest of her season she made the great plays...she made the routine plays. She was NEVER out of position. She got some hits. She played. She had fun! Parents of her teammates raved about how she was the defensive glue of the infield. This past Tuesday night, her school held its annual spring sports dinner. She positively glowed when she was handed her varsity certificate and pin. When we came home, she threw her arms around me and said, "Thank you, Daddy."

No, Courtney. Thank you.

Trading Places

Have you ever wished you could be someone else for just a little while? Welcome to my world.

During the 2007 baseball season, the Red Sox called up a kid from the minor leagues who in no time managed to capture the collective interest of Red Sox Nation (and especially that segment of the fandom somewhat derisively referred to as the Pink Hats) with his positively electric playing style.

Jacoby Ellsbury started the 2007 season in Double-A ball in Portland, moving to Triple-A Pawtucket before making his Major League debut over 3 stints with Boston. His Major League resume - even now only a few months old - is already pretty impressive. He hit safely in 27 of his first 32 major league games with an at-bat, including a 13-game hitting streak from September 1-15, during which he hit .426 (20-47) with 3 doubles, a triple, 3 home runs, 13 RBI, 11 runs, 4 stolen bases and 2 walks. The night in Fenway he scored from second base on a passed ball has already reached a kind of legendary status among Red Sox fans.

In the post-season, if he was even the slightest bit fazed by playing on baseball's biggest stage, he certainly didn't show it. In 11 post-season games, including the start in each of Boston's final 6 contests, Ellsbury batted .360 (9-25) with 4 doubles, 4 RBI, 8 runs, 3 walks and 2 stolen bases. His 4 doubles all came in the World Series. Say it with me - this kid is an absolute STUD.

Probably one of the fastest players to ever wear a Red Sox uniform, Jacoby Ellsbury is literally everything I ever wanted to be in my baseball career. He's currently rotating as the Red Sox' fourth outfielder pending either an injury to a teammate, or a trade of Coco Crisp.

If the opportunity to trade places with someone for just 24 hours ever were to happen, I wonder how Jacoby Ellsbury would handle waking up at 4 AM?

Merry Christmas 2007 From All Mixed Up Radio

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2007

All the streets are filled with laughter and light

And the music of the season

And the merchants windows are all bright

With the faces of the children

And the families hurrying to their homes

As the sky darkens and freezes

Theyll be gathering around the hearths and tales

Giving thanks for all God's graces

And the birth of the rebel Jesus

If you've ever seen my house, you know it's not very big...a Cape Cod that we expanded (a bit) to be able to finally put all three kids in their own rooms. That said, my wife's entire family invaded in waves on Christmas Eve. The first two waves landed by 7 PM...the other two followed shortly thereafter. By the time all forces had landed, there were 14 of us who for some reason were all crammed into the kitchen.

Well they call Him by the prince of peace

And they call Him by the savior

And they pray to Him upon the seas

And in every bold endeavor

As they fill His churches with their pride and gold

And their faith in Him increases

But they've turned the nature that I worshipped in

From a temple to a robbers den

In the words of the rebel Jesus

Actually, I like my wife's family, so don't read anything into that. It's just a lot different from the quieter, smaller, more reserved Irish family I grew up in. That said, things were a bit subdued - 8-year old Riane came down with strep throat and a 102 degree fever late Sunday and shivered her way through the day. Needless to say, I didn't think she'd have any trouble going to sleep at night once the prescription medicine kicked in.

We guard our world with locks and guns

And we guard our fine possessions

And once a year when Christmas comes

We give to our relations

And perhaps we give a little to the poor

If the generosity should seize us

But if any one of us should interfere

In the business of why they are poor

They get the same as the rebel Jesus

Santa made his customary cell phone call around 8:35 PM Christmas Eve; seems he was somewhere over Brazil at the time. Based upon the length of the conversation he had with Riane, it's a wonder any of the kids in Brazil received any presents. He told my 6-year old son that he was bringing him an electric guitar. Sure wish someone had warned Dad about that.

2007 has been OK by Monaghan standards. Work is going well...at both jobs. The Red Sox won yet another World Series title in my lifetime! More importantly, Daughter #1 has already been accepted at three colleges (my little baby is growing up!) and has grown into a strong, beautiful young woman. Daughter #2, strep throat and ear infection aside, is doing just fine, while Son #1 just spent the past 5 weeks playing in an indoor baseball league against 9 and 10 year old kids. He even made his pitching debut yesterday!

And if you're a regular listener/reader, you know how I feel about my wife. She is - bar none - the best thing to ever happen in my life. I like to think that I'm a better person for having married her.

I have to get back to work - about to leave the radio station for Job 2 - but let me leave you with this.

But please forgive me if I seem

To take the tone of judgement

For I've no wish to come between

This day and your enjoyment

In this life of hardship and of earthly toil

We have need for anything that frees us

So I bid you pleasure

And I bid you cheer

From a heathen and a pagan

On the side of the rebel Jesus

Jackson Browne - "The Rebel Jesus"

I'm neither a heathen nor a pagan. But I do have a special place for the music of Jackson Browne in my heart and that song has always struck the part of me that gets overwhelmed - and just a bit stressed out - at this time of year. If you don't celebrate, or if you're not a believer, the Christmas season (which seems to begin earlier every year) can be an absolute onslaught on your senses. Look, I've been in retail; I know what this time of year means to many businesses. But there's a point at which you say "enough." And if you've reached that point, then those lyrics are for you.

Merry Christmas from the Monaghan family to you and yours.

Daddy's Friend Dave

It was about a year ago. My friends Maury, Tim, Chris, Mark and I were playing a gig at the Rattlesnake Ranch Cafe in Denville. A woman walked in, and Maury and I remarked to each other how much she looked like our friend Pam Kaskeski.

The consensus was that it couldn't be Pam because she and her husband Dave and their kids live in Delaware and there was simply no way they would be in Denville NJ on this cold December night.

We were wrong.



Rattlesnake Lounge Surprise

Dave, his wife Pam, and Johnny & Karen Fecco (who came all the way from Knoxville TN!) showed up en masse that night, along with a number of friends from the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum, in what turned out to be a kind of farewell for all of us. Dave's cancer had recently returned and while he was putting up a good front, we would eventually lose him in the spring of 2007.

But for a few hours on that late December night, we were all together. Laughing, singing, joking. And my kids (shown dancing with my Goddaughter in one of the pictures) were finally able to put a face to "Daddy's friend Dave" who they were praying for every night.

I miss you, Dave.

Hy Lit 1934-2007

If you listened to Philadelphia Top 40 AM radio at all in the 1960's, you should remember the name Hy Lit. Hyski, as he often referred to himself on the air, was to Philadelphia radio as any of the legendary WABC jocks were to New York City radio.

Along with afternoon jock Joe Niagra, Hy Lit (6-10 PM) was the pulse of Philadelphia, rocking on WIBG with ratings numbers that are still hard to comprehend (at his peak, I think Lit had something like a 40-share at night - he virtually owned the young adult audience in Philly!). Scott Muni and Murray the K here in New York always talked about their relationships with the Beatles, but Lit could go them one better. When the Beatles first came to Philadelphia in 1964, they stayed in Lit's home instead of at a hotel.

I can't even begin to tell you how many nights I listened to Hy Lit's show on a transistor radio tucked underneath my pillow. His signature close is still in my ears -

"Lookin up at the old clockarooni on the wall, it indicates its time for Hyski to split the scene and leave it clean...make way for the Frank X Feller record machine. What say we do it again, tomorrow night 6-10 in the pm...in the meantime, inbetween time, maintain your cool, don't be nobody's fool, live love laugh be happy, and go in peace...peace and freedom for all mankind."

Hy Lit passed away on Saturday November 17 from heart and kidney failure at Paoli Hospital in Pennsylvania. He and all those guys at Wibbage, as WIBG was called back then, were instrumental in creating a love of rock & roll and radio in me at a very early age.

Rock on, Hy Lit.

Red Sox - World "Serious"

World "Serious." It's one of the last little-kid-isms my 6-year old son has left in his vocabulary, but it's so absolutely perfect in describing how fans feel when their team makes it to the championship game. In fact, my wife, oldest daughter and I have all told Matthew's 8-year old sister Riane that she is to stop correcting him on it. We're not too sure that she understands why, but so far she's willing to go along with the rest of us on this.

Down 3 games to 1 against a Cleveland Indians team that had dismantled the Yankees, I have to admit that the mood in the Monaghan household wasn't all that positive, although once Josh Beckett started to announce his presence with authority (to steal a line from Bull Durham), I started thinking that winning this thing might be possible after all.

This has been a terrific season so far. Among the highlights - just about any time Jacoby Ellsbury has been on base, holding off the Yankees, winning the division, steamrolling through the first round, and of course pulling out the pennant after being down 3-1 against a very good Cleveland team.

But the best part of the baseball year for me actually happened rather quietly during a mid-summer's day game in Fenway Park. My 17-year old daughter and I took in a game while looking at New England colleges. On a beautiful sun-drenched afternoon watching the Red Sox win, I turned to her and said, "This is one of my favorite places in the whole world. I love sharing this with you." She turned to me and said, "It's one of my favorite places, too. Thanks for taking me here."

Last night she and my wife surrounded me on the couch as Dustin Pedroia slammed a double off the Green Monster, Kevin Youkilis drove a ball high and deep into the Boston night off one of the Coke bottles in left, and Coco Crisp made another ESPN Web Gem catch to end the game. And as Jonathan Papelbon beckoned for Jason Varitek to "come to papa" in celebration of the 27th out, they were both telling me how much they wished they were at Fenway. But at that moment, sharing the experience of having my favorite baseball team in the World Series with two of the most important people in the world to me, there was no other place on earth I wanted to be.

Of Fathers, Sons, Baseball and Healing

That little boy in the picture is my 6 1/2-year old son Matthew; the photo was taken this past Saturday on the Bronx campus of Fordham University at an alumni baseball event. Matthew is an absolute baseball junkie. He eats, breathes, sleeps and lives baseball. His first words in the morning are very often "Dad, did the Red Sox win last night?" When I told him earlier in the week that we were going to a baseball-related event at the school on Saturday he immediately wanted to know if he could wear his uniform and bring his bat and glove.

Just the idea alone that I was back at Fordham is probably cause for a raised eyebrow or two. I called the school "home" for five years but since graduating in the late 70's I have not exactly been the Poster Boy For Universitas Fordhamensis Alumni and in fact it was probably the first time I have been back on the campus in a decade. Suffice it to say that certain university policies both during and after my time as a student have not always met with my approval.

That said, there's always been a rather big connection between my family and Fordham. My Dad came home from the war and after working for Pennsylvania Power & Light for a few years enrolled in the school and graduated in 1954. A large number of cousins on both sides of my family went there as well. And truth be told, I brought Matthew's two older sisters along on Saturday with the hope that 17-year old Courtney would take one look at the campus (which has always been beautiful) and say, "Dad, I think I might like to go to college here."

Matthew knows little about Fordham other than it's in the Bronx near the zoo and both his Daddy and his grandfather went there. He is completely unaware of my rather tumultuous relationship with my own father while I was in college or the myriad of medical malfunctions my body was going through at the time (Doctor to me during my post-lottery military physical - "Son, don't worry about the draft. It would cost the Army too much to fix you up."). The surgical scars on my knee are visible but as you probably know from your own personal experiences, it's the invisible scars that often are more painful and take longer to heal.

So there Matthew and I were on Saturday - on the same field where my Dad and I, his only son, once walked around. "Want to have a catch, Dad?" I often wonder how many times I asked my Dad that question as a kid and now here was the spitting image of that man - albeit a miniature version - standing there asking the same question of me. I called my wife and told her that she wouldn't believe the range of emotions rushing through me while Matthew and I were working on his circle change (how many 6-year olds have a circle change?). And as he and I stood there on an exquisitely beautiful autumn Saturday afternoon playing catch ("Let's use a hard ball, Dad."), Fordham almost felt like home again.

Thanks, Matthew. Your grandfather would be so proud of you. I know that I am.

Welcome Back, Jon Lester

On the surface, this would seem to be about a baseball player coming back off the disabled list and playing in the Major Leagues again. But it's so much more than that.

Eleven months ago to the very date (Aug 23, 2006) Boston Red rookie pitcher Jon Lester walked off the mound in California in a game against the Angels. Lester had been wracked up pretty badly in a game versus the Yankees five days earlier in Fenway Park. It was revealed shortly after the Yankee game that Lester had been involved in a minor traffic accident on the way to the ballpark. He was still OK enough to pitch against the Angels and even won that game. However when he realized that the post-accident pain in his lower back wasn't going away he went for some tests and found out some devastating news - he had cancer.

When you're 22 years old as Jon Lester was at the time, you tend to have a feeling of invincibility. It's the nature of being in your early 20's. And though the doctors told him it was a treatable form of anaplastic large cell lymphoma when you hear someone tell you that you have cancer, your entire world changes.

It's an insidious disease that sooner or later touches everyone of us. You may be battling cancer yourself at this moment. I lost a very close friend in early May to lung cancer. Three members of my immediate family have all successfully beaten cancer.

Tonight in Cleveland, 11 months to the date of his last Major League appearance, Jon Lester will take the mound for the Red Sox once again. For anyone who is fighting cancer, take a moment today to rejoice because Jon Lester is living proof that cancer can be beaten. This really isn't about baseball. It's about life.

On Waking Up At 4:15 AM

OK, let's get one thing very clear - I am NOT a morning person. It can take me hours to become something approaching civil when the alarm goes off. So what exactly was I thinking when I agreed to do the morning show at WDHA when management at the radio station approached me with the offer last May?

My wife is what you might call "terminally perky." She can have a pounding migraine and come bouncing into the house with a big smile on her face, laughing with the kids. She's better known as the "anti-Jim" among people who know the two of us well.

So anyway, it's up at that ridiculous hour and off to two different, full-time jobs before getting home somewhere between 8 and 9 o'clock at night. Hey, it's a tough job, but someone has to do it, right?