Friday of preseason

Let's go back in time, to preseason in 1999.

I'm in Leo Hall. Why preseason teams were being housed in Leo Hall is beyond me. It was Wednesday. Move-out day. Same as this past Wednesday in Champagnat, also move-out day. Same exact date too!

I'm helping Brian Perrella, wiseguy sophomore from Xavier in Connecticut, move out of his room. I'm lugging a big stereo speaker. Current team members reading this are probably laughing, or are confused, or both. In the days before iTunes, iPods and all your music on your laptop, college students like Perrella had huge stereo systems to listen to their music, which was on bulky, not-so-compact, compact discs.

So anyway, I'm helping him out ... and the beeper in my pocket goes off. A beeper! Other than doctors and drug dealers, who these days uses beepers, right? Again, this is the Dark Ages before cell phones. I knew immediately why my beeper was going off. My wife was instructed to beep me in case there was any "activity" going on in her belly, where our first child was waiting to come out and gasp its first breath of air.

I practically dropped the big speaker on my big toe as I sprinted to the pay phone (PAY PHONE!) to call home. Heidi (my wife) excitedly and nervously had told me her "water broke."

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? The kid wasn't due for another 3 weeks! What the ----. I dashed home as quickly as possible. A call to the doctor's office and they calmed us down. Nothing was happening. Yet. Might be a few hours. A few days. What did we know? This was our first time in the baby business. But still ... the baby wasn't due till mid-September!

The next day and a half was nerve-wracking as nothing really happened. Then, on Friday morning, things started happening. Quickly.

After a short labor, at 12:16 p.m. on Friday, August 27, 1999, our first child was born at Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck. Outside our hospital room window, we could smell the sweet odor of fried dough and hear the sweet sounds of carnival rides. The fair! It was fair week! Right across the street from the hospital, at the fairgrounds. Could you imagine if our mad dash to the hospital had been later in the day instead of at 6:30 a.m.? Imagine, getting stuck in Dutchess County Fair traffic on the way to the hospital with a baby on the way. We lucked out.

So here we are. Friday of preseason, 2010. That bundle of joy now knows how to operate and produce PowerPoint and Publisher documents. His old man and his beautiful mom have no clue how to do this. HE taught US how to program and operate our iPods. He has run 5Ks (wonder where he gets THAT from?), he plays baseball, he knows what the WHIP statistic in baseball means (God bless him!), he's a huge Yankees fan and he listens to Metallica (how did THAT happen?).

Joey turns 11 today. Next week, he goes to middle school. Friday of preseason then. Friday of preseason now. As coaches, we mark our time with such things. Phil's first grandchild was born while we were on the way home from MAACs outdoors in 1998. Joey was born on the Friday of preseason. Some things stay the same. Some things change. The cycle of coaching was what it was, is what it is.

Preseasons go by really fast. Kids grow up really fast.

Friday of preseason then. Friday of preseason now.