LETTERS FROM HOME: EXPRESSING YOURSELF THROUGH AN ATHLETIC LEAP OF FAITH

Aug. 19, 1999

Dear Ken,

If I'd paid half the attention to school or to the saxophone I did to sports as a boy I might be a scholar today or making them forget about Coltrane. Instead, I have a memory bank full of neighborhood hotbox games, Whiffle ball home runs, diving catches and last-second baskets scored with numb fingers.

I wonder why the fascination is so complete at that age. Perhaps because sports provide a constant means of testing yourself, of evaluating your place in the world.

My memories are of the legends and mystique of athletes called The Mick and Wilt the Stilt. These were something a boy could believe in. Dick "Night Train" Lane might or might not have been a great football player, but every time an announcer shouted "Night Train Lane on the tackle" life seemed as it should be.

When I was a schoolboy in the 1950s and early 1960s, Cape Girardeau elementary schools competed against each other in flag football, basketball and baseball. At Jefferson School, we lost to the tough-kid schools as well as to the rich-kid schools. I think we suffered from a lack of identity.

I was no good at football, too short and skinny and slow -- a combination sure to warm the bench. But when our coach walked among the desks on the afternoon of a game, he smeared burnt cork under my eyes just the same. It made me feel like I belonged. I don't remember ever playing a down. I remember the war paint.

Schoolyard fame and infamy, it turns out, are forever. Everybody was afraid of a running back at Washington School named Richard Ishee. He was big, strong and seemed to prefer running over rather than around.

Lorimier School had a good pitcher named Craig Horky, who was one of my childhood friends. He struck me out looking.

And Franklin School had a pitcher named Pat Godwin whose pitches were so fast they seemed almost invisible. Pat kept his live arm all through high school and played quarterback for the University of Missouri at Rolla.

Sports began losing their allure when I got to college. Everything -- music, literature, women -- seemed much more exciting. Athletics made room for art.

Now, it surprises me to say, sports are relevant once more. Or golf is. But it is not the ability to evaluate myself against others that intrigues once again. Rather, it is the opportunity to express myself artistically through athleticism.

Golf is not handicaps or high-tech clubs or swing techniques.

"Golf is what happens to you when you play," says Fred Shoemaker, my guru of the linkslands.

He compares the experience to one of Keith Jarrett's piano performances. Jarrett gets up before thousands of people not knowing what he's going to do. He begins playing and at some point loses himself in the music, a leap of faith that makes it possible for him to do something new and extraordinary.

If you can learn to do that playing golf, you can do it every moment of your life.

My mother was looking through old photos a few days ago and found one of me dwarfed by two sixth-grade classmates, Kenny Shrum and Jane McCauley. Turns out they were just big for their age.

When you're a little kid you can't imagine growing up to be 5-10. Somehow you do.

Love, Sam