REMARKS: APPROACH OF FALL STILL TRIGGERS MEMORIES

During my days as a sports editor this was a magical time for me. Not only was the promise of cooler weather looming ahead, but also the promise of another fall (and entire school year) of outstanding sports action. For several years I lived and died in the sports vein.

Some memories survive with amazing clarity -- the smell of the grass and the pfft obviously) pfft pfft of the sprinkler, upon visiting the first night of football camp or practice; the oppressive heat of the gymnasiums during early-season volleyball matches; the annual "media day" events at various high schools; and, of course, the annual fall sports preview section.

I had lost my desire to cover sports by the spring of 1992, when I got to return to my home county (St. Francois) and do regular news. I later returned, doing sports in Poplar Bluff and both news and sports in Ste. Genevieve. The field is certainly not without its rewards. Seeing a young person grow "from an awkward sophomore to a confident senior," as one journalism textbook quite accurately put it, was one of the highlights.

Now, after so many years of having to go to ball games, I find myself unable to prod myself to get out to a couple of games a year. True, photography has been an excuse. My trusty old Nikon 85mm 2.8 telephoto finally wore out about the time I came to the area. Shooting sports with a 50mm lens has some limitations. Now we're digital and digitals in our price range will not stop action.

Still, the allure of the crowd, the charge out of the tunnel (in football), the ball hovering in the air, awaiting a spike at match-point (in volleyball, obviously) or the crispness of a double play in softball can bring the old senses alive in the fall. School sports is certainly a measure of a community. It is certainly one worthy of pride, locally.

I returned to the fine art of tinkering with my personal web site recently, after a hiatus of several months. I was delighted to find that Yahoo/Geocities' PageBuilder has been updated to a version 2.5. In the past this was about the only web-building program I could master. The only problem was, it was like the vintage Spitfire an acquaintance drives. When I complimented him on it, he remarked, "Yep, it's a lot of fun when it runs." The old PageBuilder and GeoBuilder (its predecessor) were as apt to lock up the computer or to simply refuse to save the previous half hours worth of changes. With a 36.6 modem and limited temporary memory, it was a maddeningly slow and unproductive process.

Although I don't normally plug commercial products here, the new version is a remarkable improvement. It really is stronger, faster and more reliable, just as advertised. My web site, on the chance any of our readers have absolutely too much free time on their hands, is

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/1328.

I'm sweating through my second "Retro 60s" APBA draft. For readers who don't still have my column on the subject taped to their refrigerator doors (at least not on the outside!), I'll repeat myself and explain. Since I was 11 I have played APBA (pronounced "ap BUH") baseball (and some football), a game of computer-generated cards of real life baseball players, dice and a play board. Now the real APBA action has shifted to the computer version, put out by Miller Associates. Now instead of sets of player cards, we buy a disk with players' ratings on them each year. Like the board game, they produce astonishingly accurate results. I have played a number of team and small leagues (many of my own drafting) through complete seasons.

A year ago I entered a new domain -- the draft league. I took a franchise in a "retro" draft league which is playing through the decade of the 1960s, season by season. The manager/owner keeps his/her players from year to year, although he is free to make trades or release players. Each year we hold a rookie draft for the upcoming season. I've been sweating out the 1962 rookie draft. It's amazing to think that a dozen grown men (most of them with families) burn weekends and week nights e-mailing each other, trying to hornswaggle each other in drafting baseball players some of us are too young to have even see play.

It seemed a strange irony that the disaster with the Russian submarine occurred within days of the successful raising of the HMS Hunley. I suppose this says something about the frailty of human life and about man's inability to have total control over his environment and destiny. As much as submarine technology and overall technology has moved in 135+ years, going under the surface in a small medal tube is still a risk. Yet our century was only forged by those willing to take risks. I sympathize for the families of the lost seamen and hope that their tragic demise adds something positive to the inevitable march of time.