West Cocoa Chat

First, I’ve been asked to not comment about our recent trip out of State. Wife feels it might be a jinx. Details hopefully to come.

Our High School team held it Awards Banquet last night. J.V. and Varsity Baseball Players received awards, letters, and pins. For Steven, it was the culmination of a lot of work that started right after last year’s Baseball Banquet.

As I’ve said so often, Steven’s last 2 years were a challenge at best. His confidence was at a low last year but not his drive and desire. He spent the Summer and Fall, lifting weights, running, hitting, and fielding. He turned that all into a Senior season that resulted in our Head Coach saying this about Steven:

“The Coaching Staff discussed Steven and came to this conclusion, “As Steven Walker goes so goes our baseball team.” I told Steven that it was a testament to his leadership and desire. For his Mother and I, it was vindication of what we’ve always felt about Steven and his talent in baseball.

He also received his “All Cape-Coast Conference” Plaque along with his good friend “T,” our center-fielder. It was a good time and the last time that Steven would be in the same room as a player with his High School teammates.

We thanked the Coaching Staff for believing in Steven and giving him the type of Senior Season that we knew he was capable of and we like to thank all of you, who have prayed for him through out these 4 years.

We felt your prayers. We covet them now as he points towards College.

This time tomorrow, Steve-o and I will be Oklahoma City and Oklahoma Christian University bound. All day yesterday at church, I was humming the "3 Dog Night" song, "Never Been to Spain." I guess after this weekend I can say that I've been to Oklahoma.

Remember the lyrics:
Well I've never been to Heaven
But I've been to Oklahoma
Well they tell me I was born there
But I really don't remember
In Oklahoma, not Arizona
what does it matter, what does it matter.

We'll arrive in OC at 12 noon tomorrow. We plan on touring the campus, hopefully meeting the Coach, finding a place for Steven to do some "BP," going to the OC Bombing Memorial, and trying to get a good night's rest before his try-out begins at 9am on Saturday. BTW, Coach White is an (sorry Randy) elder at his church and he's performing a wedding that evening. You have to love a coach that is involved with his church and it's people.

We covet your prayers for a safe journey out, a good tryout, and a safe flight back. Steven's dream is to play baseball "at the next level." I always imagined that "next level" to be some where here in Florida, not Arizona, oops, sorry about that, slipped into that song again. But I'm excited about the prospect of Steven attending a Christian College. I pray that it happens.

Oh, we'll need those "Smoky Bear prayers" as we'll arrive back in Orlando at 12:25pm on Sunday only to have to make the drive to Tampa for a tryout at Hillsborough Community College at 2pm. Keep those prayers going for Southwest Airlines and it baggage handlers. Can you believe TSA won't let a little thing like a baseball bat in the passenger cabin. Shocking.

Hope you have a good weekend family.

Good morning family. Proud moment for Steve-o last night as he received his "gold cord" indicating his status as a "Honors Graduate." Its hard to believe that he is a Senior just days away from starting the next chapter of his life. We're proud of the boy. Here are some pics from last night.Steven getting out of his car in the distance. Our baseball field and the current rash of wild fires can be seen behind him. When I saw him getting out of his car from a distance it reminded me of one of this "mind's eye pictures" I spoke about in my last post. That "picture" is the one in my mind of my Mom, Steven's "Nanny," throwing him pitches when he was 6 in the parking lot of the Condo we lived in as we built our home. Yesterday was my Mom's birthday.
A very dark picture of Steven receiving his gold cord from Cocoa High's Principal.
The Honor Grad looking with disdain at the picture taking proud Papa or as he likes to call me, "Pops."And finally - the Honor Greg with a "Josh (Greg's son) like" pose. Greg, he reminded me of Josh doing one of his "Jim Carey" imitations.

At around 5 today, Steven asked me to go to our High School field to hit him some grounders. For a guy who has been running a 5k every other day lately, hitting some grounders sounded like easy duty, yes? Well it wasn’t and I almost hate to admit the part that hurt the worst. I’ll give you a hint – think of “Allstate.” Yes, they were the “Good hands people” but as for me, let’s just say I belong with the “soft hands people.” Yes, blisters in several places after hitting 100 grounders to the boy.

The best part of the afternoon was being with Steven along with Ryan, Bret, and his brother Brian. They came down to the field and ended up throwing “BP” to each other. I took my blisters to the outfield and was able to use my “legs” to make a few plays for a 49-year-old guy.

I don’t know about all of you but as for me, I seem to know when my “mind’s eye” takes a snapshot that is going to make an indelible mark on my memory. Today that snap-shot consisted of looking through the backstop behind home-plate and seeing Steven’s name still written on our lineup board in the lead-off position. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment.

Speaking of history, we were speaking of history, yes? Any way, I want to progress to the very next game following the Winter Park Game. The next game was against another perennial 6A power from Orlando, University H.S. The good news was that Steven hit a leadoff home run against UHS. This gave him a “Tiger-slam” type “hitting for the cycle as he had hit a single, double, and a triple the night before.

The bad news was that we lost as our pitchers issued a veritable plethora of walks to UHS batters. Steven’s performance solidified his position as our leadoff batter. It was a good time and the beginning of much vindication for the previous 2 years of confidence shattering coaching. More to come. Thanks for reading.

So another blog promised blown as I struggle to put together a little history of Steven’s memorable senior year on the Varsity Baseball Team. I’ll start with the future.

Steven had a tryout at Brevard Community College today. It was at 4 so we were unable to attend but his Pa-paw went with him. According to Steven and Pa-paw, he had a great tryout. Apparently 20 kids had been invited. Steven played 2^nd and short and hit 19 of 20 pitches thrown from a pitching machine. Later the Head Coach came up to my Father-in-law and told him that Steven was the most impressive player at the try-out. He told Steven that he had a scholarship waiting for him if he chose to take it.

It’s not Steven’s first choice but then, it’s a choice. We fly out to Oklahoma City next weekend for a tryout for the Oklahoma Christian Baseball Team. This is where Steven’s heart is so keep us in your prayers.

As far as the past with respect to this season, the arrival of Coach Arnold was nothing short of a blessing. The post entitled, “Friday, January 18, 2008 Abuse and End of Hell Week,” illustrated the style of our new Coach. Once the new team was chosen, they has to endure a week Coach Arnold fondly referred to as “Hell Week.” “HW” was basically a non-voluntary invitation to show up at the Cocoa High Gym at 5:45am, run through a hour of non-stop sprints and agility drills, make every effort not to barf, and then head home for a shower before returning to school.

On the last day of HW in which Coach Arnold told them that this would be the worse day of all, he surprised the boys by taking them all out to a local barbeque restaurant for breakfast instead of putting them through another day of running. It was a classic picture of the season to come in which Coach Arnold and his staff would mix a blend of demanding excellence, having fun, discipline, and being there for the boys when they were down. I know, they were there for Steven.

The first game of the season saw us play perennial 6A power, Winter Park High School. Steven displayed in that game what he would do time and time again, attempt to lead by example.

Steven ended up going 3 for 3 with a single, double, and a triple. He also played 2^nd, Short, and he closed the game out in the 7^th inning with 2 strikeouts and a ground out to short helping us beat Winter Park for the first time in my memory.

The feeling that night was electric for Barb and I and I know it had to be that way for Steven. He had endured 2 seasons of erratic playing time, personal attacks, and a basic stripping of his confidence as a player. Now, this may sound like a sports cliché’ but I lived it with my son – so much of the game is mental! You can have all of the physical tools you need to be successful in any sport but if your head, your confidence isn’t where it should be, and you will have difficulty being successful.

This is why we were so grateful for that Winter Park game. It started the process of eliminating some demons in Steven’s mind.

Thanks for reading. More to come.

How about that for a bold title for a blog post? I wasn’t feeling very bold or Holy Spirit led around 8am today. The sequence of events went something like this:

1. Friday – can’t sleep. Finally went to bed around 2:15am.

2. Saturday – Can’t concentrate and that goes without saying. I had an idea in my mind for my Sunday School lesson but I couldn’t put it together. O.K., before you guys (and gals) bust my chops, I know I should have had most if not the entire lesson done by Saturday. There, feel better now? Oh, did I mention that it took me three tries to electronically fill out the FASA Form for Steven?

3. Sunday – 6am – The Lord sends me my lesson and having gone to bed the night before, I’m rested and ready to write, prepare, and print.

Sidebar – Greg (http://gregengland.com/) once told me of Terry Rush of Tulsa fame, having an unusual technique when it came to his sermon prep. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong here Greg but if I remember correctly, on a visit to Long Beach, Terry told Greg that he had gone a year with allowing the Lord to send him his weekly sermon. He told Greg that sometimes the Lord sent his sermon to him early in the week and sometimes it came on Sunday morning.

Let me confess here, I am (I think) a somewhat laid back guy but this is one area where I am quite anal! I need notes, I need prep time, and I need time to make the lesson mine, or so I thought.

At 8:15am, I was ready to print my lesson. That’s when I encountered my first problem. My lovely Epson Printer, which is out of “cyan” ink, would not allow me to print a “black ink” only copy. I said some very bad things about the good folks at Epson since our old HP Printer had a setting that would allow you to use other ink in the case you ran out of one color.

After the bad thoughts and words for Epson, I thought I had a solution. I’ll take the document on my desktop, email it to my yahoo email, open and save it to my son’s laptop, and use the laptop in Sunday School.

Problem, my desktop has Word 07 while son’s laptop has Word 03! Yep, you guessed it; son’s laptop would not open the attachments from my desktop.

“May-day, May-day, may-day!” “We have a problem Houston!” “Tora, tora, tora!” Yes, in a word, I was in deep ka-ka and you don’t know how this messed with my anal side! My wife had to listen to my tirade as I bemoaned the fact that I would have to teach the class without notes.

But you know what, that class may of ended up being one of the best classes I’ve ever taught, at least according to wife. All I know is that I started talking, teaching, and more points kept coming. Maybe there is something to be said for allowing the Spirit to work within us because family, it wasn’t me! I need my notes!

So, when you see that Mac Commercial with the old guy representing “PC,” just remember me. In fact, someone came up to me after my lesson and asked if I was using Alta Vista. No, no "Alta Vista" here but as the line from the movie, "Airplane," goes, "I picked a bad day to quit sniffing glue!"

Have a good week family.

[Note: This blog is being posted from Temecula, California for someone who doesn't seem to have time to do this at night by someone who really doesn't have the time to do this by day. But, hey, what are friends for??]

Well Greg’s warning has come to fruition – I’m late on the rest of Steven’s Baseball History but it’s been and continues to be a whirlwind week. Family, we need some prayers.

We’re trying to work out a way to fly to Oklahoma Christian for a baseball try-out for Steve-o on May 17^th. We also found out he has a try-out in Tampa at Hillsborough CC on that Sunday, May 18^th. So, we need to fly from Orlando to OC on Friday, May 16, go to the tryouts on the Saturday the 17^th, and try to find a late Saturday evening flight or and early Sunday morning flight to make it back to Orlando, and then drive to Tampa for his try-out. I’m still waiting to hear from Steven’s H.S. coach for the time of that Sunday’s tryout. So, we need prayers for:

1. The timing, that we’re able to make this work.

2. To be able to find flights that will work for both tryouts.

3. That Steven does well.

4. He really wants to go to OC.

5. That we can afford to send him to OC should it work out.

6. Safe travel.

7. A cure for hair loss as I continue to grow balder by the weekend.

Thanks family.

P.S. Steve-0 has a tryout with our local community (Brevard Community College) on Wednesday.