The Sporting Life: Old man admits what co-workers know

Brent Lawrence is columnist, copy editor, reporter and jack-of-all-trades (master of none) for the Springfield Business Journal.

I_m getting old and I don_t like it.

I celebrated _ make that tolerated _ my 34th birthday last month. Not that 34 is old by any stretch of the imagination, but it_s more about the realization that I_m getting older, going thin on top and fat in other places. (Actually, I was fat long before this birthday.)

This isn_t intended as some pity party for me. Actually, I noticed the aging process when I started playing co-ed softball again this fall. But it wasn_t me who was noticeably older _ I_m still about as good as I ever was.

It_s the rest of the team that_s getting older. We_ve played together for about seven years (the memory_s going, too, as teammates have guessed everywhere from five to 10 years). But the rest of the team is getting slow and, well, one of them has trouble reaching down to stop a groundball. Of course, along with age comes wisdom, and we_re still a pretty good team. And our off-season conditioning program (read: beer drinking) remains in full force. We_re still pretty good at that.

I guess my age really hit me when I recently saw my freshman history teacher _ Kenneth Elkins. He was telling me he had been teaching for 20 years. I thought _Twenty years? How_s that possible, because I was in his first class?_ A little basic math confirmed the fact, however, and made me feel really old.

My age also is showing when discussing the upcoming Matchbox 20 concert at Hammons Student Center. They wanted $45 for tickets. Forty-five dollars a ticket! I remember being a poor college student happily spending 20 bucks I didn_t have to spare (once again, read: beer money) to go to a good concert. Now there_s no way I_d spend that kind of money to watch anybody short of _ well, probably nobody. I_d rather save the cash, buy the CD, listen at home and play with the kids.

Now that_s an alarming grown-up thought.

The final straw in the aging debate sits in front of me every day. I bought a new vehicle about a month ago. The time on the radio_s clock was incorrect when I got it _ 6 hours, 32 minutes ahead _ and I haven_t changed it yet. Actually, I can_t figure out how to change it.

Guess it_ll stay that way until my 2 1/2-year-old son can figure it out for me. And then I_ll feel even older.

Hell_s freezing over

Some people have mistakenly been crediting the recent cool weather to the onset of fall. They, however, are very wrong.

I suspect it_s the beginning of Hell freezing over after the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox both made the baseball playoffs.

The last time the Cubs won the World Series was 1908, and the last time the Red Sox won was 1918.

As a dyed-in-the-wool St. Louis Cardinals fan, this is going to be tough to say, but here it goes: I truly believe that the Chicago Cubs will win the World Series this year. And Hell_s turning down the furnaces, just in case.

Let me put this in proper perspective for non-baseball fans. For a Cardinal fan to say something nice about the Cubs is like a Cadillac owner saying _Those Yugos really were pretty nice cars._ It just doesn_t happen.

Good luck, Cubbies. And I hope it takes another 95 years before you win another World Series.