​Former Major League Baseball great Dick Allen passing recently sparked a conversation with several of my friends. The topic isn’t new amongst our group. It centers on what has happened to the pro athletes who demonstrated their goofiness, their character, their willingness to show some humor during the game.
 
That type of professional athlete disappeared years ago. When’s the last time, for example, you saw a pro golfer crack a joke or spontaneously smile solely for the sake of fun? Sure, if they skip a shot across a  pond on a par three that rolls righteously into the hole 49 feet after landing on the green, you’ll see that guy burst into a smile. Who wouldn’t?
 
No, what we’ve been missing – and this has been the case for many years – are golfers like Lee Trevino, who kept up a banter with the crowd, engaging them, not taking himself too seriously.
 
In some ways, I think that this trend mirrors our society. We’ve lost spontaneity and humor over the last 30-40 years. In many ways, we’ve lost the ability to laugh at ourselves.
 
Money is a big reason for this. Because pro athletes at the top of their craft MAKE SO MUCH MONEY, they HAVE to take their craft seriously. One crack in their demeanor and who the heck knows what demolition can occur during their next contract negotiation or in their fan base.
 
These athletes, their agents, and the owners of professional sports teams are quite aware of those pressures. It affects the image the athlete projects. Don’t get too out of line. Don’t say what you might really think politically. Don’t be silly or people won’t think you’re taking the game seriously enough.

Hey, I get that teams and individuals want to win and play their best. But consider this: Don’t you perform your best when you are relaxed? Aren’t you most relaxed when you are being yourself, not tight and constrained?
 
I know that I play my best golf when I’m having fun, joking around, loose. Dick Allen, Steve Hamilton (famous with the New York Yankees for his “Folly Floater” pitch – check it out on YouTube) and other clubhouse renowned characters played and acted so their personalities came out – they were relaxed and being themselves.
 
Dick Allen used to smoke cigarettes in the dugout. Could you imagine the hoopla that would cause today?

Recently, during the U.S. Women’s Open Golf Championship, Hinako Shibuno of Japan captivated the announcers with her smile. Why? Because it was so unusual. She was happy. She beamed. It was her personality. We were drawn to her.
 
Sadly, she didn’t win. If she had, maybe we’d see more smiles and less business-like methodical machines at the professional levels.
 
Shibuno enjoyed herself. That shouldn’t be a story. When you practice a craft you love, that should be the norm.
 
I remember a story on Dick Allen, that he juggled in the clubhouse. Maybe he was a prankster and a jokester. Maybe he was just being himself and letting the game take care of itself.
 
Pro sports need the Allen’s and Shibuno’s. They are why we get drawn to a sport. Bring back Lee Trevino.

​ 
Having a baby is a sign of faith. This time of year, with Christmas approaching in the Time of Covid, I’m heartened over and over by signs of faith.
 
Families are choosing to have babies. Babies are being born. Women celebrate their pregnancies. Father’s faces shine with joy.
 
This year has been a downer. It’s hard to get a handle on what our emotions should be or how we feel as 2020 comes to a close.
 
It’s easy to just say, “This year sucked.” No question that many people have been put in dire financial straits, having their income and livelihoods yanked out from under them with no ability to prepare. Those people hurt. They are searching. They are confused.
 
We are limited in the things we do and connections we make. A good friend just mentioned to me how he doesn’t see a good reason to retire until travel restrictions are lifted. Hadn’t thought of that. But his point is a good one: If you want to go places during retirement, now is not the time to choose retirement. And many have involuntarily been put in that category.
 
It’s all the more relevant and promising to see people forging ahead with their lives, as those families choosing to bring a new-born into the world demonstrate. They recognize the perils in the world. There have always been dangers to life and livelihood, whether it was dying from an infection 140 years ago, or getting attacked by a wild beast.
 
We face a different threat today, more intangible, harder for us to understand. It is not stopping the human spirit.
 
One of my good friends, for example, recently sent me a photo. It touched me. He and his wife got new coffee mugs, “Updated from dog grandpa (grandma) to human grandpa,” with the expected date of birth at the end. Cute stuff, and affirming.
 
Another recently married couple friend of mine posted a picture of the expectant wife, radiant. I am so happy for them. Both to be able to experience the job of parenthood and grandparenthood, and that they affirm faith in society.
 
Bringing a child into the world is the ultimate commitment and sign of love in a couple. Both of these examples (there are many others) speak to that commitment. That enhances my faith.
 
I see babies out with their mothers at supermarkets. This makes me smile. There is the tired and stressed look of a new-born mother that often goes along with that excursion, but you also see more deeply beneath it of that bond with the child and the implicit caring and love that is so hard duplicate in anything else you do in life.
 
Parenting is the ultimate sacrifice and risk-taking. Each of these pregnancies and births signify the sacrifice the parents are ready and willing to make, with knowledge of the risks in the world today.
 
I have great hope. I’m not about to sugar coat the world, nope. But seeing the next generation in swaddled clothing to battle the Wisconsin winters brings warmth to a bitter cold year.

​If you watch TV, you’ve probably seen the ads. The ones that try to get you to purchase an expensive automobile for a loved one as a Christmas gift. They deeply disturb me.
 
“Hey hon, don’t worry about that $33,000 loan I just took out. You’ll be surprised Christmas morning and agree what I secretly did for you with the funds we’d set aside for retirement was worth it.”
 
Not only are the advertisements stupid and unrealistic, they’re also demeaning. They demean just about everyone, except the 2 percent of the population that can go out and purchase a vehicle on a whim.
 
Because that is realistically the only group of people they target. Think about going out for Christmas, and you decide unbeknownst to your wife that you’re going to secretly buy her a car.

I don’t know about you, but if I came home with a vehicle and a bow tied around it without consulting my wife first, my head would be on the platter. Sure, if we’d talked about it before, that might be a different story, but even then, I’m not making that decision without full input.
 
That’s just part of the reason these asinine ads are so bad. Christmas should make people feel good. It’s a positive time of year.
 
The car advertisements make us feel bad. Because so few can afford to go out and buy something for $36,718 on a spur of the moment, which is the current average price of a new vehicle, BTW, we know we can’t afford the truck being advertised. This in turn makes us feel poor. Which in turn makes us feel unworthy and bad about ourselves.
 
Christmas is a time of year to celebrate the birth of Christ. As a society, we’ve overdone the gift giving in  celebration to the point where these types of ads don’t seem to raise any sense of outrage. They should.
 
One of the most over-the-top ads, if you haven’t seen it, doesn’t stop with the young couple (where does that young couple get ALL THAT MONEY?) buying just one vehicle. Instead, it has to be two. And WHOA, the wife puts the face claw on the husband and takes the one that he wanted for himself and he barely bats an eye. I guess that’s him turning the other cheek.
 
I don’t know. Maybe I’m the scrooge. I know a lot of people who grumble and grouse this time of year, the stress of getting just the right gifts for their loved ones. Putting up the Christmas lights sure leads to a lot of people telling me their stories of aggravation.
 
It’s nice to give in the spirit. We all appreciate the thoughts behind getting something that means a lot to us. That’s the type of gift you’ll remember long afterwards and to which we attach supreme significance.
 
Not a car or a truck though. They are “things.” Inanimate objects that move us through time a space. Certainly an expensive necessity for almost everyone who lives in a modern economy.
 
Maybe there will be a silver lining in Covid as people drive less and less and the automobile is no longer featured this time of year. Maybe we should all buy someone an ugly sweater, I don’t know.
 
The car manufacturers should pull these types of ads, and put out a public service announcement instead. It would get a lot more respect. 

​You know things have gotten weird when Covid infiltrates your dreams. I don’t know about you, but last night was the third time (at least) that I’ve dreamed I had the virus -- coughing, sore through, plugged nose. Then woke up and everything is fine. It says something when all the news moves into your subconscious.

The dream, like so many others, didn’t make sense for the most part. I was golfing (makes sense). My dad, who passed away four years ago, was with me. We had a golf cart, but it randomly jumped around the course.

Then my cell phone disappeared. Usually, I’d put the device in the compartment in front of the drivers’ side of the golf cart, but foraging there produced nothing, so my angst drove me and the cart maniacally around the course.
 
I couldn’t find the phone on the first tee box or around the second hole green. I kept searching, and like all dreams, this suddenly morphed into something else.

My shirt was off, and I knew you couldn’t play golf shirtless. I panicked. Where the heck is my shirt? This meant blasting off in the cart again, trying to retrieve my shirt. All along, my playing partners have left me, which makes me increasingly nervous. They are getting farther and farther ahead on the course, and dammit, I want to play with them.
 
Suddenly, I’m back on the first tee. I’m there with one of our nephews and our younger daughter. We’re teeing off down a hill, straight down a major city avenue. I can’t figure out what to do.
 
I’m told to just hit it straight, which I do, sending the ball bouncing and bouncing down the hill off the asphalt until I can’t see it anymore. Somewhere in the distance there has to be a hole we will play towards, but none materializes.
 
Then the sore throat hits. Don’t know why, but I find it scratchy back in the right tonsil area, and I’m worried I’m going to spread the virus. I start coughing, and it’s not just a little cough like when you get a morsel of food stuck in your through. Full-blooded hack. My nose plugs. I want to blow it, but don’t want anyone else to hear.

This continues for several holes. I can’t concentrate on my golf. My concern of contaminating others overwhelms me.

Of course, I wake up with no symptoms. But the dream certainly seems to symbolize so much of what we’re going through. I guess it only makes sense that at some point we’d start dreaming of Covid given the saturation news coverage we receive on it, and all the bad things happening.
 
Hopefully, my subconscious worked something out last night. I didn’t feel refreshed, but I can certainly look at the craziness of my dream and easily see what’s bothering me – being without a shirt in public; losing my cell phone; getting left behind; not knowing where the fairway is; catching the Covid.
 
If I can figure out why I had to drive the ball down that major city street, I’ll probably be able to fall asleep tonight with no concerns.