Fifty years ago I graduated from Ferndale High School (they actually threw me out, along with my nerdy bright green pants) and moved on down the road, spending two years at Alfred in New York State before coming to my senses and enrolling at Western Washington.

Now as I sit huddled up against the cold at various baseball fields around the county, watching our 13-year-old son Michael play Babe Ruth baseball, I find myself wondering where did all the years go?

When you reach this age, the body begins to break down and your step isn’t nearly as sure or as firm as it was when you were doing the swinging for the fences, not your young son. I never thought I would reach this stage in life where I couldn’t be as strong as I once was, where I couldn’t think as fast as I once could or couldn’t remember as much as I once did.

But that’s life. If you are not aging, you are in trouble because the alternative is not pretty.

So there I am several days a week shivering against a chilly wind while watching Michael play Babe Ruth baseball. This is the progression of life, no matter that in my case the progression is closer to the end than the beginning.

It’s fun watching Michael. He loves the sport. Knows it in and out and while he’s not the best player, he thinks he is, which should count for something. He’s been playing baseball for seven years, and has had a terrible time learning how to hit. But all of a sudden, he is getting it. Well, not all of a sudden, because it did take seven years. But he is putting the ball in play, which is a huge leap for him.

So he jumps into the car after a game in which he put the ball in play three consecutive plate appearances and the first thing he says is, “I’ve got to learn how to drive the ball.”

I just hope it doesn’t take another seven years for him to do that. I might not have that much time. But I guarantee you it will be a joy for me and for him the first time he drives one. And it doesn’t matter if it gets caught for an out. The joy will be just seeing the smile on his face when and if it happens.

I don’t know who likes sports more – Michael or me. Probably me. But Michael knows more about the players who play their games than I do. He has an incredible ability to memorize statistics, even down to who is the fastest player on any baseball team.

Michael or his sister Caitlin don’t have to be the best in whatever they do. As long as they enjoy it, that’s good enough. Caitlin is learning the piano and plays a pretty good saxophone for somebody who just picked it up two months ago. Michael is not the best player on his team, and may never be. But as long as they both have fun, that’s the main thing.

Fun is what I have had now for nearly 40 years of writing. I never have thought of writing sports as a job, as work. It’s a pleasure, and it’s not sinful. So I’m thankful I found this profession. Otherwise, I might be digging ditches instead of shadow boxing in the Mariners’ clubhouse with Ken Griffey Jr., as I once did. He thought his hand reactions were better than mine, but he wasn’t close. He could hit the ball pretty well back them, but he wasn’t fast enough to come close to me.

Griffey did out-leap me, however. His vertical leap was measured at 34 inches back in his early days with the Mariners. Mine was 12 inches. I had the Larry Bird disease.

For me, the thrill of sports isn’t limited. It’s everywhere, from coverage of pee wee football games, which I have done, to coverage of an American League Division Championship Series, which I have done. It’s all the same. The best place to be is where I’m at, at any particular moment.

I may have been the only writer to never complain about covering a Washington Husky women’s basketball game. So many of my fellow writers hated to be there because they felt the women’s game was not basketball as it should be played. It wasn’t above the rim, and they were dissatisfied with that.

Not me. I enjoyed every second of every game I saw at the old Hec Ed. Where, I reasoned, would you rather be at the office answering phones or in Seattle at a basketball game? Like Griffey’s hand reactions, it wasn’t even close.

We sports writers are lucky. There is no other way to say it. We get to see games for free while most of the rest of the population toils away at jobs they don’t like. There is nothing better than being at a game, which is where I have been since I was about five watching my older brothers play football, baseball and basketball.

I got to see Boone “Boom-Boom” Kirkland battle some of the better heavyweight boxers of his era and sat around locker rooms with him while he got ready to fight or post-fight while he nursed his many wounds. Not many people got to do that.

Sugar Ray Leonard beat Tommy “Hit-Man” Hearns at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, and I was there, as well as being at a post-fight party that was like being with Nero as he fiddled while Rome burned. All the beautiful and rich people were at poolside and I felt like an outsider leering in, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the moment, surrounded by all the pretense, the glitter of diamonds, all the great food, all the flowing booze and live music played by a band louder than good.

And that’s what it is all about – enjoying the moment, no matter if it was answering phones late at night at the office with nobody around. Those many times when I could talk to a coach were some of the greatest, except for the time when Bainbridge basketball coach Dean Scherer called and for 45 minutes let me in on a big scoop of a story only to say just before he hung up, “Now, all of that is off the record.”

I could have killed right then.

But even that was enjoyable.

When you are writing, time moves as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. I don’t know how many times I have started writing and then I’ll look up at the clock and realize five or six hours have passed. You get so engrossed into the story that time gets lost.

Still, sometimes I shake my head over how fast time as gone. It seems like yesterday that Pete and I were teenagers throwing the baseball around, in the rain, in the snow, in the sun. We would try to see who would flinch first. He’d throw hard. I would throw harder. He would try to up his speed and I’m trying to bring it even harder.

Then we would switch and throw the football. Or go to the high school gym and shoot baskets until, as they say, the cows came home.

Last week I thought of Pete, who I haven’t seen since 1968. I found his phone number on the Internet and called it. It was disconnected. So now I’m thinking Pete is gone, from dust to dust. That makes me more than a little sad, if it is true. But the memories of those throwing dust-ups will always be with me, even if he is not.

So now it’s Michael, the cold, the chill and another baseball game to enjoy. Hopefully, someday, long after I’m gone, Michael will stop and remember as I have done with Pete the days when we threw the ball around, when he played and I watched.

Maybe a tear will flow down his cheek, and then he’ll break into a knowing smile. It was fun, he’ll say to himself.

Have a great month.

You are loved.