Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

A little while ago I wrote about Roberto Clemente, my favorite baseball hero, in this space. Today, let’s honor someone I never saw play: Satchel Paige.

First off, folks like me, who carry the idea of being an athlete into their silver years, admire Satchel Paige for being the oldest major league rookie (42) while playing for the Cleveland Indians. He played in the pros until he was 47.

But here, I want to write about these lines that are attributed to Paige:

Work like you don’t need the money.
Love like you’ve never been hurt.
Dance like nobody’s watching.

These words come to mind because of something that happened about five years ago. Like we’ve done for years in our married life, M and I went for a morning walk. She was glum, upset about the lack of progress she was making in her writing. Many years before, K, our daughter, had printed these lines, with a credit to Satchel Paige, on a bulletin board in her bedroom.

It was in the spirit of Satchel Paige’s quote that I said to M, if it’s possible, why don’t you try to write stories from the place of excitement and wonder that you did when your first stories appeared years ago. She took my advice to heart and did just that with the superfine result that Narrative magazine would soon publish her story “Standards” http://bit.ly/1gRSKCy, an MM classic, if you ask me. And she has not looked back since.

M got word of acceptance from Narrative on Yom Kippur, and this week, ironically, I too was rewarded on the Day of Atonement with some perseverance of my own, with after years of false starts and promises surrounding work short and long, fiction and non-, I received word that a story of mine has been accepted for publication at a journal that deserves the respect that it has among writers. Today I’m feeling as M did when “Standards” was taken, not looking back on what has been.

So do what Satchel says. You can't go wrong.

Next: Running for Your Life: Nobel Peace Prize Candidate Couple That You Should Know About