There's a show on Chicago sports talk radio hosted by Mark Silverman and ex-Bears receiver Tom Waddle where, if you call, they ask you to recite your "sports credentials". Callers' credentials are mostly that they played (fill in the position) for the (select level or region) championship (select sport) team from (select high school, or grade school), but every once in a while there is a funny one - like someone got in a car accident with a member of the Cubs, or their dog won the spaniel races at the county fair, or something like that.

Whenever I hear it, I think about what I would say if I called the show. (I like to discuss sports, as you might note from this journal, and often THINK about calling in, but I never do...)

Here's my credential. Starting 2nd baseman for the B league intramural championship 16 inch softball team at Loyola University Chicago for the 1984-85 school year!

I wasn't supposed to be on the team. It was our floor's "A" team, and no one thought I was good enough to play on it. So they put me on the "B" team, and put a freshman who was quite good on the "A" team. But I could make almost no games for the "B" team, and could make ALL the games for the "A" team, so they switched me and the freshman (Mike Walsh), and the rest is history.

I was a bad hitter when I played organized baseball, but a good fielder. 16 inch was different. It was HARD to hit the ball very far unless you were pretty darned strong, and I wasn't strong. I found this toothpick of a bat, and used it. As it happened, my usual swing with this light bat was enough to send the big ball over the heads of the infielders but not quite as far as the outfielder. I dumped hit after hit into the gap between IF and OF. I guess in real baseball you'd call them "Texas Leaguers". Or bloop hits. I must have hit about .600 that year.

And we had one of those guys who COULD hit the ball a mile. Mark wasn't a really tall guy but he was a body builder and had incredible upper body strength. Other teams wouldn't even pitch to him after his first at bat. They'd roll the ball to him to walk him, because he hit a few over the fence with intentionally way outside pitches where he'd just jump across the plate and whack them anyway. I was on base for a whole bunch of his home runs.

And the guy behind him could also hit the ball over the fence. He wasn't a body builder or anything but he had a good swing and some extra weight behind his swing, so pitching around Mark to get to Jeff just as often led to runs on the board for us.

We won the final game by a score of 21 to 12 (the title of a popular album by Rush - that record was playing in our wing that night as we celebrated our win). We beat a team of psyche grad students. Both of our teams probably should have played in "A" league, but we didn't know how good we'd be. (I think they knew they were going to be good, and were sandbagging it trying to win the championship.)

I think they were glad they switched me to the "A" team.

Oh, and I still played nearly flawless defense at second base.

So, there we go. Those would be my sports credentials if I ever do call into the Waddle and Silvy show. The rest of my sports "career" is somewhere between pathetic and non-descript!