This isn’t going to happen again for most of you young athletes. No more team dinners or inside jokes on the team bus. Maybe you’ll go away to college, or a job, or some other new life far from here. Maybe you’ll stick around. Maybe join the armed forces or get married. The only thing for sure is that this is the last time you get to be a high school senior playing organized sports with your friends.
I thought of this last week when I was doing the old-guy thing — getting my daily steps in, walking the perimeter of the local high school baseball and softball fields while the baseball team was practicing, and the softballers played vs. a top-seeded squad from the southeast part of our state.
Strolling past a group of road-tripping parents watching their softball daughters in the pre-tourney tune-up, I stopped to chat with one of the dads. He proudly pointed out his daughter, a senior third baseman. He told me she’s off to college next fall. When I asked him if she’d continue to play softball, he shook his head.
“No. Doesn’t want to. This is it.”
That’s the way it most often goes.
On these sports pages we breathlessly chronicle the exploits of collegiate athletes. We write about buckets of NIL money, the dreaded transfer portal, Power Four conferences, and Villanova having three former players starting for the New York Knicks.
That’s big-time college sports and doesn’t impact many of the seniors playing sports in our midst.
The majority of seniors playing this spring will retire from team competition before the middle of June. A select few have scholarships and slots awaiting them at the “next level.” Others may walk on when they get to college. Many will continue to play in summer leagues, adult leagues, or intramurals. There’ll always be pickup games.
But for most, this is it. This is the last time they’ll wear a school-issued uniform, ride a school-sponsored bus, play in games officiated by real referees, and eat orange slices cut by their moms and dads.
That’s how it went for me. One million years ago.
I have covered games, mostly professional games, for more than a half-century, most of them for this newspaper.
Like most in my trade, I grew up totally immersed in sports. Raised in the farm country of Central Mass., the Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots, and Bruins were my four major food groups. I devoured everything written about my teams and came to this career after a well-spent childhood as an enthusiastic ballplayer.
Most of those who write on these pages played long before we wrote. Often not very well, but we played. My games were basketball (mostly bench) and a lot of baseball: Little League. Pony League. Babe Ruth. High school.
It’s stunning to think of how long it’s been since I last wore spikes. A senior at Groton High School in 1971, my last game of organized team sports was played 54 years ago on the green acres of Tahanto Regional High School in Boylston. We had a lot of rain that spring (just like this year), but knew our game would be played that day because classmates from local farms reported no cows laying in the pastures of Groton and Dunstable that morning. It was Game On.
Playing first base, I hit a first-inning single in a 7-4 Groton High victory. We finished 6-8. Unremarkable in every way.
My journal entry from that night read, “Good ending for sports.”
That was it. Holy Cross was not going to need a super-slow, .245 singles hitter from the Wachusett League.
So here’s a toast to the soon-to-be grads who are turning in their uniforms sometime over the next few days.
Maybe it’s already ended for your team, or it’ll be over between now and Monday. If you’re good and lucky, perhaps you’ll make it to the state tourney, keep practicing with your underclassmen teammates after you’ve graduated, and play deep into June. Maybe you’ll sing “Glory Days,” and earn state champion trophies and jackets.
One thing‘s for sure: You’ll miss it when it’s over. Even after a half-century.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at daniel.shaughnessy@globe.com. Follow him @dan_shaughnessy.
