Day (Job) Dreams

By TAD BARTIMUS

There's a lot of whistling in the dark going on at our house these days. How-to library books and magazines are stacked on counters and tables, demonstration videos come in the door every payday and experts pontificate constantly from the car's tape player.

Maybe it's those new vitamins, or the occasional postcards from trailblazing friends. It could even be fallout from all of the millennium hype -- CARPE DIEM!

But one day I realized my spouse had a new spring in his step. He was unusually cheerful and optimistic. Could it be because he was chasing a dream deferred?

Whatever started it, our daydreams got a huge boost recently from Texan Jim Morris, the 35-year-old Reagan County High School coach who promised his team he'd try out for major league baseball if they made it to the state playoffs last summer. They did, he did, and the rest media history. Morris' mid-life fantasy-come-true has inspired armchair athletes all over America to head for the nearest sports equipment store.

A minor leaguer in his early 20s, Morris was forced to leave the game because of arm problems. To stay close to the sport he loved he became a high school coach and science teacher. But Morris' arm eventually healed so well his teen-aged team complained he threw too hard in practice. Suspecting them of goldbricking, he struck his play-offs/try-out deal. The kids fulfilled their end of the bargain and, last June, Morris -- throwing a fast ball 98 miles an hour -- blew the pro scouts away. With the reluctant blessing of his wife and the ecstatic good wishes of his three children, he signed with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, racked up a 3-1 record with their farm club in Durham, N.C., and last September "went to the show," as baseball players describe being called up to the major leagues, thus becoming the oldest rookie in almost 30 years.

Once a jock, always a jock. My husband followed Morris' journey with growing incredulity. Naw, he said at first, can't happen. But the next thing I heard was the clatter of falling golf clubs being dug out from under suitcases, weedeaters and the travel kennel in the garage. How, I asked, are you going to play golf in a town without a course? "Never mind," he said, heading over the hill toward a field of chug holes and rock piles. "I'll pretend I'm in Scotland."

At first only the dog believed in him, faithfully fetching errant balls and quickly learning the meaning of "FORE!" But one day I realized my spouse had a new spring in his step. He was unusually cheerful and optimistic. Could it be because he was chasing a dream deferred?

A few weeks ago we bid farewell to departing college students with the exhortation to "follow your dreams!" When you're young that seems natural. As we get older we too often settle for hard-won complacency.

Yet hope should spring eternal. Granted, some hopes are more irrational than others: I will never dance with the Bolshoi Ballet and my husband won't win the Masters Tournament. But assorted friends in mid-life have taken up the study of the Hopi culture; launched a record label; embarked on medical school; written a novel on the internet; bicycled across America and, in my case, started a company. Why shouldn't my husband attempt to qualify for the Professional Golf Association's senior tour if he dreams he can?

"One day I woke up and realized the only thing holding me back was me," a friend said recently, as she began marketing her husband's handmade garden ornaments. She hit the nail on the head.

Realizing it had been far too long since I'd read it, I dug in my wallet to find the dog-eared clipping I've carried there since I was 14:

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
--- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I've promised my husband that if he makes the senior's tour I'll caddy for him. That was before he broke par. How heavy are those bags, anyway?

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