My 30-year high school reunion is coming up this summer, but I’m not going. I was deliriously happy to get out of Lubbock after my senior year in 1980, and I’m still happy about it, so I don’t really see any reason to go back.

And since this is mid-May, it’s also the 30th anniversary of my crowning athletic achievement. Now it’s not much compared to the accomplishments of some of the other folks here on SpikesnStars, but we weren’t all destined for greatness I guess.

See, I’ve never been an athlete. I had double pneumonia when I was 6, and had asthma attacks and bronchitis every year in school. Plus, the one thing in the world that I’m most allergic to is cottonseed. And I grew up in Lubbock, where the cotton gins grind that shit up and spew it in the air. Throw in the spring dirt storms, and my lungs were tied in knots.

So I loved sports but didn’t have the endurance for real competition. But there was one thing I could do. I was tall and skinny (this was a long time ago, remember) and I could run like the wind … for about 100 yards. I could make one blazing burst of speed, but then I was gassed.

Anyway, May 1980. I’m about three weeks from graduating and getting the hell out of this school. Hallelujah. It was also the time of year when teachers had run out of ideas and were just mailing it in, trying to come up with shit for us to do to finish the year. Especially in PE class. For some reason, all the athletic kids on the official school teams had been dumped back into our PE class to finish out the year, so we had some members of the track team and other sports. The coaches decided the way to end the year was to split the class into two huge teams and have a track meet with all the events. Since we only had an hour of class time each day, this track meet would kill the last two or three weeks of school and everyone could loaf around, except during their events.

Well, what a surprise, all the track team members and other athletes got put on the same team, and the rest of us asthmatic nerds were put on the Washington Generals team. See, this way, the athletes got one more chance to break school records, or something. I was never sure about the details.

But our team of misfits actually turned out to be pretty good. The biggest, shyest girl in school turned out to be a star shot-putter. We won some other events and were hanging tight with the rich-boy athletes, and then it came time for my first event – the 880 relay. Now like I’ve said, I could burn up the track for about 100 yards, but my 220-yard leg in this relay was really pushing it.

The other team wasn’t completely made up of the school’s track regulars, but I think there were at least a couple of them. I was running the second leg, against this smart-ass punk who was fast, but not as fast as I was. I figured I could take him at the beginning, but was worried I might not hold him off when I ran out of gas. And I had no doubt that I would run out of gas.

Well the race started and by the time the baton was coming to me, my team was already behind by 10 or 15 yards. I took the baton cleanly and put my sights on the punk’s ass in the next lane. I noticed that he had really shitty running form, with his arms and baton all flailing around and shit … and then I was past him. I blew past that fucker before I even got up to full speed, and I started motoring into the turn.

And then I poured it on. I was rocking in the Driver’s Seat and no one was going to catch me.

(I know that song is from 1978, but I didn’t hear it until 1980; this was Lubbock, remember.) I would have rocked Foghat’s Drivin’ Wheel too, but there was no time because I was burning around the track and not slowing down. Man, I was cooking with gas. My weak-ass lungs felt like they were going to burst, but I didn’t slow down. It was the hardest I’ve ever run in my entire life. I finally made another clean hand-off, then staggered to the side and gasped for breath.

The coaches and other students were all staring at me in amazement, and I looked back and saw my punk-ass competition still staggering toward us way back down the track. I watched the rest of the race, and the rich boys gained on us steadily through the final two legs, but in the end we won because of the lead I’d built.

But while I was standing there basking in victory, I also knew I’d pushed it too hard. The air was full of pollen and cottonseed, there was a dirt storm on the horizon, and I’d badly overexerted myself. By the next day, the sky was brown with dirt and my lungs were brown with phlegm. Lubbock Lungbutter.

My trackstar days were over. Or so I thought.

Read the second part of the story, “How I Set the School Hurdles Record With My Balls,” after the Astros-Dodgers preview.

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Astros at Dodgers

Dodger Stadium

Monday, May 17, 9:10 p.m. CDT – FSH-HD
Tuesday, May 18, 9:10 p.m. CDT – FSH-HD

More late-night West Coast games. Kind of tough to stay up late just to watch the kind of slap-dickery we’ve been seeing, but I’ll probably watch anyway.

Notable giveaways

Tuesday – An Andre Ethier bobblehead; note how both his hands are gripping the bat from the top. No wonder he broke his pinky finger in batting practice. It’s going to suck for him if he has to miss his own bobblehead day, with a bobblehead that shows how not to grip a bat.

Projected Matchups from Astros.com

Monday
Wandy Rodriguez (2-4, 4.81)  v. John Ely (1-1, 3.86)

Wandy beat the Shitbirds in his last start, but he still doesn’t have a quality start this month. He’s 3-2 against the Dodgers with a 2.70 ERA. Russell Martin is the only Dodger with a homer off Wandy, though Ronnie Belliard and Dreamboat Manny have hit him well. In 14 AB’s against Wandy, Reed Johnson has five strikeouts and only two hits.

John Ely is not to be confused with Joe Ely, who also got the fuck out of Lubbock like I did. John Ely is a rookie making his fourth start. He lost to the fucking Mets in his first outing, but beat the Snakes last week. He’s never faced the Astros.

Tuesday
TBA v. Hiroki Kuroda (4-1, 2.66)

Well I don’t know who’s pitching for the Astros tonight, but since Chris Sampson went to Tech and had to live in Lubbock for a while too, I’ll just use his stats. He’ll probably get into the game tonight anyway.

James Loney is 3-for-5 against Sampson with two doubles, and Belliard has a homer off him. Ethier, Kemp, and Martin are a combined 3-for-18 against him.

The Dodgers are 6-1 in Kuroda’s starts this year. In three starts against the Astros, he’s gone 1-0 with an ERA under 2. Nobody on the Astros has done much against him. Geoff Blum has a homer, but it was his only hit in 5 at-bats against Kuroda. Hunter Pence and Carlos Lee are both 2-for-8 against him, and it gets worse from there.

Injury Report

Houston – Tim Byrdak is out until late this month with a strained hamstring.

Los Angeles – Andre Ethier has that busted pinky and may or may not make this series. Brad Ausmus is on the 60-day DL after having back surgery. Pitchers Vicente Padilla, Cory Wade, and Charlie Haeger are all out and will miss this series, but Rafael Furcal might be back.

Discuss tonight’s game in the Gamezone.

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So anyway, Lubbock 1980. As usual, I missed a week of school with bronchitis. It happened twice every school year, so it was a fitting end to my senior year.

When I got back to PE class, I was amazed to learn that the stupid track meet was still going. They’d missed several days because of the dirt storm, duh, and were hustling to try to finish up. Well, fuck it, I’d already run my event, plus I’d just spent a week with bronchitis and was still on antibiotics and I was weak as shit. I didn’t even bother putting on a gym suit, mainly because they’d been bugging us to clear out our lockers and take all our smelly shit home anyway, so I had.

But they said we had to finish the dumbass track meet because it was part of our final grade, so I just wore my jeans and PE shirt and went to the far end of the track where hopefully they wouldn’t notice me.

“Craig! Get over here, you’re running the hurdles!” Oh shit, one of the coaches found me.

“What? I’ve been sick; I can’t run! Plus I’ve never jumped a hurdle in my life!”

“Well hurry up and practice at it, you’ve got 10 minutes! And you can’t hurdle in those jeans. Go get a pair of shorts out my office.”

Great, not only do I have to run the stupid hurdles, but I have to wear the ratty-ass shorts someone else left behind. The only shorts I could find were a little too small for me, but I put them on and went back out to practice.

I pissed and moaned, but no one was around because they were all watching some other race, so I lined up at the hurdles to practice. I dashed toward the hurdles and stretched out in my first leap, and both of my balls popped out one of the legs of my shorts. (This was 1980, so guys’ shorts were pretty skimpy compared to the jodhpurs that pass for shorts today.)

I suddenly remembered why our coaches had insisted we wear jockstraps in PE class. (“Look, we’ve got girls in this class, and I don’t want any of you guys to do a squat-thrust and have your balls touch the floor!”) But my jockstrap was at home, and the race was here and now.

I veered off to the side, tucked my junk back into my shorts, and readjusted my tighty whities. Nope, they weren’t going to hold anything in place. And just like that, the coaches were heading my way and it was race time.

Then I realized who my opponent was going to be. It was John Elway, the school’s top track star. (It wasn’t really THE John Elway, but it was this snotty-ass rich-boy who looked just like Elway – perfect blond hair, all tanned and muscled, and with a condescending toothy smirk.) I also realized this was his last chance to break the school record, even though I was pretty sure he already owned it.

It was a really windy day (Lubbock, remember), but the wind was blowing hard across the track, not from behind or in front of us. The gun went off, I stretched out for the first hurdle, and sure enough, my nuts came out again. But I didn’t veer off the track this time, no sir! I was already headed for the next hurdle and I knew I had to clear it not only with my legs, but my sack as well. So that put a spring in my step.

Going over the second hurdle with my nuts in the wind, I had an epiphany – I realized there’s a rhythm to running the hurdles. So I got into the rhythm of the race and gave each jump a little extra bounce, because of … you know.

I don’t even know the length of the race or the height of the hurdles, but my balls never even grazed a gate. Untouched all the way to the endzone! I was concentrating so hard that as I cleared the last hurdle, and sprinted across the finish, I realized John Elway was BEHIND ME. HOLY SHIT HE WAS BEHIND ME.

I tucked in my stuff (I don’t think anyone even noticed it flapping around) and trotted back to the coaches with the stopwatches. The one who was timing me muttered in astonishment, “School record.” The other coach, timing the track star, said “Both of them. They both broke the school record.” (I thought to myself, “Yeah, you mean both my BALLS broke the school record.”)

And then the head coach looked at his track star who looked like John Elway, and he looked at the brown Lubbock sky, and said the words that ended my budding athletic career:

“Wind-aided. Doesn’t count.”

Aw fuck. My one shot at history, and it was tainted because it got windy in Lubbock. That fucking figures. But I know where the record really resides. In my pants.

So anyway I don’t think I’ll be going to the 30-year reunion. But I will stand on my front porch and wave my balls in the direction of West Texas.

Lubbock or Leave it, indeed.