Clinton, South Carolina, Sunday, May 19, 2019, 10:40 a.m.

Maybe it’s because part of my job these days is taking pictures. Maybe it’s some sort of introspection that comes with age. Age wasn’t particularly prominent in my mind until I reached 60. Thirty, 40, 50 … they were just numbers.

Sixty was the most significant checkpoint since 18. When I was 18, it was legal to drink beer. It seemed I was blossoming into manhood. Now it seems I’m wilting into old age. The recent birthday marked 61. I ought to be accustomed to old age. My descent into that good night ought to be gentler.

2:59 p.m.

Fate interrupted at the end of the three paragraphs above.

What I was getting to was not another commiseration of age. For some reason, after a lifetime of basically being oblivious, I’ve started paying particular attention to skies and trees. When I’m on other assignments, I’ll take photos that appear striking. Once I was driving to Laurens for a City Council meeting when I saw a beautiful neon sunset and pulled off the highway, even selecting a place where the view was particularly lovely.

When I was a boy, I used to lie in the front yard and see shapes in the clouds. Maybe in my latter childhood, I’ll start doing that again. People might get alarmed. I would, too, if only because this part of the country has fire ants now.

3:23 p.m.

I didn’t watch so much as a swing of the PGA until today. By word of social media and screen crawls, I ascertained that Brooks Koepka was running away with it. So far today, every time I flip over, someone named Harold Varner III is having a terrible time. He’s partnered with Koepka.

So far I’ve seen Varner miss two short putts and hit a wedge out of deep rough almost sideways. It did bring back memories of my golfing days because the terrain in deep woods, with last year’s leaves lying everywhere and invisible roots to trip over, looked familiar.

If anyone had asked me who Harold Varner was, I might have guessed he was on the chain crew at Broome football games, something like that, but he did just hit a good shot, finally, his fifth on a par-4, and so now I think I’ll go back to the Red Sox, where it stopped raining, but the Astros are winning, and Indy, where the president of the track was climbing into a track dryer the last I looked.

4:35 p.m.

Gosh, I love Indy 500 qualifying. While NASCAR has tried every gimmick not copyrighted by Hasbro, the solution goes back a century at the Brickyard. Four laps on the clock. The total average, not the best lap, is what counts. This format would be perfect at Bristol. If you think it takes too long, make it two laps at Talladega. Four laps would be exciting at any track, though, to me. Wow. What a first lap. OK. Only fell off a 10^th on lap two. So far, so good. Ooh. Slipped 2/10ths on lap three. Final lap! Just about the same as lap three. Great job by the driver.

It’s exciting. It’s germane to the race. It makes my pulse race. Imagine the drivers’.

Indy qualifying isn’t as great as it once was. What is?

5:01 p.m.

The all-star games in most sports are shams, like watching some barnstorming exhibition. The Monster Energy All-Star Race – I think that’s what it’s called now – made a comeback last night. I thought it was the best one in at least a decade. NASCAR drivers will still do in an “all-star” race what Pete Rose was once willing to do to Ray Fosse at Riverfront Stadium in 1970.

The biggest problem NASCAR has with its all-star race is that all the other races have stolen its thunder. It was always tricked up. It was supposed to be tricked up. Now every race is tricked up.

The Red Sox salvaged game three at Fenway against the Astros and ended Houston’s 10-game winning streak.

Fernando Alonso failed to make the Indy 500 field.

It’s a pretty dramatic Sunday.

Not at Bethpage Black, though. Koepka is a strapping lad. For some reason, I have difficulty warming to his name, silly as that is. I mesh with it better than Jazz Janewattananond.

He seems like a nice fellow, though.

I’m glad Kyle Larson won the NASCAR All-Star Race because it’s incredible he doesn’t win more often. As Barney Hall used to say, “I b’lieve that young man is driving the wheels off that car.”

 

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