The Good Ol' Days

As you get older you tend to believe that the “good old days” were better than they actually were. It’s a combination of nostalgia and forgetting that at the time you probably were complaining about the same things you now say were so terrific. However in the last week or so I’ve had conversations with a couple of people in which we concluded that when it comes to playing sports and being a kid….the “good old days” were better.

Summer used to be a time for baseball games which often started in the morning and ended when it got too dark to see the ball. There were no uniforms, no scoreboard and most importantly no adults. Disputed calls were decided by the odd-even flick of the fingers, “one-two-three shoot” which was the same way you settled an argument on the basketball court. That court was outside, with metal backboards and chain nets although usually the nets were hanging down or long gone. Another summer favorite was stickball in which the game often ended when the last ball disappeared on the school roof or in a storm drain.

Football was never a summer game, saved for the fall and early winter. Two-hand touch was usually the game of choice and the church lot in Seaside Heights made for a perfect playing field. We played tackle too with some of those games taking place on somebody’s front yard and of course there was no equipment and again….no adults.

The best thing about all of this was that we did the organizing, made the rules
and always found a way to settle our differences. You didn’t have to call anyone to get a game as depending on the time of year you kind of knew when and where it would take place. Facilities were patches of grass, dirt and asphalt and uniforms were often shirts versus skins.

Flash forward to today and it’s a whole different story. Kids play when the adults tell them too, an often strict schedule of practices and games in and out of season. As a matter of fact many sports are now 12 months a year…at least the training for them is. When the so-called season is over we parents send kids to camp….not summer day-camp but sports, strength and speed camps. There’s summer leagues for everything and some juggle as many as three sports at the same time. Is this really better?

I don’t know the answer but I will bet you fifty years from now they will look back at this era and say….”the good old days really were.”