Saturday, June 04, 2005

Basketball: a game for those with good eyes

JAMESTOWN, N.Y. - About six years ago, I had Lasik surgery to fix my nearsighted eyes after nearly 40 years of wearing glasses (and later struggling with soft contact lenses).

Two things became apparent almost immediately:

1. The world is a lot neater place when you have 20-20 vision, unassisted by glass or plastic lenses.

2. My ability to hit a tennis ball, throw a basketball through a hoop, catch a fly softball, or actually hit a golf ball down the fairway, went up exponentially within weeks of the procedure.

Tiger Woods has nothing to fear, but my leaning toward wrestling and track in high school in retrospect had a lot more to do with not needing good vision than any desire to grapple with other sweaty guys or run until my lungs were on fire. I can still hear Coach Joe Rushin screaming at me, GOGOGOGOGOGO Fitzgerald, GOGOGOGOGOGO...

Today's photo - courtesy of Shirley Adams - is, we believe, the freshman baskeball team and I can recognize most of the people, including the two folks at the end of the back row, Randy Carlson on the left, and Bob Erickson on the right. The late Mr. Stark, Coach Stark in this case, is right in the middle of the back row. Paul Slocum is to the left of the coach, Jack Eckdahl to the right.

I have a much higher resolution version of this which I'll be happy to email to whoever wants one.

In the meantime, I think I'll go outside and see if I can beat my seven-year-old granddaughter at badminton. She's pretty nearsighted - and wears glasses - so I have a good shot at a win, but she's good, so I'm not making any predictions.

More tomorrow.

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