Well, it's fall. That was quick. I remember picking Evan up at school with Alice Cooper's "School's Out" blaring out of my car windows for all his friends to hear (not sure how many of them, other than Ev, actually knew the song). But Mr. Springsteen's birthday has come and gone and that means we're on our way into fall and though it may be my favorite season, I'll miss those dog days of summer!

Last night we had our end of the year party for our Mosquito baseball team and said good-bye to the boys of summer. What a great bunch of kids I had this past summer....and parents too. I've been coaching for about 7 years and I don't remember a team where we had a group of kids gel like this! And trust me; last year was not a walk in the park with a couple of kids and one particular family. It's all good...you do it for the kids and sometimes you have to take the bad with the good. But this team, the DANIMA Gold Mosquito team, was special. We didn't come in first in the league or the playoffs...but the kids had a blast. To quote my pal Nikola after we got beat out of the playoffs "Coach, I've been on winning teams before...I don't care that we lost...this is my favorite team that I've ever played on". Talk about bringing a smile to a coach’s face. And you know one of the best parts of coaching this year was watching my son, Evan, develop into a great ball player. The kid batted .700 and became a really good 2nd baseman. He even made the Select team! Very proud of him after only 2 years in baseball.

The other highlight of my summer was bringing Willie Nile to the Seneca Queen theatre in Niagara Falls. Man, he's one of the all-time greats and to almost sell out the theatre and to bring such a great, high-energy show to Niagara was a definite highlight. But the icing on the cake was having my own son open the show performing Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City" acoustically with our friend Anthony DiCarlo...and he knocked it out of the park (to use a baseball term)! Then Willie called him up for the final song to join the band on one of our favorite Willie Nile anthems, "One Guitar". We were proud parents, to say the least! 

One of the things I really enjoyed about the past summer is, though we were busy with baseball during the week, we actually got to enjoy our yard and pool with some great lazy days working in the yard, playing catch, swimming, bbq'ing, watching movies on the deck....just enjoying the weather (and the weather was great)!

But alas, summer is now the past and now we enjoy cooler nights and mornings and await the falling leaves and early sundowns, leaving less time to get any yard work done in the evenings :) Hockey has started, Bruce's birthday has passed and the inevitable butterflies are beginning to swarm in my stomach as another Light of Day Niagara show fasts approaches (Nov 6 at the Meridian Centre with Blue Rodeo...get your tickets at www.ticketmaster.ca). Ooops, sorry about the commercial plug....that's just a habit of mine!

So, as I eagerly await the annual building of the Evan Centre rink on my side yard and look forward to coaching Evan again in his first year of Pee Wee hockey, I just wanted to take a look back at a great summer - the summer of 2015! We'll miss Mr. Lou and Rowdy Roddy Piper...and I know that I'm going to miss my pals, the DANIMA Gold, but we'll see some of them at the rink and Lou and Rod will be with us in spirit at Light of Day Canada! You just know it!

Unit next time...enjoy every sandwich!
Words of wisdom from the late, great Warren Zevon

...are you still here?? Is thing working? Is thing on??