If I Knew Then What I Know Now

The joy of first-time big-league baseball experience is the fulfillment of countless childhood dreams, imagining glorified moments of grandeur. My first taste of major-league fan adulation made me feel good, and I wanted more, even for just another moment.

The enthusiasm with which the sportscaster mentioned my name, along with details of my first game exploits, slowed only after his summation conferred upon me the unofficial major-league batting title. The 1963 baseball season ended that day, and he, as well as the entire Colt .45 Organization, was looking forward to a brilliant future for this phenomenal rookie and the Organization itself.

The 1964 spring training began in February, and I was anxious to make the team and be in the starting lineup on opening day, April 13, in Cincinnati. Mondays game would begin at 1:00 pm. The lineups were announced and the cards presented to the umpires prior to the first pitch. It was without a sudden, unexpected sense of disappointment that one prominent name was unobtrusively replaced in the visiting teams lineup. It would have been an unconscionable act of omission had the world of dreams maintained its credibility in the unimaginative world of reality.

It seems that a personally satisfying accountnot only of what could have been, but of what can beis a new prospect only to be explored presently in the minds incredible realm of imagination. I now sense that I always had an inherent right to experience my life story in the way that I wanted it to be. I realize that I could have lived with an uncommon understanding that I do create my own reality.

The future is the only perpetuation of time, but now is the constantly new exemption from times past! It seems unfortunate that it should have taken more than fifty years to accrue lifes valuable lessons and then find little time remaining to take advantage of the wisdom that would have been found to give most beneficial service to the days of youth.

If I knew then what I know now, what could have been?

Suddenly a thought occurred to me, How and why is all this knowledge, and the understanding and application of it, coming into my human experience? I seem so far advanced of the times, in this year of 1964.