He sat at the bar

engaging a young

couple

in conversation.

He mentioned that

recently he

turned seventy

hoping the couple

would remark about

how young he looked.

Silly boy. It was a

young couple staring

back at him. Instead, the

young man, a big

Chicago Cubs

fan, glibly, perhaps

innocently, responded,

“Ah, the seventh inning

stretch.” Easy for him

to say. Whoa, that means

only two or maybe at

best two and a half

innings to go,

he thought.

He hadn’t

thought of his age

metaphorically,

but it turns out the

young man was

also a professor

of poetry. Seventh

inning stretch? Hmmm.

He couldn’t even hear

Harry Carey sing,

“Take Me Out To The

Ballgame,” because

old Harry finished either

the seventh or eighth but

certainly not the

ninth inning of life (How old

was he when he died?)

himself

a few years ago

in but one more

proverbial

Cubs’ loss.

He just knew there

was no Northside

World Series

in his future.

Now into life

as a baseball

metaphor, the

newly minted

septuagenarian

thought, at least

the young prof didn’t

say, “Strike two!”