On Frozen Blog

I suspect I’m reasonably idiosyncratic in concentrating my Labor Day weekend thoughts on the shortening of days’ sunlight, cooling temperatures, and the setting of the sun on summer’s sporting pursuits. I drove north and west some 400 miles, to a great Great Lake-front reunion with some college chums, and in those environs — low 80s by day, low 50s by night, strong breezes – it was impossible not to sense a change in seasons settling in. Monday afternoon I navigated my way home East by Jeep, meandering through the Pennsylvania and western Maryland mountains. None of the countryside’s leaves of course were yet changing, but the autumnal karma in me seemed to sense that that was delayed by mere days now.

I confess that a trip like this past holiday weekend’s is integral to my general demeanor this time of year. All about me throughout the weekend were audible laments of summer’s swan song, and yet for me the palpable transition was invigorating. I wore bluejeans and sweatshirts as I sipped deck beers and IPod-ded with fraternity brothers and their wives; out on the lake beach each afternoon we basked in soothing sun but never broke a sweat; the kickoff of college pigskin reminded me that the boys of summer were now marginalized a bit in perhaps a sense of shared national pastime.

And in real and great sports towns, I thought, sports page editors of professionalism were summoning their staffs to meetings mapping out strategies of liberal coverage of all of their city’s teams during the busy fall. All of them.  

Labor Day weekend affords me an ability to cross off three days of hockey-less summer and transition, psychologically, to the teasingly close onset of soon-to-be-skating days at training camp. Memorial Day weekend is soothing in its sendoff of lengthening summer and its clothes-shedding (but also, there is playoff hockey to monitor); July 4 is spirited in its patriotism (albeit steamy). But Labor Day seems to say to the puck-starved: “Ready yourself for the start, soon, of the scrapping in the corners.”

It is, therefore, the favorite summer holiday of OFB.

As if this respite in the upper Midwest weren’t enough to soothe my summer-humidity-sapped spirits, on day one back home, yesterday, the Caps issued their training camp rosters.   

Included in my weekend agenda were a pair of golf outings. This was notable for me because about seven or ten years ago I’d abandoned a profitable golfing passion. Once upon a time I could step up onto a first tee and plausibly forecast a round in the high 70s. But as day-consuming time commitments and mortgage-like outlays for regional golf invaded, I grew weary, and impoverished, and simply stored my old blades in the basement. But something about the plottings of this Labor Day weekend occasioned an oversized reigniting of my dormant passion for the links. In mid-August I successfully shopped on eBay for the set of irons I’d always wanted (Mizunos). I stood in my home on evenings the past two weeks and for the first time this decade waggled my new clubs at address positions. It was, in ways only golfers know, exciting. 

I played this weekend and I played very poorly, but I was grateful to be playing again. My college chums and I talked about future outings, together, in summers ahead, ones laden with banter of the good old days and winks related to the attractiveness of beer cart girls serving us cold ones.       

On Tuesday evening an OFB colleague rang me, seeking me as a sounding board for a file he was drafting.

“Where are you, at home or in the office?” he asked.

“I’m at the driving range,” I replied. He was startled. So was I.

As I pounded balls in mildly successful corrective passes on another gorgeous Indian summer night Tuesday I thought again about my renewed passion. Passions, actually. Now is the time to play golf, I thought. In another couple of weeks I’ll be too busy covering training camp, and then next spring, that season of hockey ridicule for a few local columnists (the only time of year they generally mention hockey — to remind us of the local team’s shortcomings), I also expect to be too busy covering hockey — local hockey — to play golf.

So I purchased another bucket of balls.