As the old Pekin high school football coach, Joe Ventura used to say back in the late 1960's, "You gotta wanna!" That's what some family members embraced last Saturday.
Grandson, Connor O'Keefe's Barrington Legion Baseball Team was playing in a Bellebille, Illinois tournament. Barrington and Belleville are separated by about 5 1/2 hours driving time. Connor, who was slated to pitch a 9:00AM Saturday game elected to spend Friday night at his Aunt Pam & Uncle Tim's house, thereby being only 2 hours from the game site.
Connor left Jacksonville for Belleville early Saturday morning using his cell phone-device as a GPS. Evidently, his cell service was incapatible downstate and the lad realized he was not going in the right direction as he neared Decatur. Connor called his baseball coach to let him know of his driving mistake. The coach told Connor that he would pitch another at 9AM and Connor would be re-slated for the 1:00PM game.
This fact was unknown to Grandparents, Mel and Gerry who left Decatur at 6AM, Pam & Tim who departed Jacksonville shortly after their nephew and Uncle Steve & Aunt Kathy leaving Granite City all with plans to meet at Whitey Herzog Field on 44th street Belleville. Soon the word comes to the Connor family-fan club. The wait game begins as we all meandered in and out of downtown Belleville stores.
Planning to have an early lunch before the one o'clock game, we headed towards a restaurant when suddenly a text message from Connor says, "I'm pitching in twenty minutes." We hurried to autos and headed to the Herzog Field only to discover that the game was moved to a field in neighboring Fairview Heights. Now the race and periodic stops for directions begins.
Finally, we arrived and watched Connor's strong winning performance. As they say, "All is well that ends well," eh?
Ahhh,... I wish folks felt about attending the Family Reunion as some do about attending a family member's ball game, but 'you gotta wanna.'
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