[cmccuist]

I just got some tragic news last night. It concerns an aquaintance of my children. This young man is 22 years old - a couple of years younger than my middle daughter and one year older than my son.

He was the typical high school jock - pitcher on the baseball team, quarterback of the football team. He probabaly pulled a lot of the high school cheerleader types. Socially, he was a total a-hole. He once actually swung a bat at my daughter when they were about 8 years old, and he didn't get any better with age.

It's a classic symptom of everyone covering for his bad behavior based on his athletic abilities. Anyway, like most athletes who are great in high school, he found he couldn't dominate in college, because everyone is a great athlete in the NCAA.

Things went from bad to worse, and the young man took to drinking (or more probably increased his drinking). Then he lost his scholarship and started really circling the drain. Well, we just found out last night that he got blasted, got into a car accident, and is now in a coma - from which he is not expected to recover.

This family has had a pretty bad run of late, most of it their own doing. The mother (who is a genuine beauty) got with the high school baseball coach a few years back (trying to get the boy more innings?). She was really high maintenance and about worked the dad to death (he was an a-hole as well).

I guess the point of this whole rant is to point out that so what if you aren't the next Tom Brady or Johan Santana. No one is! How many times have you seen guys (or gals) who are bitter to the point of distraction because the highlight of their life is high school. It's tragic when you live the rest of your life trying to recapture past glory.