The Penalty Box: My Bucket List
November 30, 2022 at 3:21 a.m.
The Penalty Box: My Bucket List
By Roger Grossman-
Some people might deny that they have such things that are left undone in their lives, but they have them—I guarantee it.
Some will even go through the time and trouble to write them down (or type them up) and then check them off as they complete them.
That’s called a “bucket list”, and the point is to remove everything from their “bucket” before their heart runs out of beats.
I don’t have a bucket list, but I do have a few things I would like to see, do, and experience before the Lord takes me home.
Some of them are sports-related, and some of them are not.
I would like to sit behind the Cubs dugout for a game at Wrigley Field.
It doesn’t have to be in the front row behind the dugout. Three or four rows up would be just fine.
I have no interest in mugging for the camera after every pitch to a right-handed batter. I have no interest in having the camera focus on me in between pitches.
What I would love is to watch the highlights of that walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th inning of an unbelievable come-from-behind win for years and years to come, and over the right shoulder of the batter who just sent the ball sailing over the ivy-covered wall and onto Waveland Avenue is me. You see my arms raised to the powder blue sky and I am the first to know that the Cubs were going to win that day.
I would like to see the Grand Canyon.
I have stood on The Great Wall of China and marveled at it as the greatest human achievement of all time (yes, including the Pyramids in Egypt). I think the Grand Canyon is the greatest natural structure on Earth.
I don’t need to go down below ground level. I have no interest in that. I just want to see the colors and appreciate the expanse of it with my own eyes.
I want to write a book.
I doubt there is any hope of this ever happening, but this is a “bucket” list not a “guaranteed to happen” list.
I get asked more and more about this one, but I know from people who have done this that it takes a long time to put a project like that together. That means summertime, and I am so mentally and emotionally drained by the time the spring sports season is over that my mind is mush and unable to put together a chapter of a book let-alone a whole book.
I would not, however, be short on material. Two adoption trips to China, the journey just to get into the radio business, the Cubs winning the World Series from a fan’s point of view.
I want to walk Augusta National Golf Club.
I don’t need to play the course. I don’t need to bring my clubs.
I just want to start at the first tee, work my way through the Front 9, then make the turn and stand at the top of the hill at #11 to see what the players see as they contemplate going for it or playing it safe.
To stand where my golfing hero, Jack Nicklaus, stood and drained that birdie putt on #17 that beautiful April Sunday in 1986.
More than all of that, though, I want to walk out through the gateway of large trees and up the hill to the 18th green.
I know how emotional I get watching the leader walk the final 150 yards to the bi-level green where champions earn their green jacket, and I know that I would “hear” that roar for me.
I want to build a birdhouse.
Not a decorative one—one that birds would actually want to live in and come back to year after year. I don’t see myself as a ‘landlord’, but maybe I would for some little friends—who knows?
“Do it” you say?
You ever see anything I have ever built? No…no, you have not.
I have absolutely no ability to do something as simple as that.
What’s on your list?
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Some people might deny that they have such things that are left undone in their lives, but they have them—I guarantee it.
Some will even go through the time and trouble to write them down (or type them up) and then check them off as they complete them.
That’s called a “bucket list”, and the point is to remove everything from their “bucket” before their heart runs out of beats.
I don’t have a bucket list, but I do have a few things I would like to see, do, and experience before the Lord takes me home.
Some of them are sports-related, and some of them are not.
I would like to sit behind the Cubs dugout for a game at Wrigley Field.
It doesn’t have to be in the front row behind the dugout. Three or four rows up would be just fine.
I have no interest in mugging for the camera after every pitch to a right-handed batter. I have no interest in having the camera focus on me in between pitches.
What I would love is to watch the highlights of that walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th inning of an unbelievable come-from-behind win for years and years to come, and over the right shoulder of the batter who just sent the ball sailing over the ivy-covered wall and onto Waveland Avenue is me. You see my arms raised to the powder blue sky and I am the first to know that the Cubs were going to win that day.
I would like to see the Grand Canyon.
I have stood on The Great Wall of China and marveled at it as the greatest human achievement of all time (yes, including the Pyramids in Egypt). I think the Grand Canyon is the greatest natural structure on Earth.
I don’t need to go down below ground level. I have no interest in that. I just want to see the colors and appreciate the expanse of it with my own eyes.
I want to write a book.
I doubt there is any hope of this ever happening, but this is a “bucket” list not a “guaranteed to happen” list.
I get asked more and more about this one, but I know from people who have done this that it takes a long time to put a project like that together. That means summertime, and I am so mentally and emotionally drained by the time the spring sports season is over that my mind is mush and unable to put together a chapter of a book let-alone a whole book.
I would not, however, be short on material. Two adoption trips to China, the journey just to get into the radio business, the Cubs winning the World Series from a fan’s point of view.
I want to walk Augusta National Golf Club.
I don’t need to play the course. I don’t need to bring my clubs.
I just want to start at the first tee, work my way through the Front 9, then make the turn and stand at the top of the hill at #11 to see what the players see as they contemplate going for it or playing it safe.
To stand where my golfing hero, Jack Nicklaus, stood and drained that birdie putt on #17 that beautiful April Sunday in 1986.
More than all of that, though, I want to walk out through the gateway of large trees and up the hill to the 18th green.
I know how emotional I get watching the leader walk the final 150 yards to the bi-level green where champions earn their green jacket, and I know that I would “hear” that roar for me.
I want to build a birdhouse.
Not a decorative one—one that birds would actually want to live in and come back to year after year. I don’t see myself as a ‘landlord’, but maybe I would for some little friends—who knows?
“Do it” you say?
You ever see anything I have ever built? No…no, you have not.
I have absolutely no ability to do something as simple as that.
What’s on your list?
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