The fire happened 30 years ago this March. I was twelve. I got off the school bus thinking about my report card and carryout pizza and my basketball game later that night. I wasn’t thinking about an electrical short in the basement and running next door to call 911.

My grandfather liked to play the three-par nine-hole golf course 

near Jacks department store in Cedar Rapids. As an eighth grader 

Some men watch me pound 

50 kilometres a week 

on the treadmill, sweat 

at my hairline, muscles 

With every step, a gong

A broken sound barrier

A human pinata

For every footfall

A Zapruder filmed headshot

In a TV sized gangway 

she bumps a volleyball to her-

self with sporadic success.

To retrieve most mishits 

The Lake Placid Lacrosse Summit is an annual tournament held in Lake Placid, NY. Running for thirty-five years now, it is one of the oldest and most prominent adult lacrosse tournaments the game has. It features unrestricted Open Divisions through the 70+ age brackets. It is an annual gathering for people from across the lacrosse community.

Walking the dog 

at the end of another workweek. 

Quiet night in the suburbs, 

the very reason we try to afford 

I tell you this because I cried when Dan Wheldon died

and I knew it was okay because my father cried when Dale Earnhardt died 

because I had the dream of playing first base for the St. Louis Cardinals when I was young 

and when they won the World Series in 2011 a friend asked “who died?”

Sometimes, I believe that there has been nothing more important than Graig Nettles, especially on days like today when my son, at second base, turns his shoulders towards right centerfield, a low floating pop-up that seems out of reach from him and the nearby centerfielder.

At some point I ended up with my grandpa’s putter. 

Not any of his woods, irons, or wedges, not even a headcover – just the old brass putter itself, here in my garage. By my count, this is the sixth home in which I’ve had the putter: one-third of the way through a round of 18.

Back in December 2023, Zain Retherford took a job at a New York City investment firm. In some ways, his path to this job was a typical one: he’d just finished his MBA at Penn State, the same school where he’d previously majored in finance as an undergraduate. But in one crucial way, Retherford’s story was decidedly atypical. Imagine Patrick Mahomes as an insurance salesman, or Kylian Mbappe as a software engineer—that’s the equivalent of Zain Retherford on Wall Street.

“Heng! What are you thinking about?”

I open my eyes to find Socheat looming over the sofa where I’m lying, trying to calm and ready myself. There’s always an electric feeling in my chest on fight days, like a storm willing itself into life.

My parents were in the bottom of the 8th. At least. They had been together for 63 years. Long enough to remember when pepper was more than something encrusted on sushi. And a can of corn was not merely something from the Cub Scout food drive. 

It is Alba who suggests football. Her father has offered her two tickets for the game at the weekend. Los Blancos. She asks Rob if he wants to go with her. Give them a chance to get to know each other socially like he requested.

Three days before the cold February morning when they buried his body, Albert Benson returned home from his weekly games of eight-ball at the Cottonwood Elk’s Club to an automatic-opening garage door that refused to open.

Five months after his wife died and a week before the Bears' first Super Bowl appearance since 1986, the doctors crack his sternum, extract three veins from his left thigh, and perform triple bypass, sewing up Bill’s chest like the laces of a football, which will slowly scab over and, if he doesn’t pick them, heal.