Click
here to listenCommentary: Hitting a home run (September
11, 2003)
BOB
EDWARDS, host: Not all heroics occur in big-league stadiums. Commentator
Morton Dean, who plays ball near his home in
MORTON
DEAN:
This
was a 1) ____________ ____________
for me. I will never be the same. I hit a home run. I had
never hit a home run
before and I'm 68 years old.
I
was 2) ______ ____________
________ on the softball field on that sun-drenched Sunday morning. Most
of the regulars who show up for our weekly pick-up games are much younger than
I; some 20 years, even 30 years
younger. But that's their problem.
I
can still hear the distinctive sound of that home run
3) _____________ from the metal bat. I can still see it, what a majestic line drive
it was, laser-like, a rope major leaguers might call it. And I can 4) ___________
___________ ____ , the
exhilaration, the outfielders playing me at an age-discriminating middle depth
had to chase the ball, which carried to the stone wall in deepest left field. I
sprinted around the bases and when the throw-in was wide of the mark, I scored
5) ____________ ________. The home plate greeting was classic: lusty cheers, obscenity-laced
compliments, backslaps, high fives, low fives.
Before
that exquisite moment, as the innings of my life played out, I did often
contemplate the 6) ___________________ of dying without ever belting a home
run. What would my gravestone read: `He was a 7) _____________
hitter'? The truth is, I had never really given up. That's because I don't
believe, never did believe in letting age suffocate goals or extinguish dreams.
I play sports by 8) _____ _____
_________of the game but I don't live life by all the rules of the game.
So
what has changed about me since that super Sunday? Well, I walk 9) _____________.
`Man, I hit a home run,'
my walk seems to say. `Pay attention. You hearing me? A home
run.' I know that I think
differently. I have a will, but not the kind most of my contemporaries have. I
will finish that novel. I will paint that painting. I will hit another home
run. And I reinvested in the notion that 10) _____
_________ _________for older
people to hang out with younger people, on the ball field and off. I believe
even more fervently now that you should aspire to things that appear to be
beyond your reach. I aspire to be younger.
EDWARDS:
The comments of Morton Dean, a lecturer and freelance writer who played one year
of baseball at
Questions:
1.
How
old was the man when he hit his first home run?
_________________________________________________________________________
2.
What
did he feel when he hit it?
_________________________________________________________________________
3.
What
did he often contemplate (think about) before he hit the home run?
_________________________________________________________________________
4.
What
changed in him after he hit the home run?
_________________________________________________________________________
5. What does he think people should aspire to do and be?
_________________________________________________________________________