My Take
By Mark McGee
There are some exciting things planned in Nashville’s future.
My question in the midst of all that excitement is will I be there?
No one in Nashville was a bigger fan of baseball than Farrell Owen.
He had played for the Lipscomb University Bisons and was the first general manager for the Nashville Sounds minor league team.
There were few things better than a baseball game for him. Nashville is on the verge of being awarded a Major League baseball franchise. There is no final word yet, and the longer it takes for a decision to be made, the longer it will take for the franchise to play its first game.
Farrell was a member of the Music City Baseball Advisory Board which is spearheading Nashville’s efforts. He and I often would talk about what it would be like to have a Major League baseball team in Nashville. There was no doubt he planned to buy season tickets.
But in 2020 Farrell died from complications of a heart attack at the age of 76. I am nine years away from that age and it could be I will be pretty close to 76 by the time the first pitch is thrown for Nashville’s Major League team.
A little closer will be the completion of the new Tennessee Titans football stadium scheduled to be ready for 2027 when I would turn 70.
Whenever I hear of new things happening in the future I start calculating my time clock in reference to those plans.
I know God doesn’t guarantee us another minute, another hour or another day, much less another year. But I would like to be there for that first Titans game in the new stadium.
And I really want to be able to physically and mentally be able to enjoy Nashville’s new Major League baseball team.
On a different level, as I have written before, there are many things I still want to accomplish and many places I want to see for the first time and many I want to see again.
I know it is another sign of my melancholy, but my mind dwells on these thoughts whenever a member of my Shelbyville Central High School 1975 graduating class passes away. One of my fellow classmates point out we have lost as many members as the 1971 class.
Not an encouraging statistic.
I now am participating in some events I wish I had known about 30 years ago. To make up for lost time I am going to be a part of them as long as God lets me.
Ben Vereen, as the character “The Leading Player” in the original production of the Broadway musical “Pippin” sings in the song “Simple Joys” that “Time is living’s prize.”
But what we experience during the time we have is really the true reward.
