Just how good are they?
Trust me, they’re good.
I, like many of you, believe I am a decent judge of talent. I mean those people who are heads and shoulders above the teeming masses who ply certain trades, especially in the sports and musical world.
I’m not talking about Gladwell’s 10,000 hours of training to become the best, I’m simply talking about that wonderful flood of excitement I feel when I accidentally encounter a true talent and later receive confirmation that I was, in fact, correct in my assessment.
What makes it more exciting is that my own sports and musical talents rate somewhere between nil and none, although I remain convinced the St. Louis Cardinals missed the boat when they didn’t draft me as their third base prospect several decades ago. They will be forgiven, major league baseball didn’t send too many scouts to east-central Saskatchewan in those days.
I watched a young girl in a swimming pool in Regina years ago and marvelled at her precise movements. She covered the 25 metre distance in a flash of arms, body and legs. Backstroke, crawl, butterfly … it didn’t seem to matter. After she emerged, I couldn’t resist, I had to ask her if she had ever been a competitive swimmer?
Yes, she had been an Ontario junior finalist in the medley among other things. She was visiting family around Regina and still enjoyed daily workouts. My talent scout juices were intact.
When I first arrived in Estevan years and years ago, I grabbed my sports reporting camera and made my way to a local baseball diamond to catch some action and see what the local talent had to offer. Within four minutes, one guy caught my attention just with the way he handled his glove and a few screaming ground balls. The ball was in and out of the glove in one split-second motion, the ground coverage was impressive.
I knew nobody on the team, so had to ask a nearby fan, just who this red-haired ball hawk was and was informed his name was Dave Donachie. Seemed he had a fairly rich history including some minor-league time before a switch to Saskatchewan. Now I know Dave on a casual basis but I never got the complete story. I believe the story goes with him being a Red Sox hopeful at one stage, and I believe it was the Boston version, not the Regina version, but he landed with the Regina version, or something like that. I know, I know, that’s pretty poor for a wanna-be sports reporter, but I was a busy boy back then because the Mercury sports reporter also had to cover city council, cop shops, chambers of commerce businesses and educational stories. That’s my excuse for being a fare-thee-well sports reporter.
But, that episode confirmed my belief I could recognize additional expertise when I saw it.
I’ve played the game with up and coming musicians and vocalists. That’s why I love attending the Regina Folk Festival every year. There is always a group or individual we’ve never heard of, knocking our musical socks off. Brad Wall’s kid was one of them, as far as I could discern this past spring and summer. Mark it down.
That’s why I like to sit in, when I can, at the EAGM”s After Dark venue when visiting troubadours make the rounds. Not major league … yet. Some will prove their mettle at a certain level, but won’t cash in. I look at these people and can think, “damn, you’re good. Chase that dream until you just can’t do it anymore, and then do it again. Don’t quit early.”
