SENIOR YEAR
An insightful look into growing up - then and now
Steve Sheppard Independent Sports Editor
Fortunately for all of us who like to have a little perspective now and then, Dan Shaughnessy kept a high school diary. He refers to it often in the pages of his new book, "Senior Year: A Father, a Son, and High School Baseball," in which he not only looks back at his own high school years, but also chronicles the decisions his son, Sam, must make as he completes his senior year at Newton North High School.

The double-header in baseball, two games for the price of one, has become a thing of the past. "Senior Year," however, is a twin bill that features two coming of age stories - Shaughnessy's and his son's.

It is not just a book about now versus then, when growing up in the early '60s really was like living with the Cleavers, but a book about parenting, about teenage choices, about family and about life today, for both children and parents. For instance:

"As far as we knew, this was a first of sorts, primarily because Sam never owned up to having any girlfriends in the first place. There were a lot of girls and a lot of friends but no girlfriends. Marilou worried about the new permissiveness (like we were different?) and 'friends with benefits' and a 2005 high school environment in which teens didn't date or go steady as much as they 'hook up.' I preferred to fall back on the usual 'don't ask, don't tell' guy mentality."

"It was sort of a cathartic venture for me," Shaughnessy said Monday. "I really needed to do it. I felt last year was just getby ting away and I wanted to put it down in real time."

Shaughnessy is the well-known sports columnist for the Boston Globe and the author of best-selling sports books "The Curse of the Bambino," "One Strike Away" and "Fenway" (with Stan Grossfeld, recently reissued, by the way). In "Senior Year," he gets to stretch his legs and tell us about his own career, his influences, what it was like to finally meet the heroes of his youth, and, most important of all, what it means to him to be a husband and father of three children (as well as father-figure to the many kids who hung their toothbrushes at the Shaughnessy home over the years). Another gem from the book:

"Universal tip to all parents: if you want to learn what's going on with your kids, put your child in a car loaded with his peers, then shut up and drive. You will hear more truths than you'll get in a month of those dinner conversations where you ask, 'How'd things go at school today?' In the car, toting kids to games, you might as well be Patrick Swayze in "Ghost." You are invisible. Fortunately, this doesn't change even when they are seniors in high school."

STAN GROSSFELD PHOTO Dan Shaughnessy

It is a book of revelations, of parallels between Shaughnessy's own high school years and those of his children, particularly Sam, who has developed into a talented baseball player and gifted hitter. The pressures surrounding which college to attend are both lessened and heightened by partial-scholarship offers and trips to Notre Dame and nearby Boston College. Fortunately for Sam, his father's occupation sometimes gives him access to and advice from major leaguers, but there is the double-edged sword of having to distance yourself from what your father does for a living.

"I was in Florida with the Red Sox - the twenty-seventh spring training of my writing career. Sam had made the trip with me in the previous three years. During one of the quiet Fort Myers mornings, before any players arrived, he'd gotten batting tips from Sox coach Ron Jackson - the same man who worked magic with David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez. ... But there was no spring training in Florida for Sam in 2006. He was draft-eligible . . . and it would be risky for the Red Sox ... if word leaked that a high school senior was practicing at the big league facility. ... (H)e'd risk losing his college eligibility if he spent any time in the Sox cages during senior year."

This is a personal story, as intimate and revealing as the diary Shaughnessy kept in high school, perhaps more. Like his columns, he does not duck the tough stuff, and lays it all out as it happened. "It was a little risky, it's private," he said, "but everybody read it and signed off on it." The lessons he learned as the youngest in a family of five children are reviewed and referred to in his involvement with his wife, Marilou, and with Sam and his sisters, Sarah and Kate. It is evident that things have changed since 1971, but that the realities of being 18 are very much the same.

As it does in life, it all comes back to baseball, and there are plenty of wonderful references to our favorite pastime and the bonds it continues to forge, not only between fathers and sons, but also among families as well.

"Senior Year" is just hitting the shelves, and is perhaps the best book Shaughnessy has written to date. He moves easily from his thoughts and attitudes as a teenager 35 years ago to the worries and love he has for his family today. It is a book that is noteworthy in its candor, and a well-written volume

to be savored. I