Arthurian Legend

Fortune favors the bold.

Thus it was in ancient times and remains true to this day.

Armory Room in the Alcazar of Segovia, Spain

While none of us can ever know with 100% certainty what the future holds, we know that doing nothing ensures less than optimal results.

However, in times such as these, doing nothing has become the rule of the day, so we must make the most of it.

The shut down of pretty much everything of any entertainment value outside of our homes for weeks stretching into months has given us each time to explore personal interests.

Nunney Castle, England

Among other things, I've been learning more about the King Arthur legend, which grabbed my attention last summer while planning our trip to England.

Most of us have been exposed to stories about King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, Sir Lancelot and the rest, perhaps beginning with picture books and old movies about the Knights of the Round Table among our earliest memories, as was the case for me.

The Arthurian Legend passed down through the ages became embellished as it spun from Wales and England to France, Germany, Scandinavia and other parts of Europe.  Each culture adapted the story to be more relevant for their distinctive cultural ethos.

Bishop's Palace, City of Wells, England

Camelot being a stone castle with round turrets actually seems to be spun out of dreams of later generations.

Many historians seem to believe the "castles" were more like wooden forts during the era when a real-life prototype of King Arthur would have theoretically lived.

Having spent time in the old Roman city of Aquae Sulis, England, I personally envision Camelot with a more Roman Empire style along the lines of the famed Roman Baths for which that city now gets its name, rather than some frontier-like primitive structure.

Roman Baths in the City of Bath, England

In the USA, we grew up on Americanized versions of those stories of heroism, and the stories were adapted to be age appropriate.

Certainly, the large picture books my parents bought me said nothing about Guinevere's affair with Lancelot as far as I can recall, and any reference to that in old TV shows I watched while sitting on my mauve living room carpet went right over my head in that less-graphic era.



By the time the 1967 movie "Camelot" hit theaters, I was much more into Jimi Hendrix and Maxwell Smart than King Arthur, though in retrospect I wish I had kept my heroic dreams that somehow faded with adolescence.

Reichsburg Castle in Cochem, Germany

It's not that I wasn't happy, but I did not continue along the sports path that had been so important in the four years before I became a teenager, which in many ways would have been the equivalent of knightly valor in tournaments and quests.

In King Arthur stories, the knights go through there jousts and seek the challenges of adventure to win courtly love.  It's not a far stretch to compare that with being a jock trying to win the affection of some special cheerleader or flag girl by scoring a touchdown or sinking a game-winning shot at the buzzer.

Warwick Castle, England

The fact that I went to Westminster High School, which brought the British heritage of its namesake into the decorating themes played perfectly into the premise, including the mascot of a Lion, which is one of the symbols of the British Empire.  At the conclusion of a game, we'd hold up three fingers to make a W and sing our school anthem which featured old English lyrics.

"Westminster, Westminster, to thee we proudly hail....Let they strength prevail."

Yes, the metaphor was pretty perfect.

As to why I didn't pursue sports, I suppose I would need psychoanalysis to explore that completely.

For my childhood friends, our glory days of sports were before our teen years on self-coached Recreation and Parks teams like our flag football team that won the city championship, going undefeated including a championship game against a much bigger, tougher team from Sigler Park that actually tackled before pulling the flags.

We played tackle football in our own games on the grassy fields of Boos Elementary School, so we weren't intimidated like other teams they played, instead just keeping our eyes on the first down markers and end zone.

Our ten-inch softball team also went undefeated through the regular season, but we lost the championship game, 1-0, to a team that made up of primarily Major League Little Leaguers, whereas our team had a lot of players who never played.  I was the player-coach, so I set the lineup, and while those later in the lineup weren't always pleased, in my mind it was exactly as it should be.

Self-coaching meant we focused on having fun playing the games, and perhaps losing that wonder and joy was what I would attribute as the primary force that brought my sports career to an end.

I've never liked having people yell at me, so when the coach who wanted to help me fully realize my football potential seemed to pick on me during "hell week" in the summer before my freshman year, that might have been enough right there.  My parents had actually been against me playing tackle football out of concerns I might get injured, so they didn't push me to follow through.

Knight's helmet at Regensburg Castle

As I realized later, not finishing what you start can become a habit.

I made the C-Team in basketball, which I always liked better than football, even if I was considerably better at football.

However, I wasn't exactly the perfect "Sir Galahad" of the team as would have been my dream as a 12-year-old.  In fact, I barely made the team as the twelfth member on the roster.

My friend Alan was a much better ball-handler and also had the wiry physique of a guard.  I was more like a power forward, but a foot too short.  That had sunk in during junior high school, when our center and power forwards literally towered above the rest of the team.  In my little blue-collar neighborhood, I was a big kid, but in the larger world of a high school with 4,000 students, it turns out I was no taller than average.

Alcazar of Segovia, Spain

Had I finished football, then I probably would have been leaner and quicker as well as stronger when basketball season started.

As it was, I still could run sprints fast, but without getting much of a chance to play until "garbage time," I barely became accustomed to bouncing the taut game ball on a hardwood floor, which has a considerably different feel from a slightly deflated ball on my slanted driveway "home court," where I imagined myself to be Jerry West.

Roman Gate in Trier, Germany

When I got in the game, I remember having difficulty keeping the ball in control while dribbling at full speed, which is definitely not what you want if you are supposed to be a ball-handling guard.

As such, I had a rather odd solution.  I would pull up about 22 feet out and loft high-arching shots at the hoop.  I made more than I missed, and my buddy Alan started calling me "Shackelford." Lynn Shackelford was a lanky shooting forward on the powerhouse UCLA team of the era.  While we bore no physical resemblance, he shot with that same high trajectory.

Our team was pretty awful, which meant my playing time came in the closing couple of minutes in a game we usually lost by twenty points.

It wasn't exactly knightly glory to be one of the lowest rated players on a bad team two years away from possible Varsity level.

Gate to the City in Obidos, Portugal

As it turned out, a boy I didn't know well, Richard, who at just 5'5" played with an obvious height disadvantage which he chose to ignore, later became a star of Varsity a couple of years later.  He had a magical moment right out of every kid's imagination, throwing a desperation shot from behind the mid-court line for a game-winning basket.  However, that shining example of knight-worthy glory came too late for me.

When baseball season rolled around, I didn't bother to try out, though admittedly I liked being at bat more than any other part of any sport.  Not only was I over sports in general, but for some reason, baseball wasn't a big sport in our school.

Sizergh Castle Gardens, near Kendal in Cumbria, England

However, subsequent Atlanta Braves star Ryan Klesko, who was born the year I graduated, played for Westminster High School.  Once again, his example of knightly-glory came too late for me.

In my first year in Little League, I was once again the worst player on the team, in this case, the Minor League Giants.  While not in the Major League, which usually had more 12-year-olds, as a 10-year-old who had never played before, I was stoked to have been drafted onto the same team as school friends Chris and Kim.

Kilkenny Castle, Ireland

There were about twice as many players as the 15-player roster would hold, so I was competing against others to keep from being cut to the Farm Team, which might have been where I belonged to be based on my skills level at the start of the season.

After all, not exactly knowing what I was supposed to do, I would catch a fly ball hit to the outfield by the coach and then wind up like I was pitching to throw the ball back in.

Buckingham Palace, London, England

Kim took me aside and told me that I shouldn't wind up, because it looked ridiculous.  My first instinct was to think that he took hops before throwing the ball, so what was the difference?  In fact, I think that lack of self-awareness and ability to accept criticism was another factor pushing me out of organized sports by the time I was a teen.

Back to Little League, Mom drove us to practices.  Kim's mom worked and couldn't drive him to the practice field a couple of miles away, so he definitely had a vested interest in me making the team.  As the manager read off the final roster for the Minor League team, he seemed to realize he only had 14 names  His eyes scanned the names on the page he held one more time.

Fisherman's Bastion, Budapest, Hungary

"And Wes," yelled Kim.

The manager still kept looking at the list and finally said, "Yeah.  Wes."

Now on the team, I wanted to become better prepared to compete, which is the right knightly approach.

I had long since stopped winding up to throw the ball, but what always interested me was learning to hit.   When the season started, I had tried to look intimidating at the plate in order to get the pitcher to walk me, although having been put in for the fourth inning along with the rest of the second-stringers, I doubt that fooled anyone.

Château de Chenonceau, Loire Valley, France

We learned that going to the batting cage was a good way to improve hitting, so my dad bought a punch-card pass for what seemed like essentially unlimited sessions.  My mom would drive me a couple of times a week to the batting cage all the way down Beach Boulevard almost to Knott's Berry Farm, easily a twenty to thirty minute drive each way.

In combination with team practices and games, my hitting improved rapidly.  That's the not-so-hidden secret for improving at anything: practice with purpose.

Dunluce Castle, Northern Ireland

By halfway through the season, I had become a pretty decent hitter.  In fact, according to the statistics I kept, I batted about .700.  My technique went from trying to get a walk to never missing a chance to get in my swings.

If the pitcher was too fast to actually get around by the time the ball reached the plate, I would decide during his wind-up if I was going to swing.  Because many fastball pitchers make a point of throwing a strike on the first pitch in order to get ahead in the count, my swing-at-anything approach proved to be a pretty good strategy.

However, even good pitchers were rarely had pinpoint accuracy, so if the ball wasn't in the strike zone, I still had committed to swing.  It turned out that balls up around my eyeballs and away from me were actually the pitches on which my arms fully extended, resulting in full-power.  Sure, they would have been called balls rather than strikes, but swinging often resulted in line drives.

Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland

I liked playing the outfield, dreaming of catching a long fly ball on the warning track like Joe Hardy from Damn Yankees, my favorite movie when I was a boy.

However, I went against my instincts --- never a good idea for a knight or anyone else --- the next year, playing shortstop and pitcher.  I stayed in the lineup because of my hitting, but on a self-coached team, I would have known better than using me in those positions. The next year, the team needed a catcher, and for some reason, I took the challenge.

Unfortunately, never having actually learned how to throw a baseball in the Farm League, I had a less-than-accurate three-quarter sidearm throwing motion, something I never realized until I was 30-years old and my friend Matt, helping me refine my tennis serve, said, "I see the problem.  You don't know how to throw a baseball."

Throwing three-quarter sidearm means that if you overthrow, it not only goes over the head of your target but also to the left of where you intended, and throwing short might result in an odd spin as the ball comes off the ground, making it difficult to catch.

Eileen Dornan Castle, Scottish Highlands

That was totally unsuitable for a shortstop or pitcher.  At least from the outfield, I would mostly just threw it as far as I could heave it, which gave me a rather consistent feel.

In my last year of Little League, I added power to my hitting, with 11 home runs in a 20 game season, in addition to hitting .719, but that was still in the Minor League.  I had missed tryouts, and no managers who'd seen me pitch or play shortstop the prior season was inspired to draft me.  On the new team, I accepted the challenge of playing catcher, because we didn't have anyone with experience at that position.   Despite not being accurate when throwing out base runners, I proved good at handling pitchers and catching the ball, and I liked being in the heart of the action.  That became my role instead of my natural strengths as an outfielder or first baseman.

Neuschwanstein Castle in Schwangau, Germany

I went on to play Babe Ruth League --- the next age group after Little League ---  as a catcher for two seasons, but in the second one, I quit halfway through.  I had been forced to split innings as catcher with another boy, who threw with far greater accuracy.

I actually found more pleasure sitting on the bench next to a teammate's sister --- who had wild, curly hair --- far more than being in the game.  I don't remember her name, but I found her very attractive.  Just as significantly, she seemed attainable, if for no other reason than she chose to sit next to me game after game.

Prague Palace, Czech Republic

That "romance" should have been my inspiration to become a better player in order to win her admiration, but for some reason, I just suddenly dropped off the team.  I don't remember why.

I can say I no longer took time to go to the batting cage, preferring to just hang out with friends or play pickup games without fast pitching.  Not having a full time slot early in the lineup, my batting average dropped to .283, which wasn't bad but was maybe half what it had been my first year in Babe Ruth, earning the attention of the manager that put me on the team I subsequently quit.

Colosseum in Rome, Italy

In addition to everything else, I had been trained to be a "more disciplined hitter," and in so doing had become more like the hitter I was when I first played Little League, working for a walk rather than my fun approach of hitting it if I could reach it, which wasn't as fun.

Palace of the Masters, Rhodes, Greece

Bottom line, I likely quit because I didn't feel as much a part of the team as the other catcher, whose dad was the coach and who was friends in school with most of the other players.

I was a grade ahead of them in school, by virtue of my birthday coming after the cutoff date.  For whatever reason, I just no longer wanted to go, so I stopped going.

As I said, quitting can become a habit.

Okay, that got pretty far off the subject of King Arthur.

However, it should be noted that I was not the only one in my graduating class that turned away from earning courtly love with knightly pursuits to trying to meet girls using silly ploys.

Only 11 of our class's seniors were on the high school football team, which I think must have been a record low, and only maybe three were in key positions.  That Babe Ruth team I quit actually had a lot of players on the team, even though they were only juniors.

During that senior year, Principal Christenson came on the loudspeaker one time to deride our apathy, asking "Is there a Class of 1971?"

Let me just wrap this up by saying that we could all do a lot worse than spending our lives trying to prove ourselves worthy of courtly love, even if that means impressing the popular ladies of the Homecoming Court in high school.

With the Love Generation of Flower Power, there had arrived an easier approach than winning the Arthurian concept of "courtly love," and as a society, we have proceeded further down what has turned out to be quite a convoluted rabbit hole.

These days, people are more likely to object to the unfairness of challenges in what remains the greatest culture for success of the self-made individual in history.

Roman Gate in Chester, England

In Arthurian Legend, knights must overcome challenges like the "Custom of the Castle," with seemingly arbitrary rules that must be followed despite potential dire consequences.  For example, a knight passing one particular stone must throw a cup of water on it.  That in turn might summon the lord of a nearby castle who was similarly obligated to come out to combat the challenger to the death.

While certainly we don't want to do anything as foolishly fatal as that, most great accomplishments might well come as a result of humans trying to prove themselves in order to win love and respect.

Glastonbury Tor, England   Avalon (?)

After all, think of the latest generation of tech billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.  Would they have accomplished as much if they had easily won love just by acting goofy?

Most of us don't have that natural athletic talent like Klesko to be the sports star we dream of being as children, much less discover those brilliant sparks of intuition supplemented by the perpetual effort required to become billionaires, but we could all benefit from challenging ourselves to do better.

In looking back from what is now senior citizenry, I realize that being lazy and fearing failure lead to losing self-respect, which is what King Arthur's legendary knights earn in their stories.  To me, that seems like opportunity missed, if for no other reason than to test our own limits in our primes.

As such, perhaps we should set our standards and expectations higher, both for ourselves and those we may inspire.