Whoa! There, Tex: The Adventures of Tex Rombara and Okie O’hare

Tex rocks in his chair and lets the creak of the boards beneath him be the only conversation.

He scratches at his perpetually stubbly cheek, takes a sip of his lemonade and turns up the volume dial on an old bunny-eared radio on the table stand next to him.

“And so Major League Baseball has to do something about this steroid epidemic,” a nasally analyst says.

Okie pushes those glasses back up his nose and grunts in disgust. “Tex, turn that garbage off,” he complains.

Tex turns the dial back down and swats at a fly buzzing through the Texas heat. He scratches the neck of the lazy yellow lab at his feet before addressing Okie.

“Okie, steroids are just apart of baseball now. Everybody’s doing them, so you might as well make it legal. Its just apart of the sport now.”
Okie grunts again.

“Whoa there Tex, there is never a place for steroids. What’s happening to sports nowadays? You remember when we were playin,’ what our steroids were? Meat and potatoes.

That was how we put on the muscle. The gym and mamma’s cookin’ and a lot of it. We didn’t need pills or shots or anything.”

Tex takes a thoughtful sip and scratches the lab’s favorite spot right behind his ear. The dog thumps its tail against the porch as Tex responds.

“I’m not sayin’ it’s how is should be, I’m just sayin’ how it is. Men used to be honest and a lot of them still are. But there’s still that group that ruins it for the rest of them. The blood, sweat and tears crowd who do things the right way will always get covered up by the cheaters and the corner-cutters. Not sayin’ it’s right, but that’s just sports now, Okie. Tell the bad stories. And call it journalism.”

Okie pushes back in his rocker with a nudge of his cane. “Reckon so.”

Tex just sips his lemonade. “Yup.”

BROWN is the asst. sports editor