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The other day, myself and Rocky Hulne were swapping stories of our days playing high school basketball, trading tales of high school heroics we still fondly remember to this day.

It was a brief conversation.

Inevitably, my fond high school—year memories turned to baseball and even after we were done telling stories, I still let my mind drift to days where the most important thing I had to concentrate on any given day was baseball.

From spring to the first day of school I was playing either high school baseball, Legion baseball or amateur baseball — all to various degrees of success mind you.

I mean, I’m the editor of the Austin Daily Herald. Clearly the Minnesota Twins didn’t appreciate my “talents.”

It was a fun moment in time that if I’m to be honest contributed to the person I am today. I learned patience through waiting for the right pitch. I learned to focus and concentrate when blistering the strike zone with my 65 mph fastball and I learned perseverance through trials like the aforementioned two grand slams in one inning I gave up that I mentioned in a previous column.

It was what I looked forward to each year. Standing my post at second base, running through the scenarios of each individual play that could have different outcomes depending on the flow of the play.

I remember warming up with friends and talking about the game afterwards. It was a time to be alive without a single digital device in sight.

But while the baseball diamond provided plenty of memories and formative experiences, it wasn’t the sole foundation for what I would become in my later years.

For that portion of my life, it was horse racing that defined a lot of my character — a character who has since developed a pretty all-encompassing and colorful language.

Now don’t get bent out of shape about a young and impressionable mind learning a myriad of words that a youth probably shouldn’t be speaking. My world expanded a little bit by the people — people I still remember fondly to this day — who revealed a new culture that didn’t really take into account youthful ears.

I loved every minute of it.

No, not just that. The track itself. I’ve spoken at length about our time in the horse racing world and those memories came back again when I watched the Kentucky Derby and the lead-up races a couple weeks ago.

During the long breaks in between races, I would let my mind drift to Park Jefferson and Atokad Park, Columbus Thoroughbred Racing and Lincoln Race Course. Summer weekends to South Dakota and Nebraska.

I thought about the horses my family and my grandparents would run: Whip’Em Good, How About Spruce, Raging Review, Hobba Belle, Zednick, Peanuts and Candy. The list goes on, each horse with its own personality as well as couple tentative connections to big-time racing.

Our first horse, How About Spruce, or Sprucy for short, traced his lineage to Big Spruce who ran second to Secretariat in the Preakness and at one point was considered one of North America’s leading runners in the early 70s according to the Thoroughbred Times.

So, how did we come about this connection I hear you ask? “And why are you not winning Kentucky derbies with such an auspicious start?”

Unfortunately, the reason we had Sprucy in the first place was because of an issue with his throat that interfered with proper breathing. Still, his heart was huge and because he was our first I can honestly say he was my favorite, with a close second by Whip’Em Good — Whipper for short.

Our second tentative connection to big time racing is actually through this year’s Kentucky Derby. This year’s winner, Sovereignty, is trained by Bill Mott, whose father, Dr. Tom Mott, was our veterinarian.

And here I have to thank my dad, David, who I tasked to help dig up this information in so much as I asked, he didn’t know and then spent more time than I asked for in looking it up for me. Ergo, he thoroughly enjoyed the act.

Thanks dad!

Probably not enough to get access to him or me at the Preakness, but still pretty cool all the same.

There are so many lovely memories from our time at the track that I could impart a number of columns dedicated to the theme, all of which I would gladly tell with relished joy. Maybe you would like to know more about the “buzzer” I went to helpfully pick-up when grandma quickly pulled me away. Or how about when I rode the blazes out of a bail of hay when I was “training” to be a jockey. I can tell you about the shear adrenaline bass beat that was standing against the backside fence when a four furlong race broke from the gate and the 10 horses wide when thundering past.

Heck, I might even tell you about being Spider-Man, because I’m pretty sure my parents won’t — at least not with any kind of pride or how my own family helped skirt the 18-year-old betting age minimum.

Either way, the time spent on the track was a once-in-life-time opportunity for a boy from Lake Wilson, Minnesota, and while I joke about the language I learned at the track, it was only part of what drove the larger experience. Fantastic people in a fantastic setting that I couldn’t imagine having been left out of.

For a large part of my youth, being around the horse track was the singular thing I looked forward to each and every week. The sounds of gate slamming open to the ring of the bell, the scent of the barns each morning and most of all the horses.

Each weekend was a chance to visit old friends by walking up and down the shed row — some I could spend all day with, others you took a wide berth around.

Horse bites hurt.