MIDWEST MISERY By Adam Hirschfeld

Every morning, I wake up to new and exciting injuries. It’s the small price I pay for staying in shape. My left elbow, right shoulder, left knee, right hip (the right hip is particularly nagging; friends call me “Grandpa”), and a few other occasional nits remind me of an undeniable fact: I am getting older.

Consider aging to be reason 5,035,675 that I am glad I have a son. Many parents joke that part of the joy in having children is the eventual cessation of parent-performed housework. I, however, am not limiting my thinking to shifting chores such as taking out the garbage or hauling loads of laundry around the house. I’m thinking about funding my retirement. I’m getting a little bored with this whole “work” thing.

So I have decided that Nathan has no choice but to be the next great sports prodigy. It will take a lot of effort on the part of both him and I (mostly him; as you will see, my duties will mainly consist of smothering the boy and generally acting like a jackass).

The bar for childhood prodigies was set pretty low by former USC quarterback and current drug rehab stalwart Todd Marinovich. You may remember Marinovich, the red-haired Californian who was raised like a cyborg by his father, Marv. Marv monitored and controlled every aspect of his son’s life as if Marv were the United States Army, including requiring Todd to bring his own cake to other children’s birthday parties (in truth, had my parents done this, it would have ensured that I actually ate something at Gerald Lee’s third grade birthday party, where pizza with multiple toppings was the only food served. Who doesn’t serve plain and pepperoni to 9-year olds?). Todd Marinovich spent two non-descript years in college and than a couple of even more non-descript NFL seasons with the Raiders before dropping out, surfing, joining a punk band, and developing substance abuse problems. Marv Marinovich wrote a book about parenting (some jokes write themselves). I’m pretty sure the two hate one another.

Two more recent prodigies, Freddy Adu and Michelle Wie, are on their way to equaling Marinovich’s legacy.

Wie, of course, burst onto the women’s golfing scene before her teenage years. Why or how she did so is escaping my memory at this point in time, because Wie has spent more time withdrawing from tournaments and alienating fellow competitors of both genders with her attitude (maybe she needs to have a piece of birthday cake) than actually playing good golf. Her father, who runs her career, is apparently a piece of work as well (no word on whether he plans to write a parenting book).

Part of Wie’s problem is that her attention has been directed more at maintaining her own spectacle than on winning tournaments. I don’t think she has any professional victories; rather than trying to build her resume winning on the LPGA Tour (even Tiger Woods won a bunch of minor tournaments in his early years before becoming bigger than the sport of golf itself), Wie enters men’s professional tournaments where she promptly misses the cut by multiple strokes each time.

Adu entered Major League soccer before he had a driver’s license. A marketer’s dream, Adu was prominently featured in numerous campaigns, league-related and otherwise. He had dominated a couple of youth tournaments and was destined to become the savior of American soccer at age 14.

His career could pretty much be summed up by his inaugural game. Heavily hyped by ABC as Adu’s debut, Freddy didn’t get off the bench until very late in the game. Despite occasional flashes of brilliance throughout his career (including a recent hat trick in the U-20 World Cup that was started with an ESPN-worthy strike), Adu struggles in MLS while maintaining a “petulant teenager” type of desire to play for a top European club. Prior to his U-20 performance, that desire brought to mind Han Solo’s comment about “delusions of grandeur” in “Return of the Jedi.”

At least Adu’s mother apparently keeps her mouth shut. No one has ever seen her stalk one of Freddy’s coaches on the sidelines, although she may have been able to get off with a justifiable homicide had she offed former United coach Petr Nowak.

Which brings us back to Nate. In his brief life, Nate has shown minor inklings of talent in three sports: soccer, basketball, and swimming.

Basketball is out because, and I wish I had another way to put this, Nate happens to be Jewish. Swimming is out because, well, who the heck ever made any money in swimming? I don’t even think Michael Phelps can afford a Hummer.

So, soccer it is. My plan is to ship him off to a remote island outside the scope of the 24-hour sports media for training. We’ll start an intense promotional campaign hyping up how skilled he is before he’s eight. We’ll stage phony tournaments in impoverished nations where I’ll bribe opponents to take dives in exchange for Chicken McNuggets. We’ll make sure he scores some very public dates with the star-du-jour of a Disney Channel show (hopefully, for his sake, one that turns out to be a slut on the scale of Britney Spears). We’ll spread rumors that club teams in London, Madrid, and Rome are interested in his services (even though the closest he’ll get to any of those places is an Olive Garden restaurant). He might even run a couple of basic soccer drills before he’s 14; who knows?

I will practice shouting obscenities at anyone who will listen and generally looking like I’d rather be anywhere but watching my son play soccer. And laying by a pool. I’ll be practicing a lot of that.

Comments? Adamh164@yahoo.com