Diamond Mind

I never had any shortage of toys as a kid -- don't get me wrong, I wasn't pampered either, but I don't recall ever feeling like I was missing out on certain "stuff". I did my fair share of Sears-catalog surfing at Christmastime, and my parents will tell you that I always created an itemized list on lined paper with the columns carefully drawn in with a ruler: page number, item, description, cost. But I don't think I ever seriously expected to get three-quarters of the stuff, nor did I feel like I came up short when I didn't.

It was always kind of a moot point anyway; there were only a few possessions I really cared about. The vast majority of the time, I had a book in my hand (and it wasn't unusual for the other hand to be buried up to the elbow in a bag of chips, but that's another story), although I can tell you that may not be the best policy at times such as when riding a bicycle, for example. When it was dark, or there was snow on the ground, I was racing Matchbox & Hot Wheels cars. When I needed something portable that I could mess with for hours, I brought my baseball cards.

The rest of the time, anytime I could get outside, it was my baseball glove.

On my frequent trips to the drugstore down the street to buy baseball cards, I would also carefully evaluate the available rubber balls to find the ones that would give me the perfect bounce off the brick wall of the church next door, then off the driveway into my waiting glove. If only there had been a Little Brick Wall League.

Even as much as I loved baseball, as a small, skinny kid who (at least when away from the brick wall) did not demonstrate prodigy-level baseball skills, I was actually too scared to play Little League the first year I was eligible. Once I got started, however, I couldn't be stopped. I played 4 years of Little League, and when I graduated from that -- despite ample evidence that I had already, ah, peaked as a ballplayer -- I played 3 years of Senior League. Well, "played" is perhaps a little strong in the latter case, but I had a uniform, and I showed up for every game, and every once in awhile they'd let me out on the field until the good players showed up. There comes a point, unfortunately, when no matter how fiercely you love the game, it stops pretending it loves you back. Regardless, however, when I look back at my "career", what I mostly think about is the fact that I missed playing that first year.

As a parent, I have tried not to make my kids merely xeroxes of myself -- I want them to have their own interests and their own opinions. So my son is big on Legos, which I never cared about as a kid, and they both like Pokemon cards, which I find kind of weird. Still, I was certainly hoping that the boy & I could share baseball; when he turned out not to dislike it, but not be enthusiastic either, I won't deny I was a little bit disappointed.

I'll also concede I was a bit surprised when it was the daughter who started at a pretty young age to ask me to play ball in the yard, and before long to beg to play Little League. Life around here (especially in the evenings) can get a bit complex, so we held her back from playing for a couple years... but as she continued to ask, and I continued to remember that year I didn't play, it just felt like we had to let her play.

She's having a great time playing -- she shapes her whole week around games and practices -- and I'm having a good (although often nervous!) time watching. I try to be there all the time for her; I remember that in my later seasons, my dad would walk to the field... see that I wasn't playing, again, and turn & walk home. I want her to remember me there. And I resist as much as possible the urge to coach, although I do... ah... encourage her in very specific terms. Most importantly, I try really hard not to call her "honey", "sweetie", or "baby".

House Arrest in HD

I've never seen the movie "A Clockwork Orange" -- in fact, after a brief exploration of the movie courtesy of our Wikifriends, I believe I'm actually quite grateful that I never have. It's also really gratifying that I'm actually too young to have seen it the first time around. At my age, and I don't believe I've ever used that phrase before, being "too young" for anything is not to be taken lightly. However, the most famous scene from that movie has been floating around at least as a concept for a long time, so I got the reference when Lost used a similar scene. Let's just say, if you're not familiar, that too much TV can be not good for you.

On the other hand, consider the postulate advanced by a noted,ah, lifestyles researcher: "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful." I have to say I've already had cause to wonder about that on more than one occasion, usually related to expense account meals or some other form of free food.

So taken all around, I'm having a hard time deciding exactly how I feel about this. OK, I know you hate it when I force you to follow a link (or as my wife says, how come you're underlining random words?), so here it is in a nutshell:

Major League Baseball is conducting a casting call for a baseball fan’s dream job. The winner of this Dream Job promotion will move to NYC to star in a baseball web series and be a part of a live interactive experience for baseball fans that will include watching every MLB game over the course of the entire baseball season (simultaneously when multiple games are on at the same time), blogging opinions, interacting with fans through social media and appearing in video blogs. The web series will be distributed on MLB.com and through social media outlets.

Well, sure, if baseball is good -- surely that is a fundamental truth -- then mo' baseball is mo' better, and ALL of baseball has to be awesome. So that would be a hard job to turn down... except perhaps for a couple of pesky obstacles. The list of skill requirements is pretty daunting, but it really gets crazy when you check out the "Responsibilities" section.

Even before that, of course, it would be a tough row to hoe for anyone who already had a ... you know... life. Not that there's ever going to be an action-packed reality series based on my life, although I suppose it might possibly appeal to the Agoraphobic Channel. But I'm fairly sure that my employers would notice I was gone after, say, a few weeks. And at home the laundry would pile up and there's only so much peanut butter you can stock ahead of time. So I'm not sure I fit the target audience of No Friends, No Family, No Job, No Particular Reason Not to Throw All Your Possessions in a Liquor Store Box and Take Off for the Big Apple.

As a matter of fact, looking a little closer, we discern that they are not explicitly promising a suite at the Plaza; to be precise, "Must reside in a location picked by MLB in New York City for the entire baseball season." I think it would likely be relatively difficult to find a steam grate with high-speed wifi, so the "location" probably has walls... beyond that, who knows.

Here's the one that really got me, though: "Must be present in the location to observe all MLB regular season and postseason games during the 2011 season." I take that to mean you have to be in your chair any time there's a game on -- even West Coast night games that start after 10pm New York time. I'm hoping that they supply a wide variety of delivery menus; it would also help if there were screens in, um, some of the less typical rooms of the house.

But at least you won't have to worry about keeping your dignity intact. The promotion is co-sponsored by Endemol USA, makers of quality television programming such as "Deal or No Deal", "Wipeout", and perhaps most appropriately, "Big Brother".

You Kids Get Off My 50-Yard Line

A few weeks back, my daughter was annoyed at me for some reason -- it's possible she didn't even know herself, of course -- so as she came down the stairs behind me, she made a disparaging remark about a relative scarcity of hair on a certain spot that was directly in her line of sight. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware of what's going on back there... but I am content to keep it behind me (much like some of my hairstyles from days gone by).

In similar fashion, I'm as aware as anyone who sees me that I'm middle-aged, but as long as I stay away from mirrors and try not to exercise too much, I don't have to face up to the grisly facts all that often. In my mind, I'm still... I don't know, mid-thirties?

So it's pretty annoying when it gets flung at me as it did yesterday. I can remember when the Super Bowl was the biggest football game of the year, rather than a national holiday. The first one I can recall watching was Super Bowl VII, when the Dolphins beat the Redskins. As far as I know, 100 million people were not online immediately afterwards, debating the quality of the commercials; just to see exactly how much things have changed, note the following, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The pregame show was a tribute to Apollo 17, the sixth and last mission to date to land on the Moon and the final one of Project Apollo. The show featured the crew of Apollo 17 and the Michigan Marching Band.

Later, the Little Angels of Chicago's Angels Church from Chicago performed the national anthem.

The halftime show, featuring Woody Herman and the Michigan Marching Band along with The Citrus College Singers and Andy Williams, was titled "Happiness Is".

As far as I could tell yesterday, Andy Williams did not appear in the halftime show -- although there's no way to prove he wasn't one of those people with the white suits and LED lights (if you can get a jumpsuit over one of those wintery sweaters he seemingly favored). I read Entertainment Weekly, so I know who the Black Eyed Peas are; while I don't have a vast collection of their music, I actually do have a will.i.am song, thanks to the kids -- his version of "I Like to Move It", from Madagascar. It's fun, and I was thinking the halftime show might be kind of cool...

Then they came on and in about 2 minutes I was transformed, against my will, into my father. I instantly became the "you call that music?" guy. "That's not singing, it's yelling!" I could almost feel my hairline receding as I watched. Plus there was a part of me that was crying out, "No! Please don't be that guy! You're still youthful (pay no attention to that hair exodus)!"

I have since regained a little of my equanimity, finding that I was not the only one who was, ah, underwhelmed. And I'm not really calling for a return engagement for the Michigan Marching Band, or even Andy Williams. It's just... I love my dad, and I respect him, and for someone to say I reminded them of him would be an honor. But this wasn't the way I had in mind. Fortunately, instead of blaming myself for What I've Become, I can blame the Black Eyed Peas for yanking it out of me involuntarily.

Rolle with the Changes

All around us are some of the traditional features of spring: the lilacs are blooming, we've had the windows open, both my favorite (real) team and my fantasy baseball team are floating gently to the bottom of the standings (note: this last has only been "traditional" for the past couple of years). Another common May sight is the new college and grad school graduates sallying forth on the job search, armed only with their most-recently-written work of fiction -- their resumes.

We have a young friend just getting her Master's who's in the throes of the struggle as we speak. I suspect that she, like others of us, is pondering how close she has to get to her degree-field so that the degree won't feel like a total waste!

Not that I'm in any respect qualified to give career advice. I've been out of college for 27 years (give me a sec to recover from having typed, and realized, that) and in that span of time I've worked full-time for a total of less than four years. The most recent period of part-time work has been totally by my choice; but still, from a resume standpoint that's a little scary.

As a hopefully ex-jobseeker myself (I realized today that my job, which started in 1997, has been around longer than my home or my kids or my cars... or anything outside my marriage. This is a good thing because, as challenged as I am with change in general, nothing highlights my shortcomings quite like looking for work), I've taken a keen interest in the trials of others -- but my attention was piqued by the story of Myron Rolle.

Myron played football at Florida State University and was a star defensive back, and was thought to be a top pro prospect, likely a first-round choice in the NFL draft. Like many college football players, he actually graduated before his playing eligibility expired, and like many players he enrolled in graduate school.

The difference in this case was that instead of taking grad courses in physical education, Myron went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar... and he didn't do it to extend his football career but instead gave up his last year of football to do it.

Rolle perhaps doesn't fit neatly into the football player pigeonhole. It goes without saying that he's very bright -- his ultimate goal is to become a doctor -- and that doesn't necessarily work smoothly with football culture, where the credo tends to be "tackle now, ask questions after you blow out your ACL". And in addition to his academic pursuits, he's also had some philanthropic achievements through the Myron L. Rolle Foundation.

So when he returned from Oxford after his time abroad and submitted his name for the NFL draft, there was a lot of discussion. Some questioned whether taking a year off from football indicated he wasn't sufficiently committed to the sport, and there were also fairly audible whispers that maybe someone that intelligent was not all that safe a bet in a coach-driven, follow-the leader world (where it must be said, there's virtue in taking orders, acting as one, not thinking for yourself).

And so it went that on draft day -- although because of the growing interest in the draft, and consequent TV-ification, there are now THREE DAYS of draft day -- Myron was actually chosen on the third day. In the 6th round, the 207th player chosen. In a spot where (and I'm asserting this entirely without proof, but also without much fear of contradiction), there were chosen ahead of him some guys with "records" of a less academic nature, and other guys who wouldn't have gotten into college at all without football, but very likely few with charitable foundations. Zero Rhodes Scholars, that much is indisputable.

For a lot of reasons I'm predisposed to feel like the guy got the short end of the stick; I flatter myself that I know what it's like to be looked down upon because of intelligence (although truthfully I suspect that my classmates might have seen me as odd for, ah, multiple reasons). And he clearly is a sort of Renaissance man (in a literal sense you don't see too often). I wonder, though, whether it isn't actually a wise move not to choose him higher. A high NFL draft choice is an investment of money, sure; but just as much it's an allocation of resources that can lead to disaster if it doesn't pay off in a long-term asset.

And of course, what you have here is the living embodiment of the cliche, "He can do anything in the world he wants to do." I can see why you might not want to bet the farm on someone who might decide in 2 years to quit and go to med school, or do charity work in the Third World, or... who knows? In fact, you could make the argument that the greatest good for the greatest number would be achieved if all the teams passed on him and let him get to work making contributions to more than just the Cover-Two defense.

Decisions Decisions

Possibly no one makes more decisions in quite such a transparently public manner than a football coach. On each play, he must decide which players to use and which play to run, so every game is something of a referendum on the wisdom of his choices.

On the other hand, in modern football, the head coach has a phalanx of faceless assistants who share the responsibility -- in fact, a head coach is often thought to be a bit of a megalomaniac if he calls the plays himself (it's all about 'delegating' and 'managing', you know). Besides, even once the play is called, the quarterback may still change it if he has what he thinks is a better idea based on the defense he's looking at.

Contrast that with baseball -- as we know, the only true, pure sport and frankly the only one worth talking about or even giving much thought to -- where the manager holds the keys, or I suppose the steering wheel, solely in his own hands. He may consult a small group of advisers, but the manager makes out the lineups and carries out the pitching changes and determines the strategy.

Unfortunately, the inescapable flaw in his Master Plan is that he is then dependent on other, imperfect humans to carry out his will. If the pitcher throws a bad pitch, or a ball goes through somebody's legs, or a guy pulls a hamstring as he's rounding third, it's quite possible that a genius blueprint will fail to add anything to the 'win' column.

As a consequence, smart baseball people don't really judge a manager on whether he wins or loses (at least not on a day-to-day basis). You'll often hear the losing manager say, "Well, we had the gun loaded." Meaning: we got our best hitter to the plate with the game on the line, or our best pitcher against the other team's slugger; if our guy pops up, or the other guy hits a tough pitch out of the park... we can't control for results, just the process of making the decision.

And... may I suggest that that's a pretty good model for evaluating decisions in general -- our own, or others such as in the case of evaluating a political candidate (to choose a less than random example).

For me, the question is not, "Did the decision 'work'?" but rather, "Did the decision make the most sense given the available facts?" I might feel a wave of regret from a bad outcome... but I ought to be able to forgive myself if I made the decision the right way.

Likewise: in voting, we're choosing someone essentially to make decisions for us. It would be great to find someone who agrees with us in every respect, who would make all the decisions we'd make ourselves. Assuming we were smart enough to do so, but if I've been hearing the political rhetoric correctly lately, we should trust good ol' Joe Sixpack to be wiser than, you know, actual smart people.

Anyway, I've never found anyone running for office that I thought had the 100% perfect plan -- so the way I'm trying to evaluate now is to get a sense not of what decisions someone would make, but how he or she would make them. I'm looking for someone who's willing to surround himself (allow me to be pronoun-specific for the sake of simplicity) with smart people, people who don't necessarily agree with him down the line, listen to all their opinions, then put it together and make the call decisively.

I feel that a person of integrity and intelligence who's capable of using information to reach conclusions might be more valuable as a public servant than a person with nearly any defined set of convictions you could name -- left, right, or center.

Of course, even if worse comes to worst -- and you have to define that for yourself-- at least in two more weeks this 'election cycle' will be over (I could certainly write reams more about the political process... but on the other hand you could argue that I already have). Then we'll have 6 to 8 weeks of Christmas ads and Christmas specials, then about 10 days of vacation (or if you prefer, Bowl Season)... so that puts us to at least the middle of January before the first candidate declares for 2012.

Going for the Gold

There was a TV show in the '60s called The Outer Limits -- or so I'm told; clearly I'm far too youthful to have first-hand knowledge -- a kind of knock-off of The Twilight Zone, with less imagination and 50% less William Shatner (not that that's necessarily a bad thing). The opening narration said, "There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission," then at the end of the episode they "returned control" to you (a power coveted by today's advertisers).

You may recognize that sensation from the just-concluded Olympics. Thanks to the far-flung tentacles of the NBC-Universal octopus (in turn, part of one of the solar system's largest conglomerates... yet one near and dear to my heart, and bank account), you could turn on your TV pretty much any time day or night and find a channel with an event being contested -- or at least a feature on Michael Phelps, Michael Phelps' diet, Michael Phelps' mom, Michael Phelps' mom's dentist....

I was pretty well invested; by my rough count I watched at least 15 different sports, though I still felt like I was missing out a bit on the Constant Variety of Sport that Jim McKay was always spanning the globe in search of. There were actually many hours of preliminary rounds for swimming, diving, gymnastics, track, and beach volleyball... rumor has it there were even some events happening in other sports where the athletes were fully dressed!

And I know for a fact that they missed out on a number of events that may not involve world-class athletes -- and a bunch of people from tiny islands you never heard of who get to go to the Olympics by virtue of being better at a sport than the other 2 people in the country who play it -- but which are contested every day right here in this venue (a certified Olympic Word). For example:

• Weightlifting. Every other night my son says to me, "Dad, will you carry me to bed, dad?" and I get to heft his angular yet nearly 60-lb. frame up the stairs to his room. During times of misbehavior, on the other hand, if he will not willingly repair to his room for "quiet contemplation", I get to perform the Clean and Jerk.
• High hurdles. It takes a finely-tuned athlete to make your way from one end of the playroom to the other.
• Figure peeling. One of my latest obsessions: see if you can peel an entire apple in one continuous piece.
• Individual medley. A solo competition to determine whether dinner can be assembled from the previous week's leftovers.
• 2-meter dash. It's time to go; let's see who can get to the door first. Although this is a land-based event over a relatively short distance, it's actually a cousin in spirit to the open-water swimming competition, which as I understand it is in turn akin to floating roller derby.

I could, as I have proved many times, go on and on. I am concerned that if I keep at it for too long, I'll give in to the obvious "wrestling" joke, although around here that event's usually held in conjunction with the Synchronized Shrieking competition. This is just a taste of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat as it's experienced here daily... you may scoff, but some of this stuff is way closer to being a sport than rhythmic gymnastics.

Accessory Before the Fact

Since two of the things I love best are baseball & reading, naturally I love to read about baseball. I know that sounds one-dimensional or even shallow, but there's all kinds of baseball reading out there:

• kids' books
• novels
• mysteries
• nonfiction -- seriously, check this one out; it's not really a 'baseball book' -- part biography, part travelogue, part history lesson, part philosophy, part poetry -- mostly just wonderful reading
• fantasy baseball

And since I also love math & statistics, and I enjoy learning more about how baseball 'works', I've read a lot of what's sometimes called sabermetrics -- baseball research often using statistical analysis. The patron saint of sabermetrics is Bill James, whose work has always been dedicated to the idea you can understand baseball if you find and apply the right tools. But it ain't all square roots and logarithms... he always writes wickedly funny stuff (occasionally more wicked than funny).

One passage I remember vividly (hence, probably, inaccurately) was an analysis of a trade. He pointed out that 'team X' had traded for a pitcher who pitched really poorly, and then almost immediately suffered a career-ending injury. They gave up two players who played well for many years afterwards, and who played positions that 'team X' also then had trouble filling. In other words, basically the Perfect Storm of bad trades... or as Bill put it, "that's what I call hanging yourself with a custom-fit noose."

This weekend, it was my turn to measure out the rope.

For years upon years, my wife has regaled me with tales of her childhood dirt-bike adventures. And the stories always seemed to end up in the same place: "When you're dead, I'm going to get a motorcycle."

Myself, I have no Need For Speed. When it comes to transportation, I want the wind in my face to be coming from the factory-controlled climate system. Given what I experience on the roads these days, I think it only prudent not to venture out without hundreds of pounds of steel and safety glass between me and everyone else. It's not like I'm the life of the party at amusement parks either; when I was a kid, my grades always got me free rides at Hoffman's Playland... except I could never find rides that didn't terrify me. And a 10-year-old doesn't cut a very impressive figure on the Ladybug ride.

So I have always dismissed the motorcycle talk in the minimum possible number of words. But lately, the song has been crescendoing.

Now she's talking about riding a "scooter" -- you know, just around town. OK, maybe a few miles down the highway. If you're thinking of the things you stand on with one foot & push with the other... guess again. She doesn't even want to consider anything with a top speed under 55 (actually, we've had cars that weren't that comfortable at 55).

Given my reluctance to see my bride of nearly 21 years become the shiny silver ball inside a giant pinball machine, why would I do anything to add fuel to the fire? Such as...

This past Saturday, while the kids were on their Annual Amusement Park Outing with their aunt, we had the whole day to ourselves for whatever fun and romance we could dream up.

Instead, I took her to look at scooters.

I guess in part I was hoping that seeing the scooters close up would remind her that not only is it an expensive habit, but also that driving something that unprotected in traffic is a little like trying to fight a forest fire in a tank top, shorts, and flip-flops.

But I'm also a husband, and let's face it: there aren't too many times I'll be able to help put that look of delight and joy and anticipation on her face.

I continue to (gently) remind her of my reservations, and I think she may hold off for now-- but I wonder whether it's just a matter of time till the other boot drops. So do me a favor: if I let you know, if and when it does become a reality, would you mind very much all staying off the streets around here?

Stranger in Our Midst

The unmistakeable signs of spring are all around us: We've had that last, false-hope-crushing snowfall.... The drive-in up the road is open, and the locals are huddled around the picnic tables in forlorn knots of 2 and 3, eating their First Ice Cream of Spring.... Tax season is upon us, and I'm getting my laptop charged up so I can finish my return next Tuesday on the way to the post office.

My Leading Indicator is always the crack of the bat being heard all across this great land of ours. Around here, we've been observing our own forms of Spring Training, on two fronts -- first, I used the March exhibition games to get the troops a little hyped on watching the Mets again... hoping that if I can amass three votes, I might prevail against our local Superdelegate, who is definitely voting "against." And, rare is the day when the girl doesn't jam on her Mets cap and say, "Dad, will you play catch with me?"

She's even starting to recognize individual players on TV. Naturally, most sports enthusiasms and loyalties are acquired virally, from someone close to you who already has the bug (although I think mine was definitely a spontaneous genetic mutation).

I just consider it responsible parenting to do whatever I can to nurture the ardor for baseball in general, and the Mets in particular -- although last fall my son, especially, figured it might be cool to be a Red Sox fan, since they were the champs.

So I was a trifle surprised when my girl came home from a trip with her grandmother to Wal-Mart with a shirt bearing the logo of...

I can't even say it. Suffice it to say that it's rumored that there's a second major league that also has a team located in New York. The New York Yonkers, or something like that.

She saw it in the store, it was sporty, they didn't have any Mets stuff in her size; so she begged Nanny, who ended up going back to get it for her.

At first, she thought it was the coolest shirt ever... then she said she didn't want to wear it to school and have kids laugh at her (as she herself has been known to do to perfect strangers -- perfectly large, beefy strangers, whom she spots on the street wearing similarly non-Mets attire).

But then as we were snuggling later that evening, she suddenly said, "Dad, what happens if I like the Yankees?" One of those times that tests your parenting skills.

I hugged her tight and said, "Sweetie, you can like whoever you want to." She seemed pleased with that answer... and fortunately has not yet noticed that Dad, who does the laundry, has somehow not yet gotten that shirt back in her drawer...

The Play's the Thing

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project uses the computers of people around the world. Whenever a participating computer is otherwise idle, it is scanning the ambient noise from space looking for patterns that might indicate an intentional effort to communicate.

In the same way, any corner of my brain that’s not otherwise engaged is always looking for blog ideas. There was an item in last week’s Sporting News that noted that both the college football national championship game and the Super Bowl featured an opening kickoff run back for a touchdown – by the eventual losing team. It occurred to me that it could be a good jumping-off place for a blog… if I wrote the kind of blog that supplies sports insights. I know from experience that many of the people who enjoy reading this (all 4 of you) don’t care that much about sports or even understand why I might care so much.

*Light bulb*.... One of the things I do attempt with this blog is to explain why something is important or interesting or funny, to try to get people to look at some topic differently. And it ought to be a better place to start than a couple of my occasional motivators:

• I thought of a joke and now I need to think of a couple hundred words to set up the punch line.
• It’s Friday and I haven’t posted anything in almost (or over) a week.
  

Usually, of course, it's such a brilliant, potentially life-changing insight that if I didn't share it immediately it would be tantamount to malpractice....

Think about the elements of great drama: conflict, resolution, some unexpected twists along the way. It also helps if the setting is recognizable enough that you don’t have to focus on that along the way, so you can reach a comfort level that promotes letting yourself be absorbed.

Of course, you’ve also just described every sporting contest: two teams , or a group of individuals, competing in a familiar event for a victorious result that can’t be predicted (just ask the 1980 Olympic hockey team). In fact, for many years the Olympics were a sporting event that happened somewhere in the world every four years; if you were lucky you’d read the story in the sports page the next day or catch a few highlights. Then ABC tapped into the intersection between games and drama – the Thrill of Victory, the Agony of Defeat; the stories behind the athletes – and now the Games are a televised phenomenon.

Any sport is, for those of us who love it, a familiar milieu that approaches ritual. But at the same time, since most of the time we’re watching it as it happens, the unexpected is almost commonplace. I have watched a staggering number of baseball games in my life – it would be an embarrassing number, in fact, except I’m not embarrassed at all because I’ve loved every minute of it. Still, when the Dodgers got two runners thrown out at the plate on the same play (in the playoffs last fall against the Mets), I saw something I’d never seen on the field before. I have to admit I wouldn’t have been quite so enchanted if the teams were reversed.

Much in the same way that I like to eat, but I don’t like all foods equally, I love “sports” but it’s baseball that gets its own dedicated portion of my brain. I don’t think I can explain that part very well; I have plenty of friends who are NASCAR fanatics but couldn’t care less about baseball, or who can’t wait for football season but are bored by basketball. In fact, it’s not that rare to talk to someone who loves college football (or basketball, for that matter) but doesn’t watch pro football (or basketball). Just a matter of how your taste buds line up, I suppose – and what you were fed when you were a kid.

In the current sports universe, free agency makes it possible for players to move between teams frequently. And so people like me are often asked, “Why root for the Mets? The guys keep changing – you’re really just rooting for a shirt.” I like to think there’s more to it than a laundry fetish. Regardless of the guys inside the uniforms, there is a tradition and continuity that preserves a connection.

My sister-in-law is a big fan of ER. When she was living in a town where she couldn’t get cable or even broadcast TV (and why even typing those words makes me break out in a cold sweat is something to explore another time) we taped ER for her every week. Well, OK, not quite every week; each Thursday at 9:58 my wife would ask if I was ready to tape it, and I’d scrabble around looking for a blank tape… occasionally I struck out. But she just wanted ER, no interest in any other show.

If you had watched ER in about 1994, and then not seen it again until last week, you might well wonder if it was the same show. None of the faces are the same – but they’re still doing the same stuff in the same place. I’m sure many people still miss George Clooney, or think Law & Order was best with Briscoe and Logan, but they’re still fans of the shows.

Well, I suppose the Mets' Briscoe & Logan are Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman, and maybe the part of George Clooney is played by Mike Piazza... but really, how different is it? I haven't noticed any great drop-off in popularity of Shakespeare's plays since Lord Olivier made his last exit. In fact, the change helps make it fun; every new player and team provides a Compare & Contrast with the memories of the past.

I actually still enjoy ER, even in its post-peak years, and I'm an avid watcher of shows like Grey's Anatomy and Lost. But for pulse-pounding drama, sports (particularly baseball, of course) has given me unparalleled thrills. I will never, ever forget Game 6 of the 1986 Championship Series (won by the Mets in 16 innings); or, it goes without saying, Game 6 of that year's World Series -- the most exciting single event in the history of history; or even a regular season game like this one... which made me scream so loud I think my parents thought I'd fallen out my bedroom window. You want to talk reality TV? I got your unscripted drama right here.

And so ol' Bill Shakespeare said it best, as always (he must've been a sportswriter before his time) -- the play's the thing.

Living the Dream

This past week or so has brought a tiny ripple of excitement to my life: a number of people have commented on my Sudoku blog entry (and since it doesn't go without saying, commented positively). Naturally, I always have a number of people respond to what I write, but this is one of the rare occasions that the number was greater than zero.

The danger in receiving affirmation, of course, is that I might revert to the state I described in one of my earliest postings -- if I do something someone likes, I have to figure out exactly what made it enjoyable, and then try to duplicate that exactly. But of course, that way lies madness.

It did make me reflect on the event itself, as well as the other times I've engaged in a public contest of some sort. I have already alluded to my spelling bee debacle... well, perhaps debacle isn't the right word. How about "soul-scarring experience"? And while I was writing about my shipboard obsession with karaoke, I failed to mention that I was equally hooked on the trivia contests held frequently (especially after I won the first one I tried, which as you know is exactly like when crack dealers give out free samples).

As much fun as that was -- although it would have been better if the prize had been an upgrade to an outside stateroom, rather than a plastic trophy-- the contest I look back on most fondly was Broadcaster for a Day.

At the time we were living near Albany and the Yankees' AA minor league affiliate was located in the area as well. When they announced a Broadcaster for a Day contest, I nearly jumped out of my skin. If it would have helped, I probably would have slept on the sidewalk like one of those knuckleheads looking for a PS3.

As with almost any other mental illness, to understand my reaction you really need to understand my childhood. I fell in love with baseball at a really early age, but as a realist from nearly as early an age, I understood I was probably not going to get to live out that dream. If not, I probably got a subconscious hint from my own fantasies: like many kids I wanted to pretend to be a ballplayer, particularly a Met. But whom to identify with? A couple of the best players were black, and while I'm certainly no racist I am extremely literal-minded. This also let out all the left-handed guys and the pitchers. Bud Harrelson was close -- small & skinny and not a great hitter -- but a switch-hitter, and besides I knew they'd never let me play shortstop. So I ended up with ... Don Hahn. I have to tell you, if you can't dream any bigger than Don Hahn, you probably shouldn't bother dreaming at all.

However, I was primarily learning to love baseball through the voices of Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy, and Ralph Kiner, the Mets' radio/TV broadcast team. And although I eventually tumbled to the fact that baseball broadcast jobs are even scarcer than baseball playing jobs, it's always been my answer to the question, "If you could have any job in the world...?" . Of course, the flames were probably fanned by the fact that almost any native English-speaker (and a few members of the animal kingdom) would be more coherent than Ralph Kiner.
So naturally at the appointed hour I showed up at the local mall to do my thing. The test would be to sit in front of a TV playing a game tape and pretend to do play-by-play. I was a bit embarrassed to note that among the competitors was a handful of boys, probably 9 or 10 years old; I wasn't sure how I felt trying to beat kids. I felt a little better when one of the kids went up and his performance consisted of, "It's a ground ball. (long pause) And he's out." Clearly I would be saving him from embarrassing himself -- although it's true that Phil Rizzuto did pretty well for himself with a smiliar level of detail.

All I remember about my turn is that the tape was of a Yankees game (of course). It was the 9th inning and Tim Leary was pitching. Actually, he wasn't; he was mostly pacing around the mound sighing -- which was depriving me of "action" to describe while my precious minutes ticked away. I did know that his career at that point was kind of on the skids, so I said, "He's probably afraid to throw the ball -- lately they've been coming back at him faster than they went in."

In any case, it was enough to win the day, and on July 16, 1991, I stepped into the pressbox at Heritage Park (a big step up, literally as well as figuratively, from the summers I worked the concession stand there). When I got there, it turned out that "Broadcaster for a Day" really meant "Broadcaster for an Inning" ... but I whined and fussed and convinced the regular play-by-play guy that they really promised me the whole game.

For nine lovely innings I got to live the dream... and along the way, I began to think to myself, "Hey, maybe if I really impress this guy, he'll invite me back." Of course, the thing about most broadcasters is that they love the sound of their own voice, so he was always going to be a one-man booth if he had any say in it... yeah, that's it. That must be why. If he hadn't been so jealous of his airtime, I'd be in the booth right now.

Well, not right now, it's pretty cold out there. And not there, because the team moved about 10 years ago. But you get the idea.

It's been a long time and I frankly don't remember anything much about the game itself. I do have it on tape, but I haven't listened to it in years. I wonder if hearing the game again would have that same powerful memory effect that music does -- to bring you back instantly to the spot. What I do remember is that I tried valiantly to soak it all in, to absorb every minute of the experience and the thrill. I had limited success with that, as I think is almost always the case, but I do know it was one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me.

The Yanks' AA affiliate is in Trenton, NJ, now, and there are only a couple of minor league teams within 100 miles or so... but if anyone involved with those teams (or any others) are reading this thing -- hey, give me a call, I work cheap.

Root, Root, Root for the Virtual Home Team

In the photo album of my mind, I seem to be missing many of the pages allotted to childhood, but one memory I can almost put a specific date on is the 1969 World Series. I’m aware that I may have inadvertently embellished this one over the years, but I have a very distinct memory of Jerry Koosman batting for the Mets and NBC play-by-play man Curt Gowdy talking about what an awful hitter he was. I also remember being a bit offended by that (although I would, over the years, learn for myself that he was indeed an awful hitter).

The real significance of that memory is that it marks the conscious beginning of my interest in the Mets. Throughout 1970, our local TV station would occasionally broadcast Sunday Mets games, which I watched avidly; in 1971 I got to go to Shea Stadium to see a game in person, and by then the affair was in full bloom.

As a consequence, this has been a satisfying season for me – except for the fact that I’ve seen about the same number of Mets games as I did in 1970, thanks to the evil gatekeeping trolls at our cable company, who even through a corporate takeover have (both) steadfastly denied me access to the Mets’ cable network. So I have an extra reason to enjoy the Mets’ trip to the postseason: I get to watch their games.

I find that playoff games give me a purer kind of joy than the regular season games do; you see, as I’ve confessed previously, I am a fantasy baseball player. In any game, the team I am rooting against – even the absolutely loathsome corporation that also wears an NY logo, whose name I shall not speak – may include a player (or worse yet, a pitcher, since their performances tend to have a more pronounced effect on my scores) who is part of my fantasy squad. So I end up hoping that a guy like Ryan Howard of the Phillies will bat against the Mets with 2 outs in the 9th and the bases loaded, trailing by 5 runs, so he can hit a grand slam: Mets win, I get 9 points for my team.

This brand of rooting is extremely mentally fatiguing, especially when you multiply by the number of players I “own”, so in some ways it’s a relief that the fantasy portion of the season is over (all the more so since I won my league, and by the absolute thinnest of margins: after 6 months of competition, my score was 0.5% higher than the second-place finisher).

Don’t worry, it’s not like I’m obsessed or anything. No, no, no, the Other Guy is “obsessed”; my friend is “preoccupied”; for me, it’s merely an “interest”. I could point out to you that I was in second place as late as September 26, but I’m afraid you might read something into the fact that I'm aware of that statistic.

Trust me, it’s only a “hobby”.

If I told you that I had the leading scorers among both shortstops and outfielders, you might lose sight of the impressiveness of that feat (distracted by wondering who would even know such a thing).

Really, it’s just a “pastime”.

However, if you’re curious about the standings as of June 12… if you’re wondering which player scored the most points in the month of August… if you need to know which team totaled the most RBI for the season (ahem, ahem)… just let me know. I mean, it's not like the binding on the yearbook is even real leather.

Not For Nothing Do They Say Hope "Springs"

There are many signposts on the way to spring; I'm sure yours are different from mine. Groundhog Day is the first excuse to speculate on its arrival, and although the First Day of Spring is rarely what it's cracked up to be here in the Great Northeast, it's at least another source of hope.

I said something to my son a few days ago about what we would do when spring gets here, and he was offended. Don't tell him it's not spring yet -- his kindergarten teacher said it was. Besides, the drive-in opened this week, and it's time to go get some ice cream!

For many of us, it's when we start to see and hear the birds. As I wrote this, two ducks just flew by about eye-level. That has to be a good sign, right? ... on the other hand, I couldn't tell whether they were headed north or south...

If, unlike my son, you need your spring to feel a bit more springy, you may wait for meteorological spring. Around here, we get subtle and fleeting hints: the first day you can walk to the mailbox without a jacket (or shoes!); that rich, green, south-windy scent in the breeze; the subsequent sneezing fits.

Whoa, there go some geese. Really hoping that's north.

What really inspires this ode is not the warmer weather we've had this week (outdoor blogging!), or the fact that I've moved down two jacket-thicknesses in that time, because the Real First Day of Spring falls on April 2 this year: Opening Day. You can have your vernal equinox, my friends, and it will not be the groundhog but rather the ground ball that determines the arrival of spring for me.

The harbingers:

• Yahoo! opens their free fantasy baseball leagues for sign-up
• The players begin reporting for spring training (note: A Baltimore Oriole looks a little bit like a robin anyway, or at least the logo does)
• Season Preview publications begin to appear on the newsstands
• "In Port St. Lucie, Fla., today, a Mets split-squad defeated the Expos 7-3." Home runs were hit by several 20-year-old kids you've probably never heard of, and very possibly never will again
• The Transactions column in the sports pages really is a column, full of who was "optioned to Rochester" and "reassigned to minor-league camp" -- or perhaps just plain old released
• I conduct the draft for my fantasy league, assign players to teams & hit the switch

With each of those the anticipation builds and the icicles begin to thaw. But tomorrow night on ESPN, the honest-to-goodness first pitch is thrown out and baseball is back. Feels like I can take a deep breath again. Even if the game broadcasts for the first month feature guys huddled in the dugout in parkas gripping hot water bottles, even if shoes and jackets will continue to be required to retrieve my Sports Weekly from the mailbox, you can't take spring away from me now.

Locker Room: All of Our Operators Are Assisting Other Customers

I haven't been hitting my self-imposed goals for posting frequency (hey, you could call me once in awhile, you know), but my attention has been divided lately because it's my busy season. I'm not a tax preparer or a florist or even a snowplow driver (although the plow guys in our area have had a pretty restful time of it). No, I'm referring to my moonlighting gig as commissioner of a fantasy baseball league.

I admit, I'm one of Those Guys. I organized the league six years ago, I keep the Official League Records (not that anyone else even notices), and I even send out occasional e-mail newsletters. I've actually gotten a little less compulsive about that -- the first couple of years it was weekly newsletters. But I guess when you come down to it, fantasy baseball has become the 21st century equivalent to Dungeons & Dragons. It's just as well I got married before I started doing it.

Most (normal) people are not thinking too much about baseball right now; the players haven't even gone to spring training yet. But in addition to supervising the league itself, I also personally conduct the player draft. That means I have to create lists of players at each position & get them to the other "owners" so they can rank the players and pass the lists back. Then I go through the lists in a preset order & assign players to teams.

There's a lot of work involved, of course, but (as with my other ... "enthusiasms") the truly remarkable, or scary, thing is what this all does to my brain. For the next month, guaranteed, when I am in the shower I'll be thinking of how I might rank the second basemen (should Mr. X be #11 or #14?). When I'm cooking dinner, I'll be trying to think of an American League starting pitcher the other guys might have overlooked. And when I'm on the interstate, I'm sure the question of which of last year's players I should keep (we're allowed four) will induce me to miss an exit sometime. If you've ever been involved in getting something started, you won't be surprised: the actual beginning of the season will come as a relief.

I guess to be on the safe side, I'd better stay in the right hand lane for the next month or so... maybe I'd better have my flashers on for good measure.

Locker Room -- Those Who Forget the Past...

As a longtime Mets fan, I have seen a number of approaches to the offseason task of reshaping the roster for the next year. In the early 70s, when I first became aware, it was often a case of picking up one guy who was supposedly going to be the answer – often a third baseman (Joe Foy, Bob Aspromonte, Jim Fregosi, Joe Torre). He usually wasn’t much good, and/or over-the-hill. Didn’t usually work (with the probable exception of Le Grand Orange, Rusty Staub).

In the late 70s, the team in the largest city in the US decided to go on the cheap. They rounded up whoever didn’t have a job somewhere else (Elliott Maddox, Tom Hausman, Kevin Kobel, Dock Ellis), with the hope of having enough guys to fill out a roster. Didn’t ever work (sorry, Lenny Randle: one good year doesn’t create an exception).

In the 80s, they began targeting value deals, cashing in their assets for guys with “upside” or to fill a specific role (still no free agents, by the way). I guess you could say it worked (Ron Darling, Sid Fernandez, Gary Carter, Howard Johnson); see also, 1986, 108 wins, World Champions. Or better yet, ask the ’86 Red Sox.

In the 90s, there was a seismic shift. Suddenly the club started handing out free-agent dough like it was one of those AOL CDs. Really, really didn’t work – not only were the players lousy AND jerks (Bobby Bonilla, Vince Coleman, Eddie Murray, Bret Saberhagen) but the contracts made them difficult to unload and the budget was already spent.

In recent years, we’ve seen some high-profile trades and a couple of free-agent splashes (Mike Piazza, Cliff Floyd, Roberto Alomar, Carlos Beltran), with the net result of one playoff loss, one World Series loss, and a slow drift through mediocrity to less exclusive neighborhoods.

Throughout, the conventional wisdom on the guys in orange and blue has been: not enough offense. Get us at least one more big bat. So many of the trades have been in search of some real thumper. It always seemed to me, subjectively, that the new guys never quite measured up. I wasn’t sure, so I decided to measure them.

I used OPS, a popular stat that combines on-base percentage and slugging percentage for a quick but descriptive shorthand of a hitter’s production, and found the top 20 OPSs for players the year before they became Mets. Then I compared their production in their first Met season. I excluded anyone who came over in midyear, with the exception of Mike Piazza (since he arrived pretty early in the season). The players in OPS order, with their first Met year: Piazza (98), Roberto Alomar (02), Cliff Floyd (03), Carlos Beltran (05), Duke Snider (63), George Foster (82), Bobby Bonilla (92), Rusty Staub (72), Mo Vaughn (02), Kevin McReynolds (87), John Olerud (97), Gary Carter (85), Dave Kingman (81 – the 2nd time), Jeromy Burnitz (02), Bernard Gilkey (96), Todd Zeile (00), Richie Hebner (79), Frank Thomas (62), Willie Montanez (78), and Robin Ventura (99).

Any Met fan of a certain age knows where this is headed; several of these guys were the most expensive and high-profile flops in Mets history. And indeed, 16 of the 20 declined in OPS, ranging from 0.4% (Thomas) to 26% (Alomar). The two big successes were Gilkey (up 12.6%) and Ventura (up 15.7%); note that both of those guys lost considerable altitude the year after that. The weirdest case was Gary Carter, who had exactly the same OPS as the previous year.

Averaging the percent changes, which isn’t really mathematically accurate since it’s not weighted by at-bats, the group as a whole declined by 7.6%. I also figured change in home runs (-10.1%) and RBIs (-7.6%).

This info is of national-security importance because of the arrival of Carlos Delgado, the latest slugger/savior. He had healthy numbers to start with (his year-before OPS ranked 2nd to Piazza), so a decline is not necessarily catastrophic. If he follows the trend, he ought to end up with an OPS of .909, and a line of .281-30-106, which any Met fan would sign off on today. I guarantee you, if he hits 30, no one will care where he stands for (or on) “God Bless America”, even if he stands on his head.