Useless Baseball Facts Kicking Around In My Head

I’ve always been a baseball fan.

Well actually, it wasn’t until the summer of 1979 – when I was 11 years old and was brought to Fenway Park for the first time, during a Boy Scouts outing, and got to see Carl Yastrzemski hit his 400^th homerun – that I became really interested and excited about baseball.

I remember goofing around with my buddies and not really paying attention to the game, when suddenly the atmosphere in Fenway changed after the crack of a bat sent a ball over the Green Monster – and the crowd went crazy. Some of the other Boy Scouts knew exactly what happened, but I was clueless, until someone explained it to me. “Yaz” had just hit his 400^th career homerun. “Is that a lot?” I asked.

Yeah, that’s a lot of homeruns.

From that day forward I was hooked. Not so much on the Red Sox, but hooked on baseball – and the history and romance of the game. I collected baseball cards, had sports posters, read baseball stats in the newspaper, kept my ticket stubs for all the games I went to.

Fast forward twenty years, as a young adult in my early 30s, I was still enamored with baseball, and loved the statistics and useless, antidotal facts about players and teams – information that really seemed only helpful during male-bonding moments such as Fantasy Baseball drafts or the sports bar or the office – which for the most part sent any female prospects fleeing in the opposite direction. But we didn’t care – because useless baseball facts are fun and exciting.

Fast forward another 10 years or so – present day. In my early 40s with a head full of useless baseball knowledge, but no longer able to banter about it at the bar or have time to play Fantasy Baseball. So what do I do with all this knowledge?

My oldest son Joseph is 10 years old. He’s been playing baseball for a few years now. We watch the Red Sox, and talk baseball, but mostly about Big Papi and Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis.

But recently he’s been getting more interested in the historic aspects of Baseball. He’s been asking questions about Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams. So I’ve been telling him the classic baseball stories.

• Babe Ruth and the “Curse of the Bambino” with supporting roles for Bucky Dent in ’78, Bill Buckner in ’86, and Aaron Boone in ‘03
• The amazing Willie Mays catch in the 1954 World Series
• The “Shot Heard ‘Round The World”, Bobby Thompson’s walkoff homerun to win the Pennant for the Giant in 1951
• And the greatest homerun of all time – Bill Mazeroski’s walkoff for the Pirates in game 7 of the 1960 World Series

But most of these are “old” stories, almost like fairy tales. Nothing I can claim to have witnessed personally (except Boone – see http://www.2walls.com/Sports/alcs_game7.asp) or even appreciated myself until I was older and fell in love with the game. So what can I share with my son about baseball that belongs to me?

Well – lately he’s been spending more time with my baseball card collection (which he inherited several years ago, but never really looked at). And while I don’t own any Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle or Ted Williams baseball cards – I do own hundreds of non-hall-of-fame, mediocre baseball player cards.

One day we’re flipping through cards, him showing me cards, asking “Is this anybody?”

I look, “no”.

The next card, “Is this anybody?”

I look, “no”.

And so on.

Then he spots a Mike Cameron card (in a Mets uniform). “Hey, Mike Cameron plays for the Red Sox!” showing me the card. “Is this a good card?”

I look at Cameron’s card, shrug, “Yeah, I guess. Cameron’s okay.” Then I remember something. “Hey, actually, you know something? You know what Mike Cameron is most famous for? Cameron once hit four home runs in a single game.”

“Really?” Joe answers. “For the Red Sox?”

“No, a couple of years ago when he was in Seattle I think.”

We start flipping through more cards, pulling out other players that I happen to know odd, useless statistics or facts about. Here are some of the cards we uncovered, and the useless facts I shared with my son:

Kyle Farnsworth – Journeyman pitcher (and all-around douche bag) who is the only pitcher I’ve ever seen charge a batter. During a stint with the Cubs, Farnsworth gave a batter some chin music, which the hitter didn’t like and gave Farnsworth a few words about it. At which point Farnsworth drops his glove and charges the batters box – dropping the guy with a couple of haymakers. A real class act. (http://youtu.be/9mt0_0k40t4)

Rick Ankiel – High prospect pitcher for St. Louis before he lost his mind and had to figure out how to play another position and hit the ball. Many people don’t remember Ankiel’s short pitching career (I have a 2000 card for him) – and only know him as a power hitting outfielder (hitting 25 homeruns in 2008). But Ankiel started out as a real-life Calvin 'Nuke' LaLoosh – a pitcher with a million dollar arm and a five-cent head. He was able to hit 97 mph with his fastball, and could strike out guys with a filthy breaking ball. But after a successful debut year, he lost his ability to get the ball over the plate, and quickly became more famous for wild pitches that sent sideline mascots and on-deck batters running for cover. (http://youtu.be/LR1CmqglVPU)

Bobby Valentine – Ex-baseball player turned colorful manager. My most memorable Bobby Valentine moment came during a 14-inning game in 1999 in which he was ejected in the 12^th inning, only to return to the dugout the next inning – wearing a disguise, a fake moustache and different hat. (http://www.walkoffwalk.com/pics/bobbyvalentinemoustache.jpg)

David Eckstein – Called the “X” factor. During his St. Louis years, Eckstein was a small, pesky leadoff hitter that always seemed to be in the middle of every Cardinal victory. (This was during those Cardinal 2004-2006 years.) Eckstein’s most famous trait was his “on-deck” antics. While waiting in the on-deck circle, Eckstein would be taking ridiculous, over the top, almost spastic-style swings – like some hyperactive kid with a wiffleball bat. (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/cover/featured/10554/index.htm)

Vladimir Guerrero – Famous for three things. No batting gloves, pine tar-covered batting helmet (which he uses on his hands to grip the bat), and the unbelievable ability to hit any baseball thrown at him. While guys like Manny Ramirez and Barry Bonds had built in radar for pitches that were in their sweet spot – Vladdy would swing at everything and could put anything over the fence. I once saw Guerrero hit a ball that bounced in the dirt before his bat hit it. The replay also showed that his bat scrapped the ground during the swing. (http://static.baseballrumormill.com/images/gallery/vladimir-guerrero-reaches-for-one.jpg)

Robin Ventura – As a cocky young player back in 1993, Ventura is most famous for smashing his face repeatedly against 46 year-old, Hall-of-Famer Nolan Ryan’s fist. Apparently, Ventura didn’t like getting hit by Ryan’s 100 mph fastball in the ribs, so decided to charge the mound and take pleasure in getting beat senseless by the old Texas pitcher. Guess he never heard the phrase – “you don’t mess with Texas”. (http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=12745349)

So these are just a few of the useless baseball facts kicking around in my head.

These events aren’t historically significant or tales engraved in baseball lore – but these stories belong to me, and are mine to share with my son.

And I know he’s enjoying hearing them. Joe sees Bobby Valentine on ESPN once in a while and shouts to me, “Hey Dad! Bobby Valentine’s on TV and he’s not wearing a disguise!”

History and March 14th

So, today's my birthday. I had a nice day. I'm forty-three years old. It's not really a very exciting number. Nothing about the number 43 jumps out at you. Age-related or not, it's a fairly dull number. If something costs $43 dollars, it's not terribly expensive. And if you sold something for $43 dollars, it probably wouldn't change your lifestyle.

There are ages that seems to cause a reaction in people when you say it. The big numbers – 30, 40, 50 – are always crowd pleasers, a reason to party.

41 is the number after 40, so you get to talk about how you're "officially in your 40's".

42 is a nice, neat number. Fun to say.

Even 45 has a nice ring to it.

43? Eh...Whatever.

I've always liked the day of my birth – March 14th. I've always liked to test people's historic knowledge by referring to my day as "the day before Ceasar was killed." A.K.A. "The Ides of March" (March 15th). Some people get it, some people don't.

Because this has always been the most interesting historic event "near" my birthday, I never thought to look and see if there was anything historically interesting on my actual birthday. So I found this website (http://www.historyorb.com/today/) that lists all of the significant world events for each calendar day.

As mentioned, on the day after my birthday, on March 15, 44 BC, Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, is betrayed and stabbed to death by Marcus Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March. That's a tough event to top.

Even the day before my birthday has an interesting event. On March 13 in 1519, Hernán Cortés lands in Mexico and formally claimed the land for the Spanish crown.

But on March 14th, I was only able to find two interesting historic events. Not as far back and history-shaping as Ceasar or Cortés, but I like them.

On March 14, 1954 – Henry "Hank" Aaron hit his first major league homerun. Albeit, it was during his very first professional exhibition game, and not during the regular season, thus not part of his overall final count of 755 home runs. But still – I'm glad to share the day.

On March 14, 1971, the Rolling Stones left England to avoid income taxes, fleeing to the South of France (where Keith Richard's had a house anyway) to record and release "Exile on Main Street". I never knew this.

So, going forward, I will share this day, March 14th, with Hank Aaron and Mick Jagger and the boys.

2009 - What I Remember

Another year, another blog post by Vincenzo. Some things you can always count on.

Whenever I looked back upon the year, I tend to whine and moan about how nothing has changed and how the "future" looks suspiciously like the past – with a few more technological time sucking devices in our hands. (Which is something to complain about. Why are we still using our hands? Why aren't we resting comfortably in some sort of virtual reality pod, doing everything with our minds?) Anyway...

Not this year. This year I'm going to bore you with the bright side of time travel (a.k.a. getting older).

Since the arrival of kids (9 years and counting) I have never really embraced New Year's eve and/or day. Often going to bed way before a drooling Dick Clark can awkwardly count down the last 10 seconds of his "Rocking Chair New Year's Eve" show into the next year. But this year our kids begged us to let them stay (and keep us) up until midnight. It would be their first time.

We started the evening off with a 3-hour Cineplex treat – seeing Avatar. (I won't give a movie review here, except to say it was mind blowing.) By the time we got home it was 10pm.

So with 2 hours to kill before midnight, we pulled out all the stops with a couple of board games, a couple of rounds of Wii Sport Resort (Christmas gift from Santa), snacks and drinks (Galliano for the adults) beside a roaring fireplace fire.

With a few minutes left in the year, waiting for the ball to drop on Times Square, I had a thought about what I would remember 2009 by. Nothing of great historic significance jumped out at me, and I felt a bit of disappointment (and another sarcastic blog post coming on). But I turned the question onto my family.

"What do you remember about 2009?" I asked them.

They all thought about it for a few seconds. Then Sammy, my youngest, answered. "Our vacation on the lake in New Hampshire," he said.

Joseph followed this with, "We built a tree fort."

Deb added, "And the new patio."

The list continued with other additions made around the house, other trips throughout the year (Virginia, Washington DC), and visits by our Australian cousins. Strange things like the "Tadpole/Frog/Mosquitoes" incident, and the Possum in the barn – made the list. As well as some sad things like Uncle Herbie dying or our friends/neighbors moving.

In the end, when the clock struck midnight and Dick Clark's smiling face signaled the coming of the new year – we had a list of the things we would remember about 2009. A full list that we could be proud of. Things that no one but us could appreciate.

So while as adults the years seem to be zipping past quicker and appear to be blending together – remember that through the eyes of a child those seemingly insignificant moments just might make their list of favorite moments of the year.

Welcome to 2009 - now get back to work!

Well – here we are. A new year. This one is called 2009.

Wow. How embarrassing. 2009 looks like 1999. Without the Y2K marketing hype. Nothing substantial has changed.

If there are aliens out in space monitoring Earth – I’m embarrassed for us.

Do you know how I got to work this morning? I drove. In traffic. The same way I’ve been getting to work for nearly 20 years now. After 20 years – hell – after 50 years! – people are still “driving” to work. In “traffic”!

At the very least we should have the majority of people on this planet telecommuting. In this age of instant communication, where I don’t even talk face-to-face with my co-workers who sit in offices on either side of my office, why do we still need to sit in an office? In a day-in-age where I spend 100% of my professional day on the phone, answering emails, texting messages, attending video conferences and webinars, why am I wasting valuable time sitting in traffic twice a day?

Okay, fine. Let’s say for argument’s sake that massive telecommuting will cause a breakdown in production quality as people end up taking advantage of working-from-home by sitting around on the sofa in their pajamas watching Oprah and Days of Our Lives most of the day.

So if we have to go to the office, or to a client, or to a vendor – why are we still driving cars? What’s the problem with teleporting? Christ… Star Trek theoretically invented it 40 years ago. We still can’t figure this out? It’s a simple process of breaking down the individual molecules of an object (like a human) and sending them across a beam of light (we have fiber optics, people!) and rebuilding the object (like a human) on the other side. Piece of cake! It’s like a fax machine.

There’s no excuse. We are further in the future than Star Trek depicted and yet we’re still driving cars around. On the ground! In traffic! It’s embarrassing! No wonder aliens haven’t invaded us. Our facilities are pathetic! It would be like us invading a 3rd world country, with no running water, no flushing toilets – it would be a miserable invasion for the invaders. (Kinda like us in Iraq.)

Fine. No telecommuting. No teleporting. Okay, so what have we done for commuter transportation since the automobile was invented? What have we improved upon since the hayday of cars in the 50s? In the 50s you use to be able to drive through brick walls and guardrails without so much as a dent in your reinforced steel bumper. Now – you can’t brush up against a shopping cart in a Walmart parking lot without it cracking your bumper and costing you $1400 to repair the entire fiberglass piece which wraps around the entire car.

Fuel efficiency? A 1959 Buick use to get about 9 miles to the gallon. Now, we all drive SUVs that get 12 miles to the gallon (or less when sitting in traffic). Great job.

What happened to the idea of “Mr. Fusion”? You know – cars using garbage as fuel? Yeah, yeah, I know – we need to build Flux Capacitors first. But a Flux Capacitor is for time travel, not fuel efficiency. Plus, time travel isn’t possible anyway. (If it was, some jackass from the future would have already told us about it. Unless they’ve imprisoned all of the jackasses, but I doubt it.)

How about mass transit? Please. Have you been on a commuter train lately? Talk about time travel. Commuter trains are like visiting the 1970s. Who does the interior decorating? The Brady Bunch?

Air travel? Go to Philadelphia airport. This will answer all of your air travel concerns. Spending time in the Philly airport is like watching a carnival of lobotomized lab monkeys reenact the tower scene in the movie “Airplane”. I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue!

Admit it – we are a pathetic civilization. We don’t try to fix the big problems. We fix thousands of useless problems. Instead of solving world hunger, instead of looking for alternative sources of fuel, instead of a better healthcare system, instead of better education, instead of better transportation, we have:

• Toothbrushes that don’t require you to move your arm
• Shammy cloths that can hold 2 gallons of water
• Super-putty that can fix coffee mugs and hold the weight of a 250 pound man
• Clothes for dogs and cats
• MP3 players the size of a credit card
• Video games that simulate sports and makes you sweat in front of your TV (go outside and play with your kids you lazy bastards)
• Books on CD (read a book you lazy bastards)
• Velcro shoelaces (….lazy bastards)

I’m sure we all own some of these shamefully unnecessary items. (I will NEVER own an electric toothbrush.) But as long as we continue to fall for the marketing scams and buy these items – society will never attempt to do anything substantial to speak of.

So here’s to another year of mediocrity – with the slight hope that we’ll evolve as a race ever so slightly and perhaps do something extraordinary.

A Day To Remember

For the first time in as long as I can remember – I am tremendously proud of America. I know there is a lot to be proud of in the long history of this country: Many valiant wars, humanitarian acts, moments of solidarity and demonstrations of individual freedoms that we all take for granted on a daily basis. But for the longest time (call it 6-8 years) I haven’t felt terribly proud of this country.

Perhaps it’s the decline in some of the basic needs and services that seem fairly important to a sophisticated and industrialized nation – such as healthcare and education. And the increased costs associated with them. Or perhaps it’s the way we’ve handling international relationships and crisis – with deceptive practices, poorly handled (or ignored) intelligence and cocky overconfidence (i.e, like a drunk, poorly educated, well-armed redneck in a Texas bar).

At the age of 40, I have officially voted in 6 presidential elections in my life. I did not miss one. But I can confidently say that I have never experienced any excitement about any presidential candidate in my life. I am a certified, card-carrying politic cynic and hater of all things related to politics. I firmly believe that all politicians are lying, conniving, double-talking, greedy scumbags.

I vote. But I vote without any hopefully expectations.

But on Tuesday night, while watching the presidential election unfold in front of my eyes, I – for the first time in my life, experienced the actual feeling (and firm belief) of political “hope” for this country. I have never felt excitement about a presidential candidate like I feel for Barack Obama. Obama is inspiring and hopeful. He instills a feeling of intelligent leadership. He says the things I want to hear from a potential President – including the concept that he works for me – not the financiers of his election or the organizations and big businesses that can chirp the most. And on a smaller, more personal level, I like the fact that he is a young, new politician, without the crutch of personal loyalty to major organizations that put him in power. We don’t need experience. We need intelligence and leadership.

Lastly, I really like the idea that our President has small children (like me) and understands the challenges of trying to raise a family in the best possible way.

When Obama was declared the winner on Tuesday night, and as I watched and listened to his acceptance speech, I felt the shadow of that gigantic, narcissistic, gluttonous, moronic douche bag – George W – finally begin to lift.

I could go on for hours wondering how this country managed to first put, then keep, this idiot in office. Most of the conversation would revolve around the concept that all of the Red states fall at the bottom of the education spectrum, while all of the Blue states house the highest educated people (noting that every Ivy League school falls in a Blue state). And because of this overwhelmingly large population of poorly educated Americans, the extreme Conservative platform is catering to their lack of broad thinking and target the issues that really have almost no effect on their daily lives (i.e., gun control, abortion). Could these people continue living (and live well) without their fully-automatic weapons and updated abortion laws? Yes (but they probably don’t think so). Could they continue living (and live well) without proper healthcare and education? No (but they probably don’t realize this). The Bush administration (and parts of the Conservative agenda) have operated with the tools of “fear” and “misinformation” in order to continue their service to the upper 10% of the financial food chain. This isn’t what America is about.

I continue to be proud to be an American, and I’m thankful to be able to raise my children here. But as America continues to fall behind other countries in education (#18 in the world, behind leaders like South Korea, Japan, Finland and Sweden), healthcare (#37 in the world, behind leaders like France, Italy and Singapore), and other important issues like global responsibilities, clean energy alternatives, economic stability/responsibility and many others – I can’t help but be disappointed in our leadership.

I’m still a political cynic. And who knows – in four years I might find out I’ve been bamboozled again. But for the moment I’m going to try to be positive and savor the extremely enjoyable idea that Hope, Integrity, Honesty and Intelligence has arrived at the helm of our country.

Back From The Dead and Plugged Back In

It’s been 2 years, 3 months and 24 days since my last entry. I went out to get a cup of coffee – and never came back.

See, after years of working for “the man” at a soul-sucking corporation, and bitching about it on my sub-pop culture website 2 Walls Webzine – I pulled the plug on both and went underground.

I quit everything and started an anti-establishment, anti-social, anti-whatever-you-got, revolutionary group called "Working For The Man Sucks, So Let's Quit Our Jobs and Be Consultants From Home". The acronym is kind of lame (WFTMSSLQOJABCFH) so it didn't really catch on. And truthfully – no one else joined, so getting rich on membership dues didn't work out either.

So I did the next next best thing – I opened a coffeehouse. (The next best thing would be a surf shop, but I don’t live near any surf.)

You know how everyone likes to talk about how they’d like to just quit their jobs and open up a martini bar or a coffeehouse or a fitness gym or a surf shop or anything that has a certain ‘coolness’ about owning? Well, I thought – why not just do it? Stop talking about it and take the leap.

So my wife and I did it. We left the corporate world for the gourmet coffee world and opened a hand-roasted, gourmet coffeehouse and espresso bar.

It was great. It turned out exactly how I envisioned it – complete with a high mahogany bar, plasma TVs in every corner, comfortable lounge seating, wireless Internet, local artwork hanging on the walls, local bands playing at night, people standing around the bar sipping mocha lattes and talking about politics, music, art and sports, or discussing the finer points of coffee bean origins and how to make the perfect espresso macchiato.

After six month we won local awards for our coffee, latte and espresso and started to move into corporate catering. All was good.

Except we weren’t making any money.

See, the parts I didn’t envision were the number of hours we needed to work in order to keep payroll down, or the high cost of goods and low profit margins, or the cost of insurance, or the crooked health inspectors, or the employee headaches, or the amount of after-hours paperwork (payroll, taxes, inventory, supplies, bills) I had to do.

All I wanted to do was sell some coffee. Be a coffeehouse owner. I never wanted to be an accountant, a tax attorney, an employee relations therapist, a janitor, a cook, a busboy, or a delivery boy. But these are all things I needed to do in order to try to make a profit in this business.

We plugged along for another year – but the revelation came when I realized I could never sit down and fully enjoy my own coffeehouse. There was always too much to do and never time to sit back and relax.

So after a year and a half, we tried to sell, but the economy had turned sour and no one was buying – so we walked away. Lost everything we invested.

But this isn’t a sad story. I have no regrets. I have good memories of a place I built and was proud of. I enjoyed the opportunity to see what business ownership and self-employment was like and have gained a greater respect for people who own their own business – especially in the retail sector.

So now I’m plugged back in and back working for “the man”. But “the man” I’m working for now isn’t so bad. I’m doing things that I’m good at and enjoy (web marketing related) and the stress level is low. Now if I can only convince “the man” to bring in a coffee grinder and industrial espresso machine things might just be perfect.

FIFA World Cup

I've got a giant plasma TV directly in front of my desk at work. Usually it's tuned to CNN or MSNBC, but this month it's "FIFA all day, every day". (Too many European's in the office. I'm going to scream "equal time" come baseball playoffs.)

Anyway, I've watched more soccer in the past 2 weeks then I have in my whole life. I've come to a couple of conclusions:

1. Soccer is the most athletic sport on the planet
2. Soccer is too difficult
3. Soccer is too polite

I'm really impressed with how athletic these players are. It is non-stop running and jumping and kicking and falling down. The field is huge – and the effort to just run up and down the field once at full speed would probably kill any baseball, football or basketball player (with the exception of a couple of football wide receivers). Yet these soccer players run it for 90 minutes.

But that's the problem. This game is too difficult. There's not enough scoring. Seeing a goal scored in soccer in real-time is like seeing a shooting star. The moment you look away, someone finally scores. You're forced to watch the replay 50 times, because the network is dying for something to highlight. To watch a game for 90 minutes and only see (or see it in replay) 1 goal is really disappointing.

Every soccer game I've seen is like this unbelievable pitchers' duel in baseball. It's very exciting and suspenseful, and as it gets closer to the end, the pressure to score is unbearable. But ultimately, pitchers' duels are boring. A pitchers' duel every blue moon is cool, but in the large scope of things people like scoring. They like homeruns and triples and stolen bases and plays-at-the-plate. Soccer needs more scoring.

I think soccer could benefit from an Arena Football-like makeover. Here's how:

1. Make the field smaller, it's way too big. Guys are exhausted by the time they get down the field, they barely have the energy to kick the ball into the goal.

2. Have less guys on the field. There's way too many guys running around. This is why no one can score. People keep getting in the way.

3. Maybe even get rid of the goalie. He just gets in the way. Basketball thrives without a single guy guarding the net. Just make it everyone's responsibility to guard the net whenever the ball is on your side of the field.

4. Run the clock backwards like everybody else. It's kind of distracting to look at the clock and see 20 minutes and not think there is only 20 minutes left in the game.

5. Stop with all the politeness. This is a sport - not a cocktail party. If a guy gives you an elbow in the face, don't let me catch you helping him up off the ground later in the game. Get your posse together and make sure he remembers to keep his elbows to himself next time with a good ol' fashion group tackle.

6. Lose the shiny shirts. I don't know how this will make soccer better, I just find all the shiny shirts really distracting.

Apologies to hardcore soccer fans. If you like, you're welcome to stop by my desk and blow a whistle and raise a red card over my head.