Messages From The Muse, Heartline Rolls, Highway Calls & Various Other News
An old friend of mine recently referred to me as a baseball genius. My response was to thank him, but let him know I am no genius. Just merely a man who found a way to get through some tough times via something I enjoy. There’s nothing supernatural about plotting a course on a map, starting the engine of your mode of transportation and making your way to your desired point of interest. However, there is a great deal of work involved, be it in the form that earns one the means to fund such a venture or the planning leading up to it.
A similar sort of exchange came surprisingly from who I consider the inspiration for my world roaming walk-a-bouts at younger age not revolving around the game of baseball. Somewhere in our conversations I mentioned my next outing to the park to her which was met with a statement that it must be nice to just up and travel to Maryland and that having kids makes it extremely hard to be spontaneous. Ah, spontaneity. The blessing and curse that it can be.
Truth is there is far less spontaneity at the heart of my excursions than one might think. There is a great deal of planning and plotting that comes long before the key touches the ignition of any vehicle used to get to the awaiting ticket counter and turnstile leading to a box seat at the various locations I head toward for an afternoon in the sun or night under the lights. Spring Training 2012 in Arizona for example, was months of advanced planning starting in December with game ticket purchases, three months before games were set to take place. The spontaneity occurs mostly once the arrival at the games has taken place. Before and during the transport to are spent with preparation and execution nearing levels of strategy equal to my days patrolling as a scout with the U.S. Army’s 1-7 Cav. I wish it were as easy as simply punching an address into a GPS and putting the pedal down. However, depending on the extent of stay and distance to my destination logistics often come into play sometimes weeks and months before an umpire ever proclaims “Play Ball”.
It seems rather fitting these points of view of my peers come following my most recent successful attempt of attending two games in two states on the same day in Altoona, Pennsylvania and Eastlake, Ohio, the first such feat since doing so in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Columbus, Ohio in 2011. The first attempt back then was out of arrogance with this year’s version being all in the name of minor league baseball and the Altoona Curve’s famous landmark right field roller coaster as the primary focus.
Interestingly enough, the events throughout the duration of this baseball journey has been much like a roller coaster ride. Reflecting back upon the first day out, the experience began with great similarities to a young boy at an amusement park that wanted to brave the most terrifying coaster there was to offer, yet was nervous and apprehensive all the while. I recall the morning of my first game of this now three seasons of wondering and wandering. How I was sitting nervously and frantic on the edge of a bed in a hotel in Richmond Hills, Georgia, hours and miles away from Steinbrenner Field in Tampa on the phone with my father stating how I was okay and perhaps I would just come back to Ohio. I was like teenage boy who had been sweet talked into the long line of a behemoth roller coaster by the prettiest girl in school hoping to impress her with my bravery but internally shaking at the knees of the impending twists and turns and peaks and valleys of the ride awaiting ahead. I was ready to back out long before the ride had even started and head for the safety of the carousel or Ferris wheel ride of home. However, the reality for me was it wasn’t a kiss the girl at the top of the Ferris wheel kind of point in my life. i needed to strap in and just plunge and deal with the screams and vomit that may lie ahead. Besides, no one has ever got the prom queen riding the bumper cars in the amusement park of life.
57 games, three seasons, and a travel pattern that has spanned over 15,000 miles, the ride is still going up and down and round and round. On the eve of yet another potential two games in two states on the same day outing, it’s difficult not to feel joy in the experience that the rickety rails of highway and airline travel have afforded me. From a crack hotel in Florida featuring nightly visits and conversations with strippers to pass the time to five-star hotels and airport terminal chit-chat about Elmore Leonard novels with Dodgers icon Vin Scully. From rented lover and rented beach-side apartment to rental cars and moments and meetings with my childhood heroes. Just when the ride seems it’s coming to a slowing pace or end, another turn reveals another ascension to an unseen view.
Sometimes I want the ride to end, believe it or not. I want someone to say stop. I want the pretty girl in line to ask for me to simply win her a stuffed animal at a game of chance along the midway or perhaps have a bit of cotton candy during a stroll around this amusement park called life. But as I sit on the ride I realize, there’s no comparison between the rush of the ride and a sugar rush. There’s no screaming at the sight of a stuffed teddy bear. That’s reserved for the thrust into the corkscrew of the next turn ahead, strapped in, legs suspended, while hanging on for dear life white knuckling upon the ride.
The Altoona Curve’s obscure outfield backdrop suits this pursuit indeed as my travels in the pursuit of baseball nirvana see me consistently winding up and down the elevated peaks and deeply set valleys of Appalachia most often in my routes to the ballparks I have come to know and have yet to see. This high and low journey rooted in the terrain of my home, my carousel in the amusement park of the vast American landscape. The next peak on the ride ahead appears to be Delaware and Maryland. And surely along the way, I’ll think of that girl in the line again and hoping the ride will one day stop as the conductor finally hits the switch and I’ll coast along gently on the break run. But as surely as those thoughts will come, soon too I will realize, that deep down I am the conductor after all and there is no one waiting in line for the ride. The stretch of track ahead I thought was an end is a thrust line and the next peak is up ahead. It’s a long way down, so it’s best to just throw up my arms and scream at the top of my lungs across Hell and creation for another hot dog and a handshake.
Until next time….
April’s Fool, Dead Raccoons, & Summer In B Minor
It’s 3:39 a.m. and I’m awake planning a potential expedition to Michigan for a two city Sunday baseball extravaganza – weather and work permitting. May has arrived and the month of April has showered me with five outings to various minor league parks across the Midwest. 2013. Season three of “the madness”. Grand Rapids and Lansing are calling me, that is if the folks at the office don’t call me first.
Much has changed since the last real posting. Florida is a mere memory. Chalk it up as experience and bad manufacturing by the American automobile industry. Ironic the next destination could be to Michigan in an old Ford pick up truck as opposed to the original theories posted back in December. But then again, the beach is boring and you should never live where you vacation. It’s like eating cake for dinner everyday. Sure it sounds fun, but before you know it your blood pressure is through the roof and you’re bloated and sluggish. Cake is overrated and so is the sunny place for shady people. But I digress.
In between jaunts to Charleston, West Virginia, Akron, Toledo, Dayton, and Indianapolis, I’ve been dreaming of dead raccoons and former acquaintances. It doesn’t matter really, but between the park and work, I’ve been on the road a lot. I’ve seen a lot of dead raccoons. As for the former acquaintances, not so much. Dream analysis or interpretation defines dreaming of raccoons means you’re being deceived by someone or something. The deception I’ve seen of late is that baseball belongs in the Midwest and Northeast portions of the United States during the month of April. A revisit to Appalachian Power Park in Charleston, WV being the exception, every other visit to a stadium this season thus far has been wrought with cold or rain. With no Spring Training to start this season’s road ramblings, these locations served as somewhat of a trial run to see if I still had the knack for this thing I do this time of year.
I’m calling this year’s journey “A Summer In B Minor”. And if you know anything about music, you know that the B Minor key is the key of utter despair or the acceptance of fate and very gentle complaint. Fitting as despair to a large degree is what began these treks not so long ago, yet the transformation of it into absolute acceptance of this way about the world of professional baseball has been a magnificent evolution. It’s time I started writing about it again. There is no despair or melancholy regarding my third season of this. In fact, it’s perhaps the first time in a long time, going to games has been pure fun. Because I can. Because I said I would. Because I started something, and I’d like to finish it.
Back in November, I started kicking around the idea of eventually coming back north one day and picking up where I left off with this summer baseball expedition I started in 2011. However, when the day came I wanted to put a spin on it and purposely avoid the MLB parks I’d yet to visit and do a season in the minors. The idea first came during a game in 2012 in Louisville, KY over a bottle of Mountain Dew and a fried bologna sandwich. The thought hit me like a bullet to the head, that in no Major League venue could you find this sort of experience, the basic nature of the game combined with basic sort of delicacies. When my original plans for the 2013 season were altered, which were centered around Grapefruit League Spring Training, World Baseball Classic, and the east coast of the state Florida, my life was forced to return to basics in a huge sense. Being a man with a serious love for the game ever-present, a refined outlook on the joy of summers on the highway and in the stands in my spare time, and a goal to keep this going at a reasonable cost ($158.50 in cost for all 20 tickets…I’ve paid $170 for a single game at two different points over the course of doing this) and attainable list of destinations, that idea has begun to take shape.
For me, 2013 is about getting back to basics and that means it’s back to baseball, beyond the palm trees and desert sand, the massiveness of the Major Leagues, trading that in for the venues and small towns found through the hills of Appalachia and across the Midwest and around the bordering states of home. – It’s good to finally be back.
Until next time…
Farewell, Black Dog
It’s been a year since I wrote the following;
WELCOME HOME, BLACK DOG – November 21st, 2011
“I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.”
–H. L. Mencken
I have very little use for anyone who holds the sentiment of the above statement. To lack the intelligence or ability to see the avenues into one’s third eye which are provided via sport and hold an elitist view as a result is not only a master of blatant contradictions but also a fascist. Then again, Mencken also made statements that would make any Nazi grin. And I’m not using these terms in the way a kid with ninety-thousand dollars in student loans for a six-year that should’ve been two-year degree in theater at a public university camped out at an anti-Wall Street rally would, but in their literal sense. Mencken was an anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer. Non-sports fans and those who scoff at the threat of physical contact in the name of competition take note.
The season is long ended and I’ve lacked the ability to be long-winded of late. I’ve not yet progressed in this tale to the moments in Milwaukee and Denver or waking up in that Texas hotel to search for pancakes while Game 7 of the World Series took place between the Texas Rangers and St. Louis Cardinals far and away in Missouri and surprisingly unobserved by me. I’d gone missing from my church the place where I healed my hurts, just like the Rangers offense. I’ve traded my tickets and trips to the cathedrals with those to the time clock, the classroom, the batting cage, late night illegal streams of Welsh rugby and professional wrestling pay-per-views, and the soccer pitch. The lack of baseball brings out what I’ve called “the black dog” for years. It’s a weird state, when things get strange. A seasonal depression not associated with the typical four seasons, but rather the big four sports. It’s a withdrawal created by being inundated with football, basketball, and hockey that I could only imagine equals that of the coming off of a weekend cocaine or sex binge. My judgement becomes impaired and that’s when the dog bites back. Weird reaches its pinnacle and I could end up flying off the handle and very well find myself manufacturing thoughts of trips to some Mexican League game only to wake up the next day to buy luxury automobiles, go grocery shopping, and start quilting and building ships in bottles. Or worse, becoming interested in Republican politics, questioning why no one else I know finds Ron Paul to be so wonderfully insane and a potentially the leader of the free world.
Oddly enough, one year later, we’re on the eve of an election. The future of the country is hanging in the balance and I’m hold up in an apartment in Sarasota, Florida. Which is unfortunately, Republican turf. By this time tomorrow, I could be planning a move to Cuba, folks. I’d much rather live in a communist country than one led by Mitt Romney. But I digress.
The real purpose of this writing tonight is I’ve noticed something. The World Series has long come and gone and baseball is the furthest thing from my mind. The crinkled and torn map tucked away in my wallet is still safely placed and ready to marked upon come March, however, I’m not actually sure I will. The black dog is missing and I’m not particularly too tore up over it.
I had no intentions of staying here. I wanted a brief stretch of beaches and baseball in the second venture to the sunny place for shady people, and that’s all. But along came a little piece of land and some horses and all that changed.
Something is happening here and frankly 2013 Grapefruit League Spring Training might very well be a day off jaunt to the park rather than another quest to check a list, make a few collages, and write a few paragraphs. Chapter 3 in this accidental stroke of brilliance has transformed into something more than a life in pursuit of the game, it’s simply become a life. Day to day. Hour to hour. Smile to smile.
Farewell, Black Dog.
Until next time…
Exile In A Sunny Place For Shady People
Defeat. Failure. Disappointment. Lose.
These have been the greatest gifts I have ever received. Without these simple things, I would not have had the opportunity to be currently jamming away on this keyboard at 2:28 in the morning in an apartment in a neighborhood in Florida that quite frankly, I don’t always feel at home in. Let’s just say, I wasn’t raised in this tax bracket.
However, on my drive home yesterday from my second of two games I attended, in Bradenton and Port Charlotte, I got a feeling I hadn’t felt since returning from Milwaukee last October following Game 2 of the National League Division Series between the Brewers and Diamondbacks. A calming clarity to the fact that the end to the season was upon me, but this adventure or quest to see the game of baseball in various locations across the country and perhaps world, was one without end or resolve.
When this idea came about it was one born from despair and the desire to escape that feeling. Strangely enough, I came to this very state to start it all off, I never imagined I’d one day be living here making daily commutes driving up and down the very highway I once tried to use as an escape route. Back then I came here to try not to die, this time I’m here to write, watch baseball, and just live.
It’s not all sunshine. Inside the cul de sacs and safety and security of these air-conditioned palm tree infested gated communities with tennis courts and private members only gyms, I’ve lived just as I might in the hotel rooms I’d lay my head down at while chasing the darkness to the various games prior to coming here, humble, in solitude, considering my next move and destination. But more often than not, I focus solely on the day. Which is a bit new to me, believe it or not.
The 2012 baseball season is winding down right before my eyes. Typically, there comes a long and dreadful waiting period for its return that if you’ve paid attention to anything I’ve written regarding it before I call “The Black Dog”, but as I mentioned before instead of the doom and gloom of the impending close to the season I feel at ease. In fact, I even went so far after yesterday’s game to text my sister, “I feel at peace today.” Perhaps the sunshine of Florida has chased the dog away, leaving it a stray mutt that will face the cold Ohio winter alone this year during the offseason. One can only hope.
I haven’t written much publicly this season as I had done in the past, but I can say that I have not abandoned the desire to chronicle all this for potential public consumption. And with a needed visit to Marlins Park and a World Baseball Classic Qualifying Tournament Championship ticket hanging on my bulletin board, the goal I set of 30 games for the 2012 season will not only be achieved but surpassed, so there is far more to see and do before I’m truly able to process what I’ve seen and done since stepping on the plane to see Yu Darvish pitch in Arizona back in March of this year.
Much has changed since March of 2011, when this whole thing started in Tampa with the New York Yankees. It’s not just a way to feel better or to prove someone wrong who said I couldn’t do it. It’s not just about the game. It’s not just about making the artwork I do following the visits, or the photos I take or the people I meet. It’s everything to me. It’s not resolution or a home I’ve been looking for at all. It’s the comfort of it all, knowing this will never really end. I can’t stop. Even when it’s not being played, the game goes on. In my mind, in a frame on my wall, in these words I write. I live in my own heaven. It’s pretty magnificent.
But even as I write this, I know 2013 will be here before we know it. The Baltimore Orioles, currently in a fight for the American League East title, will arrive here in Sarasota to train and this whole cycle will begin again. “Soon…”, as I often say, will once again become “now” and the destinations will be picked and performed and give birth to another round of photos, memories, moments, and time capsule in collage form I’ll hang upon the wall to remind me who I am and where I’ve been.
Love is cyclical. It comes. It goes. It comes again. And I truly love this game.
Until next time…
A Pirate’s Life For Me
18 June 12
I have once again returned to the scene of the crime. I imagine it’s either a character flaw or perhaps I am as delusional as everyone has said of late, but nonetheless, I have chosen willingly to descend into the Sun Belt in search of something and have done so in the name of baseball.
Just a mere four days ago I packed as much as could in the back of my Cadillac and bolted southeastern Ohio like a man making a jailbreak. And in between the plethora of Ohio license plates I saw heading in a similar direction, the mere three gas stops, and the flashbacks of my previous travels that is the highlight reel ever-present in my mind during the sixteen and a half hours it took to arrive at my new home in Sarasota, Florida I am wondering if it’s even believable to use the game as an excuse for my restless roaming anymore? I don’t know where I’m headed next or first for that matter, I just know where I am right now. Likewise, I know I haven’t done this in quite sometime, writing that is. It’s been an odd time since coming back from Arizona to say the least. The Desert Search for Baseball Allah that was Spring Training in Phoenix turned out to be perhaps too perfect in hindsight. You set a bar like that by mere random means, it’s very hard to duplicate. And that’s definitely something I don’t ever want to do with this, try to relive previous trips or time periods. However, that statement in and of itself is a bit hypocritical given my current location. Let’s just say there’s a lot of familiarity here, and it’s downright perfect yet unbelievably the potential for utter disaster. Maybe I believe in fairy tales, maybe I shouldn’t.
Whatever happens here, the least should involve the sixteen professional baseball teams that reside in this state. I’m yet to determine or consider what order those visits will come in. But I imagine the most sensible would be the Bradenton Marauders located a mere 13 miles from here.
Until next time…
On My Way To The Cage
It seems you’ve left out the most important part
Seems you’ve left out every ounce of a forgotten name
The constant
In a downward spiral
And in their time of rising you get buried away
Seems she holds all titles known to man
Seems you’re mediocre in comparison
Retired thoughts
Now living life like on a highlight reel
But in my time of rising you get buried away
The rain is falling down
The lightning crashes
As we turn the page
I trade my confinement for a cage
Where wood strikes leather
Knuckles lined up
Shut you the fuck up
Shut it the fuck out
This game is violent and beautiful
Just like you
Tonight I’m Roy Hobbs and The Hitman
Rolled up into one
Just don’t strike out
Everyone is watching
But I’m the only one here
There’s no place like home
There’s no place like home
There’s no place like home
Inside the box
Smack the pill
And when it connects
I disconnect
From everything you are
The Gridlock of March Madness, Returning To The Scene Of A Crime, & Why Kenny Chesney Owes Me $20.
I found myself yesterday driving in a moving 100 car pile-up that I blamed on “the madness” of March that is known as the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. It was actually traffic for a Kenny Chesney concert at Raymond James Stadium, which forced me to park at some guys house across from George Steinbrenner Field and cost me $20 dollars when regular stadium parking is typically $10. So if you see Kenny Chesney, tell him he owes me money and that I enjoyed his ESPN 30 for 30 documentary.
I’m submerged in a virtual sports all you can eat buffet here in Tampa, where over the past week I’ve been in the backyard of the East Region schedule, the Tampa Bay Lightning v. Ottawa Senators, and of course New York Yankees spring training. Between these factors, the spring break crowd, general high traffic flow, and road construction that has popped up even in the short time I’ve been here, driving in this town has become the only negative part of the journey. Driving in Tampa has earned its place in my heart as both fun and inherently evil. Until recently, the phrase taking turns three-wide bumper to bumper at high speeds was something I only associated with the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, that was until I began normal commutes from East Fowler to MLK Blvd. via I-275 South.
The madness is permeating from the highways to the broadcast booths. Even Greg Gumbel is struck with the woes of it, welcoming viewers to “ESPN” on the broadcast I was watching on CBS. It’s an outbreak that began on Thursday March 17th, which is why I like many others have quarantined myself indoors keeping updated on the results of games waiting for the virus to pass sometime in early April. Of course, I’ll be heading back to Ohio tomorrow which is a land full of people hoping that in a few short hours George Mason isn’t sporting the slipper much as they did in 2006, but it’s hard for even I the casual fan/gambler to see Ohio State not winning a virtual home game in Cleveland, Ohio against a team whose regular season schedule features nowhere near the amount of wins against current tournament teams as Ohio State can boast having. I also think the Buckeyes are too deep for George Mason in regards to their bench. And I’m not even a Buckeye fan, in fact I’d say it wouldn’t be a stretch to say I hate Ohio State. Just ask the guy who asked me about Jim Tressel during the recent Yankees and Twins game I attended.
Which is of course another topic for another time…
Lost in all the NCAA’s though is the NIT and I only bring it up because Kent State just paid me well on 9/5 odds with their win over Fairfield. The poor NIT is like the only child who got all the attention for years until its parents decided to have another kid who turned out to be way more attractive, smarter, and loved by millions. The NIT is Khloe Kardashian folks, making the NCAA tourney Kim. Which one would you rather be in, honestly? Perhaps that’s a bit crass, but face it, no one cares about Kent St., Virginia Tech, or any other team that may end up heading to Madison Square Garden and winning it all save the teams involved and the folks like myself needing a fix before the “real” games we’re wagering on start.
The actions everywhere if you’re looking for it right now. Hell, I could walk outside my room right now and get some “action” standing on Nebraska Ave, where the lovely Keegan, a new friend I’ve made here, told me she saw a prostitute get punched into the concrete of an underpass while walking with a man, during her drive over to visit me. That’s not any action I’m looking for obviously, I’m talking about the kind that comes with the tournament with respect to gambling which is why I feel the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is one of the best sporting events known to man.
A basketball game in and of itself is much like auto racing for the casual fan, which is to say you only need to watch the final two minutes of either event in order to see what’s important. But what the tournament format provides in the way of gambling and online brackets and office pools is rooting interest and viewership that is incomparable to any other sporting event, aside from perhaps the Super Bowl or Kentucky Derby. I feel it’s safe to say that regarding these events for some viewers and passers-by it’s important who wins as long as the winner is them as they mark off their brackets game by game and round by round. I’ve never met anyone who is solely a college basketball fan for the sake basketball. Then again, I don’t get to Kentucky as much I’d like anymore.
I too used to be a bracketeer, for lack of a better term. But I’ve found that it’s far more enjoyable to watch the games when my wagers are done on individual game basis and not by trying to predict a sole champion from a field of teams over a tournament that takes nearly a month to play as if I were some Nostradamus of the hardwood. Which I am not by any means. It’s been far more profitable as well.
Such is life. In my experience it’s far better to live game to game and day-to-day than to attempt try to envision where you’re going to be standing a month from now. Take the single bracket I’ve filled out on ESPN.com for example, as of right now with several games remaining on today’s schedule, I’ve correctly picked only 32 of the 41 games played thus far in the tournament. That’s 78% and not bringing home any grand prize. But on the wagers I’ve made on teams for the straight- up win where fractional odds were available on an individual basis game to game and round to round I’m currently, 19-4 correctly picking 82% of the games.
Making money on the NCAA in the first few rounds is seemingly easy due to the chalk. It’s the same reason I occasionally bet major professional tennis tournaments. Tops seeds usually hold, it’s the later rounds where the research and the risk come in to play. Or perhaps the better word is the work. Anyone can fill out a bracket and win a few dollars in an office pool. There’s no talent or skill in it. It requires little more than a pen, pencil, or click of a mouse.
Live betting is just that lively. Anyone can fill out a bracket and accumulate enough points to make up for mistakes in the late rounds. Brackets provide a sense of security that single game bets don’t.
Much like the song played at the end of it all, single game wagering is “One Shining Moment”. You’re right or your wrong. You live and die by your choices. That’s not just sports or gambling, that’s life. It’s not meant to be prognosticated and picked out in stages, it’s day-to-day, game to game, filled with upsets, dominating performances, last second heartbreak and drives through the lane to victory.
The madness has arrived. Survive and advance. True, indeed.
Until next time…
Diary Of A Mad Fan 