With props to bat-girl for explaining the concept, today's Boyfriend of the Day is Jonathan Sanchez!
Thankful Friday
I have a long story to tell, but no time to tell it. Many of you know the heart of it anyway: how sushi and sake on April 21, 1989 led to a first kiss and how that kiss led to… well… to our entire life together.
If I had time to tell it, here’s what you’d read between the lines of Chapter 1:
I’m grateful that Hugh put that cold beer on my hot, sweaty neck in the spring of ‘89.
I’m glad that Adam went home for Passover. And that I was just buzzed enough that balmy April evening to go get sushi with a rag-tag band of bike messengers instead of going home.
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And when we fast forward to the most recent chapter—the chapter where I’ve been stressed and glum for days and I’m sitting in front of my computer at work and from behind someone kisses me gently on the head and there’s Hugh with an extraordinary bouquet of flowers—in this chapter you’d learn that while I’m indifferent to grabbed-at-the-checkout, obligatory flowers, I am deeply, heart-spinningly grateful for flowers given at Just the Right Moment, for Just the Right Reasons.
You’d also learn that I’m unendingly thankful for long, strong hugs given selflessly and without expectation of anything in return. It’s really, really nice to have someone hold you when you’re sad, especially when he doesn't pester you to explain but when you try he listens.
Oh, man. If I were telling this story, you wouldn’t even have to read between the lines to know how grateful I was for my Sushi Day present, because I would spell it all out:
Hugh wrote me a song! He wrote the lyrics and the music and he played/sang all the tracks and he put it all together in one afternoon! And it’s hilarious, and it’s sweet, and it ROCKS! And here it is:
Thank you, Hugh! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Thankful Friday
Yesterday I emailed some incorrect information to 300 people.
So I got Person in Charge to give me the corrections, and I sent out a correction memo.
Almost instantly, I got four emails back telling me the corrections were wrong.
So I begged Person in Charge for corrections to the corrections, and then sent out a memo cleverly entitled, “Additional Corrections.”
Two seconds later, I got an email asking, “What about ABC and XYZ?”
So I… I…
I made Rad and Elaine look at pictures of Kai and Boo.
Have I ever mentioned that my dad, whose corporate career was really not that much different than my own, said to my mother as he lay dying, “But I never did anything!”?
Have I mentioned that one of the Thunder-dads, Steve Fainaru, just won a Pulitzer Prize? How freakin’ awesome is that?
Anyway. I just thought I should mention these things, so that when I skip town on a stolen 400-Four and end up in Baja you could maybe remember that I’d mentioned these things, connect some dots, and tell my story for me.
This period of overwork (for that's what's at the root of my sour funk) will surely pass. In the meantime, I am thankful for Section 130, Row 11—low to the field and securely in the warm, lazy-making sun. The Giants may have failed pretty miserably there on Wednesday, but it was a great perspective of the field: the vast green outfield streched away, away, tempting me to hop the low, padded fence and kiss the ground.
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So... since we're talking about reporting, and baseball, and since I haven't the time or energy to write more thankfulnesses, I offer you instead the Pirates team report I just turned in on deadline.
(First though, let me publicly pray that when I ran into Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Steve Fainaru at the baseball field the other day, said congratulations and bowed down to his greatness, and then joked that I was a reporter, too, because I was doing the reporting for E's Little Leauge team, PLEASE dear god tell me he couldn't hear my inane mumbling over the murmur of the field-side bleachers, or that if he heard me he knew that I was, well, DUH, totally joking. I mean, that'd be obvious right? Right?? BTW, Steve has also covered the Red Sox for the Globe and has co-wrtten a book called, "The Duke of Havana," which is being Amazoned to my house right this very minute.)
Anyway, meet the Pirates, optimized for league newsletter suitability:
The Best Thing
What’s So Great About Being a Pirate?
Forget that they’re undefeated as of this writing; there’s something bigger and better brewing with the 2008 Albany Pirates.
Picture this: the Pirates have had three scoreless innings and the Padres are gaining on them. There’s one down and nobody on in the top of the sixth. The mood could easily be desultory.
But when Gabriel Raulet steps up to the plate, a cheer rises from the dugout: “Let’s go, Gabriel, let’s go! Let’s go, Gabriel, let’s go!”
Gabriel punches a single through the infield, kicking off a four-hit, two-run rally.
Or this: Eli Dinneen comes in to pitch the bottom of the sixth against the Phillies. He throws four balls to two of the first three batters, and they both reach base on coach-pitch. But the Pirates rally behind Eli, and he blazes through the next two batters to end the game with a pair of strikeouts. Lev Corne, a AA veteran and spirited team player, leads the charge to congratulate Eli, and the whole team piles on to celebrate.
So see, the Pirates aren’t just winning, they’re turning into a baseball team.
“They’ve progressed amazingly well,” says Manager Jerry Schreibstein, “especially in terms of being in the proper place in different situations.”
Evidence? Brandon Ross playing the line at third and robbing a pull-hitting Padre of extra bases, Lev playing smart, heads-up second base and always hustling, George Elsbury denying a Padres’ slugger of a homerun by rifling the ball in from left field, and Owen Cooper consistently making crowd-pleasing plays, like a recent leap and tumble snag of a tough pop-up.
Shay Schreibstein has quickly learned to set the tone with stellar early inning pitching—his form, control and measured pace regularly putting the Pirates in charge—and Oliver Cooper, who attributes the Pirates winning ways to “teamwork and always trying your best,” is on a roll at the plate.
Gabriel, Cedric Epple and Gabe MacClure seem to get on base with solid hits every at-bat. Will Tokunga has been crushing the ball, and Kamran Hegler can’t make it to the batter’s box before the opposing team’s coaches start moving their outfielders back. No matter who’s at bat, stomping, fence-rattling cheers punctuate every hit.
“We’re always cheering each other on,” explains Eli, “and if you get something wrong, your teammates are nice about it.”
“It makes your teammates feel good,” Lev elaborates. “It builds their confidence and helps them get better.”
Wise words from the team’s AA veterans. But Cedric puts it pretty well, too: “The best part of being a Pirate,” he says confidently, “is being a Pirate.”
Mistake of the Week
Shoot! I scared my little brother with this morning's post about our big brother. So let me explain a bit more than 100 words allowed. My big bro, John, has been having mysterious symptoms: numb fingers, toes and tongue; really bad pain in one arm/wrist/hand. And nobody can figure out what's wrong. So he's having all sorts of tests and being referred from one specialist to another, etc., etc., and it really sucks.
And it's scary.
But not that scary.
Scary enough to warrant heavy doses of psychic energy— hoping, wishing, praying, whatever—that I like to believe can help prevent anything from being seriously wrong.
But not scary in a desperate, something really is seriously wrong sort of way.
In other words, John is O.K.! Sorry if my post was alarming to John's fanbase. Or John himself.
Word Count Wednesday
I was just calling to see how he was doing, but then my throat tightened up and I realized I was honest-to-god worried.
He didn’t pick up. I left a message and glanced at the rearview mirror. He’s 500 miles away, but there he was, in sunglasses, driving the car behind me. What did it mean that his doppelganger was there in my rearview mirror?
Apparently it was a good sign; he called back feeling good and sounding very John-like.
And now my prayers are less plaintive and more optimistic: watch over him, lord, and keep him safe and well.
~ 100 words ~
Word Count Wednesday
Officially, the Giants are 3-6, but they’re 2-0 on my watch. I had to miss the first six games; Tuesday night they finally had a game I could be home for.
Tim Lincecum gets all the credit for the way he pitched Tuesday night, but I’m taking some of the credit for Hennessey late in the game and Bengie’s two homeruns.
And tonight’s win? Sanchez rocked, and the bullpen kicked ass. But I helped Fred Lewis throw Giles out at the plate, and I had a little something to do with Ortmeier’s walk-off RBI.
Yep. We’re 2-0.
Top Ten Tuesday
I have just one question for you this morning.
If you're the first to respond, answer my question and ask a question of your own.
Subsequent commenters: answer both/all questions in the most recent comment, and then add one of your own.
Here's my question:
1. If someone gave you a free round-trip plane ticket to anywhere, leaving tomorrow and coming back in three weeks, where would you go?
Thankful Friday (even though it's Saturday)
Jen died a year ago today.
I wake up and take a shower.
A year ago.
I wake Eli and Kai by lying on the mattress with them and snuggling up to E.
One whole year.
I wake Taavi the same way. He is so warm and cuddly. His cheeks are sweet, soft. I close my eyes and throw an arm over him.
It's so hard to reconcile being here and Jen not being there.
My own mortality is so real when I think of Jen. It's a strange, sad feeling, this certain knowledge that any one of us could die any day; any one of us could go to the doctor and the news could be bad--
--and so it's good to remember Thankful Friday, but last week and yesterday it hasn't been in me. So instead, here's Lou Gehrig's famous farewell speech, given at Yankee Stadium in 1939, after he'd been forced into retirement by the disease that would kill him a few years later:
It's a well-known speech, of course, but I'd never heard or read more than a few lines of it. Reading it with the anniversary of Jen's death approaching, with spring springing and opening day around the corner, it sunk in real deep."Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break. Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.
Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky.
When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift — that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body — it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed - that's the finest I know.
So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you."
Top Ten Tuesday
"I spy, with my little eye, somethin'... somethin'... BLUE."
The way Taavi spies with his little eye, the way he says the words and the way he thinks so hard you can see it (like Winnie the Pooh); and the way he delights in the wrong guesses and the eventual right one, it just makes me giddy.
What's good in life?
Taavi playing I Spy!
There was an interesting article in Salon the other day about Parenting, Inc., a book about "the clever, bizarre and sometimes insidious ways that marketers capitalize on today's parents' fears and aspirations for their children."
And how! Hugh and I, thanks to our laissez-faire parenting style combined with a decided lack of disposable income, have found it real easy to steer clear of designer baby clothes and so-hip tees, how-to-be-a-parent classes and hundred dollar strollers.
(Yes, I know there are $800+ strollers, but $100 would have been a stretch for us. We were more the garage-sale, one-crooked wheel-is-not-so-bad types or, more often, the "1, 2, 3 -- JUMP!" and carry-'em on your shoulders types. Which is much more conducive than a stroller, by the way, for going to a crowded San Francisco restaurant, hopping on the bus, clambering up a rocky hillside or walking along the beach.)
One thing the article touched on was how all the high-tech, interactive, "give your kid every advantage by building his brain" toys seem to have supplanted all the simple, do-it-yourself toys & things, like Legos and trucks and dolls and balls and paper and crayons.
If you have kids, you've seen the box-is-better-than-the-present phenomenon, and/or the amazing power of sticks, stones and puddles, and/or the wonder of I Spy.
It's pretty awesome, and you see it every day if you pay attention. The other night I was reading in bed and could could hear the thwack of hard surface on floor and Taavi talking to himself and some other mysterious noises. So I asked him what he was doing.
- I'm playin'.
- Playing with what?
- With a marble and a stick and the Tick.
- What? Did you say a marble and a stick and the Tick?
- Yeah. I'm playin' with a marble and a stick and the Tick.
And it was very difficult to tear him away from the marble, the stick and the Tick and get him to go to bed.
So, anyway, I was kind of wondering if you want to play?
I Spy wouldn't work so well, but how about 20 Questions?
I am thinking of a thin (something that I spy with my little eye, right here, right now), and you are invited to ask me yes or no questions (one at a time, please) until you figure it out.
Whoever gets it right gets a prize -- even if it takes more than 20 questions. Seriously... look what I sent Debbie A after she won my Word Geek Challenge (the book, not the yummy dessert):
So get asking! (This is for for you, Cyril, quick and easy!)
