What do I do? Why, I'm a . . .

In the last eight months there have been several occasions on which I've had to name my occupation. Forms at the doctor's office. Surveys. Applications for this or that. It used to be easy. I'd write "lawyer" or, if I was feeling a tad pretentious that day, "attorney." It's not as easy anymore.

The most technically correct term for what I do and what I am is probably "blogger." But for as much as I love and defend the fine art of blogging, the title "blogger" sounds a bit, I dunno, silly. And even if didn't sound silly it's not always a useful term. Sure, anyone reading this or generally surfing around the web will be cool with it, but anyone who isn't at least moderately Internet savvy -- which is a lot more people than you may realize -- has trouble with the term. If they've heard it at all, it probably was used in some bullshit newspaper trend piece about how the lowering of journalistic standards is ushering in the End Times. If they haven't heard the term it takes so much time to explain what I do that the thumbnailing purpose of a title is defeated anyway.

I've toyed with "writer," but that's even more pretentious than "attorney."  For one thing it's vague. What do you write? Are you a writer of novels? Children's books? Instruction manuals for washing machines? Saying you're a "writer" is less a description of one's occupation than it is a lifestyle statement. A person who says that they're "a writer" -- and nothing more -- is usually trying to tell you that they're an intellectually-inclined soul who wears interesting and/or complicated glasses, doesn't hold up all that well when their political assumptions are challenged and likes jazz a little too much. Or they're trying to get laid. Either way, the only people who can really get away with calling themselves "writers" are people who have written a novel, a thin volume of half-decent poetry and an interesting though ultimately rejected screenplay. The rest of us are poseurs.

That led me to "baseball writer." First time I whipped that one out, however, I was asked which team I covered and why I wasn't at the ballpark that night. That aside, it's the best I had been able to come up with and -- after explaining that I'm closer to being a columnist than a beat writer -- it satisfies most people.

But it's not perfect. No, the closest to perfect is a description my friend Ethan came up with this morning:

I just realized: You're a DJ for the baseball news.  You don't create the news;  you aren't the news;  you just riff on the news.  You keep the music (news) going.  You know you have to play what's hot, but it's your mix and your patter, and you throw in an oldie or an obscure Smiths single when you want to, dammit.

I've taken to telling people that I've only had two jobs I've ever liked.  Turns out they were the same job all along.

How to Become a Famous Blogger

The bike wreck

I recently pulled my bike out of storage for the first time in five years. Kids and work and laziness and everything else kept me from riding it, but now I'm back in the saddle as it were.  After a few short warm up rides I've done a 28 mile trail ride a few times. I'll probably keep doing that most weekends until the weather gets cold. I'm happy to be cranking again, at least in my own modest, flat-terrain, not-so-fast way.

There was a time when I rode more often. Between 1998 and 2003 I tried to do a substantial ride once or twice a week if I could. Nothing serious, really -- maybe 20 miles here or there -- but enough to keep the head clear and to keep sloth and obesity at bay. I rode much more seriously when I was in college, though, often doing 30 miles or more a couple times a week in addition to my usual riding around campus thing. At least until the bike wreck.

It was the summer of 1994. Unlike the previous summer when I worked two jobs and tried my best to keep busy, the summer of '94 was all about drinking beer -- I had just turned 21 -- throwing a baseball around and generally goofing off. I had a job at the Ohio State bookstore, but it wasn't particularly stressful. I worked at the office supplies counter. If I didn't feel like going in on any given day, I just didn't. If I felt like leaving two hours early on a given day, I just did. I'm still not sure how I got away with that.

I used my ample free time to ride around Columbus. Sometimes it was a purposeful ride on a trail. Sometimes it was a long stamina-builder out in the country. Sometimes -- usually with my friend Todd -- it was just riding aimlessly all over the city. We'd head downtown and ride down parking garage ramps. One time we rode through a hotel lobby and across a pedestrian walkway over High Street. Wherever it was, and whether I was with Todd or not, rare was the day when I didn't ride somewhere.

August 21st was going to be a great day. It was a Sunday, and I had tickets to see Bob Dylan at the Ohio State fair that evening. My first Dylan show, and I had been looking forward to it for a long time.  Figuring I couldn't just wait around all day, I decided to kill some time with a ride.  I hit the trial that follows the Olentangy river up to Worthington and back. It had rained the night before and there were a lot of puddles on the trail. I took things slower than usual from campus up to Worthington, but by the time I turned around to come home I was getting pretty confident. Too confident, it turned out.

I was somewhere between Antrim Lake and Whetstone Park, buzzing along at full speed, when I hit a puddle that turned out to be more mud than water. My bike slid out from under me but I kept going. As I hurtled head first -- and, alas, helmetless -- towards the pavement, I didn't panic. I didn't go blank. My life didn't flash before my eyes. Rather, I simply had this casual, almost lazy thought that more or less went "well, isn't THIS fucking great." I was more disgusted with myself than anything.

I don't think I went unconscious, but I don't remember the impact either. I was laying on my side, not yet feeling any pain, and feeling an immediate, inexplicable need to get back up. I struggled to my knees and then to my feet and turned around back the way I had come. Two rollerbladers were slowing down as they approached me. The woman went wide-eyed. The man started yelling at me: "Jesus! Are you alright! Jesus!" I really had no idea. Indeed, I hadn't really had a conscious thought yet.  As he started yelling it dawned on me that I could be injured. I decided to take a look at myself and see if I was.

"Hmmm. That left arm is hanging a bit lower than usual and I'll be damned if I can move it," I thought.  "More blood than one usually sees on my forearms and knees too," I calmly went on. I concluded the assessment by noting how difficult it was to triage the situation what with everything spinning around like it was.  I was interrupted at that point by Mr. Rollerblader grabbing onto my good arm and my back and telling me in very slow and soothing tones that I'd be better off if I sat down on the ground. That was probably a good idea, because I'm pretty sure that I did lose consciousness a few seconds later.

I woke up, lying on my back. Mr. Rollerblader was hovering over me. He had been joined by a jogger and another couple of bikers.  Rollerbladder was holding a little white towel to my head. I heard him say to one of the others that his wife had skated back to Antrim in order to call an ambulance. I also heard him say something like " . . . I don't think so, it's just bleeding a lot." I think he meant my head looked ugly but that he didn't think I had a cracked skull or anything.  At that point he noticed that I was awake. He told me not to move. I tried to sit up anyway because I'm kind of an asshole when it comes to stuff like that.

I made it to a sitting position but I couldn't do any better. My head was throbbing, but the real pain was in my left shoulder. I looked down and, just as I saw how low it was sagging, Rollerblader said that he was pretty sure I broke my collar bone and maybe separated my shoulder. I felt nauseous and dizzy and I couldn't hear very well.  Eventually he eased me back to my back, saying something about how anything could be broken, so I probably shouldn't move.

I have no idea how much time had passed when I heard the helicopter. It hovered several hundred feet above us.  There was a lot of confusion -- they weren't airlifting me out of there, were they? -- but it flew away a minute or two later. Turns out it was just trying to pinpoint where I was so the ambulance could find me. A few minutes later it backed slowly down the trail to where we were. I remember thinking how badly I wanted to ask the driver how hard it was to back all that way down the trail.

The EMTs got out and took a look at me. One of them moved the towel from my head and got what appeared to be a satisfied look on his face. He told Rollerblader that it was just a gash and didn't look serious. They got a backboard and a gurney out and rolled me onto it. They also put a neck brace on me. Rollerblader and the others gave me little pats of encouragement and some assorted take it easys and were on their way. 

Once in the ambulance the EMTs asked me questions and shined lights in my eyes to see just how messed up I was. I answered a couple of questions at first, but the neck brace was starting to freak me out. I'm claustrophobic and I have an intense fear of suffocation and I felt like the thing was smothering me. Instead of responding to their questions I repeatedly asked them to take the neck brace off. They said no several times, but after I insisted they went through what sounded like some legal routine in which they asked me if I understood what I was asking them to do, whether I took full responsibility for whatever happened without the neck brace and a lot of that kind of thing. I apparently satisfied them that I was lucid enough to make the choice, so they took the neck brace off.  One of them told me that if I ended up paralyzed that I shouldn't come crying to them. I think he was joking, but I'm not sure. I'd like to think that if they really thought I had a neck or a back injury that they would have just ignored me.

The hospital was rather anticlimactic. By then they had figured out that I wasn't a serious trauma case, so they had me cool it on a gurney for what seemed like forever. Eventually I was shuffled into an X-Ray room. Then I was shuffled to an exam room where I waited for an even longer time. At least there was a baseball game on TV to help me pass the time.  Eventually a doctor came in, examined me a bit and did some more light-in-the-eyes stuff. He told me that I had a clean break to my left collar bone and  a concussion. The gash to the head was pretty minor and didn't even need stitches. Same with my legs and arm. The treatment: lots of gauze pads, a funky looking brace that fastened with velcro straps to keep my shoulder immobilized and a big honkin' prescription of some big honkin' pain killers. I'd have to fill that myself later, but the doctor gave me the first dose and I was soon feeling pretty groovy.

When they went to discharge me they asked me who would be picking me up.  Good question! Carleen was in France on a study abroad program, so she was out. My parents lived hundreds of miles away. Todd and just about any friend I could think of who could get me was out of town. My friend April was the only person I had them even try to call, but she wasn't home.  They ended up just giving me a cab voucher.

In the cab on the way back to my apartment it dawned on me: the Dylan show! I had been in the hospital a lot longer than I had realized and the show was going to start in a little over an hour. There was no way I was going to be able to drive in my condition -- too many meds, way too dizzy, too much pain -- but something told me that I needed to go anyway.  I asked the cabbie if the voucher was good for two stops. He told me it was good for anything, so I had him take me to my apartment and had him wait outside while I changed out of my bloody and muddy clothes. It took forever in my condition, but I did my best to wash up, put on some clean clothes, grabbed my ticket, got back into the cab and told him to take me to the State Fair.  I'm pretty sure he thought I was a loony, but the fact that I let him fill out the voucher himself -- tip line and all -- probably made up for it.

I found my seat a few minutes before Dylan took the stage. He began with "Jokerman" which was a song I never much cared for. "Lay Lady Lay" was a bit better because he lit into it like he was angry, kind of like he did on "Before the Flood." "All Along the Watchtower" was good, but rather rote. Things ticked up nicely by the middle of the set with some "Blood on the Tracks" tunes and then a couple of obscure things like "In the Garden," which was easily the best song of the show. He didn't play "Like a Rollin' Stone" at all, though, which would have shocked me if my fuzzy, drug-addled head had allowed me to feel shock. As it was I was groovin' and I didn't really care.

I headed for the parking lot and walked around for a good five minutes trying hard to remember where I parked before it dawned on me that I was stranded.  I waked back into the fairgrounds and stumbled through the midway a bit, trying to think of how to get back home. I could walk it, I thought, but it was a few miles through some bad neighborhoods to get back where I needed to go, and I wasn't in any shape for that. I wasn't hopeful when I called April again -- for all I know she was out of town -- but thankfully she answered.

April met me at the gates of the fairgrounds and I got in. My shoulder was starting to ache again, and I remembered that I needed to get my prescription filled.  April drove me to an all-night pharmacy way up in Dublin and then took me back home. When we got there, her husband Brian was waiting on my front stoop. Though newlyweds, neither of them were 21 yet, and I had spent the summer buying them beer. Brian got the lowdown on my bike wreck and suggested that, in celebration of my survival, we all get drunk.  Seemed like a great idea to me, so we walked across the street, got a couple of cases of lager and spent the rest of the night in my apartment drinking beer and listening to Dylan. I didn't go to work the next morning. Since I didn't wake up until after noon, I didn't even bother to call in.

That all happened sixteen years ago, and a lot of things have changed. I ride a bit slower now than I used to. I also wear a helmet when I ride these days. Dylan's shows have gotten a lot tighter since then.  I don't mix heavy prescription pain killers with alcohol anymore and I haven't slept past noon for any reason in over a decade. Brian and April are divorced and presumably buy their own beer. People carry cell phones around now, which would have been handy a couple of times that day. One of the few things that hasn't changed is my regret over the fact that I didn't get Mr. Rollerblader's name so I could thank him.

If you're out there, dude: thanks.

Adventures in Video

So I've done two videos from my spiffy basement studio so far. The first one was yesterday.  The second one was today.  I think we'll be doing them weekly at first. If they get popular we may do more. If they don't get popular I suppose we'll burn the tapes and pretend it all never happened, like "Fletch Lives," "After M*A*S*H" and "The New WKRP."

Ever hear yourself on a tape recorder and think you sound awful?  Multiply that by a gabillion for video.  People are telling me that they're coming out OK, especially for a hopeless newbie like me, but I'm not so sure.  I have a face and a voice that lend themselves to the written word.

This is not evidence that I lack self-confidence. Quite the contrary, actually. I have no problems being pasty and bald, for example. But when you're bald you don't spend all that much time looking in the mirror, and as a result you start to think you're thinner, more handsome and less pasty than you really are. And my inner monologue voice sounds a lot like Cary Grant and that just somehow doesn't make it to tape. Having an overly healthy self-image challenged in such a head-on way is a rather sobering experience.

But I suppose I'll press on with it. I'll admit, I was more comfortable today than I was yesterday. I'll likely feel even better about it next week and the week after that.  By mid-summer I'll be yelling at production assistants and shunning my unfamous friends like a genuine TV star.

The Basement Studio

NBC decided that it would be a neat idea to set me up with a little studio in my basement to do video for the blog.  Ten boxes and six hours with a technician in my basement setting it all up later and the thing is operational.

You've heard people tell stories about getting drunk and making cell phone calls they regretted the next morning? Imagine what might happen if I stumble into my basement after half a bottle of Wild Turkey and start broadcasting stuff . . . 

Anna's adventures in Wonderland

We've been reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Anna at bedtime. We do a chapter a night. When we leave the room, however, she picks up the book and goes on reading, getting about halfway through the next chapter on her own before she goes to sleep.

I finished "Lobster Quadrille" before I left her room a few minutes ago, but waited outside her door to listen to her begin "Who Stole the Tarts." She read to herself out loud, handling 19th century rhythms much better than I do when I read to her.

After a few moments I poked my head back in her room, making the excuse that I thought I had forgotten to shut her window, but mostly because I just wanted to see her lying in bed, reading the book. As I left the room I asked her what she thinks of nonsense.

"Daddy, it's not nonsense. It's Wonderland," she said, not taking her eyes off the book for a second.

My Usual Day at Work

The Complete Spring Training Report

I'm back after eight wonderful days bopping around Florida. The product as written over in baseball land ended up being about 60% travelogue, 40% baseball, so it may be of interest to the dozen and a half people who read this site.  Here are links to all the posts, in chronological order:

Greetings from Spring Training

Day with the Mets Part 1
Day with the Mets Part 2
Day with the Mets Part 3
Day with the Mets Part 4

Meeting Old Gator

Day with the Twins Part 1
Day with the Twins Part 2
Day with the Twins Part 3
Day with the Twins Part 4

Red Sox Nation South Part 1
Red Sox Nation South Part 2
Red Sox Nation South Part 3

Arrrrgh! The Pirates Part 1
Arrrrgh! The Pirates Part 2
Arrrrgh! The Pirates Part 3

An Aborted Trip to Steinbrenner Field

Phun with the Phillie Phanatics Part 1
Phun with the Phillie Phanatics Part 2
Phun with the Phillie Phanatics Part 3
Phun with the Phillie Phanatics Part 4

Spring Training Trip Wrap Up

If you have the patience to get through all of that you probably enjoyed it.

To beard or not to beard?

Things you can do when you work from home: 1. Grow beard; 2. Pretend to be 19th Century president; 3. Pretend to be Elvis; 4. Go back to normal.

Fear and Loathing in the Sunshine State

I got my itinerary this afternoon. The flights and hotels are booked, the rental car is reserved and the media credentials are (almost) squared away. I'm going to Florida the second week of March to cover spring training. I'm going to once again do battle with a state with which I have never really gotten along.

 There were, I believe, three childhood vacations to the sunshine state. Maybe four -- they kind of blend together so I may be mixing up the continuity a bit -- but none of them were unequivocal successes. The earliest was a classic "let's pile six people in a Buick and drive 1,500 miles -- why? -- because it's the 1970s and that's just what people did back then" trip.  The two extras were a young neighbor couple, friends of my parents. I think I was six years-old. Must have been at least six, actually, because we were driving the light green '79 LeSabre. [UPDATE: My dad notes: "It was not a LeSabre.   It was a full deuce and a quarter. Electra 225 Limited. Strictly class."]  A celadon green, I'd say, which my parents called "the thick and chewy Buick" because of the soft cushy vinyl -- or whatever it was -- on the roof.

I dwell on the car, because I remember almost nothing of our time in Florida itself. Just the interminable drive from Flint, Michigan to Key Largo, two adults and a child in the front seat, two adults and a child in the back. Plus purses. And pillows. And books. And Kleenex boxes. And shoes. And a cooler full of sandwiches and sodas, because it was Jimmy Carter's America and malaise meant only eating at restaurants once a day no matter how far from home you were. And it was always a Howard Johnson's.

The next trip I remember was just the four of us. It started out as another driving trip, but Ronald Reagan was in office by then, and he turned us all into men and women of action. 20 miles from home my dad hit an ice patch on the highway, decided that he didn't need two days of this crap, diverted to a pay phone and booked us on a same-day flight from Windsor, Ontario to Tampa. Well, next day, technically, as the flight left at what I remember as 3AM the following morning. We waited things out in a Travelodge motel sort of sleeping, sort of not.  Once we got on the plane my brother ordered an orange juice and the flight attendant brought him a screwdriver.

The trip itself was generally OK. We went to the pre-Epcot Disney World, which I imagine today would be considered quaint.  We made it down to Key Largo again, staying in a mobile home that belonged to my grandparents. I don't think they had been down there for some time, as the inside was covered with dust and grease and all manner of nastiness. The first morning there my mom turned on the oven and the whole place filled with noxious fumes. The room in which I slept was full of my grandmother's trashy romance and horror novels. One of them had a hyper-realistic cover picture of a man being hanged. It haunted my dreams for the rest of my childhood. I can still picture it, quite vividly, nearly 30 years later.

But the real downer of that trip wasn't the trailer -- you can overlook a lot when you're near a nice beach in January -- it was a short visit with some people we used to know named the Keefes.*  They had been our neighbors in Michigan for a time. The father sold cars (Buicks, natch). The mother, who seemed on the young side and was rather loopy, worked at a record store.  Their daughter, Janie, was a year younger than me, and we were more or less inseparable when we were five and six years old.  My dad built a ladder that straddled the backyard fence so we could visit one another. I swam in Janie's pool, she played with her Barbie dolls in my basement and we decided that when we grew up we'd get married and work together as garbage men, Janie driving the truck, me riding on the back, emptying cans. She was my first best friend.

One day, however, the Keefes just picked up and moved from Michigan down to Florida. I don't think that I ever knew the details, but I recall vague talk of scandal -- maybe drugs -- and other unseemliness.  I can only assume my parents decided to visit them for my and Janie's sake, and I remember being glad to see her. Their home in Florida, however, was a disheveled mess. The morning we went to Disney World -- Janie and her mother came with us -- the power was turned off at their house and some mention was made of "confusion" over the electric bill.  I was too young to know what was going on, but I knew something was amiss.  The day in Disney was fun, but the visit has become overshadowed by a certain sadness in my mind and memory, partially because of Janie's apparently unfortunate circumstances, but also because it was the last day I ever saw her. I've often wondered how her life has gone. I worry that it hasn't gone particularly well.

The next trip to Florida started off with such promise. It was April 1984. My parents were coming off a couple of years of relative prosperity and we were making the trip in a motor home with a boat in tow. In addition to the four of us, two of our best friends -- the Yoder brothers -- were allowed to come along for the trip. The two days on the road were great fun. We brought thousands of baseball cards with us and we sorted and traded them all the way down I-75. Day three was spent out in the great big ocean in our little boat speeding around, jumping waves and having a grand time. It had all the makings of an epic vacation.

That night, however, my father was paged by the campground office. The call was from Michigan. My great Uncle Harry -- who was really more like my grandfather and who may be more responsible than anyone for me being the baseball fan I am today -- had suffered a massive heart attack and died in his back yard.  We started back home that night.  His funeral -- a Jewish affair, held an extra sundown to accommodate our journey -- was the first one I ever attended. By the end of this ordeal I had come to associate Florida with sorrow and disaster.

It would be 21 years before I'd get back there. This time I was there on legal business, dispatched to Sarasota under outrageously stressful circumstances. I wasn't exactly told to obstruct an official investigation while I was down there, but it was pretty clear that everyone on my side of the table would have been happier if the investigation went slowly and was hopeful I could make that happen. I wasn't exactly being followed by government investigators while I was down there, but they certainly knew where I was at all times during the trip.  I wasn't exactly threatened while I sat in a warehouse full of rare coins for three straight days, but the fact that the security detail that guarded them openly and freely brandished Israeli assault weapons didn't make me feel all that comfortable either.  On the bright side I billed a shitload of hours that week and back in those days that was pretty much all that mattered.

My last trip to Florida came on the same case a year later when I visited my indicted client and his wife in their stately Florida Keys home to prepare him for his criminal trial. I'll admit, the place was fabulous. Great views. Expensive wine. Wonderful steaks, seafood, sunsets and  swimming. But for as nice as the accommodations were, an air of dread hung over the entire trip. I won't say my co-counsel and I knew exactly what was coming, but we did know there were rough days ahead. I remember floating in the pool and looking at the stars one evening when Tom walked out on to his bedroom balcony above where I swam. He raised a toast to me and told me that the next time I came I'd have to bring my family. I knew there wouldn't be a next time. I don't know if he did too and was merely playing the role of charming host or if he really felt he'd beat the rap. Whether it was hubris or denial I still don't know, but it cast a pall over the entire trip.

It's been four years since that visit, and again, I prepare for Florida.  Will this be the time nothing goes sideways for me down there? The first time that no bad news, bad cars, bad hotels, bad vibes or bad people come between me and all that the Sunshine State is supposed to offer?

I'm hopeful. After all, I'm going down there for baseball. To grok the spring training zeitgeist in the service of my dream job. I'll be armed with a press pass an expense account and a vague-to-nonexistent mandate to meet people, watch games and write stuff, which is something I'm fairly confident I can handle. No amount of bad Florida juju can mess that up, can it?

Wait. Don't answer that. If you need me, I'll be checking out the cactus league schedules and checking to see if my airfare to Miami is refundable . . .

*As is the case in many of these tales, some names have been changed to protect the innocent, the guilty, the vaguely shifty and the morally dubious.