Today's hate mail

I get a bit of hate mail from time to time. Not a lot. And even when I do get it, most of it is couched in at least a core of a legitimate complaint. And I usually take it in pretty good cheer.

This one that just came in didn't really have a core of a legitimate complaint. I mean, there are many factual assertions in there -- I do mix it up with readers, my comments section does occasionally get chippy, I have, from time to time, had little pissy battles with various other sports writers and I was, very briefly, considered for a job at ESPN -- but this one is just odd.

The things the guy complains of are, if legitimate, old, old news that, if they really bothered him, would have caused him to abandon the site a year or two ago. The reference to NBC's baseball content pre-me is also weird because there wasn't any. Really. It was just AP wire stuff.

But you know what? I still kind of love it.  For reasons I can't explain, this little bit of bile made me kind of happy. Oh well.
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The baseball portion of the NBC sports online operation is, and has been, going in the wrong direction for a long time.  The day your Mr. Calcaterra came in full-time, in my opinion, it began its slide.

In a matter of months, the entire tone of this website changed from one of joy to one of contempt, disgust and insults. Mr. Calcaterra, who at one time wrote humorously, apparently now prides himself on finding the lowest common denominator to not only write about, but to solicit as readers. And he has done an admirable job.

Read the comments sections now, vis a vis days past. These days, the comments are - in many cases - from apparent paranoids intent on insulting each other. And in large part, your Mr. Calcaterra is responsible for this. Go back and read any criticism of Mr. Calcaterra. Any minor comment, no matter how insignificant, brings about a vicious attack from your Mr. Calcaterra.

It is obvious that he brings this on himself. One day he describes himself as a "highly-paid, high-powered attorney", the next day he's off driving his Honda and regaling readers with tales of his hapless plight as a non-partner associate at some Columbus, Ohio law firm. But don't
criticize him. That's not his style. His style is to launch a hate campaign against one of Sports Illustrated's baseball reporters, for some unspecified reason. I doubt if John Heyman cares, but to readers who originally followed your website to enjoy baseball - it brings up some very dark questions.

I realize Mr. Calcaterra was not considered for the ESPN job, but to take it out on other reporters for no reason is non-sensical.  I do not enjoy reading your website any more.  I do not enjoy reading comments from your - now - pack of ranting paranoids.

In fact, I am out. If you should persuade Mr. Calcaterra to return to his strength - writing humor - you might be able to right the ship, but at this late date, I am afraid that NBC Sports has done themselves in.

Just for once, let me look on you with my own eyes

This is what happens when you reveal yourself to be a nerd to a video producer who knows how to use Photoshop:

Probably the highlight of my blogging career thus far, however.

The whole video in which this appears -- only for a second though -- is here.

PETA and the 1000 buckets of pig poop

I told this story over at HardballTalk today, but it's the kind of thing I usually put here, so why not put it here where it won't get buried?

The last stop in my legal career was at the Ohio Attorney General's Office.  One of my jobs there was to defend lawsuits brought against the state arising out of stuff that went down on the Statehouse grounds.  Some of it was slip-and-fall cases, but the vast majority of the work involved helping the people who managed the Statehouse property approve (or not approve) petitions for people who wanted to march or protest.

Normally it was easy: they'd call, asking if they can keep some group off the capitol steps and I'd say "Nope, sorry. Gotta let 'em march."  The First Amendment is so troublesome that way.  But heck, several years earlier the KKK got to rally there, and if you can't keep them out, you can't keep anyone out. Besides, the guy who ran that operation was a cranky old guy who didn't like anyone protesting, so it was a lot of fun to tell him just how little say over the matter he had.

But then, in the summer of 2009, came PETA.  Who, though I disagree with their stance on the tastiness of animals, their suitability for my barbecue and the comfort of their skin when put on my comfortable Eames lounge chair, I do respect in an odd fashion.  They've got moxy and chutzpah and, though they're occasionally (frequently) insane, they usually seem to have a good sense of humor about themselves. Which is essential when you're wrong so often. Live and let live, I say (note: this motto may not apply to cattle, pigs, chickens and other things that I may want for dinner this evening).

That summer PETA wanted to stage a massive protest on the Statehouse lawn in which they would (a) place approximately 1000 buckets full of pig poop in neat rows; (b) place giant industrial-sized fans all around them in order to blow the stink all over downtown Columbus; (c) bring in giant amplifiers with which to project the sounds of pigs being slaughtered to a mutliple-block radius; and (d) erect giant video screens on which the horrors of factory farming would be displayed.

You won't be surprised to learn that the guy who ran the Statehouse called me, somewhat upset over all of this.  And while I normally would just say "First Amendment, forget it" and go back to my clandestine baseball blogging, I felt that I needed to dig into this one a bit more.  So I did. And I learned that PETA had just recently tried to do the same protest in Washington and maybe in a few other states besides Ohio, but were denied everywhere else.  Indeed, it was my assumption -- based on the fact that they hadn't yet started suing everyone over it -- that the protest was never really going to happen and that they just wanted the headlines that the state's rejection of the application would provide.  Smart!

The whole thing fascinated me, really, so I decided that rather than simply send a letter saying no, I'd try to find a legitimate yet innocuous basis for denying their application, putting the ball back in their court rather than letting them use my state as an example of intolerance and authoritarianism for their next press release.

After an afternoon of research with a summer law clerk -- who herself happened to be a vegan and former PETA member and who had quit the organization because this kind of nonsense bugged the heck out of her -- we found some obscure 19th century law that dealt with the storing of offal within the city limits.  We didn't think that offal and pig poop were the same thing, but we figured it would be fun to make the PETA lawyers research that one and explain it in their letter objecting to our decision or in the lawsuit if it came to that.  If they want to fight over the true nature of poop, by God, I'd fight that fight.

We sent the letter denying their right to rally on the Statehouse lawn.  I spent another four months at the AG's office before coming to NBC full time. Never heard back from them, so even if it was just a phantom protest/publicity stunt, I'm still claiming that I'm 1-0 all-time vs. PETA.

Gosh, remembering that has me in a really good mood now. I think this evening I'm going to eat a really bloody steak in celebration.

And with that you can close the book on Calcaterra's legal career

When a starting pitcher leaves a game with runners on base, he is still responsible for them.  His day, statistically speaking, is not done until those runners either score, are retired or until the inning ends.  When that happens the announcer usually says "you can close the book on" the starting pitcher, because nothing else that occurs in the game will be attributable to his line in the box score.

I just read in the Columbus Dispatch that the Ohio Supreme Court has finally ruled on a case involving the Ohio Legislature. The substance of the case would be boring for most of you, but it's interesting to me because I was the pitcher of record, having represented the Legislature while working for the Ohio Attorney General's Office. I had almost forgotten about the case in the past year. Reading about it this evening, it seems like something from a past life. Which I guess it is.

I took myself out of the game in November 2009 when I bailed for blogging, but there were still runners on base. The relievers who came in got me off the hook and, with today's decision, we ended up winning.  Personally speaking I probably got a no-decision, but I pitched pretty damn well.  Either way, I was glad to see the outcome. Not just because my side won, but also because it happened to be the correct decision.  It's not often both of those things happen in the same case.

But win or lose, it was a great game. The case helped me rekindle, well, not my love, but at least my fondness and respect for the law that I had lost in private practice. I lived and breathed it for nine months. It kept me up many nights.  But it touched on some elemental constitutional law questions. It required sophisticated legal thinking, writing and argument. My colleagues and I sat around and discussed competing legal theories just like I imagined I would always be doing back when I was in law school but never really did in private practice. No one ever talked about the amount of attorney time being devoted to the case.  Everyone just wanted to win it and to win it with our honor intact. We did.

And now that it's finally over you can close the book on Craig Calcaterra's legal career. Because unless I'm mistaken, it was the last case I worked on as a lawyer that was still active.  Soon the clerk will send the last file with my name anywhere in it to a storage room where it will be quickly -- and justifiably -- forgotten.

And though I probably don't deserve the honor, I have it on pretty good authority that Ohio Attorney Registration Number 0070177 will be retired. Not a bad way to end a career, no?

Where's home?

My mom and dad were born and raised in Detroit. After their first two years of married life in Alaska, they moved to Flint, Michigan in 1969, set up housekeeping and had my brother and me. He was 13 and I was 11 when we moved to West Virginia.  After 13 years away, my parents moved back to Flint in the late 90s -- same neighborhood even -- and stayed until around 2006 or so. They live near my fortified compound on the outskirts of Columbus now.

On Thanksgiving my dad and I were talking and the subject of Flint came up. Though he knows it's a hole now and said that he couldn't see the point of living there again, it seems pretty clear that he and my mom will always think of it as "home." Or at least as close to "home" as anyone who has lead lives as itinerant as theirs can.  Conversations with my brother suggest that he thinks of Flint as home too.

It's not my answer. When people ask me where I'm from I invariably say Beckley, West Virginia. I lived there from April 1988 until I left for college in September 1991, and again for the summer of 1992. That's it.  A little over three and a half years.  I lived in Parkersburg, West Virginia around the same amount of time but if asked to give a quick biographical sketch I usually leave Parkersburg out completely. I lived in Washington D.C. around the same amount of time and that's quickly referred to as the time I was in law school with no attempt to make a connection between the place and my life as a whole.  Counting college, I've lived in Columbus for a total of 16 years -- almost my entire adult life -- yet it's always where I live now, not where I consider home. And I often make a point to say that, if given the chance, I'd love to live in any number of other places.

What makes Beckley my hometown to me when at least two other places -- Flint and Columbus -- have much stronger claims?

Maybe it's the coming of age thing. I got my driver's license after I moved to Beckley. My first job. My first real kiss (spin the bottle in junior high school doesn't count) and first real girlfriends there. I graduated high school there. I met the woman who would become my wife there. She's a native, and for years when we went home for the holidays, Beckley was where we went. A lot of the important stuff in my life happened in Beckley.

But most of the same could be said for my brother too, and he doesn't call Beckley home. My parents did all of those things in Detroit, and that place seems consigned to ancient history for them, with Flint taking greater prominence.  And really, it's not like Columbus has just been a way station for me. My entire professional life is here. I bought my first home here. I've had and have raised two children here. Everything that's important about me as an adult can be explained by this town. But it's still not home.

It makes me think that home is merely a state of mind. That we can be, technically speaking, from anywhere, but we can choose what is home based on just about anything. Maybe it's time. Maybe it's people. Maybe it's an emotional connection.  Why Beckley? Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's the topography. A lot of it is probably the memories. More than anything I think it's because I've always felt at peace there in ways that I've never felt peace here.

Where's your home? Is it a multiple choice question for you like it is for me? Am I odd in thinking that I can just choose the place I call home? Am I a central Ohioan or a Michigander in denial?

This is the stuff you think about on a Saturday night when everyone else is asleep, the ABC affiliate is carrying the crappy football game instead of the good one and you just had a tall glass of Maker's Mark.

The Shyster Chronicles: The Interview

Before reading this, please read this.


I knew him, but I wasn't sure if he knew me. 

Oh, he knew my name, my work experience and my education because my resume was sitting on the desk right in front of him. He knew that my morning had gone well so far and everyone else had been nice because the interview had been going on for five minutes.  But did he remember me? Did he remember that two years ago I was, nominally at least, his lawyer? Did he remember that I was assigned by his friend -- my old boss -- to counsel his wife as she fought some petty little battle with a home remodeling company who had screwed up the basement renovation?  The lawsuit was filed in his name too because he owned the house and paid the bills, but I never spoke with him.  I only spoke with his wife, who made sure I knew which furs were damaged by seeping ground water and which family photos were curled by the moisture and flecked with mold.  Long conversations, mind you, that went on for as much as an hour after I had obtained the information necessary for the latest demand letter or the latest draft of the complaint.  She went on about the contractor. On about the neighbors. Occasionally she went on about her husband too, who at this very moment was asking me about where I saw myself in five years while -- maybe -- trying to figure out why I seemed familiar to him for some reason.

Those long conversations with Mrs. Morton ended abruptly. I was to call her on a Monday morning and she didn't answer. When two days passed without hearing from her I called her husband, but he didn't answer either. Emails went un-returned as well.  I drove by the house, but no one was home.  I was a bit worried by this, but only a bit. Mostly I was just happy that I was being given a break from this dreary little case, the time for which I wasn't even allowed to bill thanks to it all being a big favor from my boss to the Mortons. With them incommunicado I could get back to the cases which actually interested me and, more importantly, for which I could bill my time.  I was having a rough enough year without having to spend so much of it on this pro bono nonsense for my boss' golf buddy.

A week later I finally heard from Mrs. Morton. It was a short call. She sounded as is she had been crying. She told me to dismiss the lawsuit. When I asked her why, she would only say it was a personal matter. She thanked me for my time and effort and that was that.  I told my boss about it, but he acted as if he already knew. In fact, he seemed surprised that I was still in contact with the Mortons at all.  He asked for the file and told me to move on to other things. Oh, and not to talk to anyone about the matter.  Which was easy because I didn't know what was going on.

I finally figured it out a few weeks later when my boss' secretary spilled the beans:  Dan Morton had been arrested for solicitation of a prostitute the morning I was supposed to have spoken to Mrs. Morton.  It was kept quiet -- didn't even make the police blotter because of who Dan was and who he knew -- but he couldn't keep it from his wife.  After picking him up at the police station -- his car had been impounded -- she packed a bag and flew down to the condo in Ft. Myers to clear her head for a few days, a lawsuit over home improvements the last thing on her mind. My boss was doing his best to smooth things over legally for his buddy Dan. He probably would be successful in doing so, but no one knew for sure about that marriage.  Or what might happen to Dan's standing at his firm or in the legal community at large.

But he somehow gutted it out. The charges were dropped, because in this town they're always dropped when they involve guys like Dan Morton.  Word got around about the indiscretion, but not too widely.  Somehow Dan kept his job as managing partner at Hicks Henderson & Foley. Somehow Dan and Abby Morton stayed married. I went back to work on billable matters.

Over the next two years I lost momentum at my old firm.  I wasn't happy with my cases and my boss was increasingly unhappy with me.  I felt I needed a change of scenery and figured I'd try to jump someplace else before I was inevitably pushed. When the recruiter told me that Hicks Henderson was looking for a mid-level litigator I didn't give a second thought before telling her to go ahead and send them my resume. I didn't even think of Dan Morton until I got my interview schedule the day before and saw his name on it.  And now, here I was, sitting across the desk from him, the managing partner of their Columbus office, making small talk and wondering if he knew that I knew that he was busted in a Walgreens parking lot trying to pick up a $25 whore on a random Monday morning two years ago,

He knew.

"You're probably curious to know what happened with that business with the basement," he said.  "We settled.  It all worked out OK."

I told him I was happy to hear that.  After what seemed like a long silence he went on.

"When I got your resume the other day, I showed it to Abby.  She said that I should hire you.  Said you were . . . supportive back when the case was pending.  I appreciate that."

Again, I thanked him.  But I can't say that I liked his look.  He was clearly uncomfortable talking about this, even if he seemed compelled to cover this territory. And after an interview in which he had been far more content to talk and talk rather than to ask me any questions, he now seemed like he was waiting for me to say something.  When I did nothing more than offer a closed-mouth smile and a slight nod, his expression brightened.  He may have been waiting for me to talk, but he was happy that I didn't. And my silence apparently sealed the deal.

"Welcome to Hicks Henderson, Mr. Sullivan.  I'd like you start as soon as you can."

Great Moments in Product Placement

Reason number 346 why I want to move my family into a fortified compound:

Darren Rovell of CNBC is a sports business expert. His beat: Ticket sales. Team marketing. What ads were up behind home plate when the no-hitter ended. What logo the tennis player had on the towel with which she wiped her face just before winning the French Open. How much free exposure Anheuser-Busch got when the basketball player flew into the crowd and knocked over the beers. This stuff is occasionally obnoxious because, really, people don't want to be constantly reminded of just how for sale everything is, but Rovell is really good at what he does. And he's probably right that everything is for sale anyway.  I read and link his work all the time even if it drives me a bit nuts on occasion.

Last night, though, was a new low. Or high. I'm not sure which.

I was on Twitter, bullshitting with baseball and media people during the Rays-Rangers game. Just as the game was put out of reach, the first Chilean miner was pulled up from the hole. Everyone in my little clique of virtual friends was going back and forth between the game and CNN and everyone was talking about both things.  Then this exchange happened:

Rovell: "1st miner was wearing Oakleys. I estimate worldwide exposure of a least $100 million for company"

Me, retweeting him: "Not sure if serious . . ."  Really, I figured he was just cracking wise "in character," as it were. Which would have been pretty funny, actually.

Rovell, in a direct message to me: "dead serious. scroll back your TV, Craig."

Me: "I don't doubt he was wearing Oakleys. I was just surprised that your first thought at this was the marketing angle."

He ignored me after that, but tweeted a bunch more stuff about how Oakley provided the glasses, how Oakley has offices in Chile, and that sort of thing.

Again, nothing personal against Rovell because that's the sort of work he does and he probably can't help himself. But I think it may have been the most depressing Twitter exchange in the history of Twitter exchanges.

I am about the least sentimental and emotional person on the planet when it comes to news stories like these, but man, we were watching a rare moment in which the human spirit peaked out from behind all of the awfulness in this world, and people are thinking about . . . product placement.

Boys

Carlo hit a kid at school a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't a major incident. More of a reflex than anything else. The kid pulled on his backpack. Carlo hates it when people do that so he turned around and slugged him in the gut.

The teacher saw it and tried to explain to Carlo that it was the wrong thing to do.  There was no getting through to him, though, because Carlo tunes out disapprobation, 100% of the time.  "I'm awesome and righteous," he thinks to himself, "so there is no way this angry person could be talking to me."  The teacher wisely escalated the situation: she sent Carlo to the principal's office and the principal forced Carlo to call Carleen at work and tell her what he did.  This got through to him and he realized that he was wrong. I spoke with the teacher the night before last, and she said Carlo's been great since then. He either learned his lesson or the kids are all too scared to mess with him.

He's playing soccer this fall. That's probably worth its own post, but for now just know that he generally likes it. Apart from his stunning good looks he'll never have anything in common with David Beckham, but he's not the worst kid out there either. And he has a great attitude too: he runs around, has fun and doesn't care if he scores goals or if the team wins or not and that's probably all anyone can ask.

The games have all gone well until today. I should have known that it was going to be a bad day when the other team showed up and started doing highly regimented group warmups before the game. Kindergarten soccer teams don't do that. They run around and kick the ball a bit and talk about Batman. These other guys drilled like the Soviet army. Maybe they were having fun with all of that, but I'm not sure how it could be possible.

The worst part was that they played like goons.  They pushed and they shoved and they tripped and they tackled. The referee must have had other things on his mind, because apart from some half-hearted "let's keep it clean out there, boys" he really wasn't all that into restoring order.  The other coach seemed pleased that he had turned five year-olds into thugs, because no matter how ugly it got out there, he just clapped his hands and told his kids that they were doing a great job.

Carlo doesn't get the ball very often, so he wasn't getting shoved, but a couple of his teammates -- the fast, skilled little guys -- were taking a beating. One kid came out of the game after getting shoved to the ground, landing hard on his head.  At one point, when our boys started to get discouraged, our coach gathered them together and told them -- loudly, so that others might hear -- how proud he was that they were playing "good clean soccer."  It was heartening to hear.

But it wasn't enough for me.  Seeing the rough play made me think of how bad I felt when I heard that Carlo hit that other kid. It made me think of little incidents I had with other boys when I was young. It made me think of how difficult if can be to be a boy. To have society's expectations of what it means To Be A Man come into conflict with my own, non-aggressive and non-violent values so very often as I grew up. It made me think about the fine line a young man must walk in order to avoid becoming either a brute or a victim.

I can't communicate these feelings with Carlo yet -- he's far too young -- and even if I wanted to, I couldn't at that moment because the game was going on.  But what I was seeing go down this morning was starting to prey on me, so I did the only thing I could do: I stared at Carlo's head as he ran up and down the pitch, willing him to hear the psychic message I was sending him:

"Carlo: it's wrong to hit. I'm so glad you learned that after what happened at school that time. You are a sensitive boy, and I understand that your emotions sometimes get away from you. That happened to me when I was your age too. It will be hard to learn to control yourself sometimes -- you'll want to scream and lash out and cry to the heavens when things don't go the way you want them to --  but you'll learn to reign that in. I did. I know you can, because you're intelligent, and strong-willed and wonderful.

"But let's leave that until tomorrow. Right now I want you to chase after that tall boy with the blond hair on the other team who just shoved Aiden, and I want you to body slam his skinny punk ass to the grass and whale on him until he cries for his momma."

Carlo didn't hear me.  It's probably for the best that he didn't.

Raising a son is hard.

Free Tiffany!

As I've mentioned, I have a little studio in my basement. Each morning I spend  fifteen or twenty minutes down there taping the HBT Daily videos that get posted on the blog and various other places in NBC land.  The host is Tiffany Simons. She does her thing from the main studio in Connecticut. We hear each other via our little earpieces and see each other on video monitors. She sets up the segments and shoots me questions designed to make me look smart.

Everyone should have someone who does that for them, by the way. Not just about sports, but about life in general. Imagine if you were driving down the street and, rather than merely ranting when a jerk cuts you off, a pleasant young woman says "Craig: that guy who just cut you off looks like an asshole. Why don't you tell all of us the ways in which you're a better driver than he is."

Wouldn't that be great?

Anyway, Carlo is usually home when I go downstairs to tape. He has seen the studio equipment and he has seen the end product online, but he has never seen me actually tape a segment (which he thinks is TV). I didn't think it really interested him much until tonight when we had this conversation:

Carlo: Did you do the TV thing today?

Me: Yep.

Carlo: Is that lady still living in our basement?

Nope. That's not creepy at all. Not one bit.

Why Working at Home is Both Awesome and Horrible

This is stunningly accurate.  Really, apart from the fact that I wake up even earlier now that I work from home than I did when I had an office job, the dynamic -- if not all of the specifics -- is pretty much dead-on.