Diary of a Diehard

For the most part I have found that Major League baseball players are very approachable and receptive to signing autographs and talking to the fans. Over the past three years, my kids have been able to obtain an autograph or talk to each of the Arizona Diamondbacks players including such reclusive types as Randy Johnson and Todd Stottlemyre. It is always fun to see the looks on the kids faces as they hold out their ball and a player will stop and sign or talk with them. I believe it is important that the players reach out and try to give something back to the fans who shell out their hard earned dollars to watch them play. Granted, signing for a few hundred or thousand screaming fans can be trying at times and I recognize that there are many fans out there that take advantage of the players by getting autographs and then selling them on the open market but most of the players take this in stride. Note that I said most. The one player who is an exception to this is Erubiel Durazo. He seems to go out of his way to alienate the fans. Today was a prime example of Mr. Durazo’s behavior. Each Sunday, the Diamondbacks have “Bullpen Buddies”, a program where 75 children 52 inches and smaller go into the bullpen during batting practice and meet two players and get their autograph. Today’s participants were Dan Plesac and Erubiel Durazo. The children were all led into the bullpen where they waited for the players to arrive. Mr. Plesac was on time and spoke to each child as he signed their item. He was great. All of the children came away from meeting Dan with a smile on their faces excited to meet a baseball player. Erubiel Durazo on the other hand decided that it was more important to hang out at the batting cage rather than meet the kids. He never did show up at the bullpen. I could see this type of behavior if he were getting ready for an upcoming game but he is injured and cannot even swing a bat at this point. This is the fourth time I have seen such behavior from him. Last season as I was leaving the game, I saw Durazo leaving the players parking lot. At the gate, there were four children asking for his autograph. Durazo pulled out of the gate and stopped to wait for the kids to approach his car. As they arrived, he drove off. I understand that he may be tired after a game and want to go home but if he had no intention of signing, don’t stop. He did more public relations damage by driving off than if he had never stopped at all. It is young players such as Durazo that will cause fans to avoid going to baseball games. I am disappointed that Erubiel has chosen to portray baseball players in such a dim light.

The Diamondbacks had a rare game on national television as the game of the week against the Anaheim Angels. As always, we arrived early for batting practice. We stood in the left field bleachers and spoke to several of the Diamondbacks players. At the plate, Kelly Stinnett was taking batting practice and hitting bombs to left field. While we were standing there, the public address announcer explained that Kelly would be signing autographs at a local Nissan dealership after the game. During the inaugural season, Kelly presented a baseball to my daughter Whitney as part of the “September to Remember” celebration. Since that time, Kelly has become her favorite player. I called Trina and we decided we would take the kids over to meet him in person. After the game, the family made their way to Mesa where we waited patiently for Kelly to arrive. As we were standing in line, I had a brilliant idea. If I could get Kelly to remove his hat, I could get a picture of him and save myself a lot of work on his Chia head. Since I have not had much luck with players removing their hat for me, I gave the camera to Trina. After all, who could deny a picture by a pretty lady with 4 kids in tow? At first, Kelly declined her suggestion that he take off his hat but after some pleading by Trina and Kelly’s wife, he relented and removed his cap. Trina took a couple of pictures and even got his autograph. This will save me at least 3 hours of work in airbrushing his hat and hair off. What a sport, if only he could get Matt Williams to remove his hat I would be all set.

Usually I am a pretty upbeat guy that can find humor in nearly every situation. Regardless of how the day goes, there is always an underlying message that revolves somehow around baseball. Unfortunately, that was not the case today. After a long and turbulent flight across country and little sleep, I found myself in the shower trying to wake up. Within seconds of the water hitting me in the face, Tiffany came in screaming that Trina needed me outside immediately. I jumped out, threw on some clothes and rushed outside. There I saw Trina kneeling beside a 72 year old man giving him mouth to mouth recitation and CPR. Around him were two neighbors and a hysterical wife. The man had a heart attack and Trina was desperately trying to revive his lifeless body. During the commotion, his wife went into some type of seizure and fainted hitting her head on a boulder. As Trina worked on the husband, I attended to the wife. It seemed like an eternity before the paramedics arrived. They worked on each of the victims and rushed them both to the hospital. As the ambulances left, Trina and I were left standing there contemplating all that had occurred in the past 45 minutes. As I awoke this morning, I had planned on unpacking, working on the web site, and then going to the Diamondbacks game. It left me to contemplate whether any of this really mattered. Well, anything besides going to the Diamondbacks game that is.

During my trip to Orlando, I had packed two essential items, my Diamondbacks shirt (well one for each day to be exact) and my Diamondbacks hat. I wore these each day to remind me of home and what I had to look forward to when I returned. It was interesting to see the reaction I received from people with these items. A day did not go by that I did not have at least ten people stop and talk with me about baseball and the Arizona Diamondbacks. The questions ranged from them asking if I was somehow connected to the Diamondbacks organization (I answered that the team and I were attached at the wallet) to whether I was from Arizona. The Diamondbacks logo and baseball cap transcended cultural barriers, language differences, economic divergence, and personality discrepancies. I found I had a lot in common with these other baseball fans. Whether they were telling me of their home town team or a visit they made to a Major League baseball game, the stories had one central theme. Baseball is a vital part of our society and provides a way for us to share experiences and communicate with each other. It was interesting to listen to these people and share similar memories.

The differences between Disneyland and Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom can be subtle. For the most part, they are very similar consisting of themed lands, themed rides, and themed lines. Of the three ingredients, it would appear that the lines is the one constant. My observations are that everything at the Magic Kingdom are bigger and better than their counterparts at Disneyland. This is especially true with regards to the lines. Each attraction I attempted to ride, I stood with 2000 of my closest personal strangers and waited for what seemed like an eternity. Now I wouldn’t have minded it so much if were were waiting for something important like the gates of Bank One Ballpark to open, but this was just for some sort of boat or roller-coaster ride. Of course I had to do all of the standard rides such as Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, and others. I suddenly realized that many of these rides either had a baseball undertone or could be improved by adding a baseball theme to them. For example, Country Bear Jamboree was very similar to the sights you would find in the bleachers during any Cubs home game at Wrigley Field. The Jungle Cruise had as much humor as a John Rocker Sports Illustrated article. And who among us would not rather see the Hall of Baseball Commissioners rather than the Hall of Presidents. I for one would like to see an animatronic version of Bart Giamotti banning Pete Rose from baseball for life? Of course the one attraction that would be the most popular would be the renovated It’s a Small World. Instead of that annoying song and dancing children, we would replace the song with Take Me Out to the Ballgame and each of the children would be dressed as either a Major League Baseball player or a Minor League Baseball player with those wacky logos such as the Lansing Lugnuts. The grand finale would be a death match of baseball mascots and a final slide of the boats into a mug of beer just like Bernie the Brewer. Now that would be the happiest place on earth.

As part of the Microsoft conference I am attending, Microsoft has decided to throw a party. What more appropriate place to send their customers than the Islands of Adventure theme park. It is almost frightening as I realize the correlation between this amusement park and my experience with Microsoft. As I entered the gates, I am assailed by Microsoft employees to sign documents removing their liability should anything happen. This exercise seemed quite similar to their registration wizard for Microsoft Office. We then were packed down a narrow walkway where Microsoft threw small trinkets at us to make our stay more enjoyable. In a sense, they do the same by sending out patches to fix their software bugs. We then arrived at the park itself and all it had to offer. Islands of Adventure is broken up into several themed areas that surround a man-made lagoon. To the left we strolled through Marvel comic land with rides being portrayed as action cartoons. Along the street were street performers dressed as super heroes or super villains. I could have sworn that Dr. Doom looked eerily similar to Bill Gates. From Marvel land we moved to Toon Island, a silly land that would equate to the experience customer’s have when calling Microsoft Technical Support. You do a lot of running around and people laugh at you when you try to be serious. Our journey then moved to Jurassic Park, the land devoted to legacy software that Microsoft still supports. There is nothing more frightening than to come face to face with a Windows 3.1 user, unless of course you come across the fossils of a DOS user. We next entered into the Lost Continent, that area where Microsoft embraces open standards and is a good corporate citizen. Of course this area was filled with lawyers who were litigating that this land was not necessary because all the other lands were perfectly competitive and were benefiting humanity without government intervention. The final land of adventure I visited was the one that accurately described my dealings with Microsoft, Dr. Suess Land. Whether it was the Gates that Stole Christmas statue or the Ballmer in the Hat, I felt like I had lived this experience more times than I cared to. I can still remember those immortal words spoken by IT customers upon opening their software, “I do not like Exchange and Spam, I do not like them Bill I am.” It is interesting how life imitates software.

I found it interesting, as I traveled east away from Arizona, I found less and less Arizona Diamondbacks merchandise. In a few of the more backwards areas, I even ran into a few people who were unaware that the Arizona Diamondbacks were a baseball team and not a type of reptile life form. Luckily, I had brought my Arizona Diamondbacks media guide and I took time from trip to enlighten them from the good book. Although I am not an ordained member of the clergy, many of these people proclaimed to be born again baseball fans. I didn’t feel baptism was appropriate since I didn’t want to get my Nikes wet but I did leave them with a handy Diamondbacks 2000 schedule and the phone number of their local DirecTV dealer so that they could order MLB Extra Innings and see all of the Diamondbacks games on satellite television. I began their conversion with a brief discussion on the history of baseball from its lowly beginnings in a grove of trees near Abner Doubleday’s house to the multi-billion dollar business it is today. At each junction, I would test for understanding before going on to the next precept. Our discussions always ended with a brief narrative of how to calculate the “magic number” and ERA. Before I left, I had established quite a congregation of loyal followers. We all promised to stay in touch and send pictures and mail of our experiences when the Diamondbacks clinch the National League Western Division. The field was plentiful and the conversions high. They each promised to pray for the demise of the designated hitter and to help Bud Selig see the error of his ways with this talk of realignment.

I have always been fascinated by the production of movies and television. It is an industry that seems to be in constant change and is responsible for creating magical moments for the entertainment of the masses. Besides, they usually have enough technology to start their own third world country. Given this interest, I was obviously excited to see what was going on at the Disney MGM Studios. The park was evenly split between amusement rides and a working studio. We started at the Tower of Terror where the premise is you are entering the Twilight Zone through an old hotel. I was interested in seeing how realistic this would be and had envisioned my own theory of what the Twilight Zone would look like. I came away disillusioned. Their idea and mine were completely different. I had anticipated a world where pitchers dominated baseball and all of them hit over .300. The home run became nearly impossible to obtain and the majority of games ended in scores of 1-0 or 2-1. The Twilight Zone was further defined by the existence of a 145 pound Mark McGwire who hit for average blooping singles over the third baseman’s head. None of these visions were in the ride. The one redeeming factor of this ride was that they dropped you faster than Jose Canseco’s value in the National League. For those of you contemplating a trip to Disney MGM Studios, I would highly recommend the following: Aerosmith’s Rock and Roller-coaster, Tower of Terror, 50′s Prime Time Cafe, and the Sci-Fi Drive-in Diner. If you are there in the evening, be sure and see Fantasmic.

What trip to Orlando Florida would be complete without a visit to Walt Disney World? I had not been to Disney World in seven years so I was interested to see what had changed. The park had grown tremendously since I was last here. There were now four parks instead of just two. There was the Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, Disney MGM Studios, and of course Epcot Center. Epcot has always been my favorite park. I don’t know whether it is the World Showcase with exhibits from around the world or Future World with its technology and promise of tomorrow. It might just be the giant geodesic ball that looks like a baseball. Whatever the case, I always enjoy seeing what Disney has in store for its guests. When we arrived, we found that the International Flower and Garden show was going on. The plants and flowers were magnificent. The other thing that I found interesting was that there were no crowds. It was a Saturday and yet we walked to the front of every line. We waited for a maximum of 5 minutes to ride every ride. This is unheard of at a Disney park and I kept thinking perhaps I had died and this was some sort of amusement park heaven. The one thing I enjoyed most was not a ride nor an attraction. Disney has begun the practice of pin trading within their properties. For those of you unfamiliar with this, let me explain. There are pin carts located around the property where you can purchase pins displaying Disney characters, movies, rides, or events. You buy these pins and wear them around. You then find others who are wearing pins and barter between collectors trading for one you like better. I started trading pins when I was on all-star teams in Little League. We would trade pins with other players from other parts of the country. Over the years my collection has grown to over 1,500 pins several are 20-30 years old. This visit my collection grew by another 200. I’m sure Trina will kill me when I get home.