Diary of a Diehard

Nearly a week has passed since quasi election day. We are still no closer to electing a president than we were a week ago. Declaring a winner in this election about as hard as hitting a Randy Johnson fastball. With the political deadlock in Florida, there are other votes that need to be tabulated. This is the time of year when awards are given for performances during the 2000 baseball season. Last week we saw the Rookie of the Year awards handed out for the American and National leagues. This was followed by the Manager of the Year for each league. This week is the more prestigious awards, the Cy Young and the Most Valuable Player. Today is the American League Cy Young while tomorrow is the National League. I waited for word to come out on how the vote went hoping beyond hope that this would not be another case where no clear winner could be determined because old people in Florida could not figure out which hole to punch on a ballot. Lucky for baseball fans everywhere, we had the opposite happen. Pedro Martinez was voted Cy Young winner for the second straight year. The vote was unanimous. That was somewhat surprising to me since I thought David Wells had a very good year and would garner some votes. Instead, he was relegated to third place after Oakland’s Tim Hudson. Pedro is indeed a dominating player who is deserving of the award. It will be interesting to see the result of the National League Cy Young race tomorrow. Obviously I am rooting for Randy Johnson but with the struggles he had in the second half of the season, anything is possible. If you don’t believe me, just ask someone from Florida.

For the past week or ten days, a team of Major League Baseball all-stars have been in Japan playing exhibition games against teams from the Japanese leagues. At first I was kind of excited about it. After all, it is baseball and it does feature Major League players. This enthusiasm waned when I found out that the games would not be televised. I can’t for the life of me figure out why. I mean ESPN has been showing re-runs of their nine ball pool tournament for the past week. I would much rather see baseball than listen to an announcer attempt to get me excited about two fat guys with sticks smacking a ball around a table with holes at the corners. There is just so much you can get out of watching balls spin around a table as the result of a break. Instead, I found myself surfing the satellite dish looking for Japanese television and the game. There is something to be said about watching baseball being announced in Japanese. Other than the player names, I had no idea what they were saying. It didn’t matter though because at least I was watching baseball. Of course I had to change channels as soon as the game was over. Right after baseball was Sumo wrestling. There is just something unnatural about watching two fat guys in thongs trying to give each other wedgies while hundreds of people watch and cheer.

As I got up this morning and made my way downstairs, I noticed that the neighbors all had flags hanging from their houses. Curious, I went to the calendar to try and determine what holiday I had missed. Looking down at today’s date, I noticed it was Veterans Day. Wanting to fit in with the neighbors and show my support for Veterans everywhere, I ran to the garage and got out the ladder to hang a flag on my house as well. Within 5 minutes, I had planted my Diamondbacks flag firmly in the flag holder and I was standing in my driveway admiring my work. Soon, I was joined by my neighbor across the street. He came over to see what was going on and noticed my flag. He asked why in the world I was flying a Diamondbacks flag. “Well because it is Veterans Day of course” was my reply. He again looked puzzled and asked me why I was flying a Diamondbacks flag rather than an American flag. Hey, I don’t tell him which team to root for do I? I explained that the entire starting line-up of the Diamondbacks were made up of veterans. Not a single rookie was in the line-up unless you counted Alex Cabrera and he only played a few games towards the end of the season. I further went on to explain that I thought it was admirable that there was a holiday that celebrated an athlete with experience. I had pondered why there wasn’t a Rookie Day but then settled on to paraphrase the response my parents used to give me when I asked why there wasn’t a Children’s day to go with Mothers day and Fathers day, “Every day is Rookie Day.”

The long dark off-season continues as there is very little going on in baseball that can get a fan excited. Oh sure, the General Managers are meeting in Florida to discuss items of business, but there isn’t much going on even there. A couple of minor trades, the latest round of Manny Ramirez wanting to be paid similarly to the Gross National Product for many third world countries, and of course the latest version of where’s A-Rod. What’s even more frustrating is that teams cannot talk contracts to free agents until midnight tonight. That makes this the longest day of the year for a baseball fan. I had concluded that today would be a hopeless adventure to find any baseball news and soon found how wrong I was. Some time after lunch, I was surfing around the Internet and happened to stop by the Arizona Diamondbacks web site. There I found the schedule for Spring Training 2001 had been posted! I could not believe my eyes. What had started out as a day of frustration was quickly turned around as I began to scour over the dates to determine how many I could attend and where. My calendar at work quickly filled up as I began to map out which days I would be sick and which I would take as vacation. Of course, I had to first see where they would be playing on my birthday. I always attend a game that day. This year, the Diamondbacks play the Rockies in a rare night game in Tucson. I wonder if I will be able to swing that one? Then I spent the rest of the day trying to determine when tickets would go on sale for these games. This turned out to be a pretty good day after all.

The recent elections have tainted my views of democracy. I agree that the people should be allowed to decide who should win an election. I do not agree that if an election does not go according to the way a candidate feels, they should continue to ask for a recount of votes until the outcome matches what the candidate would like. So today, I am again sitting in front of the television watching the news to see what the latest story is out of Florida. I found it amazing that the results of the vote were not even the top story on the news. I would have thought all business would have stopped until a winner is announced. Finally, the announcer came on screen and began the news story. Indeed, the election is now official. A winner has been identified and this time, the press waited until all votes had been counted before they projected who would be victorious. I of course had my own preferences and I knew who I had voted for. Of course, my vote in this election had no bearing on the outcome. That would be decided by the people currently in Florida. Finally, the newscaster came to the actually reading of the name, I sat there on the edge of my seat waiting. “Dusty Baker” he announced “has bee voted National League manager of the year.” My heart sank as I heard his name. I had hoped that Tony LaRusa would win. I felt he did a much better job this season than what Baker had. Sure Baker coached well, but Tony had to deal with injuries to Mark McGwire and a less than stellar bullpen. Well, the people have spoken. I will abide by their decision. Congratulations Dusty Baker.

Like countless other American citizens, I sat at home last night thanking my lucky stars for living in this country and what that means. Democracy is a wonderful thing. What other country do you have the freedom to color in a box and select the most powerful leader in the free world? But this freedom brings something more importantly, the right to watch something other than election reports on television. If we lived in a communist state, we would be required to watch as each and every vote was counted. Not in this country! I was able to come home and tune into ESPN and watch sports all evening long without once hearing about how red necks in backwoods Kentucky had passed a referendum to allow cousins to now date. This is a great country!

Continue reading ‘The People Have Spoken’ »

Every four years, American citizens are asked to elect a new president. I will be the first to admit that I am not very interested in politics. It is not that I don’t understand the candidates platforms, it is just that I don’t care. Oh sure, I know I should be more involved but I just don’t have the time. That seems like a cop out but to be quite honest, many of the issues these candidates are promoting mean very little to me. The Republicans want to give a tax break to those citizens who are in the top 2 percent of income. I will never be in this bracket so it doesn’t really matter to me whether they get the break or not. The Democrats want to make sure that my rights to have an abortion are maintained. I have never been pregnant nor do I plan on ever having an abortion so that really doesn’t matter to me either. I guess I should take more of a big picture view of things and try to choose the candidate that will do the most for the country as a whole, but I can’t. If there was just something that was of interest to my demographic slice of America, then I could stand behind one candidate or the other, but there isn’t. At first I thought that I just didn’t understand the candidates well enough. I don’t want to be an ignorant voter so I attempted to determine where each man stood on the important issues. I sent an e-mail to George Bush and Al Gore asking how they stood on things that were important to me. For example, how do they each feel about Astroturf? I have a very opinionated stance on this and would like to vote for a president who shares my abberation of this synthetic grass. Next, I asked how each felt about the proposed realignment of Major League Baseball to more geographical boundaries. This is much more important that those silly questions that were asked during the debates leading up to the election. Finally, I wanted to know how each stood on the designated hitter. How could I possibly vote for someone who was in favor of this abomination? Each candidate was given a couple of weeks to reply before I would decide my vote. As election day loomed, I did not hear from either candidate. In the end, my vote came down to a personal decision. I ended up voting for George Bush. The only reason for this was that he at least owned the Texas Rangers. Al Gore couldn’t even throw batting practice to the Detroit Tigers without hitting a batter. You can’t have a president that throws like a girl!

As a child, I can remember there were some nights of the year that I found especially difficult to sleep. There was of course Christmas Eve when every kid in the world probably got 3 hours of sleep total while listening for sounds of Santa Claus delivering your presents. Then there is was the Fourth of July. What kid could be expected to sleep with the smell of gunpowder and colorful explosions going off throughout the world. You just gotta be up to see what was blowing up and what kind of damage it did. Finally, there is the night before Opening Day. How could you possibly think about sleeping when you knew full well that within 24 hours there would be baseball and your team would be tied for first. Sometimes that would be the only day of the year when your favorite team would ever be that close to the play-offs. That one day, you could talk about the magic number. Hey, 162 is a magic number. It happens to be a very LARGE magic number, but it’s still a magic number. Now I can add the night before seat relocation forms are due as a night when I get very little sleep. It’s not that I was overly excited as much as I was nervous about something happening that would cause my forms not to be received on time. Well, my worries were not unfounded. First off, we were out of stamps. Second, I decided that I should probably hand deliver the forms to make sure they arrived safely. Then I had car problems so I couldn’t go downtown. I begged Trina to take care of the forms while I was stuck at work only to find that what started as a nice day suddenly clouded up and rain poured down making travel hazardous. Trina did come through by calling down to the Diamondbacks and made arrangements to get the forms to them on time. By the end of the day, I was an emotional mess. So as I left work, I was exhausted but relieved that my forms are now in the hands of the Diamondbacks. All is again right with the world.

The dust had barely settled at Bank One Ballpark after the World Series when Major League Baseball’s equivalent to Forest Gump made his way to Washington D.C. to tell the United States Congress about the state of baseball. He ranted and raved about what dire straits America’s pastime was in. In the midst of his dissertation he uttered a word unheard of within the context of baseball in over a century, “Contraction”.

Continue reading ‘Contraction’ »