Diary of a Diehard

Today is definitely a Sedona Red letter day in my life as I am sure it is in thousands of other baseball fans’ lives. Not because it would have been Jackie Robinson’s 88th birthday or that it is Nolan Ryan’s 60th birthday. No, today is special because it is the day where final payment is due on season tickets for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Sure there are always two sides to every story. Some of you may be thinking, “How can this be such a great day, after all you have to send hundreds or thousands of dollars to a faceless corporate entity who has no feelings for the every day fan.” To you I would say, stop channeling my wife. No I am kidding; Trina is as excited as I am about today. Well maybe not as excited but she is at least putting up with it. After all, can you possibly imagine what life in our house would be like if I didn’t get season tickets? That would mean I would be around all the time and she would lose 83 nights where she can do whatever she wants knowing I will never find out about her trips to the craft store or the scrapbooking store. And even if I did find out she knows that if I have season tickets then she can justify her purchases by stating, “Well it is cheaper than your baseball tickets.” There really is no comeback for that so she has an upper hand in our marriage from April through September. I’m ok with that as long as I have season tickets.

Continue reading ‘A Proud New Owner’ »

New products and services seem to come along constantly but very few make a dent in my life. I find I am just too busy with the day-to-day chaos of activity that I just don’t have time to devote to trying out all the new toys and gadgets. This is really a depressing fact for me as I just love new technology and trying new things. But even though I seem to be overwhelmed with my normal life flow there are times that a new product or technology just bowls me over and changes my life. I have divided my mortal existence into two phase, pre-Diamondbacks and post-Diamondbacks. In my pre-Diamondbacks state I was much like an unborn child. I was growing and developing but I wasn’t really aware of my surroundings. That all changed on March 9, 1995 when Major League Baseball awarded a franchise to Arizona. From that point on I began to have real experiences that I could remember. So in my post-Diamondbacks life phase I have had three major technology advancements that I would call life-changing.

Continue reading ‘My Technology Love Affairs’ »

For 63 days I have successfully dodged the piercing glares and probing discussions from my wife as she has attempted to get me to commit to work around the house. If I kept up that pace I may be about to slide through the next 19 days until pitchers and catchers report. At that point I could plead that baseball season had started and I had so much work to do between the blog and preparing myself for Opening Day that I could not possibly be expected to do chores. Today Trina was preparing her weekly calendar. This is a ritual that happens every Monday where she writes down important events that each family member has so that we can make sure everyone is where they need to be each day. Usually my activities never make the cut on this schedule. I am not sure I understand why that is so today I made the mistake of actually asking. Trina explained that “go to the Team Shop” was not an important event especially since I had written it on every day of the calendar. With the month nearly over, Trina flipped the page to begin filling in events that were scheduled for February. It was at that point she noticed that I had circled February 17 in red and put hearts next to it. She commented how thoughtful that was that I had remembered to make a note to myself about Valentines Day but that I had marked the wrong date and that Valentine’s Day was actually February 14. There are sometimes that I just don’t know when to leave well enough alone and this happened to be one of those times. I told her the markings on the 17th were not for Valentines but were to remind me that was reporting day for pitchers and catchers at Tucson Electric Park. It wasn’t a heart she saw; it was a Sedona Red baseball diamond. I’m not exactly sure why but this seemed to trigger something in my wife replacing her normally sweet disposition with that of Linda Blair from the Exorcist (without the pea soup). She began to speak incoherently; ok maybe it was just that I wasn’t completely listening since I was still thinking about Tucson Electric Park and what non-roster invitees the Diamondbacks would bring to Spring Training. Anyway, when I tuned back in I found that Trina had produced a stack of official looking papers and laid them in front of me.

Continue reading ‘Oh No, Not the Honey-Do List!’ »

Lost in all the chaos of yesterday was the fact that there was an event scheduled at Chase Field. As I have said countless times before (you are welcome to peruse the blog archives to count if you want) I am an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball fan. That being said, I try to never miss an opportunity to go to Chase Field if for no other reason than to check out my seats and make sure the stadium has not been reconfigured and my seat is gone. Yeah I know, but just because it has never happened in 10 years doesn’t mean it couldn’t. That is a recurring nightmare I have. I get to Opening Day, walk through the gates and head down into my section only to find that my seat number is missing. The seats are sequentially numbered up until mine then it skips over my number and continues leaving me homeless. There have been many a night where I have awakened in a cold sweat freaking out. So anyway, that is why I always like to go down to Chase Field whenever possible. Last night though was just too weird even for me to attend and that is saying a lot.

Continue reading ‘Monster Jam’ »

A few days ago the Arizona Diamondbacks announced the annual Hometown Tour. This has been a fan favorite for the past several years. Caravans travel the state carrying players, coaches, and announcers meeting with fans and giving them a chance to make a connection with the team. Most of the caravans travel to far off places around the state allowing everyone in Arizona to be counted as Diamondbacks fans. Unfortunately the local Phoenix fan is usually left out of the festivities. This year though the team took into account that there were many of us who couldn’t wait for baseball to start. Of the four caravans, three had stops around the Valley of the Sun. Looking over the schedule, the South tour was the one I was most excited about. Chandler resident and Diamondbacks third baseman Chad Tracy would headline this tour stop. He would be accompanied by golden glove second baseman Orlando Hudson would also be there to provide fans with a chance to thank him for all the highlights we experienced last season. Pitching phenom Dustin Nippert rounded out the players in this caravan. The final participant would be broadcaster and former pitcher Tom Candiotti. As soon as I read this I immediately begin to make plans to take the kids to see the Hometown Tour at the Arizona Mills Mall in Tempe.

Continue reading ‘Hometown Tour’ »

Have you ever had a dream that felt so real you would swear that you were wide awake? I am not talking about the dream where you are standing on a hill dressed in sun god robes with thousands of women worshiping you and throwing kosher baby dill pickles at you. No I am talking about a dream where when you wake up you just know the events happened and they seemed plausible so that when you told the dream to a friend or co-worker they would actually believe your story. Well, I had one of those dreams last night and when I woke up I swore it had really happened. I immediately ran to the computer to see if MSN or one of the news outlets were reporting the events that had occurred. Unfortunately I was disappointed to learn that it really was a dream. In the off chance though that this was a premonition and the events will unfold, I’ll give my views on it before I forget how I felt when I first learned what had happened.

Continue reading ‘I Had a Dream’ »

I think we have all experienced watching our favorite television program and just at a pivotal point of the program the network will put their news graphic on the screen and in an official voice they announce, “We interrupt this program with an important news bulletin”. This is usually followed by some talking head that tries his best to look serious as he explains some event that usually occurs thousands of miles away from where you are sitting in a country that you probably couldn’t find on a map if your life depended on it. This news interruption usually lasts for somewhere around 20 minutes where the talking head repeats himself a hundred times usually prefaced by the words, “this just in”. Finally the screen fades back to the news screen and the disembodied voice lets you know that you are about to return to regularly scheduled programming just in time to see the credits scroll across the screen and you are left wondering what happened in the show. As a kid this used to drive me completely insane. I could never understand why they could not just pause the program tell us about the important event then resume the program so we didn’t miss anything. I still don’t get that but with DirecTV and Tivo I rarely watch “normal” television so I’ll get over it. The other thing that always bothered me was how did they decide when to interrupt a program and when to let the news announcement come during the news time slot. Today is a prime example. There was an announcement that I would have interrupted every station on the planet yet no programs were interrupted. In fact it wasn’t even the top story on CNN or Fox News Channel.

Continue reading ‘We Interrupt This Program’ »

Late last week I received an email from the Arizona Diamondbacks. That event may become one of the good/bad day criteria very soon. This email happened to be from Diamondbacks Magazine. In the message the team described the changes that would be occurring with the team’s printed media. I know this is probably very difficult to imagine but I am an avid reader of this publication. I first started reading Diamondbacks Magazine in 1998 and I think I have every issue the team has produced. The magazine is a great way to keeping up with the team during the year. Diamondbacks Magazine is also the official game program so during the season I end up with multiple copies of each month’s issue since I always buy a program for each home stand to get the scorecard and player numbers for the upcoming games. When a new issue arrives at our house there is usually a fight between me and my daughter Tiffany to see who gets to be first to read it.

Whenever I get any communication from the team I spend a lot of time reading and re-reading the message just to make sure I don’t miss something. This email was from the editor Greg Salvadore who talked about upcoming changes that were going to happen with the magazine. With each description I started to get excited knowing that baseball season would be right around the corner. Part of the changes being planned revolve around the upcoming tenth anniversary of the Diamondbacks being formed. I’m already looking forward to the celebrations I am planning with my family to commemorate things we have experienced going to the Diamondbacks games. We have nothing but fond memories of the team and Bank One Ballpark/Chase Field. Well, mostly fond memories. I am still dealing with the aftermath from July 11, 1999 but that is a story for another day. As part of the events leading up to the tenth anniversary the Diamondbacks are asking fans to share their memories from special events in Diamondbacks history. The first two they have chosen are Opening Day 1998 and Randy Johnson’s 20 strikeout game on May 8, 2001. Oddly enough I was at both of those games and vividly remember the events of those nights.

Continue reading ‘Diamondbacks Magazine’ »

So I happened to be perusing the archives at MLB.com just trying to see if I had somehow missed a story in the past month. I’m not exactly sure how I could miss a story since I read that site and the Diamondbacks sites daily if for no other reason then to remind myself that reporting day for pitchers and catchers is only 22 days away. Granted it is the longest 22 days of my life but looking at the bright side it is better than yesterday. Yesterday I was 23 days away from the beginning of Spring Training so today is a lot better. So anyway I happened to be looking through the old stories on the Major League Baseball web site and I ran across one from January 2, 2007. The title was Gear up for baseball at fan fests. Intrigued by the title I began to read the article. It talked about how several teams hold annual fan celebrations in the winter.

Continue reading ‘Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Me?’ »