January 2007 Archives

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I have very few rules to determine whether I am having a good day or a bad day. The ones I do have though are kind of important. If I wake up in the morning and I am on the couch downstairs and not sleeping in the bed after I made one of my comments to Trina that’s a bad day. If at the end of a day I have not been called by my boss or the kid’s principal, that’s probably a good day. If I can make it through the evening news without hearing the words “global”, “thermal”, “nuclear”, and “war” that is probably a good day. If I hear the words “Barry”, “Bonds”, “traded”, and “Diamondbacks” in the same sentence that is probably a bad day. As you can tell, my grading system is relatively simple and straight forward. Today I added a new rule on the good/bad grading scale. If I get an envelope that has Sedona Red or an “A” logo or a “D” logo somewhere on it, that is indeed a good day. Using this scale, this has been a really good day. I came home from work and walked down to the mail box. Opening the mail door I immediately saw the Sedona Red envelope flap shining as bright as the noonday sun. I retrieved the letter being careful to leave the other mail intact there in the box. (I didn’t want to take any chances that one of these other letters may contaminate my good/bad scale so the safest thing would be to leave the other mail in the box until tomorrow.)

When I moved from Idaho to Arizona I did so for a couple of reasons. First was the great job offer I received from Motorola. Second was the fact that I hated the cold. It wasn’t just me though it was my whole family. When winter weather begins in mid-October and continues through April that is just too much. And believe me when I tell you that there is nothing worse than waking from a dead sleep to the sound of the snow plow coming down your street. You know that you have approximately 16 minutes from the time the plow passes your house until you have to have the piled snow moved from in front of your driveway. If you miss this window of opportunity you will be left with a pile of snow that may last until Memorial Day. People sometimes ask me how I can stand to live somewhere that reaches over 120 degrees in the summer. It really isn’t so bad. I keep a pair of oven mitts in my car so that I don’t burn my fingers on the steering wheel and then I just crank the air conditioning until I cool off. I would much rather do that than have to continually wear 27 layers of clothing just to go out and pick up the newspaper. I admit, I am a total wimp when it comes to cold. I just can’t stand the fact that parts of my body could become frozen solid and break off. There is something just not right about that. For the past week though it has been unseasonably cold in Arizona. By unseasonably cold I mean frigid by my standards. The high temperatures hovered in the forties and the lows were below freezing. Finally the unimaginable occurred. Last night I stood at the window wrapped in a blanket staring at the clouds when the rain began to freeze and turn to snow. I stood there in disbelief at what I was seeing. I never thought it was possible that I would have to endure the sight of snow again and yet here it was. Before I moved here I had asked the realtor if it ever snowed and he told me, “It would be a cold day in hell before it snowed in Phoenix.” Well here we are and it made me start to wonder, what other events I should expect now that hell had frozen over.

I am first and foremost a baseball fan and specifically a Diamondbacks fan. After that I am a husband and a father. Trina and I have had a lot of long discussions about the order of things and priorities. I am not sure why she is so bent out of shape, she was ranked number two and I have offered to allow the second place priority with the best record to make the play-offs so she should be grateful that she’s the wildcard in my life. Somehow though she doesn’t share my enthusiasm for that accomplishment. If Trina had her way I think baseball would be buried somewhere at the bottom of the standings. As a result, I am trying to make a conscious effort to move husband and father up closer to the top at least until Spring Training starts. This weekend was a perfect example. My son Dakota has been playing soccer for the past 4 years and has actually gotten pretty good at it. As a result he has made the tournament team and their first action is this weekend. His team will be playing in the Coldwell Banker Shootout in Tucson Arizona. Trina seemed to insist that I attend this tournament. I am not sure where she would get the idea that I may not go. Quite the contrary, I was excited at the thoughts of driving 2 hours, staying in a hotel with the families of 9 other 9 year old boys and their parents, and watching soccer matches.

Arbitration is an interesting arrangement in the context of Major League Baseball. Throughout the season management tells the players how important they are to the success of the franchise. This sentiment is continually impressed upon the player giving them confidence and self-worth. During the off-season, these young players are then subjected to a process where they try to place a dollar value upon their talent based upon the current economic environment of the game. At the same time management likewise attempts to determine a player’s value. These values rarely are equal leaving a discrepancy. If the player and management cannot resolve the differences in the values, they will go in front of an arbitrator and each side will present their case as to why their value is accurate. This puts the team in a very delicate position. Rather than building the player up by telling him how valuable he is, the team is forced to identify the faults or areas needing improvement that justify their lower offered value. Without question this is uncomfortable for all parties. How can a player rationalize that for the majority of the year the team provides positive feedback and reinforcement only to see them go completely in the opposite direction during the off-season? For this reason the Diamondbacks have historically been a team who settled arbitration cases well before the beginning of the hearings so that they are not put into this type of situation. This year the Diamondbacks had come to terms with all of their arbitration eligible players except two: Eric Byrnes and Doug Davis. In Byrnes case, the numbers are relatively close meaning that a deal will most likely be worked out. In Davis’ case, the numbers were substantially different to the tune of over $2 million making it a delicate process.

This has been one of those days where at the end you just can’t decide whether it was a good day or a bad day. Today is an anniversary day for me. It marks one year since I had my latest shoulder surgery. At this time in 2006 I was being wheeled into the surgical center to repair a torn labrum. This was the fourth time I had that shoulder operated on and it appeared that I would need one more before I was done. Prior to surgery I could not lift my arm above my shoulder so I had high hopes that this would repair that and I would finally begin to get back to normal and resume playing ball. It was a depressing time of my life as the shoulder injury and subsequent surgery eliminated any chance I had of attending the inaugural Diamondbacks fantasy camp. I vowed to get my arm back into shape so that I could attend the 2007 Fantasy Camp. For the next twelve months I went through physical therapy (Trina seems to find joy in being able to tell all of her friends that I am in therapy and makes a habit of forgetting to mention that it is physical therapy) trying to overcome the problems I was having with my throwing arm. I had always hoped for the best so that I would be able to attend fantasy camp. By mid-December I realized that was not going to happen. My arm is still having problems and no amount of therapy is going to help. The pain though slightly better than a year ago is a constant reminder of how much I have left to do. My goal of attending fantasy camp was destroyed and this week has been especially depressing knowing I am not in Tucson with the campers. With all this disappointment I desperately needed something to pick me up.

Whenever I leave home, I always make sure I have at least one piece of Diamondbacks merchandise. Luckily that does not seem to be a problem for me since almost everything I own has the team logo on it. (Important safety tip to all husbands: regardless of how cute and sexy you think your wife will look in that Diamondbacks negligee you saw in the Team Shop, your wife will not agree when you get home.) I will admit, my wardrobe is substantially dated as most of it is purple and turquoise but it still supports the team. So when I left for Minnesota, I made sure I had some Diamondbacks apparel. The truth of the matter is I took nearly all my Diamondbacks clothing and wore it simultaneously just to try and stay warm. As I packed for the trip, Trina asked the same question that she always does, “why do you always take your Diamondbacks gear with you?” I’m not sure whether she somehow is anticipating that after 10 years of her asking that same question I will all of a sudden change my answer or if she is having one of those “senior moments” when she just forgot that she had asked that before. My answer never waivers.

As if this week weren’t already bad enough, I realized that I had to go to Minneapolis Minnesota for three days of meetings. I am not sure who the comedian is that thought it would be funny to send a guy from Arizona to Minnesota in January but I guarantee there will be payback. I’m already planning a follow-up meeting where people from Minnesota will travel to Phoenix in August. After a quick check of the Weather Channel I found that the high temperatures in Minneapolis would be hovering around 8 degrees but with wind chill it would feel like -12 degrees. To try and get a sense of comparison, I placed a thermometer in my refrigerator freezer and found that it was hovering at about 29 nine degrees. I also found a half eaten Dairy Queen Dilly Bar that I believe carbon dates to the Reagan administration but I left that in the freezer just in case I get hungry sometime later. Negative numbers are never a good sign. They are bad when I am doing the checkbook after a trip to the scrapbook store and they are even worse when put in the context of temperature. I will gladly admit that I am prejudiced against cold. After 4 shoulder surgeries, three knee surgeries, an ankle, a wrist, and a reconstructive finger surgery; I don’t deal well with cold. My entire body aches and about the only way I survive is by “better living through chemistry”. I needed to do some quick planning if I was going to deal with this trip.

I could not help but pace back and forth across the room. I had a lot of nervous energy and I was not exactly sure why. I found myself restless and not able to concentrate today. I walked back and forth in front of the shrine looking longingly at my baseball glove and the basket of balls that Dakota had collected last season. I reached down grabbed a ball and my mitt. Absent-mindedly I began tossing the ball into the air and catching it. I’m not sure why but I just felt like I was missing something and I could not put my finger on it. I was at first worried that I had forgotten something important like Trina’s birthday, our anniversary, or something like that. I checked the calendar to make sure I was not able to head down that path that every husband dreads where you space off some spectacular event that is important to your wife which inevitably leads to either a quick trip to pick up a card and gift certificate to the craft store or if you really messed up, a call to the emergency jewelry store when you were in real trouble. But the calendar was no help, I hadn’t made a note to myself about any Sedona Red letter days that would mean anything to Trina, then it hit me.

Previously I had written how much me and Barry Bonds had in common. We are both baseball fans, we both own a baseball jersey, and we both are under doctor’s care. This week though I feel like I need to put some clarification on exactly where these similarities end. Earlier in the week Fox Sports reported that Barry Bonds had failed a test for amphetamines last season. It seems that Barry was feeling a little down and needed a quick boost of energy to face the hoards of adoring fans. According to Barry he went to teammate Mark Sweeney’s locker and found some magic pills that gave him the energy to get through the day. Wow, you just have to love the fact that Barry threw his teammate to the wolves there don’t you? Here’s a guy that demands the highest level of loyalty of his entourage yet the moment he finds out that he failed a drug test, he immediately pointed the blame to someone else. What is worse is that Mark Sweeney didn’t have anything in his locker yet now sees his name associated with a failed drug test.

Although the calendar shows mid-January, it definitely feels like spring is in the air. Ignore the fact that the thermometer shows 42 degrees or the fact that it is cloudy with a chance to rain; this is definitely spring. How you ask could I say that? It’s simple; today Spring Training tickets for the Arizona Diamondbacks go on sale. I have been anticipating this day for the past three months. I have two whiteboards at work, one whiteboard at home, and a notebook filled with papers identifying which games are of interest to me. I started off by making a list of all the games that looked good. I presented that list to Trina of potential games I wanted to attend. She then compared that list against the calendar to see whether they might be a conflict. She immediately handed the list back to me stating that just copying the schedule for the Arizona Diamondbacks did not constitute a list. I assured her that there were not any extraneous games on my list but I could tell from her stern look that I was going to have to revise my list. I therefore took out the weekend games but she then reminded me that most of the games were afternoon affairs and that my employer may have an issue with me being gone every afternoon at 1:00 PM. That’s a good point that I had not taken into consideration. Trina also reminded me that I had made a New Years resolution that I would only go to one game per week. I reminded her that I had already crossed out that resolution as unobtainable so we were at a stalemate. I finally got her to agree to a schedule where I would be able to see every team in the Cactus League but her criteria was that I could not go to any stadium to see the same team more than one once.

At approximately 4:19 PM on Sunday October 1, 2006 the dust was beginning to settle on a controversial play that saw the Arizona Diamondbacks season end with a 7-6 defeat by the play-off bound San Diego Padres. At approximately 4:20 PM on Sunday October 1, 2006 I began to make plans for the 2007 baseball season. There was so much to do. For the previous two weeks I had been visiting different sections of the ballpark with my camera and notebook in hand making notes so that when season ticket renewal and seat relocation packages arrived I would be ready. I was initially concerned when I hadn’t heard from the Diamondbacks but finally my envelope arrived and it was time to begin. I went through the packet with a fine tooth comb reading each word over and over. I then made a trip to Chase Field to make sure that I had accurately decided on my choices. Finally I went to the Diamondbacks web site and renewed my season tickets. I then rushed to the fax machine to send my relocation form. Not wanting to take any chances I also sent an email to season ticket services where I attached my form, the receipt from the online transaction and a plea to the baseball powers that I would be able to successfully relocate. All that was left to do was patiently wait to see what the outcome would be. It has been a struggle with me not knowing where exactly I would be sitting for the 2007 season. According to the forms, the seat relocation process should be completed by the holidays. Since Christmas though I have eagerly been checking my mailbox (much to the disdain of my mail carrier) waiting for the big announcement. As of Monday this week I still had not heard from the Diamondbacks and my impatience grew to the point that I had to do something about it. I picked up the phone and hit the emergency services speed dial number on my phone which has been reprogrammed and no longer dials “911” but now dials the offices of the Arizona Diamondbacks. On the other end a polite young lady asked how she could assist me. I inquired when the seat relocation process would be complete. Puzzled she answered that it had been finished for a few weeks. My heart leaped to my throat and I barely could form the words. “Could you please tell me where I will be sitting for the upcoming season?” I asked. She looked up my account number and returned to state I was sitting in the same seats as last season. How could that be? Were season tickets so popular that none of the 20 choices of the 106 rows and 25,120 seats I had identified were available? The young lady then stated that they had not received a seat relocation form from me. Actual panic began to take control of me.

I am a baseball fan. I will gladly admit that and wear that title proudly. Trina on the other hand believes that is some kind of admission and the first step to recovery. While Trina and I may disagree on the level of commitment that is healthy for a fan to exhibit, we do both agree that baseball is America’s pastime and the greatest game ever invented. Sure I may occasionally watch some football, 1991 was the last time I think I stayed awake for an entire half of a football game, I just can’t seem to get into that game. It’s hard to be enthusiastic about a sport where they only play once a week for 17 weeks and during that time they have to have a week off. Basketball likewise is not a game I normally get into. I follow the Phoenix Suns as a matter of civic pride and because they too wore Purple but I have been to one Suns game since I moved to Phoenix 13 years ago. That leaves hockey. I went to one Coyotes game but we sat in the upper deck with an obstructed view so it was hard to follow the game. No, baseball is my game and I am comfortable with that. When my friend Andre asked this week if I would be interested in his tickets to the Phoenix Roadrunners minor league hockey game I gratefully accepted. I thought I would take Trina and Dakota to their first hockey game and since the Phoenix Roadrunners play at US Airways Center we would be right next to Chase Field and I could see how the progress was coming on migrating from purple to Sedona Red. Minor League hockey does not appear to be a big draw in town based on the attendance of me and 500 of my closest friends but I was going in with an open mind that perhaps I could learn to enjoy another sport. What I had not expected was that by the end of the night I would uncover a deep dark secret that impacted not only hockey but my beloved Diamondbacks as well.

Have you ever had one of those days where just the most bizarre things happen for absolutely no explanation? Welcome to my world. I have come to the misguided conclusion that I have a magnetic personality and I am polar opposite of normal. Yesterday just happened to be one of those days where at the end you just sort of scratch your head and say, “well that’s interesting.” I was living large hanging around just waiting for the Hall of Fame vote to be announced when I thought I should probably check my email. Like most Sedona Red Blooded Americans I have about a million different email addresses. I’m not sure why I have that many other than the fact that every time I create a site or log into something I get asked if I want an email address. My mom always taught me to politely accept a gift so I took it. Now I find I have more mail addresses than I actually have mail. That in and of itself is not the weird part, it is what I found when I started checking the accounts that gets weird.

Like baseball fans everywhere, I eagerly awaited the press conference at 11 AM Arizona time when the newest inductees to the Hall of Fame would be announced. It has been reported as a foregone conclusion that Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn would be included in the 2007 class. The bigger question on everyone’s mind would be whether candidates such as Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco could garner enough votes to be included. Personally, I want to meet the guy who thought Jose Canseco would get enough votes to get in. Maybe if we were talking about tabloid journalism author hall of fame he had a chance but seriously what 10 year baseball writer would honestly mark the box next to Jose Canseco’s name giving his Hall of Fame candidacy validity? When the vote tally was announced, Canseco had 6 votes which I think is just shy of the 75 percent needed for all induction unless of course there were only 8 voters then I stand corrected and congratulate him on his accomplishments.

Today has to be one of the most nerve wracking days that a retired player has to endure. This is the eve of the announcement of who has made the Hall of Fame. When ballots were provided to the Baseball Writers in November, we talked about what the vote potentially meant from the perspective of steroid usage. ESPN has done further research and conducted a poll of baseball writers to try and get a feel for how many of them took this into account when they voted. Based upon this poll, it would appear that Mark McGwire should probably not plan his day around waiting for the phone to ring telling him he has been elected. A player must receive a seventy-five percent vote to be inducted and given the results from ESPN McGwire should expect to receive no more than twenty-five. It will be interesting to see whether this figure holds true. I’ll be curious to see if the voters are making a one-time statement or if this is indicative of what players from this era can expect when they become eligible. We may be on the cusp of the Hall of Fame Dark Age when players find it especially difficult to be elected.

The timeline of the Randy Johnson saga would mercifully come to an end today. There was a 3:00 PM deadline for the Diamondbacks to work out a deal with Johnson’s agents to allow him to waive his no trade clause to become a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Everyone fully expected the deal to be completed within the time allotted. After all, Johnson had been negotiating through back channels letting everyone who was anyone know that he desired to play closer to home and what it would take for him to sign on the dotted line. Once financial parameters could be worked out it would come down to Johnson passing a physical. Some wondered whether his health and recovery from back surgery would be a detriment to passing the physical. What people did not understand was that Johnson has been working with Dr. Michael Lee on his recovery from surgery. Lee is the team physician for the Arizona Diamondbacks. I am sure that the Diamondbacks have been closely monitoring the progress Randy is making and relied heavily on the medical opinions of Dr. Lee during these negotiations. There is little doubt that Johnson will pass the physical with flying colors. Randy is still insisting he will be ready for opening day 2007 and no one at this moment is contradicting that statement.

Timing is everything. On Thursday during the monthly Diamondbacks chat a lot of the discussion revolved around the rumored trade with the New York Yankees to bring Randy Johnson back to Arizona. During the chat Major League Baseball dot com announced that the structure of a deal had been completed between the two teams and that the commissioner’s office had been notified of a potential deal. The commissioner’s office then granted a 72 hour window in which representatives of the Arizona Diamondbacks could negotiate with Randy Johnson’s agents to work out a deal for an extension and/or for Randy to waive his no trade clause which would allow the deal to be completed. The posted story provided some details of the players who would be involved in the trade and made me wonder, what is the unit of measure we would use to determine if this trade was appropriate for the Diamondbacks?

Yesterday during the monthly on-line chat with the Diamondbacks, the fans in attendance seemed to be just a tad bit fired up and not necessarily in a good way. New Diamondbacks president Derrick Hall was very good and attempted to diffuse the chatters by providing as much detail as he could in answering their questions. It’s always interesting to hang out during these chats just to get a read on the pulse of the fan base. It is also interesting to see what kinds of questions are asked. What I have found is that a lot of the fans who attend these sessions do not completely understand the definitions of duties between the baseball side and the business side of the team. There are countless questions that discuss on-field player personnel both at the major league and minor league levels. These types of questions fall under the jurisdiction of player development and are managed by the General Manager and scouting departments. The club president is typically responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the team including things such as fan comfort, loyalty, promotions, etc. So asking the team president about player moves would be akin to calling the plumber to ask him why your electrical outlets suddenly stopped working. While the plumber may be working side-by-side with the electrician and may have overheard there was a wiring problem, it is not usually within his job duties to troubleshoot electrical problems.

Trina worries that after the regular season ends that she will not know what to do with me especially having my undivided attention until Spring Training begins. For the first couple of weeks after the Diamondbacks were finished I had the post season to keep me entertained. Once the World Series ended though there would definitely be trouble since going from no interaction with the family to full interaction would be enough to drive them all crazy. Luckily, around that time the holiday season started. First there were the decorations for Halloween then soon after that we were getting ready for out-of-town visitors who always seem to arrive when the weather gets nasty in the north while temperatures in Phoenix are hovering in the mid-70’s. Then of course there was Thanksgiving which for a family this size is a major undertaking. After Thanksgiving we went into full Christmas mode followed shortly there after by birthday mode and New Years mode. After that though things start to slow down and Trina is left dealing with me pacing the floor and counting days before pitchers and catchers report to Tucson. This year she took preventive measures which are paying huge dividends.

I have not seemed to be able to get over this cold and bronchitis that I have had for the past week or two. After a day at urgent care followed by practicing “better living through chemistry”, I had hoped that I would finally be getting better but that has not been the case. Instead I feel like I swallowed a Randy Johnson fastball and it has stuck in my chest. According to Doctor Trina, I am now coming down with pneumonia which means yet another trip to see the doctor. This totally sucks and I am not in any kind of mood to be dealing with the medical profession. Considering I am scheduled to fly to San Francisco for a couple of days of meetings, it probably is prudent to follow Trina’s advice and seek out a few more prescription drugs. So we get in the car and Trina drives me to the doctor’s office. I have the remaining dose of cough syrup in my system so I am not allowed to operate heavy machinery meaning that I won’t be renting that fork lift today or driving the Suburban.

It was a cold Idaho morning some thirteen years ago. I was sicker than I had ever been in my life. I was fighting off a cold and the flu and was drugged to the gills. All that took a back seat though as Trina was nine months pregnant and was over her due date. When she shook me awake at 3 AM I knew what that meant. I jumped out of bed nearly knocking myself out on the closet door that I had forgotten to close the night before. I found my clothes and quickly dressed before helping Trina get her things for a trip to the hospital. The roads were icy and slick and very dangerous. I was careful but felt on the edge trying to get Trina to the hospital. We arrived and were admitted to wait for the birth of our daughter. Whitney Leigh Summers was born shortly thereafter and became the second baby born in Idaho Falls for 1994. The first baby born each year is showered with gifts from local businesses and vendors. The second baby born each year doesn’t even get the used diapers from the first baby. I’ve never let Whitney forget that fact and remind her of it each year on her birthday. This year was a special milestone for Whitney, she is now officially a teenager.

With the ringing in of the New Year, it has become traditional for us to review our lives and assess how they have turned out. This assessment never seems to be positive. There are always aspects that we wished could or would be changed. Undoubtedly that then leads to some sort of complaining about how life is not turning out quite like you planned which is a natural stepping stone towards promising yourself that you will somehow change the aspects that are most bothering you. Just so you don’t forget, you write each of these things down along with a promise of how you will make things better in the coming year. These lists are then taped to the refrigerator door to act as a constant reminder to you of the things that need to be worked upon. Slowly these lists that took center stage on your refrigerator will find themselves pushed aside by shopping lists, pictures that your kids drew, and reminders of doctor’s appointments you have made. Before long, this list of resolutions is buried never to be seen again until next January when you clean off the refrigerator to make room for next years resolutions.