Diary of a Diehard

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.)

Continue reading ‘More Letters From Home’ »

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.

Continue reading ‘The Day Hell Froze 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.

Continue reading ‘Bigger Balls and Smaller Players’ »

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.

Continue reading ‘The Art of Arbitration’ »

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.

Continue reading ‘Riding the Rollercoaster’ »

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.

Continue reading ‘The Ambassador of Diamondbacks’ »

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.

Continue reading ‘Global Warming and Frozen Tundra’ »

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.

Continue reading ‘What Am I Missing?’ »

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.

Continue reading ‘Keeping Up with the Bonds’ »