Diary of a Diehard

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?’ »

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’ »