January 11, 2002
With only five weeks until pitchers and catchers arrive in Tucson Arizona for the beginning of Spring Training, it is time to start sending invitations to those players who are not currently on the Arizona Diamondbacks roster. Today those invitations went out to several players but one name was mysteriously omitted, mine. Oh sure, I am old but then so is most of the Diamondbacks roster. I mean there are people currently playing that are older than I am. So if Mike Morgan can get an invitation, I think I deserve one too. I don’t just want a George Plimpton invitation though. I want to compete for a job. Since the Diamondbacks might have just forgotten about me, let me refresh their memory.
Continue reading ‘Where’s My Invitation?’ »
January 10, 2002
It has been a banner week for getting mail at our house. Normally we get things such as bills, requests for us to further our collection of credit cards, advertisements for weight loss and carpet cleaning (sometimes by the same company. I am guessing the program has something to do with me cleaning the carpets myself.) This week though, it was a little different. In addition to all that other stuff I had received my Salt Lake City Olympic tickets.
Continue reading ‘The Countdown Begins’ »
January 9, 2002
In many parts of the country, people are surrounded by snow, ice, and freezing temperatures. For many years, I was one of those people. I would get up every morning, dress in every piece of clothing I owned, and trudge out into the darkness with my snow shovel in hand trying to stay warm while flinging snow from my driveway across the lawn. Cars would have to be plugged in to warm the engine block during the night or else the car would not start the next morning. This was all done in hopes that some three months from now the snow would melt and the grass would once again come out of hibernation so that we could again play baseball.
Continue reading ‘Feels Like Spring’ »
January 8, 2002
Around the second Tuesday in January, baseball again seems to rise to the top of the national sports consciousness. This is of course the day that the Baseball Hall of Fame announces their newest elected members. This of course is also the time I make my annual case for why all-around nice guy and two-time Most Valuable Player Dale Murphy should be elected. This is usually followed by my annual tirade directed towards the Baseball Writers of Association of America for ignoring character when voting for the Hall of Fame inductees and instead determining who should go in based upon whether they were a good guy to interview, or some made up statistic or other subject criteria such as whether a player was the “best at their position”.
Continue reading ‘Return of the Wizard’ »
January 7, 2002
As I arrived home from work, I was greeted at the door by the Federal Express man. This is not a normal occurrence for me so to see him at my house was just a little strange. In his hand was an envelope that I had to sign for. Looking at the outside of the envelope, the return address listed Utah. I felt around the envelope to try and understand what was inside. It felt fairly large and not real flexible. I took the package to my desk and tore it open. There inside was a Hallmark card from the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee. In the card was my tickets to the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympic games. Each ticket displayed the event that the ticket was for along with a really cool silver hologram.
Continue reading ‘I Got a Silver Ticket’ »
January 6, 2002
Having been preoccupied over the last several days, I had not gotten a chance to look around on-line or in the newspaper to see what had been going on. By “what has been going on”, I was of course referring to the Arizona Diamondbacks. As far as I know, the newspaper has only one section (sports) and the Internet is made up completely of baseball related web sites. Well, today I decided that I really needed to check things out a little better so I sat down at the computer and began to check the web for Diamondbacks news. The first thing I came across made me very excited.
Continue reading ‘Have Schedule Will Travel’ »
January 5, 2002
It is hard to believe how quickly time goes by. I really need to check my watch. I am not positive but I think that as I get older, my watch runs faster. That is the only explanation I have for why time goes so quickly. But I have also noticed that my watch is subjective about when time goes faster and when it should slow down. For example, ever since November 4th at 9:05 PM, time has pretty much stood still. At that moment, the last out was recorded and the baseball off-season officially began. I feel as though I have been in hibernation ever since that moment. That is until December 20th. On that day, my daughter Ashley returned home from school. She has had me constantly running from the moment she got off the plane. Whether it was doing last minute Christmas shopping, after Christmas shopping, pre-New Years shopping or post-New Years shopping I feel like I have lived in the car or at the mall. I keep having to check my credit card to see if the magnetic strip has melted on the back or not. Now though, it is time once again for her to pack up her things and leave. The other children are fairly depressed thinking that they will not be seeing Ashley again for another four months. I am in a little better spirits since I will see her next month when I arrive for the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
Continue reading ‘Da Plane! Da Plane!’ »
January 4, 2002
It is interesting to see how a holiday adjusts a guy’s outlook. Take this week for example. It started off with New Year’s Eve on Monday. Everyone was busy getting ready for their parties to give a big farewell to the year 2001. The majority of people spent the evening into the early morning of the next day celebrating the turning of another calendar page.
Continue reading ‘Gotta Love a Short Week’ »
January 3, 2002
One of the worst parts of the holiday season is when it is all over and you have to take all of the decorations down. For weeks Trina drug me around the house arranging each decoration to put our house in the appropriate festive mood. I had to endure her wrath when she returned home and found I had topped our Christmas tree with an Arizona Diamondbacks hat. I am still confused as to why this bothered her 
so much. After all, it was a World Series hat for crying out loud. But I have to admit, that was pretty mild compared to when she discovered that I had replaced the wise men in her nativity scene with Arizona Diamondbacks bobblehead dolls. Now I personally thought she was a little out of line on this one. After all, she was clearly getting the better deal. I should be a general manager for pulling off a deal where we trade four members of the World Champion Arizona Diamondbacks for three wise men and a camel to be named later. Granted, I could have understood her reaction if I had put a Diamondbacks hat on the baby Jesus but since I could not find one that would fit, I did the next best thing. I even tried putting robes on the Diamondbacks but that still didn’t make her any happier.
Continue reading ‘De-Decorating’ »
