The following is a rough excerpt from a coming book not yet titled.
Chapter XX
We flew back to Vegas on a Southwest evening flight. Almost all of our flights around the PCL were Southwest since the airline had a major hub in Vegas. The Casinos drew so much tourist action from around the country that you could get a lift to just about anywhere at any time. Unlike my last PCL residence, Portland Oregon, where it seemed any flight required a red-eye layover in another city, often Las Vegas, living in Vegas granted reasonable wake up calls and flexible flight times. Beyond that, being a baseball player in Las Vegas was a mess.
For starters, Las Vegas offers every species of trouble a player could possible want. Prostitution, drugs, gambling, speeding, fighting, stolen goods, bum fights, and the list goes on in to eternity. If you were a young man with to much testosterone, and not enough brain power, you get high, naked, rich, broke, drunk, beat up and arrested—all in the same night. Ironically, this is part of the Vegas charm; what most folks came looking to experience. Action, baby, action! Get loose, get crazy, use the city like a condom, then don’t even bother throwing it away when you’re done. Just leave it on the sidewalk for someone to step in. (more…)
In a recent talk with a friend, the subject of the great Tim Tebow came up. No, no, not his amazing football season this year. I don’t pay attention to football whatsoever, so trying to talk about the mechanics of the game with me would be a fruitless endeavor. Instead, the conversation was about religion in sports, and the amazing amount of attention Tim Tebow has been able to bring to his chosen faith, Christianity, by being a sports super star.
It’s not a problem to me that Tim Tebow uses near cultish amounts of Christian rhetoric when he communicates with his teammates or the media. In fact, I think it’s kind of gutsy, and I can appreciate his zeal. It’s not a problem for me that he likes to sing praise songs during the game, or remain in constant communiqué with his divine coach. It’s kind of a problem that he tells people God is going to make certain plays happen, but I can get over that, because, well, it’s not like he’s saying the end of the world is nigh, or drink this punch with me or anything. Tim is obviously enjoying his right to religious freedom to the fullest extent and I don’t, personal evangelism choices aside, begrudge him one bit. The ubiquitous presence of the camera has a way of blowing out of proportion any personal quirks, religious or otherwise. (more…)
On Thursday I got to do my first NPR voice over for a commentary I wrote about the unknowns of being a free agent. It aired this morning onIt’s Only A Game.
I get the question of what team I’ll be playing for, where, and if I’ll be playing at all a lot. Often I have no answer. Until it happens, I know about as much as you do. My agent is out there, hard at work, but until something definitive is hammered out, there is no reason for him to call me and get my hopes up… or down.
Yesterday, during a radio interview, I was asked how, from a player’s perspective, the new drug testing policies set forth in the mid 2000’s have impacted the way players think about using PEDs.
For starters, the game is cleaner. It really is. I know that guys popping for PEDs make big news these days, but that’s because there are now rules in place to show just how scandalous these perpetrators are. When things weren’t so strict, it wasn’t such a big deal. Then baseball clamped down on the situation effectively making the matter a serious issue, with serious penalties—funny how the severity of the punishment adds the deviousness of the crime, isn’t it? (more…)
“We’d love to bring him down to visit you, but we need him more comfortable with traveling in the car first,” I say, sincerely this time, patting Xylo on the head as I speak. I had to pull him into to range of the laptop’s camera so he could fit in the shot of the video chat.
“Will he lay down?” Asks the couple.
“Oh, no,” I say, “he might miss something if he does that. He paces around back of the car, slobbering on my windows, farting like someone ruptured a septic tank.”
There was no response to that comment.
“It’s, uh, it’s a bad traveling experience. Mostly for us. He just wigs out. But I’m fine with that. I mean, I can’t stop him from doing it, and eventually, when he realizes he’s not getting out and he’s not going to die, he’ll calm either from learning or exhaustion.”
“Oh the poor thing,” they say. “The poor, poor, puppy.” Xylo is not even looking at the camera, he’s just taking up space like he usually does. “Have you thought of getting a new car, with more space in it?”
“Oh, that’s not going to happen,” I say, instantly. This firm and immediate stance on the subject gets a face scrunching, head jerking reaction for them pair like I just said that I’d rather be addicted to crack than feed my child. (more…)
I’m sorry Ryan Braun, but no player who has appealed a positive test has ever had their case overturned. Things aren’t looking good for you, your reputation, and, depending on what and how much you took, the size of your testicles. I’m not saying you did it, but just getting accused is bad enough. The fall from grace is a hard one, do what you can to secure a soft landing before you hit terminal velocity.
But, hey, on the bright side, just between you and I, things aren’t looking that bad either.
Lets be honest folks, as Buster Olney asked on an ESPN interview yesterday, does crime pay? It sure does. If it didn’t people would be less inclined to commit it. When there are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake for guys who can get the job done, what’s a fifty game suspension? (more…)
Now that shock of Pujols leaving the Cardinals has started to sink in, we have to ask ourselves if the Angles are going to get all one quarter of a billion dollars of their money’s worth from the deal? Albert is unquestionably one of the game’s premier talents, but, still, $250,000,000 is A LOT for any player, let alone a hitter already in his thirties. And ten years is long time. How many of those years can Albert realistically reproduce what he has been? Five? Six?
You can’t predict the future of any baseball player’s performance, you can only bet on what you know from the past. The Machine has a hell of a track record, and that’s what he’s getting paid for. His years with the Cardinals were like a long audition for the right to haggle out a deal like the one he just got. It’s not that unrealistic when you think about his upside in conjunction to his sample size. (more…)
I’m just going to come right out and say it: it’s extremely hard to concentrate on writing while your dog is slurping his crotch like a snow cone. Hey, I know dogs bath themselves with their tongue. I get that their customs are not my customs, and that their tongues go places usually reserved for porn or torture, but for goodness sakes, can’t they be a little bit more discrete about it? It’s a fervent, sloppy, ramen noodle-slurping event that lasts far longer than the needed time required to swab the area in question. (more…)
