Category Archives: Sports

In Honor of Jackie Robinson Day, my Buck O’Neil Interview

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There’s a lot of Internet chatter today about Jackie Robinson, what with today being the day MLB recognizes his accomplishments and with the recent release of the movie, 42.

That got me thinking about the 2006 special election for Negro League Era players and executives that the Hall of Fame held in Tampa. I covered the event, and during the leadup I was fortunate enough to conduct a phone interview with the legendary Buck O’Neil. Here’s a link to that interview, which some unknown someone was kind enough to archive. If I can later, I’ll download it and imbed it. It’s about nine minutes, and it was one of the coolest things I did during a 24-year sportswriting career.

Buck didn’t make it into the Hall that year, and he passed away about six months after our chat. In 2008, the Hall of Fame honored him with a statue and an award named after him. Here’s the link to that info. And here’s Buck’s bio on Wiki.

It’s certainly a good time to think of Jackie, but we would be remiss if we didn’t also spare a moment of thought for the other men who played the game so well in the Negro Leagues (and I think Jackie would think the same thing).

 

A Weird, Wonderful Welcome Home

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Tropicana Field

The rotunda at Tropicana Field is a bright, welcoming portal. It’s the front porch of the big, old, dusty (but always pleasant) dome.

Once again, I found myself at Tropicana Field on Tuesday afternoon, blinking away the memories. I thought it might get easier the more often I went, the more time and space I put between myself and my former self. But no. It’s not easier. It’s the same. Mostly.

Only …

This time, I didn’t gaze quite so often down toward the press box, trying to discern with my weakening eyes who was sitting in my seat. No. It’s not mine. Not anymore.

And …

I found myself more engaged in conversation with those around me in the Bobby Doerr Suite than enraptured by the action on the field. Make no mistake – I watched David Price pitch against the Orioles Tuesday, and I saw Evan Longoria make Gold Glove play after Gold Glove play. I saw, too, Jake McGee’s agony in a five-run Orioles seventh. When I did watch, my mind clicked back into the old habit of looking for every minute detail of every play, seeking the differentiator, the true turning point, looking beyond the obvious for the interesting and the eternal. When I wrote about baseball, I used to watch for those moments like a cat watches a bouncing feather tied to a stick – not mesmerized, exactly, but poised to snatch it and make that moment my own.

Tropicana Field

The view from the Bobby Doerr Suite at Tropicana Field.

But …

We left, my fellow parent blogger and I, in the eighth inning. We left bearing gifts after an enjoyable Opening Day afternoon. I was accompanied by Scotty Schrier, writer and publisher of DadsWhoChangeDiapers.com, and we were there as guests of the Tampa Bay Rays. Which also was … odd … for me. Odd, but pretty cool, too. And we left before the game was done, because we could, and because it was time for us to go. We came, we saw, we enjoyed, and we tried to beat the rush hour traffic across the Howard Frankland Bridge and home to our families.

So …

We come to it, the reason why it HAS to be different now for me, why my old way of thinking about this ball club and this stadium no longer applies. I used to cover this team for a newspaper. Now, thanks to an out-of-the-blue email from the Rays’ marketing department, I am one of several Tampa Bay area bloggers who are part of something entirely new in Major League Baseball – a local blogger outreach program with an eye toward telling stories about the fan experience at Tropicana Field, as well as the emotional connection the fans share with the team.

Tropicana Field

The Rays touch tank, just beyond the right-center field fence.

It starts with this year’s theme: Welcome Home. I understood the idea behind it the minute I saw the campaign reported in the Tampa Bay Times. Remember, this was a team that finished last in attendance in 2012, but finished eighth in MLB in terms of TV viewership. There is an obvious connection between the Rays and their fans, a connection that never has been reflected in the average attendance. The Rays, beginning their 16th season, now feel like the home team. A generation of kids have grown up with them. To those kids, no matter where life takes them, the Rays will always mean home.

It has taken a while for that to happen. I was there in the bad old days, when a “crowd” of 4,000 people was announced as 8,500 routinely. When 100-loss seasons were routine. When you could sit on press row and distinctly make out spoken conversations between fans sitting behind either dugout. When the Devil was in details of the organization, as well as in the name.

David Price

2012 AL Cy Young Award winner David Price celebrates after a strikeout. The first 20,000 fans at Saturday’s game between the Rays and the Indians receive a pretty cool figurine based on this photo. (Image courtesy of the Tampa Bay Rays)

I also was there for the early days of the Stu Sternberg-Matt Silverman-Andrew Friedman-Joe Maddon transition. I had a lot of conversations with all four of them back then about how they intended to fix what they had inherited. I didn’t always share their vision. But then … I’m me – a laid-off baseball scribe working now in Internet marketing – and they are the Fantastic Four who shaped what has become the most respected organization in baseball.

And … this: I guess some might call me a shill. I did accept the team’s invitation, after all, to spend the afternoon in the Bobby Doerr Suite. To partake of their chicken fingers and diet soda. To grab the bag of April giveaways on my way out.

Doesn’t matter. I know where I stand now. It might always be weird for me to go back to the Trop. But I wonder. When is it not a little weird going back to the old places? When are the ghosts ever exorcised?

David Price

Joe Maddon gnome, Price figurine, Astro bobblehead dog. Guess which one my sons want to break … I mean, play with first? Once again, Cy Price is overshadowed by the dog.

I’m pretty sure now that’ll never happen for me, not completely. I can never be a fan, really, because I spent too many years zealously honing and guarding my objectivity. It’s ingrained now. I could no more root for the Rays than I could hit Price’s fastball. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate what the Rays have become. In fact, it might even strengthen any argument I might make in favor of the experience of being a Rays fan — if I say it or write it, you know I mean it. I never pulled punches when I covered the team, and I don’t intend to start now.

Yet, I’m still learning how to do this. This is a different role for me. It’s enough for me to know now that I can look at this organization through a fresh set of eyes, the eyes of a father of two sons who already have begun to form an allegiance with this team that I’ll never enjoy, but will encourage in them with all of my might.

One day, maybe my sons will focus in on the game situation in a given moment, try to guess along with the batter, anticipate the hit-and-run, appreciate a well-executed sacrifice bunt, attempt to interpret the intricacies of the unwritten rules that govern player behavior on and off the field. Maybe they will love the game like I do.

Only, they’ll do so through the prism of Rays fanhood. That’s something I can absolutely get behind, and if they invite me back, I’ll surely go. It might feel weird, but then, isn’t it always when you go home again?

Tampa Bay Rays

Just a couple of Rays fans, excited about Opening Day.

Why I Don’t Cover Baseball Any More

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Pitchers and catchers report next week for spring training. On that day, I’ll pick up my sons at daycare, take them home, make their supper, beg them to eat their green beans, help them with their homework, maybe play with them for a while, help them get ready for bed, read them a book, yell at them to get back into bed, ask them don’t they know how late it is, chase them up the stairs and back into their bedrooms, threaten to withhold tomorrow’s dessert if they don’t go to sleep, and check on them on my way to bed, amazed, as always, at how achingly beautiful they are in repose.

It wasn’t so long ago I would not have been able to do any of those things. And not merely because I didn’t have kids back then. I wouldn’t have been able to do those things on the day pitchers and catchers report for spring training because I would have reported, too.

I might have mentioned once or twice that I used to cover baseball for a newspaper. I wrote about the Tampa Bay Rays for a newspaper here in Tampa. That job went away for good in July 2008. The layoff ended a 16-year run for me at the paper. The last decade of that was spent writing about baseball.

I asked off the Rays beat after the 2005 season. Why? Why would I leave what many people (myself included) would consider the career of a lifetime, the dream job? It couldn’t be more simple: My wife and I were expecting our first child in December of that year. There was no way I wanted to put my family through the rigors of a baseball season year after year after year.

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The Consolation of a Game of Catch

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They got home around 5, just as the light was beginning to fade. Chris, 4, rang the doorbell to announce his presence with authority. Jay came in through the garage. Their faces always look older after a haircut. This time, Jay looked older and pensive.

Would there be enough light to squeeze in a meaningful amount of play time with the neighbor boys? Or, more to the point, were the neighbor boys even home? He spent his day planning the play date, which might or might not happen, depending on various post-divorce weekend kid arrangements that are frankly kind of tough to comprehend if you’re 7 and fortunate enough to have both parents still living under the same roof.

The neighbor boys weren’t home. Jay’s afternoon plans, so carefully constructed, were ruined. The corners of his mouth turned down. His eyes went wet. He flopped on the family room couch and started to mope. He does take disappointment to heart.

On a related note … I found my glove today. We’re trying to remediate the Hoarders-like atmosphere we’ve cultivated over the years in the upstairs office. That’s where my glove was, buried in an industrial-sized garbage bag full of sports gear.

While Jay tried to process the disappointment (we told him he can always play with them another time, like, tomorrow), I walked upstairs to get my glove. I called over my shoulder.

“Jay, let’s play catch. Get your glove and that soft baseball.”

He didn’t budge from the couch.

“I don’t want to play baseball. I want to play with Phineas and Ferb*.”

I continued up the stairs.

“Well, I’m going to get my glove,” I said. “I’d really like it if you came outside and threw a ball around with me. I’ll be right back down.”

When I reached the living room, there he was with his glove and the ball. He still didn’t look too happy, but he was ready to adjust his expectations downward for the afternoon.

“If you’re going to play baseball,” I said, “you’ll need a hat.”

I grabbed his USF Bulls cap off the hat rack and popped it on his head. And out we went.

Keep in mind, this was the first time. We might have tossed a little rubber ball back and forth together at Tropicana Field on Father’s Day, but never had we stepped into the back yard, gloves on hand, for an actual, father-son game of catch.

Father-Son Catch

Our little lefty. Step and throw, bud. Step and throw.

Of course, he only actually caught my underhand tosses a half-dozen times. (He tried every time, though, and didn’t even flinch that one time when the ball bounced off his hands and onto his face.) After indulging me for about 10 minutes, he decided he wanted to kick the soccer ball around, instead. But while we played catch, I thought of all those years of youth baseball, of the thousands of hours I spent honing my fielding ability and learning how to propel a spherical, seamed, leather object at a high rate of speed to a small, precise target hundreds of feet away. I thought of my dad.

And, hey … this kid, my kid, can really throw. (Scouts – in case you didn’t notice from that photo, this kid can really throw left-handed. I’m just saying.)

After we played catch and kicked the soccer ball and paused every few minutes to determine if those far-away bursts of kid laughter and shouting were Phineas or Ferb**, we gathered the sports gear and started inside.

Of course you knew this story had a kicker.

While Jay carried his glove under one arm and the soccer net over his shoulder, he said to me: “This was a sad and glad day. I’m still sad that I couldn’t play with Phineas and Ferb today, but I’m glad you wanted to play catch with me.”

OK, so maybe it doesn’t get any more clichéd for a dad, any more hackneyed for a writer, than a game of catch between a father and a son. Costner did it best in Field of Dreams. I mean, his dad came back from the dead to play catch. Can’t beat that***. But I don’t care. It’s not a competition. Maybe the next time the neighbor boys are AWOL, Jay will realize it’s not the end of the world, after all. And maybe he’ll want to play catch again. I’ll keep my glove handy, just in case.

* Not their real names.

** Again, let me reiterate, these are not the neighbor boys’ real names. But wouldn’t it be freaking awesome if they were? I mean, think about the implications of having a couple of super-genius engineers/interstellar travelers/friends to all kid-kind living in your neighborhood if you were 7. You’d sure as hell be disappointed if they weren’t available to play on a Sunday afternoon. Wouldn’t you? Yes. Yes, you would.

*** I tear up every single time.

Lies and Athletes: Why Do We Care?

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People lie.

The only difference between you and me and sports celebrities who get caught lying is that their lies were told or perpetrated in order for them to be paid millions of dollars, or to protect their ability to continue to earn that kind of money.

I am a father. And I was a sportswriter. The former means I have children to guide through this world until they are ready to make their own decisions about life. The latter means I was around a lot of professional athletes, many of whom were liars. Not all, but many.

When you’re in the weeds, it’s not easy to tell the difference between the truthful and the deceitful, the admirable and the deplorable. I have no doubt that I was lied to – often – right to my face in clubhouses and locker rooms around the world. I have no doubt that I asked direct questions about steroid use and was lied to directly. Do I know who told those lies? Nope. Does it matter? Nope.

So, what’s the point here?

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The Time We Almost Missed Christmas

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We shuffled up to the customer service counter winded, defeated, dejected. The O’Hare concourse was empty. Anybody who had a chance to get somewhere that night, Christmas Eve 2000, was either there already or on the way. Not us. We were trapped in the giant airport on the outskirts of Chicago, stranded between working that day’s Buccaneers-Packers game at Lambeau Field and getting home in time to wake up in our own beds on Christmas morning.

There were five of us. Four were with the Tribune: a beat writer, a columnist, a photographer and me. The fifth covered the Bucs for the Orlando paper. I was the only one who didn’t have at least one kid waiting for me back in Tampa, but the house was full of in-laws, including some toddler cousins. The Orlando writer was on his cell phone when we got to the customer service counter to sort it all out.

“No, sweetheart, I won’t be there tonight,” he murmured. “Molly. Molly. Don’t cry, sweetheart. Daddy will be home tomorrow. … Well, I don’t know what time. Don’t cry, Molly. Put Mommy on the phone, OK? Don’t cry, sweetheart. Daddy’s sorry.”

__________________________________________________________

When you’re a sportswriter, you don’t think about what you do as sacrifice. The night-time hours, the weekends, the holidays lost, the ridiculous travel schedule – it’s just what you have to do to get the story, to cover the beat, to keep the job. It still hurts to miss things, but the ones who choose the life must absorb that pain and wear it like a badge. Those who can’t cut it are frowned upon or mocked. Oh, you miss home? Waahhh. Work at a bank. It’s the same macho approach whether you are a man or a woman. Those who make the choice know that they are privileged to have the job, that literally thousands of people are out there waiting to take their place, and any sign of weakness might just be the chink in the armor that allows the tip of the spear to penetrate.

In other words? Quit your bitching.

__________________________________________________________

The football game went into overtime (foreshadowing!). Packers 17, Bucs 14. We filed our stories and photos and headed to the airport. The plane left Green Bay on time. There was snow, of course. But a little snow didn’t delay us in Green Bay.

The delay came in Appleton. Why we stopped there, I’m still not sure. Maybe it was for fuel. Maybe it was to pick up a passenger. Either way … what? We stopped in Appleton? It took about five minutes to fly from Green Bay to Appleton. Five minutes. We were up, we landed. It was supposed to be a 15-minute stop, for no reason I could discern.

Instead, it lasted about two hours.

What. The Hell.

__________________________________________________________

I remember looking out the airplane window while we sat on the ground in Appleton. It was dark and white, and snow drifts were piled against the terminal walls. It looked cold.

__________________________________________________________

We were assured that we would make our flight in Chicago. It might be tight, we were told, but we’d make it. We might have to sprint through O’Hare hurdling airport chairs like O.J. Simpson in a Hertz commercial, but we would make the flight. Our departure gate wasn’t that far from our arrival gate, we were told, so we would make it.

O'Hare Neon

This light sculpture is called Sky’s the Limit. It’s a neon walkway at O’Hare. We saw it only in passing on Christmas Eve 2000.

We landed with 20 minutes to spare. We grabbed our carry-ons and bolted up the ramp. We would make it. We sprinted up the concourse, found the connecting passageway to our departure terminal, ran at top speed down a hallway lit by flowing neon lights. We would make it. We found the right terminal, ran past the other gates, counted the numbers to ours. We would make it.

And I swear this happened next: We saw our gate 50 yards ahead, three attendants hovering around the desk and the ramp door. We kicked it up a gear, sprinting, shouldering our computer bags, a bunch of out of shape sportswriters desperate to get home for Christmas. In slow motion, one of the attendants reached for the handle to close the ramp door. We would not make it. In slow motion, the attendant’s head turned toward us as we yelled for her to wait wait wait wait we’re coming don’t shut it yet hold on we’re almost there stop stop stop stop stop!

We would not make it. The door shut just as we got there. Click.

I lost it. We all did. They knew we were coming. They saw us. They had been told we were on the way.

Click.

There was a floor-to-ceiling window right next to the door. There, at the other end of the ramp, was our airplane. The ramp began to move away from the side of the airplane. Then, while my fellow travelers tried to reason with the attendants, I actually did something I’ve only ever seen in movies and TV shows. I banged on the window and tried to get the pilot’s attention. I hammered on that glass and waved my arms and yelled as loud as I could. The pilot never so much as glanced in my direction. The ramp kept moving away from the plane.

Merry Freaking Christmas.

__________________________________________________________

At the customer service desk, the Orlando reporter tried to comfort his young daughter on the phone. The airline customer service guy gave us all $100 vouchers for pretty much any local hotel we wanted to stay at that night. He also told us that the O’Hare Hilton had a Christmas Eve special. It was connected to the airport, so we decided to stay there. Then we were all booked on a first class flight for the next morning. To Orlando. Because there were no direct flights to Tampa until late in the day. So we rented cars, too. To drive from Orlando International Airport to Tampa International Airport, so we could pick up our cars before we drove home to our families.

Merry Freaking Christmas.

__________________________________________________________

After we checked into the O’Hare Hilton, we met down in the hotel bar. There was a Christmas Eve bowl game on. I think it was Georgia and Virginia in some very, very minor bowl in Hawaii, of all places. I don’t even think they play it anymore. So, we gathered at a table in the empty bar and watched a college football game. We ate bar food and drank. We toasted Christmas.

Then an old man in a gray suit and fedora stumped into the bar with the aid of a brass-handled wooden cane. He sat at the table next to us and ordered a drink. He placed his hat on the table in front of him and leaned his cane against a chair. He nodded to us and sipped his drink while he watched Georgia-Virginia in a bar at the O’Hare Hilton on Christmas Eve.

We sat and talked and asked the old man to join us and watched the game until it was time to go to bed.

__________________________________________________________

I can only imagine what it would be like to still be one of those guys. The guys who spend Christmas Eve working in Green Bay and miss their connecting flight home to Tampa. I never had to call my boys and explain through their tears that I wouldn’t be there when they woke up on Christmas morning. For that, I am grateful.

My sportswriting career didn’t end on my terms. I was laid off in 2008, freelanced for 19 months, then landed a Monday through Friday job writing and editing in a cubicle for an Internet marketing agency. That’s what I do now. I don’t have to concern myself with inexplicable layovers in Appleton, Wis., or callous gate attendants or inattentive pilots or lonely old men in hotel bars on Christmas Eve. It wasn’t my choice for the sportswriting to end, and I do miss it every now and then. But I wouldn’t go back. Not to the way it was, anyway. I haven’t missed a Thanksgiving or a Fourth of July or a New Year’s or a Halloween or any holiday since 2007. Having weekends off is like having 52 two-day vacations every year.

Tuesday morning, I’ll see the light in my sons’ eyes when they come downstairs and dig into their stockings. I’ll be home for Christmas.

__________________________________________________________

After we landed in Orlando on Christmas day, 2000 – I highly recommend first class flights, by the way – I rode in a rental car with the photographer and the columnist. The photographer drove and we took I-4 in record time. At the Tampa airport, I got into my car and drove home. It was around 2 o’clock Christmas afternoon when I walked into my house. There were maybe 20 in-laws there. They had already eaten. I hugged my wife and ate some leftovers, then opened some presents. It was nice.

Twelve years later, I still have the Eddie Bauer jacket my wife bought me that Christmas.

We separated two years later and divorced in 2003.

Chicago Cold

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Come to think of it, I don’t believe I will tell the boys everything I remember about being a sportswriter.

I will tell them this, though.

Cold. Soldier Field in December cold. Open freaking press box at Soldier Field in December cold. It was 1997 or ’98. Honestly, I don’t remember and it doesn’t matter. Because it was cold and gray and wet and I was one of three writers the paper sent to Chicago to cover Bears-Buccaneers on a cold damn Sunday.

I actually don’t remember who won the game, even. Probably the Bears. It might have been the game when Bucs safety John Lynch knocked out his brother in law, a Bears tight end. Then again, that might’ve been another game, a warmer game. These things tend to run together after a while. Was it even football? Yeah, that much I remember.

And the cold. I remember the cold. So damn cold.

Third quarter, or maybe mid-fourth. The beat writer got heated talking in the cold on his cell phone. I didn’t notice until I heard:

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. No. No. We’re not going out there in this. Forget it. Who’s … what? Dammit. All right. Dammit.”

He SLAMMED his phone on the counter.

He looked to his left, two seats down. Right past the impassive columnist. Right at me.

“You’re not gonna like this,” he said.

“Then don’t tell me,” I said.

“The publisher is watching the game on TV and they keep showing all these Bucs fans shivering in the cold. That was Andy. He said news side wants a sidebar from us on those freezing fans. Eight inches ought to do it.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not going out there in this. No way in Hell.”

Let me pause here for a second to share a bit about the weather and sportswriting. A lot of games are played outdoors. Sometimes, it’s hot. Sometimes, it’s cold. Sometimes, it rains. We’re out there in it, and a lot of times it’s just miserable. There are few places on Earth or Mercury as horrible as the open press box at Camden Yards in August. There is no air conditioning. Only the home writers even have overhead fans. And there are bats nesting in the overhead neon light fixtures. Or there were. I can’t vouch for bats in the light fixtures now. But there once were bats in the light fixtures, and it was freaking hot. Good barbecue and crab cakes, though. And they used to keep beer on tap in media dining in Baltimore. So, there’s that.

But that day in Chicago it was freezing cold. I don’t know what the temperature was. Probably minus-387 Fahrenheit. Which is, like, minus-3 Celsius, I believe. Cold, man. Like, Siberia cold.

One more interlude about the weather, if you’d indulge me. The coldest I’ve ever been was in 1998 or ‘99, during the NFL playoffs. I covered Cardinals-Vikings at the HHH Metrodome in Minneapolis. I remember it was startlingly bright and blue out, not a cloud anywhere. It also was minus-28 degrees, with a wind chill of minus-a thousand. I stayed at a hotel south of town near the Mall of America, and I had to park my rental on the downtown side of the dome. Which was fine except the media entrance was on the other side entirely. And I forgot my winter hat. Still, I parked, shouldered my computer bag over my big, thick, black long coat and trudged toward media will call. The mass of the HHH Metrodome shielded me from the 8,000-mph wind tearing down from Canada or Neptune, or wherever that un-Godly cold wind comes from up there. When I rounded the edge of the dome and made the turn toward will call, it cut through me, coat and all. My eyes watered. My nose ran. My ears bled. I bent my head and shoulders into the wind and trudged on. My ears didn’t actually bleed. But as hypothermia set in, I dreamed I won the Iditarod and Elisabeth Shue presented me the trophy. When I finally made it to the outdoor will call window, I leaned over to speak into that little round metal grate in the glass and said, “Buh,” like shriveling, mummified Alec Baldwin in the climactic wedding scene in Beetlejuice. Exactly like that, actually. My lower jaw fell off. The kind Minnesota grandma ticket lady inside waved me in and thoughtfully did not comment on the layers of snot and eye juice frozen in my goatee. I still have not thawed. My lower jaw didn’t actually fall off. I think the Vikings won, but lost the next week to the Falcons in overtime. Which didn’t matter either, because John Elway.

Chicago was cold, too. Not Minnesota cold, and the wind wasn’t Neptunian. But damn cold. And I was not going out in it to satisfy the journalistic whim of some publisher curled up nice and cozy on his recliner a thousand miles away in warm Florida. But the beat writer and columnist, while sympathetic, insisted that it had to be done. And it had to be me.

“Listen,” the beat writer said. “Just go out there, grab the first two people you see wearing anything red or pewter, ask them about watching the game in the cold, and come back up here and bang out eight inches. It sucks, but it’s got to be done.”

I looked over at the columnist, who gazed impassively past the blinking cursor on his blank computer screen and out at the field. I followed his gaze and watched a play or two. Probably half the Bears players were dressed in short sleeves, as were the Bucs offensive linemen. Tough guys. Steam gushed from their mouths and noses with every breath, and rose to blend with the body steam seeping out of their helmet ear holes. The steam all rose together to form a layer of breath-and-body-heat fog that swirled more or less permanently over the field. God, it was cold. I stood up in the cramped, cold press box and reached for my coat.

I pulled it on, first my right arm, then my left. I buttoned every button, right up to my chin, and turned up the collar. I grabbed my knit cap and pulled it on my head. I found my gloves in my coat pockets and slipped them on a finger at a time. I fumbled around for a notebook, my tape recorder and a pen. I took one more look at the field and turned to head out of the press box. Which was when the columnist woke up and grabbed my arm.

“Here,” he said. “You’ll need this.”

It was his own red scarf. I felt my tense facial features relax. This was a gesture of kindness, of solidarity, of empathy. He’d been there. He’d done his share of shit stories at shit games in shit weather. He understood. This made it easier to take. A little. But as cold as it was, I’ve never been a scarf guy, and I wasn’t quite feeling warm and fuzzy enough to just graciously accept his gesture and go about my business. Still, my voice was not pissy when I answered.

“No, man. It’s fine. I’ll just keep my collar up and be back in 15 minutes. Thanks, though.”

“No, this isn’t for your neck. It’s to wrap around your dick. Because we’ve been pulling it for the past five minutes.”

I … what … oh.

Damn, it was cold that day in Chicago.

This Game’s Fun, Okay? Baseball’s Hall of Fame Conundrum

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BBWAA Hall of Fame Voting

The letter from the National Baseball Hall of Fame that comes with the ballot.

I was fortunate enough to see Barry Bonds play in person in a handful of games during my tenure as a baseball writer. The first was in October 2003, when his San Francisco Giants lost a National League division playoff series to the eventual World Series champion Marlins in Miami. Bonds was two years removed from hitting 73 home runs, and nearly three years short of catching Henry Aaron. He was also two months away from giving what would turn out to be deceptive grand jury testimony in the BALCO case.

That first night in Miami, I stopped typing during batting practice to watch Bonds take his swings. I was absolutely certain I was watching one of the greatest hitters of all time, clear and cream or no clear and cream. The BP home runs he hit into the empty right-field stands at Joe Robbie Stadium were big. Big and breath-taking, like the Grand Canyon. Big and loud, like the Pacific Ocean.

Big like the stain left on baseball by performance-enhancing drugs.

I saw Roger Clemens pitch in person dozens of times. I saw him in a Blue Jays uniform, a New York Yankees uniform, an Astros uniform, a Tampa Yankees uniform (at a May 2007 rehab outing at Legends Field, live-blogged by yours truly) and a New York Yankees uniform again. He was no longer the Rocket by the time I picked up his career. Not really. But he was still Roger, and he was still a winner on the field, and I was absolutely certain I was watching one of the top five right-handed pitchers of all time whenever I saw him pitch.

Their respective perjury trials have begun to recede from memory (or, anyway, I had to look up the details). Bonds was convicted of obstruction of justice – but not perjury, and served no jail time. Clemens, who was mentioned in the Mitchell Report, was charged with six felony counts of lying to Congress. After an initial mistrial, he was found not guilty on all six counts this past June.

So. Here we are, December 2012, the time of Hall of Fame reckoning for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

I am about to vote for the fifth time. On previous ballots, I already have left off the names of Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire because they used performance-enhancing drugs. They posted Hall of Fame numbers (particularly Palmeiro), but it’s not only about the numbers when it comes to voting for baseball’s Hall of Fame.

The reason I didn’t vote for them – the reason I am inclined, at the moment, not to vote for Bonds, Clemens or fellow first-year candidate Sammy Sosa – is the existence of rule No. 5 in the BBWAA Rules for Election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. I’ve cited it before, and here it is again, in its entirety:

  • Voting – Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.

If those three words – “integrity, sportsmanship, character” – were not there, Hall of Fame voting would be a much simpler matter of selecting my subjective criteria (and remember, it is a highly subjective process) and voting for the players who matched or exceeded those criteria.

No matter if I or the other 500-plus voters from the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) like it, the way a player conducted himself off the field matters. So does the way he treated the game when he played. There are those who would argue that even if the character issues are taken into account, the weight of on-the-field accomplishments might still warrant induction. I’m not sure that argument holds water, any more than the argument that it’s OK to base your selection only on the numbers and behavior before the perceived PED abuse took place. Look, how do we know when (or even if) these guys began to shoot up? When is the cutoff for Bonds? Before San Francisco? For Clemens? Before Toronto? That’s a slippery slope and it is a poor way to choose a Hall of Famer.

On what, then, are we to base our decisions?

Several players, including recent Hall inductees Andre Dawson and Barry Larkin, have come right out and said neither Bonds nor Clemens deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. They consider Bonds and Clemens (and, by extension, anyone who used PED) unworthy because they betrayed the game. It is particularly heinous because it was Bonds and Clemens, two of the game’s most gifted players, who succumbed to temptation for the sake of … what? A few more playing years (and many more millions of dollars)? A chance to break hallowed all-time records? An opportunity to burnish numbers that already might have warranted induction into the Hall of Fame?

But wait. Clemens has denied he ever used steroids or human growth hormone. Bonds has denied that he knowingly used BALCO’s infamous steroid compounds, the clear and the cream. Sammy Sosa has also denied using.* The question is, how do we, as voters, as journalists, know beyond a shadow of a doubt that these players are not telling the truth? Without evidence to the contrary (or a McGwire-like admission or test-related suspension), is it fair for us to indict these players by withholding a Hall of Fame vote that their raw numbers certainly deserve?

*Although, the fact that Sosa used a corked bat – against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, of all teams – and that corked bat shattered all over the Wrigley Field infield in 2003, and Devil Rays catcher Toby Hall pointed out the cork in the broken bat’s shards to the home plate umpire … to have witnessed that circus-like spectacle of cheating might make me think twice about voting for Sosa, anyway.

Always, I go back to the fifth rule for voting. Integrity. Sportsmanship. Character. I’m not trying to sound all sanctimonious here. I know that these are nebulous qualities. We all define them in our own way, and they mean more to some than to others when it comes to voting. I’ve thought a lot about these concepts since I became a voter five years ago. And how have they guided me in my selections? Here are my four previous ballots:

  • 2008: Bert Blyleven, Rickey Henderson, Tommy John, Dale Murphy, Jim Rice, Lee Smith.
  • 2009: Roberto Alomar, Bert Blyleven, Dale Murphy, Fred McGriff, Lee Smith.
  • 2010: Roberto Alomar, Jeff Bagwell, Bert Blyleven, Fred McGriff, Dale Murphy, Lee Smith.
  • 2011: Jeff Bagwell, Fred McGriff, Dale Murphy, Lee Smith.

We are allowed to vote for as many as 10 nominees. As you might have noticed, I did not vote for two players who made it in: Andre Dawson and Barry Larkin. I’ve written before, I loved both players when they were active, and admired them for their career excellence and off-the-field activities. I just did not feel like they quite crossed that threshold from superb to Hall of Fame. Yet, I don’t deny that they are Hall of Fame worthy now. Nor am I naïve enough to think that all of the players I vote for will get in. Murphy won’t, and this is his last year of eligibility. I think if Dawson and Jim Rice are Hall of Famers, Murphy certainly should be, too. And I’ll probably vote for him one last time. But I don’t expect him to make it.

As you can probably tell, the subjectivity of this process is a deep, winding rabbit hole. Why Fred McGriff, but not Larry Walker? Why Jeff Bagwell, but not Edgar Martinez? I could explain those decisions now, but I’ll save that for when I actually decide on my ballot for this year.

Because I have decided that in my fifth year as a voter, the advent of Bonds and Clemens on the ballot means it’s time for me to re-evaluate how I make my selections.

Did they cheat? I don’t know. Probably. But I don’t know.

Here’s a question I need to consider, and I hope all voters do, too: If Clemens, Bonds, McGwire and even Palmeiro were not Hall of Fame worthy in the eyes of Major League Baseball or the National Baseball Hall of Fame, why are they allowed to appear on the writers’ ballot? Joe Jackson and Pete Rose, two obvious Hall of Famers based on numbers alone, are banned for gambling ties. Yet, Bonds is officially the all-time home run king. Not Henry Aaron. And Roger Maris is consigned to long-ago history by all those apparently drug-aided 60- and 70-home run seasons by Bonds, McGwire and Sosa.

The question now is, if these players are still eligible, what right do I have* to keep them out of the Hall of Fame? I have to balance that with an equally important question: If we, the voting writers, don’t deny perceived cheaters the ultimate honor in baseball, who will?

I’ll be wrestling with that for the next couple of weeks. The deadline to file my ballot with the BBWAA is New Year’s Eve. Until then, I welcome any and all advice/comments. Just … please relax. Have a ball out here. This game’s fun, okay? Fun, God damn it.

Here are this year’s candidates: Sandy Alomar Jr., Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Jeff Cirillo, Royce Clayton, Roger Clemens, Jeff Conine, Steve Finley, Julio Franco, Shawn Green, Roberto Hernandez, Ryan Klesko, Kenny Lofton, Edgar Martinez, Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Mark McGwire, Jose Mesa, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Rafael Palmeiro, Mike Piazza, Tim Raines, Reggie Sanders, Curt Schilling, Aaron Sele, Lee Smith, Sammy Sosa, Mike Stanton, Alan Trammell, Larry Walker, Todd Walker, David Wells, Rondell White, Bernie Williams, Woody Williams.

*BBWAA members become voters after 10 consecutive years of membership. That’s like, 347 years in SEO Writer age. I was an active member as a sportswriter for the Tampa Tribune and as a freelance journalist from 1999-2009, and became an honorary member for life in 2010. Voting for the Hall of Fame is the last meaningful vestige of my career as a baseball writer, and I take the honor seriously. But it’s definitely fun, too.

Am I Corrupting My Sons With a Sports Obsession?

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Jay likes Tottenham Hotspur, the Rays and the Bucs, but he loves playing on his own team.

I became aware of sports as entertainment and diversion in 1974. We lived in Raleigh, N.C. I was 5 years old.

That year, North Carolina State won the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament. Dad, back from Vietnam, was (as I recall) still a student at N.C. State. He might have been a recent graduate. I’m not sure, but we still lived in Raleigh, which meant we were at the epicenter of one of the great and awful spectacles of American sports – the spontaneous, post-championship celebration in the streets.

On the night the Wolfpack defeated Marquette (it was March 25), a carnival broke out on campus. We piled into our brown Pinto station wagon and crawled along the roads among a frenzied pack of Wolves, many of whom ran or stumbled along with one finger held up to the sky – N.C. State was, at that moment, Number One. And so they chanted deep into the night: “We’re Number One! We’re Number One!” I held my arm out the car window and raised my index finger. I was Number One, too. We all were.

I’ve never forgotten that night, or the swirling open-air celebration, even though I later switched my allegiance to (gasp) the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Much later, I discovered the history and glory of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Between the emergence of my obsession with all things Carolina Blue and my sudden, very real addiction to the Only Football Club in North London, I was paid to write about sports.

Games and the people who play them at a very high level have, to say the least, meant a lot to me over the years. Sports was the first connection I can remember with Dad. In addition to the N.C. State championship celebration, I remember tagging along as the batboy for a Little League team Dad helped coach. He taught me and my brother how to practice fielding by tossing a pink Spalding hi-bounce ball against a brick wall (hit the ground first for pop-ups, hit the wall first for grounders). I played Little League, flag football, and youth basketball. After we moved to Florida in 1982 (mere days after Michael Jordan broke the Georgetown Hoyas’ collective heart in New Orleans), I found the Braves and the joys of spring training in West Palm Beach. I obviously didn’t know it at the time, but the move to Florida when I was 13 put me on the path to becoming a sportswriter and put me in deeper touch with my visceral connection with sports.

At no point (that I recall) did Dad or Mom or any adult figure in my life push me toward supporting a particular college or professional team. It was sort of the same with religion in our family; we attended several different churches, and I dutifully said the words and read the Book. But for the most part, my brother and I were given a great deal of intellectual latitude when it came to spiritual matters like religion and sports. (Politics, as well, but that’s another essay entirely.)

So, now, do I feel even the slightest bit guilty that when I ask my 6-year-old son and 4-year-old son to name their favorite sports team, they both say, without hesitation, “Tottenham?” No, I don’t. Especially after glancing at this doctoral thesis on how people become loyal sports fans by Jeffrey D. James of Ohio State University. According to James, it’s perfectly natural for kids to be influenced by their parents when it comes to developing loyalties in sports. Besides, James also writes that kids don’t truly develop the long-lasting, seemingly irrational attachment to particular sports teams until age 8 or 9. So, there might be hope yet for my kids. Plus, Jay qualified his instant answer of “Tottenham” by adding, “And the Rays. And the Bucs.”

And I asked him why he likes the teams he likes.

“I like the Bucs and the Rays because they’re awesome,” he said.

Fair enough. But why does he like Tottenham, a team he has seen play far more often in high-definition, pixelated form on the PS3 version of FIFA 12 and FIFA 13 than on actual live TV?

“I like them,” he said, “because you like them.”

There you go, Dr. James of The Ohio State University. Validated again. But what are the implications?

Certainly, as my early forays into Wolfpack euphoria proved, the allegiances of early youth can be fleeting. It doesn’t really matter to me if Jay and Chris retain their interest in Tottenham Hotspur soccer*. It’s a nice testament, I suppose, that my obsession with Spurs is enough to pique their interest. They both know the words to the fight songs, and that makes me feel all warm and bright inside.

*That said, if they ever come to me and confess an abiding affection for Arsenal, they will be disinherited immediately.

Of course, neither of my sons really knows what it means to love a sports team. I mean really love a sports team. As Dr. James points out, a person has to reach the ripe age of 8 to begin to develop the lifelong obsession that so many Red Sox, Packers, Kentucky Wildcats and Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans profess to.

It’s a tribal thing, this choosing of a sports team. It has to do with geography, with family history. It has to do with so many little occurrences, so many forgotten conversations with childhood friends. It can be as random as what’s on TV on a given night, or what color you happen to like, or where you go to college. In some ways, I think, we don’t choose our teams so much as our teams choose us.

Dr. James concluded that the process begins with the enjoyment of a particular sport, followed by the attachment to a particular team, followed by an attachment to a particular player. Ultimately, for the franchises, it’s about creating that attachment early to ensure a lifetime of buying stuff – tickets, jerseys, programs, more tickets, more merchandise. It’s about grabbing them, keeping them, and encouraging them to pass the obsession on to another generation.

OK. I buy that (just as I bought a Tottenham Hotspur pint glass, bottle opener, coffee mug, t-shirt and two hats). And, so far, the process seems to be playing out just as Dr. James suggests it should with my boys.

Yet, what if they just don’t like sports? And what if it’s our fault? I mean, we’ve been to exactly one Tampa Bay Rays game as a family. We’ve been to zero Bucs games, and zero games of any kind for the nearby University of South Florida. Are MomScribe and I failing to expose our sons to sports in a manner adequate for them to later make informed decisions about whether they want to be true fans?

I spent thousands of hours at ballparks all over the world. My exposure to the behind-the-scenes nonsense of the sports world sort of jaded me to fandom, at least until I rediscovered it with Tottenham Hotspur in ’09. Has that affected my willingness to contribute to the full immersion of Jay and Chris into the Tampa Bay sports world of Rays, Bucs and Bulls? (I’d say Lightning, too, but eh. They’re locked out again, and hockey just isn’t on the radar for these Florida boys.)

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see about that. It’s enough for now that Jay truly enjoys playing YMCA soccer, and that Chris will almost certainly join in that fun soon. Eventually, I’ll introduce them to Little League baseball, and maybe get them shooting and dribbling and passing and defending and learning the intricacies of Dean Smith’s Four Corners offense on the neighborhood basketball court.

This is America, after all. They’ll have plenty of opportunities in the future to lose their minds over a sports team. It’s in their blood. I don’t think they could avoid it if they tried.

What I Learned from the Trip I Didn’t Take

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I was just reading through my last two blog posts, and I cringed a little. I’m not a preachy guy. I’m opinionated, yeah, and I’m not shy about sharing those opinions. But I don’t ever want to try to pass myself off as some kind of authority on most of the stuff I write about. It’s opinion, that’s all. I was a sportswriter, for goodness’ sake. That’s what I knew. Ask me about baseball, football, basketball and (now) English soccer and I can speak with some authority. The rest? It’s just me being a loud mouth, flexing my rhetorical muscle for the sake of … writing. Because that’s something else I flatter myself about, that I know a thing or two about writing.

Anyway, enough about me and my opinions (which, to reiterate, are just that – opinions).

I started this blog, ostensibly, to tell my kids some stories about my time in newspapers. Here’s one.

Me in 1997. Oh, man. THAT guy needs to be taken down a notch …

Once, there was this sportswriting hotshot who thought he knew everything. That guy was 27, covering the NFL for what was then considered a fairly major newspaper on Florida’s West Coast. (It was me, in case I wasn’t clear enough, and the paper was the Tampa Tribune.) The Tribune has certainly fallen on hard times lately, but back in the mid-to-late ‘90s, it was still a “big paper,” with a large and incredibly talented staff. We traveled all over the place, sending reporters and columnists around the country and the world to write about the teams we covered. My first year on the pro beat was 1997. I was the backup Buccaneers writer and the NFL writer for the paper. It was my first extended taste of traveling professionally to places like Green Bay, Minneapolis, Atlanta, New York, and other cities. I liked it. A lot. And I felt like I did a decent job that first year.

So, at the end of my first NFL season, when it was time to determine which FOUR Tampa Tribune writers would be assigned to cover the Super Bowl in San Diego, I kind of hoped (OK, expected) to be included in the traveling party.

Um … no.

Oh, I was disappointed. Kind of pissed, actually. I felt entitled (who doesn’t at that age?), and I felt ripped off. Hadn’t I earned that trip? Didn’t the bosses OWE it to me to let me go and cover the biggest game of the year?

Um  … no.

They didn’t owe it to me. I only THOUGHT they did. And, because I had absolutely no ability to hide my disappointment at that age, my co-workers KNEW that I thought I was entitled to that trip. Man, I was such a douche.

Anyway, about two weeks before the game, I received a letter in my office mailbox. It was from John Lynch, who was the starting strong safety for the Buccaneers at the time. I don’t remember the exact wording, but it went something like this:

Dear Carter:

I very much enjoyed working with you during this past football season. This letter is to let you know that you are invited to participate in the Lynch Family Foundation Charity Golf Tournament at Torrey Pines on the Friday before the Super Bowl in San Diego.

In fact, I would personally like to invite you to complete a foursome with myself, my father, and radio host Jim Rome. I know we’ll have a great time!

Please RSVP as soon as possible, so we can hold your place in the featured foursome. I look forward to seeing you in San Diego during Super Bowl week. Also, make sure you set aside Friday night for the post-tournament party and dinner. Linda and I would love for you to share our table.

Sincerely

John Lynch

PS I almost forgot to mention that all tournament participants will receive a complete set of customized Callaway golf clubs. Could you include your height and grip preferences in your RSVP? Thanks!

I read it and felt my face begin to flush. I fumed. I ranted. I showed it to everyone in the office that afternoon.

“See?” I said. “See? This is what I’m missing out on! I can’t believe I’ll miss this because the Tribune won’t send me to the Super Bowl! Dammit! Dammit!”

Most people just nodded and went on with their work. One or two told me to pipe down. One guy told me I better not waste time bitching about it, because Lynch needed to know ASAP that I wasn’t going to be able to make it. He was right.

I had to call John!

I checked the letter (it was on official-looking Lynch Family Foundation letterhead) to see if there was a phone number. There was. It had a Southern California area code. I dialed it. It rang. Someone answered.

“Thank you for calling Steak n Shake. How may I help you?”

I was all … “Steak n Shake? What? No, I’m trying to reach …”

And that’s when it occurred to me that the letter might not have been genuine. I looked up from my desk and saw every face in the department smiling at me. And not in a kindly way … more of a we-feel-bad-but-we-still-think-it’s-funny-you-fell-for-that way. I slowly placed the phone on its cradle, folded the fake letter and put it back into its envelope.

They got me. I later found out that my colleague on the Bucs beat was the mastermind. It wasn’t the first time he got me, and it wouldn’t be the last. I deserved every one of those cranks, and I learned a bit about what happens to douches when they take themselves a tad too seriously and forgot to laugh at things – especially themselves.

I covered the next three Super Bowls in Miami, Atlanta and Tampa. No free golf clubs, but good times.