Learning the Lesson

So I went out to see Moneyball, right?  Fun time; good movie.  The movie talks a lot about taking walks in baseball.  The idea is that a walk is, most of the time, just as good as a hit, since either way you end up on base which is the most important part.  The idea of taking a walk is a strange one, though.  I remember when I was  a little kid I loved taking the walk.  When I was in 3rd grade, I played baseball.  I was a member of the AAA Twins, and I think we were pretty good.  I was the shortest kid on the team, and after just a few weeks I realized that I got on base a lot more often when I didn't swing the bat.  You see, AAA was the first level when the kids pitched for themselves, and it was hard to throw a ball inside the strike zone of a kid that's right around 4 feet tall.  I loved getting on base, because when you were on base you got to run around (and even steal bases!)  As I've mentioned in the past, running was kind of my thing, so I wanted to do whatever it took to let me run.  I didn't really learn much about baseball though.

Flash forward to a couple years ago.  I was umpiring a AAA game for San Ramon Little League.  When I umpire that age group, the strike zone I call is gigantic.  If that kid can hit it, and it isn't at his eyeballs or on the ground, it's probably a strike.  This is to encourage the kids to swing the bat.  The pitchers have fun when they put the ball past the batter, the fielders have fun when they get to field the ball, and kids get to run around.  Everyone wins.  Nonetheless, on my way out, I was barked at by a bitter parent who was questioning the educational value of calling a gigantic strike zone.  I, in turn, questioned the value of sticking the bat on the shoulder and taking a free pass.  I knew I had done it when I was a kid.  I didn't really learn much about baseball though.

I wonder if this shaped my view of baseball at all.  I'm a huge fan of sabermetrics these days, and I know the value of the walk.  To me, it doesn't matter if you try the hardest on the field or if you're the nicest guy; what matters is that you put runs up for your team and stop the other team from doing the same.  I came to this conclusion after reading books like Moneyball and Baseball Prospectus, and through normal rational thought.  The question is, why do I think kids should swing the bat and adults should take the walk?  Is it better that I help the kids have fun rather than get results, and I think the opposite for adults?  At which point do I flip the switch and start taking the walk?  I feel like I haven't really learned much about baseball.

Pickiness and Potatoes

Were you a picky eater when you were a kid?  I was.  Fortunately the pickiness always fleshed itself out in easy to manageable ways.  For instance, when I wanted a sandwich, I wanted bread with mayonnaise and the cheap sliced turkey.  That's it.  If I was really feeling adventurous I might want lettuce.  If you had mayo and turkey, I could live for days.  Sometimes, though, my pickiness had dire consequences.  Let me tell you about mashed potatoes.

Let me say this first off: I like mashed potatoes (now.)  After many years, I grew to like the buttery texture and absorbant flavor, and have realized that my Mom really does make great mashed potatoes.  This was not always the case.  Certainly my Mom always made great mashed potatoes, but I didn't know.  When I was young, all I knew was that mashed potatoes were gross as all heck.  The texture was creepy and the flavor was sickening.  I knew I wanted no part of them.  I was probably five or six years old one day when Mom made the fateful mistake of forcing me to eat them.

It was a family dinner like many others.  The six of us were huddled around the table, and in front of me was a full plate of food, including a heaping helping of potatoes.  I told Mom, quite abruptly, that no mashed potatoes would be eaten that night.  If anyone else wanted to have their fill of the abomination, by all means, I won't stop them.  I, though, refused to eat such filth.  Mom, being the ever wise one, told me I had to eat the potatoes.  I get it now; she just wanted me to get over my irrational fear of potatoes and eat them because they tasted good and were healthy.  Nope.  I refused to cave.  She insisted.

You ever try to go toe to toe in logic with a child?  You know that at any time the child could cave in and do something so unthinkable that it throws the argument out the window.  I had to do that; I resorted to threats.  "Mom, if you make me eat those potatoes, I will throw up."  I meant it, too.  Mom wasn't having any of it.  I reinstated my claim.  "Mom, if you make me eat those potatoes, I will throw up."  I was told, once again, to eat the potatoes.  I was told I'd like them, and I saw my whole family enjoying them.  I had to teach them a lesson.

You probably have two outcomes swirling in your head right now: one where I cave in and enjoy them, and one where I eat them and return them from whence they came.  This, unfortunately, is a story of the latter.  I did eat those potatoes, and I returned them back towards the center of the table in the fastest way possible.  It was a revolting sight.  Nonetheless, Mom insisted on this dance again.  We debated the merits of the potatoes, and I once again consumed/unconsumed them.  From that day on, Mom never forced me to eat anything.

It took me until mid way through High School to enjoy a potato that wasn't French Fried.  I stayed picky, and enjoyed mayonnaise and turkey sandwiches.  Heck, I'll probably eat one of those this afternoon.  The point here is that when you try to match logic with a child incapable of reason, you'll probably get burned.  Mom knew that she had to pick her battles with her kids, and I guess that day she realized that with a possible outcome like that, foods were no longer a worthy battle to fight.

Dad, Still

Most people identify themselves as Morning or Night people.  For whatever reason, people always feel like they get better work done at one extreme or the other.  Me, personally, I feel I'm a night person.  It's almost as if the world has gone to sleep, and I'm finally free to just dump thoughts onto paper.  I need to have a free and clear mind from other work in order to really let it flow.  My Dad, on the other hand, is a morning person.  He claims he wakes up instinctively at 4 AM, sometimes 3, due to habit.  I don't know why we're so different in that regard, but you can't say he didn't try to make me a morning person.

When I was young, I remember waking up early on either Saturday or Sunday morning to play video games with my Dad.  The rest of the family was asleep, so the only ones to wake up were my pseudo-nocturnal Pops and me, the youngest kid in the family.  We'd wake up, drive to Happy Donuts in Belmont (I believe it was called Wild Bill's back then) and grab breakfast before going to play games.  Typically in the beginning we'd go off to my Dad's work, where his tech-savvy co-worker Don had a bunch of computer games stored on his computer.  Old adventure stuff mostly; I remember King's Quest being one of them.  Typically I'd play a game, and Dad would watch.

As an aside, there's something awesome about having your parents just sit and watch you do things.  When I started helping out with Jr. High, I remember I was told that the kids will grow to like you just because at that age it's cool to have an adult care about what you're doing.  I don't know what it is about having people watch and care and encourage you, but when it's an adult you respect (especially a parent) it really means something else.

So anyways, Dad watching me play video games was special.  Eventually the owner of the business (my Grandpa) caught wind of the games, and banned them from the office.  What a curmudgeon.  Anyways, the locale switched to my home.  The weekend gaming took on a new tone at that point; it was gaming in quiet because I wasn't allowed to wake my family.  The quiet was what permeates my thoughts of those days.  My Dad and I didn't always talk a ton.  Well, I should say, I talked a ton, and my Dad listened.  Perhaps the video gaming was a way for my Dad to enjoy my company without having to listen to me yammer on incessantly about Calvin and Hobbes or whatever occupied my six-year-old mind at the time.

There just isn't enough quiet these days.  I still talk too much, I play video games, and I still eat donuts, but I don't have the quiet enough.  Dad always brought the quiet.  When things went wrong, I could count on Dad to come in, bring the quiet, and slow things down to the point that they could be sorted out.  I think of Psalm 46:10.

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
   I will be exalted among the nations,
   I will be exalted in the earth.”

 I admire a lot about my Dad, but his ability to be still, quiet, and listen to God is definitely up near the top of the list.  Even in trivial things like playing video games, Dad was always there to be still and just listen to what was going on around him.  I really need to start taking in more of his wisdom.

Mother's Intuition

You ever think about the Christmas List?  When I was a kid, I made a list of things I wanted for Christmas.  I knew I wouldn't get all of them (sometimes hardly any of the specific things I mentioned) but I knew making a list was important.  It served to hype up the season and get myself excited, and it also served to let everyone know what I wanted.  Like many kids (or so I imagine) I always took great pride in my list.  I posted it front and center on the refrigerator for all to see, and I'd keep an eye out for people looking at it.  When Christmas rolled around, I was always happy with my gifts, though sometimes they weren't the ones on the list.  There was one thing that tied the gifts together though: Mom.  Either Mom directly bought it and gave it to me, or she had advised someone in what to get me, or cleverly disguised a gift from "Willie Mays" or whatever.  You could always tell the thought Mom put into buying Christmas gifts.

Her thought processes, though, ranged from the extremely cryptic to the flat out obvious.  I remember, once, receiving a call when I was 10 or so from my Mom in early December.

"Hi, Andy?"

"Yeah, Mom?"

"Uhh, yeah, do you like "War...craft?" 

"Yeah, I do, Mom."

"Oh, OK.  Do you like "Might...And...Magic?"

"Yeah...why do you ask?"

"Oh, I was just wondering." (Click)

Can't blame the lady for wanting to get it right.  Other times, though, it was mysterious.  I remember in College I got a printer.  It's a very nice printer; I still use it to this day.  It scans, copies, prints photos, and the ink is really affordable.  The thing is, though, that I never told anyone I needed a printer.  The printer I had at the time was a piece of junk that barely got the job done and was on its last legs  Come Christmas time, though, Mom gave me a printer though I had just barely realized I needed one.  Chalk that one up to Mother's Intuition I guess.

I think Moms are supposed to have an innate sense of knowing when their kids need something.  Being the fourth kid of the Patrick line, I think I reaped an intangible benefit of Mom having honed this skill through the years.  By the time I reached every age level, Mom was so well polished at the art of coming through in the clutch that I didn't even realize it was happening.  Things just went right, and that was the way of the world.  Even though she worked until at least 5:00, there was always a warm dinner at home at night.  Whenever practice had ended, there was always a ride ready to come get me.  Whenever I tore a hole in my shirt jumping over a fence to make prank phone c--I mean, jumping over a fence for fun and nothing else--there would always be another shirt there ready to take its place.  These may sound like trivial and obvious things, but I've started to realize that they aren't for everyone, and they didn't have to be.  If it weren't for Mom orchestrating all these things, then my childhood wouldn't have been as carefree as it was.

I wonder if Moms strive to get to the point where their kids don't even realize they're doing the things they're doing.  Mom always did everything without too much fanfare.  She never made a big deal about her birthday, or fished for thank yous at dinner, or anything like that.  She simply made sure it was done, and took joy in the fact that her family was safe and happy.  That's pretty amazing.  Maybe that's what Mother's Intuition is: just a practiced skill derived from knowing how to keep the family safe and happy.  If so, my Mom's pretty darn intuitive.

Brothers

Quick refresher course: I like video games, I rented them often, I thought my brother was the greatest video game player when I was a kid. With that in mind, let's flash back to the year 19xx.

The year is 19xx (I don't actually remember the year but I was around 7 or 8 years old). My brother and I had rented Mega Man 3. Mega Man 3 was a game where you weren't just a regular man, but a weird robot man that could absorb special powers from other robot men by killing them. So your goal was to pick a stage, get past the evil guy's lair (mostly by jumping and shooting) and then killing the guy himself at the end. There's more to it, but you get the idea. Each Mega Man game had eight evil guys you had to kill before getting to the final evil guy, and you could do them in any order you liked. When you beat a boss, you were given a password, and if you wanted to turn off your Nintendo, you could restart your progress by inputting the password when you started playing again.

Anyways, so my brother and I had rented this game. We took turns trying to beat the boss. Most of the time this involved me failing miserably and then handing the controller off to my brother who would do much better. In fact, I think he had beaten every one of the evil guys except for one: Magnet Man.

Look at this guy: dude has a magnet on his head. He's serious business. He was serious enough business in fact, that Doug and I had quite a time trying to beat him. I remember us trying more than once before having to call it a night and both having to go to school. After school got off I went home to try my hand again at the dreaded Man of Magnets. I had some time to the game myself before Doug got home, and I had to relish it. We were lucky to have a second TV in our house, and it didn't have cable, which meant it was free for Doug and I to play all we wanted. That said, sharing was strictly enforced. Once Doug got home, we had to take turns (unless, of course, one person "broke the other's concentration" which was a policy liberally enforced). In the time before Doug got home, though, somehow I had managed to beat Magnet Man. Don't ask me how; it was some combination of blind luck and sheer force of will.

This was a big moment for me; I think it was the first time I beat Doug to anything. Of course, I didn't really think of it that way. I thought of it as doing my part for the team. Doug would come home, hear the good news, and then we'd progress straight on to the boss together. That, unfortunately, wasn't the reaction he had. Doug wanted to beat the level for himself, and he was actually kind of mad that I had done it without him. We had what resembled an argument between brothers seven years apart, and I'm not even positive we played that night. The next morning though you can be dang sure we kept going in the game. Doug and I had a neat relationship growing up; we could get mad and yell at each other, but once we got a good night's sleep, all was forgiven. No apologies were sought for or given; we just reverted to being brothers without grudges. It was understood that whatever had happened before happened, but it wasn't big enough to get between us. We just let it lie, and moved on.

I remember at times wondering if there should have been more apologies handed out, but now I don't think so. The dynamic between us, at least from my angle, never begat any grudges, and I hope it was the same way with him. I wonder if all brothers are this way. I think the moral of the story is: don't let stupid nonsense get between you and your brother/friend/partner/whatever; there are magnet men (and their proverbial counterparts) that are far more important to focus on.

Gentleman Jim

So Jim Thome just the other day hit his 600th home run. This is a pretty startling athletic feat; only seven other players have done this, and they belong to three categories: Hall of Famers (Aaron, Ruth, Mays), surefire hall of famers (Griffey, A-Rod), or surefire hall of famers if not for PED suspicion (Bonds, Sosa). Jim Thome is also the nicest guy in baseball. One would think that these two things combined would make a huge baseball story, but it's not getting that much love. I particularly think that it's getting slighted when compared to Derek Jeter's 3000th hit, a feat accomplished by twenty eight people. I have a few theories:

1) In light of past steroid use by other sluggers, people are associating Thome with steroid use by proxy. I get it; baseball has tainted our minds forever. We can't really look at any random feel-good comeback story without wondering if it was a product of chemical use. When you look at a monstrous slugger like Thome, it's easy to think that he's all 'roids. That said, Thome has never been connected with steroids. He wasn't on the Mitchell Report, he wasn't named by Canseco, and there haven't been whispers around the media about him. Furthermore, hitting home runs is all Thome does. We're not talking about a guy like Bonds, who went from a great 5 tool player to the most prolific masher in history. We're talking about a big guy who stayed big and did what he had always done.

2) Thome does not play for a large market team. Thome plays for the Minnesota Twins, and before that he played for the Chicago White Sox. The American League Central has never been a division where most of America looks to for action. Thome is now on his 5th club (Indians, Phillies, ChiSox, Dodgers, Twins) and can't really be considered "Mr." anything, like, say, Jeter is. Jeter is an iconic Yankee, so he has the backing of the biggest fanbase in American Baseball.

3) Major League Baseball is hedging it's bet for a few years with regards to power hitters. This is related to #1, but focuses more on the sport as a whole. Major League Baseball might not want to trump up a huge slugger as a model for the game just in case a story does break that the involved parties were juicing.

4) Thome's secondary skills are overlooked. To the untrained eye, Derek Jeter is a fabulous hitter that is made even better by the fact that he's a shortstop. Jim Thome is a fat dude that drops bombs. While most of the world can't seem to fathom the idea that Jeter wasn't a good fielder, the simple fact that he is a shortstop makes his feat that much more awe inspiring. Jim Thome's secondary skill? Getting on base. Thome got on base at a .403 clip over his career, good for 6th among active players (Helton, Pujols, Manny, Berkman, Giambino). Unfortunately the majority of the baseball loving world is just as slow with realizing the benefit of the walk as they are of seeing Jeter's poor defense work, so Thome comes off as a one dimensional player while Jeter is hailed as a toolsy beast.

It's a shame. It's a darn shame. Gentleman Jim is among the best hitters we have had the pleasure of witnessing in our lifetime, and this great milestone may be the pinnacle of his career, and baseball just isn't giving him his due because of circumstances beyond his control. Well done Jim.

The Bonnell Hurdle

I didn't always like writing. When I was in Jr. High, I felt the same about writing as did every other kid; it was just something that came along with school. Sure, I wrote stories when I was a little kid, but those died out as I got older. When I was in school at that age, I wrote in the same manner as I did any other homework assignment; uncaringly. This made for quite the shock when I reached high school and I ran into the entity known only as "Mr. Bonnell."

Mr. Bonnell was his own man. He wore a bow tie, rode a cruiser bike to school, rang a bell to signify the start of class, and addressed everyone by Mr. and Miss. He was, to put it lightly, old fashioned. During the summer going into my Freshman year of High School, Mr. Bonnell required all incoming students to write a paper on a book of their choice from a small list. I chose "The Hobbit" because I had already read it, and thus, didn't have to do any extra work. My paper was what I had assumed a paper was supposed to be; grammatically correct in most ways. I didn't really care about what the content was, because my 8th grade teacher cared only about proper grammar. It didn't matter to me that the entirety of my paper was just a rough summary of the book in two pages, as I thought I had done a fine job. Mr. Bonnell politely disagreed.

After I read my paper to him in private as all students did, he explained to me that my paper wasn't quite up to standards. To sum up; I got a D-. It was quite the shocker as my first grade of my High School career wasn't one to write home about, so clearly I had work to do. I spent the rest of the first semester trying to figure out what to do, and mostly failing, though occasionally I gained slight progress. Up until the last paper of the quarter the highest grade I had received on a paper was a C-. The last paper of the semester was on George Orwell's classic, 1984. I had to try something new. I told my Mom (God bless her for putting up with all my writing nonsense) that I would go a different route. I was going to throw style out the window completely and be totally structured with my paper. My essay would consist of quotes and explanation. I would have a short introduction, a short conclusion, and one sentence at the bookends of each paragraph. Other than that, I would have nothing but quotes and explanation to prove my point. "Winston did this" and it meant that. It was bold, but I had no option left other than the hail mary. When I had finished reading that essay to Mr. Bonnell, he sat there staring at it blankly. He carefully pondered how to break the news to me. I knew I had done something wrong.

"This is exactly what I've been looking for, Mr. Patrick."

The clouds parted. Light shined down through the atrium and onto me, straight from the heavens. The wisdom and mysteries of the stars were being revealed to me as all happiness flowed through me. Mr. Bonnell was finally pleased with my work. He went on to tell me...I don't know. I don't even remember the particularities of that conversation beyond "you did it." All I knew was that I had somehow figured out how to write a paper, and I did it by breaking it down to its most basic elements, shrugging, and hoping I got there. That day was a turning point for me; I would strive to be as terse as possible in my academic writing, and it hasn't failed me since. Sure, I don't follow that model in blog-format ramblings, but that's why nobody reads this blog but me, and those who love me an inexplicable amount.