Introduction September 22, 2010

“I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee.” Carly Simon You’re so Vain

Suffering through a losing season of baseball is like a long car ride home from a nice vacation sitting cramped in the backseat. It seems longer than it really is because you are heading nowhere fun, and you know when you get there it will be close to midnight and that evil alarm clock is way too eager to proclaim its existence at 6:00 AM.

Baseball is like a lot of things. A lot of different metaphors can and have been used to describe it. Sitting in the back of my friend’s car riding back to his house too late at night and staring out the window I thought of that metaphor. I wasn’t particularly comfortable and all interesting conversation had died long ago. All that remained as we got close to his house was the quiet drone of his music and the silence of the night. That is how it feels to watch the end of a losing season. All the fun is gone. It has been a long time since anyone even bothered to mention the Washington Nationals as anything other than the team that the Braves and Phillies are playing in an effort to pad their stats and make it to the playoffs.

Being a baseball fan of a losing team is tough. It is very tough. It is downright trying at times. I set there every night hoping for a win and there is around a 40% chance that I will be rewarded with one. In a way it is a marriage. I love the Washington Nationals. It is probably not a phrase a lot of people say. I also love my wife. I am not sure in this metaphor of being a baseball fan as a marriage if my wife is the mistress or baseball is. My wife would demand that she comes first, but at times baseball demands to come first. In my dreams of one day seeing a World Series game in person I can imagine very little coming in front of it. Nothing short of my wife giving birth or being seriously injured will keep me from that game, but of course that doesn’t mean my attention will be diverted from it.

I imagine as the business man fucks his mistress on semen stained sheets on a dirty mattress in a cheap motel has his wife in the back of his mind. The mistress can be put away and forgotten about, but the man has to go home to the wife eventually. Maybe that is how it is. The baseball season never truly ends and my marriage never truly ends. It is always there and present in my life. When the off-season arrives I will be trying to find out who the Nationals are trying to sign and trade for, and I know every year I look forward to February 14^th because it is close to the time that pitchers and catcher report to Spring Training. My wife of course looks forward to that date for an entirely different reason.

The two are so intertwined in my life that my wife and baseball are both the mistress and the wife. The metaphor applies to both equally. There are times when my wife will stand next to my chair looking down at me longingly waiting for a goodnight kiss and all I can say is, “Hold on. Zimmerman is batting.” Then there are times when the baseball team is losing. Down 9-1 in the 8^th and I think it is suddenly a great time to give my wife all the attention she craves. She is very understanding and that is why this whole thing works. She understands I love baseball at times as much as I love her. She has things she feels this way about and at times she is out at the barn with her horses until 9:30 or 10:00 at night. I hardly notice because I have baseball to care for me, but that will end soon and Hot Stove news won’t come quick enough to hold my appetite at bay. Then it is my turn to be understanding.

If you are reading this it means I was successful at what I sat out to do. I want to write a book, not just about baseball, but about life, marriage, and the times that try us. I want to take you with me on my journey through a season of baseball. It will most likely be another long trying season, but there is that small chance that it will be something magical. That some miracle will take place and the Nationals will actually have a winning season. Again if you are reading this you know the answer to that question.

Or maybe not.

I am not going to wait to find a publisher and release this to the public. I am going to keep you updated along the journey. Each week of the 2011 season I will put up two chapters. Before the season begins I will put up seven chapters. One right after the world series, one after the winter meetings, one when pitchers and catchers report, and then one a week when Spring Training games are going on.

I will include many different things about baseball. I will talk about how much I like stats, and then how much I dislike them. I will talk about the beauty and the poetry I see in the game. I will talk about my travels and the cities I see. But most of all I will talk about how baseball has entwined itself into my life and how my wife and I deal with it. How she hides in the bedroom some nights while I watch the game, how she can talk with me for five or ten minutes while I listen to the game on the radio before she realizes that I haven’t heard a word she said, and of all the times we sit at the games together and enjoy each other’s company.

I invite you then to join me on this journey. To enjoy my pleasures and my pains as I watch and suffer along with the Washington Nationals, and as my wife suffers and endures a husband that at times loves baseball as much as he loves his wife.        

How it Might Feel to be a Free Agent September 1, 2010

It might be odd to say, and then again it might not be, but today I felt a piece of my soul drift away. The fact that it took me an entire month to finally quit LA Boxing should say something. As should the fact that I made my wife call to cancel the membership. It just feels painful to close that chapter of my life. Maybe a gym membership isn’t a big deal for everyone, but in a way it felt like part of who I am. Back when I joined LA Boxing I seemed to have more time on my hands. Work was not as stressful and difficult and I was able to leave before 5:00 PM. Traffic on Rt. 50 also wasn’t as bad, and I was able to get to the gym in time for the 6:30 boxing class.

Recently this has become impossible, and the fact that it is baseball season and my life is all consumed with baseball doesn’t help. In years past I was able to grab nights at the gym when I could, but with heavier traffic and a busier work schedule it just became impossible. It is really no fault of LA Boxing, and here is where this all connects back to baseball. Adam Dunn loves it in DC. The Nationals supposedly love Adam Dunn. It seems like a match made in heaven, but forces beyond the control of either party might keep a deal from happening.

Dunn has had one of the best seasons of his career and it is largely due to the fact that he now plays at first base. His defensive importance has decreased by moving to the only defensive position less important than left field. Dunn’s nature as a defensive liability no longer completely outweighs his offensive production. Of course other players of Dunn’s skill set have seen sharp declines in productions in their earlier 30’s, an age that Dunn is just now reaching. If Dunn wants too many years it might not be a match for the Nationals, and if the Nationals aren’t willing to pay the money Dunn thinks he should get then it isn’t a match for Dunn.

I am now positive from my personal experience that both sides will feel the way I do. LA Boxing was perfect for me. I got to hit things. I also got to do cardio (which I hate doing) in a fun and interactive manner. Let’s face it, standing on a treadmill or elliptical machine for 30 minutes is one of the most boring experiences in the world. Hitting a punching bag and then dropping to the floor for push-ups or sit-ups is fun. I do not have a bad word to say about the place. It lost my business not because of something it did, but simply because of the logistics of its location.

Sometimes we want things to work out, but they just don’t. I am positive Dunn isn’t lying when he says he enjoys being a National. He will never forget his experience here and I am sure he has built a lasting friendship with Ryan Zimmerman, and Josh Willingham. The nice shiny gym I go to now doesn’t have a set schedule. I can come and go when I please, but when I want to do cardio I have to get on a boring elliptical or treadmill, and while I missed weight training a bit in my time at LA Boxing I am sure I will miss the punching bag even more.

One day when I get a house I will have a room in my basement. It will have a TV to watch baseball on, bookshelves on every wall, a fridge full of beer, and hanging right in the middle will be a big punching bag. I can’t imagine how useful this will be when a National’s hitter grounds into a double play. Right now my wrath is taken out on whatever household object happens to be in my hand. My wife and I’s dog is always very concerned when anyone is upset, and he often checks on me as I sit there screaming, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” at whoever the offender is.

Living in a 500 square foot condo has a lot of downsides, and one of the main ones for me right now is my wife likes to spend time with me. That doesn’t sound so bad when I say it like that, and I might make myself sound like a monster here, but she doesn’t think I am me when I am watching baseball. Either I am cussing at a perceived injustice a player has committed just for me, or I am drawn into the action and unresponsive to her constant chatter. She feels that being away from me all day entitles her to get to spend time with me without realizing that I have also been away from baseball all day as well.

Of course with modern technology I am never that far away. I can whip out my smart phone and look up baseball news, or cruise on over to my favorite baseball websites on my work computer. In this new modern world we are never truly detached. When we first started dating she would get a little upset at me when I would look at my phone to get the scores, but now she is used to it. Sometimes she reminds me that she is a living person and my phone is just an electronic device, but she fails to understand that it is informing me about baseball. That while I might be married to her in the eyes of God and the law I am also married to baseball. Baseball has crawled into my blood and soaked through my skin. It is a part of me.

When I see the letters SB, CS, K, BB, or any other combination that exists in baseball my mind actually thinks they mean that scoring. During the BP oil spill I kept wondering who was spilling all this oil during batting practice. And it is for this reason that sitting here thinking about how much I will miss my time at LA Boxing that I have a sudden feeling that I know what it is like to be a free agent leaving a place that is truly loved for no other reason than it simply couldn’t work out.