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jordan@jordanbastian.com
PAST ENTRIES
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Here I Am
Breaking In
One Calorie?!
The Hunt is On
The Falls and The Hall
Oh the Irony
My Two Favorites
In Babe's Footsteps
Islands Take Three
Done with Da Vinci
Two Weeks Off
Upcoming Schedule
A Day at the Park
Taking a Day Off
The Commish Speaks
Cleaning Up
Running and Writing
Fun With Facial Hair
Good Editors
Say It Ain't So Raffy
Here I Am, I know, those of you family members who I've been giving a hard time for not updating your blogs often enough are probably calling your Little Bro a Little Hypocrite. Well, I'm at the Rogers Centre working right now, but I figured I'd hop on here and let everyone know what's been going on, since I haven't posted in -- heaven forbid -- four days! I've received a few calls about the packages I sent out for potential jobs and I'm working on setting up a couple interviews. There are a few prospects on the horizon that I like and a few I'm not so enthusiastic about, but I'm just thrilled that I got such a quick response. I know that the right door will open up and whatever job I am fortunate enough to have when my internship is up will be the right job for me. Obviously, I'm not going to go into any details on here until I know anything official. As far as MLB.com coverage goes, I wrote for the Blue Jays this week with a few features and that one day of game coverage when the Halladay thing went down. Today, I'm going to be writing the game story, tomorrow the notebook and then this weekend I'll be filling in for the Tampa Bay writer again. The D-Rays were a good team to work with so it shouldn't be too bad at all. It'll be the first club I've covered twice, now. I'll cover Seattle again in September. Those will be the only two teams I cover twice this summer. As far as at home, not a whole lot has been going on. Kelly made some awesome lasagna yesterday, though. Mmmmmmm. She made a comment about baking something and I suggested lasagna, joking around because I knew that wasn't what she was talking about when bringing up baking. But she looked up an easy recipe online and we went to the store and, let me tell you, that lasagna was gooooood. The leftovers are in the fridge and every time you open the door to get something else the smell just makes you want to have another slice! That's definitely going to be my dinner when I get home tonight. Well, that's all for now. I have to turn my attention to the job at hand. Keep Kelly and I in your prayers as we continue to search for the right job. But, more importantly, keep the families in Lousiana and Alabama and the other places hit by that Hurricane in your prayers. Watching that news coverage these past few days has really made us appreciate the life we have and how fortunate we are -- even in our little, crappy apartment in Toronto. I'll be blogging more later. Stay tuned... Posted at 4:39 p.m. Breaking In, I've covered Baltimore, Seattle, Tampa Bay, Oakland, and the Los Angeles Angels for complete series against Toronto. I've even covered the Blue Jays to a certain extent. But Friday was the first day that Toronto's beat writer allowed me to handle an entire gameday for the Jays, while he took the day to recover from his recent two-week road trip. I was more than happy to fill in. I'll take all the work and experience I can get. It didn't figure to be a hard day to take over, either. I went into the day expecting a relatively slow news day and had a few ideas I was batting around for the lead note in the notebook. Then, it happened: "So, any update on Halladay?" A reporter routinely asked Toronto manager John Gibbons about the status of the Blue Jays' injured ace pitcher. "Yeah, he's pretty much done for the season." Holy crap. That wasn't supposed to happen. All us reporters got our questions in and then promptly flipped out our cell phones to call the proper places. This was my first time working in the middle of a breaking news story that would get national coverage. We had a mini press conference with Halladay, I grabbed a few more quotes and headed back to the press box. That's when I found out that the Associated Press had beaten me to the keyboard. I'm guessing the story was relayed over the phone, because the AP guy was with me most of the time. I could be wrong, though. Ah well. I got my story filed next and it made it to the front page of MLB.com and to the top headlines on the MLB.com news page. That was a first for me. In fact, it's still the third headline on the news page a day later. I guess finishing in second place isn't all bad on your first day of handling such an event. The game coverage went smoothly from there on out. There was a straight steal of home in the first inning by Cleveland's Grady Sizemore, which became the lead of the story. And the notebook filled up nicely in the wake of the Halladay news. Today, I'm back at the Rogers Centre, but only as the third man in the press box for MLB.com. I will be working on a story about the Alumni Weekend they have going on right now, celebrating their 1985 division-winning team. Sunday there is another game and that night I have to do Minor League stuff again. On Monday, I'll have another Player of the Week story and more Minor League coverage. Then, it's an off-day on Tuesday for me. Stay tuned for more... Posted at 10:39 a.m. One Calorie?! So, I've been chugging down Diet Pepsi with reckless abandon since I've been in Toronto. Yesterday, Kell was giving me a hard time because I was snacking after dinner and I went to make a point by saying, "Well, I'm drinking calorie-free Diet Pepsi, so it's OK!" I picked up the can and as I was in mid-sentence, pointing at the nutrition label, there it was:
Can you believe it? One Calorie! That means I threw down at least FOUR CALORIES yesterday! Kelly quickly calmed me and said that I was probably wrong -- that maybe there was always one calorie in Diet Pepsi. But no, I know that there was ZERO! When I was on my big health kick and dropped 40 pounds from December-May, I was very reliant on Diet Pepsi in my quest for a more in shape me. So, I consulted the Web site. If you go to www.dietpepsi.com, you'll see that no calories are listed in the nutrition facts. BUT, if you go to www.smartspot.ca, the site for diet pepsi in Canada, it will clearly say ONE calorie in the nutrition facts. Another difference? In America, there is 25 mg of Sodium. In Canada? 30 mg! What the heck? I don't understand how crossing the border into the land of our friendly neighbors to the North can add a calorie to Diet Pepsi. Unless one of the countries is lying to its citizens. I guess I'll just have to watch out for how much I consume from now on. I don't want that extra calorie throwing off my eating habits! I'll have to run 3.1 miles instead of 3.0 miles from now on. The moral of this story is this -- and it isn't an anti-Canada thing at all, I really enjoy living in Toronto -- when you go into a different country, things you become used to are sometimes slightly different. Are there any explanations for it? Nope. Why are there fries at Taco Bell in Canada and not in the U.S.? Why does the milk come in bags in Canada and in plastic cartons in the U.S.? Why does butter come in a brick block in Canada and in small bars in the U.S.? And, now, why is there one more calorie in Diet Pepsi in Canada and none in the States? We will never know the answers to these mysteries. Posted at 3:49 p.m. The Hunt is On, Over the last two days I have been scouring the web and job boards and today I sent out my first stack of packets to potential jobs all over the U.S. I sent 11 packages out today and applied to about six others online and I'll be sending more out as the week goes on. I'm looking primarily around Illinois, Michigan and Indiana, but I've sent out stuff to other job openings around the country. I'm not limiting myself, either. There were a couple that I inquired about that I don't personally think I have a shot at, but you never know unless you try, right? There were a couple in particular that I was pretty excited about, but who knows what will happen over the next month or two. I do know that I looked at my student loan balances today and now I really hope the job hunt is successful! Anyways, wish me luck on my newest journey. I'll be working for MLB.com until the first week of October and this upcoming month is going to be a fun one for me. I'm happy that I'll get to cover a few away teams in September after a month of the Jays being on the road and me being the extra man in the press box when they were at home. That's all for now. Don't forget to take a look at my trip to Niagara Falls and the Hall of Fame. Bye for now... Posted at 11:53 p.m. The Falls and The Hall, We're back from our road trip. Kelly and I went a small town called Niagara on the Lake followed by Niagara Falls on Thursday, and then we drove four more hours into New York to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Below are the photo galleries I've put together from our two-day journey. I selected the better pictures we took along the way. Just click on the smaller image and the larger photo will open in a new window. The picture quality isn't the highest, so if any of you want some of these for yourself, just e-mail me and I can send you the full-sized file. Enjoy! NIAGARA ON THE LAKE First we went to Niagara on the Lake, which has been referred to as "the prettiest town in Canada." Kell and I stopped there to get lunch on the way to the Falls and also to stop in all the small, quaint shops. It was a very pretty town. Before we got there, though, I took a slight detour to stop in a small town called "Jordan." I got some fun pictures there, too. There were a lot of flowers and parks all throughout Niagara on the Lake and people being carted around the village by horse and carriage. My dad and mom went here during their honeymoon in the '60s, so it was fun to retrace their steps with my wife. Here are some of the photos:
NIAGARA FALLS I hadn't been to Niagara Falls since I was around 11 or 12 and Kelly hadn't been there since she was 14. So, it was fun to get back there together. When I went there with my parents, we spent all our time on the Canadian side and hit all the shops and things like that. Kelly and I stayed on the Canadian side, too (it has a prettier view), and we also did the Maid of the Mist tour. You get on a ferry boat, which takes you right into the mist of the Horseshoe Falls. You have to put on rain ponchos to keep from getting soaked. It made for some great pictures. Kelly had done it before with her family, but I hadn't, so I was like a little five year old the whole time. We got dinner at the Rainforest Cafe -- we've now been to that restaurant in the States, Mexico and Canada -- and we then headed back to the Falls to watch them get lit up at night. At first they just put huge, normal spotlights on the Falls, but then they gradually add color to the lights -- making the water change from red to blue to yellow, etc; Here are some of the better pictures we took:
COOPERSTOWN - BASEBALL HALL OF FAME Kell and I spent the night in Buffalo. I reserved a place on Hotels.com and, I didn't plan it, there was a Chili's across the street! As soon as we got our room we headed over to get some chips and queso. We now have also been to Chili's in three countries! The next morning we made our way through the hills of Central New York towards the small town of Cooperstown, where Americans have been brainwashed into thinking baseball was invented. I won't get into that here, but just understand that baseball being created by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, N.Y. is a myth. Anyways, I was really excited to go there because I hadn't been to the Hall of Fame since I was about 14 and, to top it off, both of my heroes growing up -- Carlton Fisk and Ryne Sandberg -- were now enshrined. Sandberg was welcomed into the Hall of Fame just a few weeks ago. We visited Doubleday Field, where an Oldtimers Game was in progress, and then we walked through the hallowed Hall and through the various exhibits. When we were done in the Hall of Fame, we got dinner in a small cafe and visited the many baseball souvenier shops. I talked my way into getting a Sandberg autographed baseball -- the only one I could find in town. I bargained with my wife until I convinced her that I would accept the ball as my birthday AND Christmas present! But now I have Fisk and Sandberg balls for my growing baseball stuff collection. Here are some photos that we took:
I went a little crazy with the digital camera and took a bazillion pictures. It was the first time that I managed to completely fill the memory card! I took a lot of photos of the plaques of my favorite players. Here is a selection of them:
That's all for now. We had an awesome mini vacation and today we spent our day back home just laying around being bums. I don't start working again until Friday. I'm sure I'll be blogging more tomorrow. Stay tuned... Posted at 10:32 p.m. Oh the Irony, This was an actual large-print photo that appeared in the Hall of Fame's Records Room. Kelly actually spotted it before I did and when I took a good look at it I hada good laugh given the recent news stories:
For those of you who might not get it: Pete Rose was banned from baseball for betting on games involving his team and Rafael Palmeiro was suspended recently for testing positive for steroids. The fact that both of them appear on the same picture in the Hall of Fame is priceless. Posted at 10:39 p.m. My Two Favorites: Here are the my two favorite shots I took at Niagara Falls. I messed around with them in Photoshop. If you would like to have them as wallpaper just click on them to get the larger image. If you would like the originals, I can send them to you if you e-mail me.
Posted at 10:43 p.m. In Babe's Footsteps -- Sort of, Kelly and I finally made it to the Toronto Islands on Tuesday. Right when we arrived on Centre Island, we made out way to the southern shore, where there was a bike rental. After collecting a pair of old-fashioned bicycles, we rode along the western path and headed towards the site of Babe Ruth's first professional home run. During "Canada Day" at the Rogers Centre a few weeks ago, I learned about Ruth's first pro blast when they flashed the fact on the Jumbotron. Afterwards, I did a little bit of research and learned that the feat occurred on Hanlan's Point on the Toronto Islands. Hanlan's Point -- the western-most peninsula on the group of islands -- used to be home to a fairgrounds and an old baseball stadium in the early 20th century. The field and everything else was torn down in the 1930s, so the actual place where Ruth hit his only Minor League homer no longer exists. Legend has it that the baseball still could be sitting at the bottom of Lake Ontario. When I printed out a map of the islands before our trip, I saw a marker on the map, which indicated a plaque or monument of some sort to honor the achievement. I expected a plaque of some sort and maybe a small statue -- a backstop where the old stadium used to be would have been nice, too. Instead, after biking around in circles at the far end of Hanlan's Point for a while, we stumbled across this:
It wasn't exactly the astounding tribute I had imagined.
Here is a closer look at the plaque and its text below: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Babe Ruth in Toronto Near this site, at the old Hanlan's Point Stadium, on 5 September 1914, Baseball's legendary Babe Ruth hit his first home run as a professional -- the only home run he ever hit in the Minor Leagues. The lanky 19-year-old rookie, playing for the Providence Greys of the International League, connected with a pitch off Ellis Johnson of the Toronto Maple Leafs, sending the ball over the fence in right field and scoring three runs for his team. Ruth, as pitcher of his team, allowed only one hit and the Greys shut out Toronto, 9-0. His later career made Babe Ruth a monumental figure in baseball history. This plaque commemorates both the extraordinary career of Babe Ruth and the important contribution made by Toronto to the game of baseball from "Little League" teams to the Toronto Blue Jays of the American League. Toronto Historical Board ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Behind the rock with the plaque screwed into it was this overgrown field. No backstop, no bronzed home plate, not even a hint that a game of baseball could have taken place anywhere near this place. Beyond the trees and to the right is a small airport. I think it is very probable that the airport was built on top of where the old fairgrounds and stadium once were -- especially since the legend of the home run tells of how the ball landed in Lake Ontario. From where the rock is, it would've been a near 800-foot shot to send a ball into the lake. I'm not saying the Babe couldn't have done such a thing, but it would have been very unlikely from that spot. The rock tribute was a little disappointing to say the least. At least Kelly and I are going to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Friday. That should make up for it. Tomorrow, we're just going to be relaxing at home and researching more of our upcoming road trip online. We're going to look into doing the Maid of the Mist thing at Niagara Falls and we want to see if there is anything interesting to stop at on our way to Cooperstown. Stay tuned... Posted at 12:41 a.m. Islands Take Three, We were going to go to the Toronto Islands on Sunday, but the weather was bad. We were going to go today, and we got as far as the ferry entrance at Lake Ontario. Then, we realized we forgot to get cash before we left home, forgot our ATM card at home, the ferry only took cash, and I only had enough money to pay for the subway trip home. Phooey! So, we felt like a couple of idiots, but we made due. We walked around the city and went and saw some of the cool sights around town. We pretty much walked the same path that I did when Kell was in Chicago. We went to University of Toronto, saw the cool School of Design, and then walked over to the Rogers Centre, where we decided to go to the Hard Rock Cafe to get a couple of burgers (If you are curious about seeing some of the stuff we saw, you can see the blog entry called "No Kelly - Day 2" in the July archives). It was kind of weird seeing the Rogers Centre this week. The field was completely redone to work for the Argonauts Canadian Football team. So, the stands were moved around, what would be the center field wall was gone, the bullpens were gone and it was hard to picture where the baseball field was supposed to be. Sooooo, tomorrow we are going to the Toronto Islands! (as long as nothing else goes wrong) Tonight we watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to keep in the spirit of the Holy Grail quest since we just read The Da Vinci Code. Now, Kelly has seen all of the Indiana Jones movies, too. Another trilogy down. Over our honeymoon and the following week -- with Kell's permission -- we watched the Star Wars movies. She hadn't seen all of them until then. I still have to have her watch all the Terminators, the Rocky's, and perhaps the Die Hard Trilogy -- she isn't sure if she's seen all of those. At least I don't have to introduce her to 11 hours of Lord of the Rings movies. She's seen all of those in the theater with me and loved them as much as I did. We're a couple of nerds -- we are well aware. I guess that's all for now. I'm getting pumped about heading to the Hall of Fame on Friday. I'm going to have a million pictures :) Stay tuned... Posted at 11:53 p.m. Done with Da Vinci, Can you believe I finished that book already? I started Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code three days ago and completed the novel at 4 a.m. this morning. I stayed up that late reading it because Kell couldn't wait to hear what happened next with each passing chapter. Wait, what? Yeah, I ended up reading the book outloud to my wife. When I posted last, I told you I was about 100 pages into the book. Well, that night, as I continued to read to myself, I kept thinking parts of the story were cool and was trying to tell Kelly about them. This had to be utterly annoying to her, especially since she was planning on reading the book after me. She asked me to stop giving her updates, so, joking around, I asked, "What, you want me to read it to you?" She paused, looked at the book to see how far I had gotten, looked back up at me and said, "Can you catch me up?" Once I realized she was as serious as I was kidding , I began flipping through the first 130 pages and gave her a brief summary plot of each chapter I had already read. I got her up to date on the storyline to the point where I had stopped and once she was clear on what had transpired, I took on the task of reading the rest outloud. On that first night, I read to around page 300 before we called it a night. After church yesterday, Kelly returned the favor and read for a half hour before I dozed off to the sound of her hypnotic voice -- at least it was hypnotic to me at the moment! I crashed for about four hours I guess. When we got up from our Sunday nap, we watched the end of the Blue Jays/Orioles game and then went out to the porch to hang out. She cross stitched, while I continued pouring through the massive text. Kelly bought the book for me for my birthday two years ago. What is funny is, that when she got the book in the mail, she was holding a large-print, hard-copy version of the novel -- like one you would purchase for someone with eye problems. I gave her a little bit of grief for the mistake, but for good reason, the words on the pages are huge! My copy of the book is 740 pages long, which is probably twice as long as the regular one. In hindsight, though, it worked out great. I put off reading the book for two years because of college and other books I was reading and when I did end up beginning the book, my wife asked me to read it outloud to her. Let me tell you how reading a book outloud -- especially a 700-plus page book -- is much easier when the words are in large print. So, I picked up at page 330 yesterday and continued to read through the evening. By the time we moved from the porch to the bed so that my voice wouldn't disturb the neighbors anymore (they probably were listening and on the edge of their seat, too!), I had gotten so close to the end -- and the action was getting more intense -- that we decided to finish the task. We were up until 4 a.m. and when I read the final word I gave the book a good heave across the bed, let out a huge sigh, raised my arms in triumph and said, "We're done! No more reading outloud!" I don't know if you've ever read a book outloud -- probably Dr. Seus or some other small children's story to your kids -- but reading a huge, complicated novel about symbology, the sacred femine and the true meaning behind the Holy Grail for two straight days is not easy. I'm going to be avoiding any excessive speech today. My throat still kind of tingles -- not to mention the weird, whacked-out dreams I had last night. Through all of this, I almost forgot to tell you what I thought of the book. I'll keep this short. Well, the novel, obviously, had to be good for me to rip through it in two days -- and rip through it outloud! It was extremely fast-paced and Brown sure has a way of leaving you hanging at the end of each chapter, wanting to know what's going to happen next. I would finish each section and Kell and I would look at each other, pondering stopping and heading off back to reality, but then we would smile at one another, knowing we couldn't stop now. We had to keep reading. That's how good the novel is. It's one of the best FICTIONAL stories I've read. Ever. Now, as far as the stuff that many Christians have been bashing that appears in the book, sure, there are some underlying themes and tones that Brown puts out there that are pretty questionable. However, in the same way that many Christians have been screaming "It's a novel!" to the group of people that have been buying and believing Brown's claims, I also would scream back at them that, "It's a novel!" to them to say that they could easily move beyond the underlying themes to read a fascinating story. The story is only a collection of myths and stories you've already heard. Movies from Pi to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade have dealt with same topics. Obviously, if people are believing wholeheartedly what Brown has written that's a problem. That is something that has been addressed, though, in the form of Dr. Lutzer's The Da Vinci Deception, which I'm reading next. Anyways, Kelly and I are heading to the Toronto Islands today. We were going to go yesterday, but the weather was cloudy and rainy and I ended up reading a huge book to her. So, we're going today. We got a hotel in Buffalo, N.Y. for Thursday, so that morning we'll be heading to Niagara Falls. On Friday, we'll be going to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Staty tuned... Posted at 10:47 a.m. Two Weeks Off, Yeah, the Blue Jays are on the road for two weeks, which means I'm sitting at home not working for a while. I talked with my boss about maybe heading to Syracuse to work on some Minor League features during this break, but the times that I would want to go -- to combine the trip with stops at Cooperstown and Niagara Falls -- the Syracuse Skychiefs are on the road. So, it doesn't look like that's going to work out. So, I'm using these two weeks to just relax, do some reading, plan a road trip for Kelly and I, and to work on some job hunt-type stuff. Tomorrow, if the weather is nice enough, Kelly and I might head to the Toronto islands. We're not sure what exactly there is to do, but it's supposed to be a nice time. It'll be good for some relaxing walking, maybe a bike ride (if they rent them out) and another view of Toronto. So, we'll see if we do that. Also, there is a section on the islands called Hanlan's Point, where there used to be an old fairgrounds and an old baseball field back in the early 1900s. Hanlan's Point is best known for being the spot where Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run. I'm looking forward to heading over there to see if they have anything there commemorating it. I think they are in the process of making it a historical site, so I don't know what's over there now. The fairgrounds and the field were torn down in the '30s. I'm also working on planning the trip to Niagara Falls and then to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Kell and I have both been to the Falls, but not since we were kids. I'd like to do the Maid of the Mist thing -- we didn't do that when I went with my Ma and Dad when I was younger. Cooperstown is only like three hours into New York from the Falls or around that anyways. I haven't been there since I was a kid, either, and Kell has never been. We might make a weekend out of the trip next weekend. This week I think we're just going to be hanging around the apartment. Maybe we'll get adventurous and head downtown or something once or twice. Yesterday we went and saw the new movie The Skeleton Key with Kate Hudson. It was a pretty creepy movie. I went through a whole large bag of popcorn on my own because I was creeped out on the edge of my seat the whole time! It dealt with voo doo and weird stuff like that in the South, so the eerie factor was pretty high in the flick. I started reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I've had the book for a long time, but never started it because I've been in the middle of working through all these other books. Kell bought it for me for my birthday two years ago. I have the bad habit of reading seven books at once. Since we've been up in Canada, though, and I'm no longer in school, I've finished Moneyball, Shoeless Joe, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy and have started Three Nights in August and The Da Vinci Code. I'm flying through this book, too. It really is fast-paced right from the start. I started it yesterday and am already nearing page 100. After I'm done reading it I'm going to read The Da Vinci Deception by Erwin Lutzer, who is the pastor at Moody Church, where I attended growing up and got married. He gave me a free copy and he was on some news show discussing the book before. A lot of people believe all the stuff in Brown's novel without realizing that is is A NOVEL. So, it'll be interesting to read Lutzer's book next. I'm also already looking forward to the movie, which comes out next summer and stars Tom Hanks. Anyways, I'm going to get going for right now. Kell is busy cross-stitching and I'm going to get back to reading. I know, we sound like a couple of old people, huh. Oh well, we're having fun! Talk to you soon... Posted at 2:31 p.m. Upcoming Schedule, This summer is just flying by! I just received my schedule for the rest of the baseball season and the reality of this job coming to an end is starting to hit me. I'll be job-hunting this month, but hopefully can find a permanent position with MLB.com or MiLB.com. I really love this job and want to keep doing it in some capacity. Anyways, I'll be posting my schedule up on the "My Schedule" page in the next few days, but I figured I'd let you all in on some of it right now. This month I will continue to be the third man in the booth. That means a lot of sidebars, previews and a rotation with the Jays writer of flip-flopping between the notebook and writing game stories. Tomorrow (later today, technically) I'm writing two very short articles about some pregame charity stuff that the Blue Jays are doing. Nothing fancy -- just short and to the point. So, I think the Jays writer is going to be handling the game coverage tomorrow. I also have two weeks off this month. Toronto is on a road trip from Aug. 12-25 and I'll be splitting that time between sight-seeing with Kelly, working on the job hunt and doing general assignment work for MLB.com. I don't head back to the Rogers Centre press box after this series with Detroit ends until Aug. 26 when Cleveland comes calling. September will be a fun last month for me. On Sept. 2-4 I'll be covering Tampa Bay for a three-game series. I have already covered them once this season and I really enjoyed working with manager Lou Piniella. The highlight of my month will be during a three-gamer series on Sept. 12-14, when I'll be covering the World Champion Boston Red Sox. It'll be in the middle of a thick playoff race and I'll be handling all the BoSox coverage (unless something changes at the last minute). On Sept. 19-22, I'll be covering the Seattle Mariners, who I covered for a three-game series last month. This time it'll be a four-game series that takes place right across my 23rd birthday on the 21st! Oh well, I guess there's no place else I'd rather be on my big day then getting to write about baseball. After that Seattle series, the last home series is a three-game set with the Royals on Sept. 30-Oct. 2. I'll be the extra hand for those three games and then it'll be off to wherever the real world will be sending me. I'll keep you posted on that as any developments arise. I am making good connections here and am hoping to have them lead somewhere where I'm not covering high school track and field. I know I've got to pay my dues like every other sports writer, but I really want to avoid preps again at any cost. I want to keep my focus on baseball, but that will be hard to find a job in considering I'll be done here when the baseball season is over. Things will work out, though, they always do. Anyways, I'm off to bed. I just thought I'd toss a quick blog on here before I hit the sack. Have a good night and I'll be posting more tomorrow. Stay tuned... Posted at 1:47 a.m. A Day at the Park, Well, every day is a day at the park for me. But it was nice to actually get to sit and relax and take in a baseball game rather than having to work during it. It's hard to explain, but it's a totally different feeling when you're just sitting and taking it in, not caring who wins, not keeping score, not thinking of how you would lead your story, and not having to meet any deadlines. It felt nice. Before the game, I brought Kelly and her family into the park before the gates opened and I snuck them into the pressbox to see where I get to work. I also took them inside the Jumbotron control room, which was cool because I had never been in there myself.
This is Kell and I on the third floor of the Rogers Centre, where the pressbox is.
This is a view of the pressbox from our seats. I work in the second row in the middle. The game was higher scoring -- on the Jays' side -- than I had expected. Randy Johnson was pitching for New York, but he just didn't have it on Saturday. He allowed at least a run in every single inning he pitched.
This is as close of a picture of The Big Unit as I could get from our seats. There were a few highlights of his night, though. Here are a couple video samples, best if opened with Quicktime or Windows Media Player, if you cared to watch: Randy Johnson hitting Reed Johnson with a pitch Anyways, I'm writing this entry from the pressbox before today's Tigers/Jays game. I'm not doing the pregame notebook, so I'm just hanging out up here right now. I'm going to be handling the game story today, so that will be posted on my site later. I have to run. Stay tuned... Posted at 4:17 p.m. Taking a Day Off, I'm not going to work today because I said so! But I AM going to the Rogers Centre. Kelly's brothers and her one brother's girlfriend all drove with Kelly back up here two nights ago and I got us five tickets to go to the Jays versus Yankees game today. So, on my day off I'm still going to the ballpark. Shows you how much I like my job! It'll be nice not to have to keep score or meet any deadlines as the game goes on, especially because Randy Johnon is pitching for New York. I saw the Diamondbacks play a bunch of times when I lived in Colorado, but I never went on a day when The Big Unit pitched. He was actually scheduled for one of the days I bought tickets for back then, but his start got moved. I also never caught him pitching at Comiskey when I went to Sox games growing upand he was with the M's. So, I was surprised when I looked at the probables for this weekend, that I picked the day that he was starting. It should be fun to watch. We'll be sitting in the "Club 200" seats, which are the second level up along the first and third base lines and behind home plate. Besides the press box, people say they are the best seats in the house. Plus, the seats are cushioned like theater seats. Cool, huh? It looks like it's going to be a nice day, too, so hopefully the dome will be open. Anyways, I'll post more later after the game. Stay tuned... Posted at 11:54 a.m. The Commish Speaks, I don't know if you heard or read or not, but MLB Commissioner Bud Selig released a statement today about the recent steroid suspensions. You can find the whole press release on MLB.com, but here is part of it: "I am saddened by the recent announcements of violations of baseball's drug program. Back in March, I said that everyone who tests positive will be suspended and that has come to pass. While I believe the suspensions show that the current program is working, they underscore the need for an even tougher policy. There is a deeper issue confronting baseball. It is the integrity of the game and that transcends the viability of the current program. "There exists some doubt in the public sector about our sincerity in eliminating steroids from the game. That is wrong. We must create an understanding everywhere that when we say we need to rid the game of steroids, we mean it. The best way is to put in place the program that I proposed to the Players Association more than three months ago. We must increase the levels of discipline to 50 games for a first offense, 100 games for a second and a lifetime ban for a third. And, probably most important, we must turn over the administration of our program to an independent authority to, once and for all, end the debate about the transparency of our policy." I thought this was a great statement. A lot of people assume that baseball, i.e. Bud Selig, is not trying as hard as it can to rid of the growing steroid problem. I liked how Selig put his thoughts right out there in this statement and said he proposed a tougher policy than the one in place, but that the player's association didn't approve it. I think a 50-100-lifetime policy is a great idea. If he did propose that and it was shot down, well, then the blame can be placed on the players that fought for a lighter policy. Baltimore's Rafael Palmeiro -- statistically speaking, a future Hall of Famer -- and Seattle's Ryan Franklin were both suspended for violating MLB's anti-drug policy this past week. Each will be given a 10-day suspension. 10 days. 10. Use steroids, hit nearly 600 home runs to earn Hall of Fame credentials, get caught, and sit on the bench for 10 days. Yeah, that seems like fair punishment. I'm happy to see that the testing is starting to catch some of these players, but the issue of how long they are being punished needs to still be addressed. I like Selig's proposal and if the player's aren't willing to go with something that is strict along those lines then the fans will just assume the player's have something to hide. It's taken some time for me, but even I'm beginning to be skeptical of some of these accused athletes. I've been one to kind of brush off the steroid stuff and just presume players innocent until proven guilty. That's how it should be, but I WAS SURE Palmeiro was innocent and was just a player that benefited from a juiced era. I didn't think he actually was juiced himself. Anyways, I just read the Commish's statement and thought I would toss some thoughts out there about it. If any of you want to share your thoughts with me you can e-mail me. I'm up this late because Kell is supposed to be getting here in the next hour or two and I want to be awake to say hello to her. Or maybe I'm just a crazy person who likes to blog about baseball at three in the morning! At least since I don't have to cover the away teams this month I know that I don't need to get up as early to do as much research. All I'm doing tomorrow is the notebook and maybe the preview for the Blue Jays. I don't really have to do any pregame work for either of those things. So, I get to sleep in more than usual this month. Kind of cool, actually. Well, I'll talk to you all later. Posted at 3:44 a.m. Cleaning Up, Kell won't be back here 'till like 2 a.m. or something, but I still needed to clean up the apartment. I didn't go running today because it looks like it's going to rain out. It hasnt yet, but as soon as I strap on my runnin' shoes and head out, it sure will. That's happened to Kelly a few times up here. I'm not taking any chances. Since I cleaned the apartment -- which consisted of putting all my stuff away, hanging some clothes, making the bed, doing dishes and mopping -- I decided it looked so good that I'd take some pictures for you. We haven't posted any pictures of where we live yet and the only people who have seen the place is Kell's parents.
I did post this picture before. If you look right above the top-right corner of the restaurant, you can see our balcony. I took this picure on one of my walks home from the subway. The mall and Baskin Robbins that we go to are behind the building.
This is what you see right when you walk in our apartment. Here you can see our awesome air mattress, the colorful couch, our new and improved AC, and the TV with only one speaker -- and not a very good one at that! We also put that carpet in. It was just all dirty, dusty wood when we arrived.
This picture was taken with me standing on our air mattress -- I'll have to put more air in it now -- looking back at the door, where I took that last picture from. There is the piano on the left and the bathroom right passed it. I may be covering the Blue Jays up here, but if you look closely, you can still see a Cubs hat hanging from the coat rack.
I stepped off the bed and moved over to our closet, which you can see in the top-right corner of the last picture. Here is a picture of where we eat and where I work. I had the Blue Jays/White Sox game radio broadcast playing from my laptop there while I was cleaning and taking pictures. There was no TV for the game today, so I had to listen to it. I like that more sometimes, though. How did I get back on baseball? In the cabinet behind the table is where I keep all my office stuff. On the chair closest to the sliding doors is my printer. We have a pretty big balcony through those doors. You can see we're missing some blinds, though. They keep falling off because the clips that are holding them are broken! Fun, fun.
Here is the view from about where our TV is. You can see I'm still drinking Diet Pepsi. No regular pop for me. This is our kitchen. It is very small. Why, you might ask, am I not showing you the whole kitchen? Well, there isn't much more. All that you can't see is the fridge, which doesn't open all the way because of where the garbage can has to go. It's not very convenient for putting leftover pizza boxes in the fridge. Well, that concludes our tour. Not huge, but big enough for Kelly and I to survive in for a few more months. I'm going to make some dinner and wait for her to come home, now. Tomorrow I work the Blue Jays/Yankees game at the Rogers Centre. I'll be doing the notebook for Toronto. Other than that, I'm not sure what I'll be up to. Stay tuned... Posted at 5:29 p.m. Running and Writing, Those are the two things I did today. I slept in this morning and then got ready to go on my run. I went on our normal 3-mile route and did almost 2.5 miles before my body gave in to the 90-degree heat. I walked to the 2.5 mile mark -- Kell and I drove the route and figured out what streets marked the distance -- before running really hard all the way home. I was really encouraged because I was almost at sprint pace, for me anyways, and it didn't hurt my ankle at all. That was a first since the injury. When I got back to the apartment building I ran up and down the eight stories of stairs once, decided my legs were hurting enough, and went to our apartment. Today MLB was announcing the Player, Pitcher and Rookie of the Month and since I was listed as general assignment today, I had to write three separate pieces. Jason Giambi, Barry Zito and Gustavo Chacin won the awards, respectively. I was excited because I was going to have a clip on the Yankees site. So, I wrote all three and sent them out. But it turns out that the beat writers for New York and Oakland wanted to do the stories on their own, so the only one that I wrote and went live was for Chacin. As cool as it was that I did one, the stuff I did on Chacin was a rehash of the game story I wrote on Sunday. You can see how I just pulled quotes and reworked the same angle as before. So, I didn't end up getting a clip on the Yanks' site. Ah, well. I'll try and let the New York beat writer let me do a sider or something while they are here this weekend. The chances of that are slim, though. I'll probably be doing Jays stuff for most of the time. The only N.Y. stuff I'll probably be doing this weekend might be the game previews. I'll include the stories I wrote on Barry Zito and Jason Giambi here, in case you would want to read my take on it over the other writers: Jason Giambi, Player of the Month for July Anyways, I am going to get going for right now. I'm watching the Blue Jays play the White Sox right now and it's a good game. I have the day off tomorrow, which is good because it'll give me time to clean the apartment before Kelly comes home. It'll be nice to have my wife back. It's been a rough (almost) two weeks. Posted at 10:03 p.m. Fun With Facial Hair, Well, out of pure laziness, I grew a beard when my wife left me here more than a week ago. Out of pure boredom, I decided to shave it today and had some fun in the process:
Here you can see my "awesome" beard. Since I haven't worked since Sunday, it's extra shabby. Thanks to my father, I can't grow much on the cheeks. Thanks Dad. Instead, I get more of this chin strap thing. Welp, time to start hacking it off.
On the right side I decided that some good ol' chops were in order. Oooo how tempted I was to keep the 'burns for when Kelly showed back up. Growing them out so cool like this takes hard work! I threw on the hat to look extra country. I quickly shaved off the burns and moved to the left side to experiment some more.
Here I went after the burns first. What was left was a kind of goatee/half-chin strap deal. As cool as it was, I don't think the wife would've been such a huge fan. So, off it went and all that was left now was cleanup.
Back to normal: Just my chin patch or "no-tee" as Kell calls it. She calls it that because it isn't a goatee, so, it's a no-tee. I never do a goatee, because -- again, thanks to the wonderful genes my father passed along to us Bastian boys -- I don't get very good connectors from the mustache to the chin patch. So, I've been sporting just the patch since High School. I haven't shaved that part off since a short period during my senior year more than four years ago. I wonder what I'd look like without it again...Hmmmm...Maybe I should find out! No. We'll save that for another day. Stay tuned... Posted at 9:30 p.m. Good Editors, I tried to sneak that quote passed the MiLB.com editors, but no go. Like I said yesterday, you can see why a reporter would leave it in there, but for an editor to not take it out is unbelievable. So, I tried the same thing. It turns out that we have some good editors within MLB.com! Phooey! In case you missed it and don't feel like scrolling down, here was the quote I found and tried to include in the Appalachian League's weekly notebook: "The umpire had a tough time with his ball sack and keeping the balls dry." -- Danville pitcher Tyler Bullock, on Tuesday's rainy conditions, as reported by the Danville Register and Bee. Yes, that was a real quote. Ha. Oh, well. It would have been funny to see that circulated around, but it will make enough rounds with the staff that saw it. I was hoping it would slip by them, but they did their job. Anyways, not too much happening today. I may or may not be doing the AL's Player of the Month story today. It might be released tomorrow. I'm not sure. I am pretty sure that New York's Jason Giambi will be taking home the honor. He hit over .350 with 14 homers in July. He's the first player to have that many homers with an average of at least .350 since Sammy Sosa did that in 2001. I'd say Giambi has a good shot at being Player of the Month. Other than that I'm just watching TV and hanging out. I may go for a run, but the weather is pretty crappy outside. I'll catch you guys later... Posted at 1:25 p.m. Say It Ain't So Raffy, In case you hadn't heard, Baltimore's Rafael Palmeiro was suspended 10 days for violating MLB's steroid policy today. I couldn't believe it. I met Raffy last month when I covered the O's and he was just about as much of a class act that you could ask a ballplayer to be. He was a great interview and came across as a very honest guy. I watched the Congressional steroid hearings when they were on earlier this year and I've got to say that when Palmeiro pointed at the Senators to tell them, "I've never used steroids. Ever. Period." I bought it. The look in his eye was so serious that I couldn't imagine he was lying. It'll be interesting to see if Congress calls him back, now. If he lied to Congress that's sort of a big deal! Now, though, he insists that he never knowingly took steroids. Sounds familiar to Barry Bonds comments. I'm sorry, I don't buy this unknowingly took steroids bit they keep feeding us. As a professional athlete it is your job to take care of your body. When you use supplements during a workout, how could you not know what you were using? If they aren't sure what's in it then I think they shouldn't take it. It sounds simple enough and it should be. One of my friend's brought up that this could really hurt his first ballot chances at becoming a Hall of Famer. I agree. Sure, 3,000 hits and soon-to-be-600 homers are locks to get him in the Hall, but his numbers are the kinds of stats that will be judged based on the era, not on the numbers alone. He was the product of of a juiced-up era and never won any major awards or titles to boot. He'll get in the Hall, but his chances of going in on the first try are lower now. As far as my day today, not a whole lot happened. I did the notebook for the Appalachian League and wrote the MLB Player of the Week story. Aubrey Huff won. I was hoping it'd be someone from a team I hadn't covered so that I could get a clip on another team's site. No such luck. Ah well. You can see the article on the Tampa Bay Links page within my MLB.com Links page and you can find the Minor League stuff in there, too, if you wanted. The highlight of the day came when I was looking up quotes from players around the Appalachian League from the local newspapers that cover them. This was an actual quote that I included in the notebook: "The umpire had a tough time with his ball sack and keeping the balls dry." -- Danville pitcher Tyler Bullock, on Tuesday's rainy conditions, as reported by the Danville Register and Bee. HA! I laughed outloud to myself here like an idiot and had to call Kell to tell someone else about it. I can just hear the reporter setting it up: "So, it looked like the baseball was slipping out of the pitchers' hands tonight. Were they slippery from the humid conditions out there?" "Yeah," replies the player. "The umpire had a tough time with his ball sack and keeping the balls dry." HA! HA! Sorry, I had to write it twice. And guess what? It's still funny. I can see the reporter laughing and putting it in his story, but the fact that the quote made it past the copy desk and editors is not so good. It shouldn't have made it to print. That was bush league -- Rookie League, actually! Ah well, it made for a good read and I'm glad they kept it in there for my sake. Anyways, I'm off to relax and watch some TV. I am off for a few days now. Just biding time until Kell comes back and until I have to work again when the Yankees come to town. Stay tuned... Posted at 9:31 p.m |
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