I love Baseball America.
I walked in the front door, and covering the top two-and-a-half feet of every wall are blown-up, plaqued covers of old editions of BA. Every surface has a bobblehead or pennant or photograph of a baseball player on it, taped to it, or near it. It was love at first sight.
When I arrived it didn’t seem like anyone was around. It was kind of dark and every desk in my view was empty. So I did what anyone would do. I kept walking around, delving deeper into the office. Okay, maybe not just anyone would wander around a strange place, without knowing what areas might be off-limits, but that’s my style.
I saw someone at a desk in an office, so I knocked on the outer part of the open door. I soon found out that he was one of the editors, though not the one I had spoken to previously. His name will be Editor 2, because I, of course, have forgotten what it actually is.
He expected me, but I was early and I don’t think he was prepared for that. He found me a desk in a cubicle and said that he would let the man I was waiting for know that I was here when he arrived. I suppose I was Editor 1’s responsibility because he was the only person I had ever spoken to, so it made sense to me that I would have to check in with him.
Editor 2 brought me the two most recent editions of the Baseball America magazine for me to read. Of course, I skimmed through to find anything related to the Blue Jays and their prospects. I have priorities. I will get to the other stuff later.
I was happy to learn that BA ranked Roy Halladay the player of the year. And, Dirk Hayhurst, my first big league interview, wrote a blurb about him for the story. A hilarious little addition, as are most things that come from Hayhurst.
The staff started arriving not long into my reading. I was given a task to start on right away, working on the BA directory for 2011. I was instructed to update the national organizations and the Summer College Leagues, so I set to task.
It didn’t seem so hard, looking up each and every organization and updating using their websites before emailing each of the leagues to verify. But it took a lot of time. I didn’t finish. I got through about 12 leagues or so and will continue when I get back tomorrow.
Sometime before lunch I met most of the people in the office and got a tour, courtesy of Editor 1. I was pretty impressed by the room full of each of the issues of the BA magazine since 1986, and by the room of t-shirts and other swag from the company. Editor 1 told me I could come back before I left if I wanted something, or some Christmas presents. I was pretty pumped about that, but maybe I’m easily impressed.
When Editor 1 mentioned that he was going for lunch and asked if I wanted to tag along with him and Editor 2, I was relieved. I hadn’t seen a vending machine or a restaurant anywhere close to where we were, and I was hungry. All I had eaten was a granola bar. Of course I went with them.
It seemed like we went pretty far, but the pizza was good. And, Editor 1 bought my lunch. It was incredibly nice of him. It seems like they think I’m doing them a favour by coming out here to help out. Really, they’re doing me a favour, keeping baseball in my life for at least November and December.
I am hoping they go out for lunch tomorrow too, and invite me along again, mostly because I don’t have any food to take with me and it could be a long time without food if I try to go all day.
It was also a good time to talk to some people. I hadn’t really had a conversation with anyone at the office before the outing.
We discussed the weather in Canada, and how nice it was to not be seeing snow or ice in any conceivable future. We talked football, hockey, basketball and of course, baseball.
I told them that when I mentioned to my classmates that I was heading to North Carolina, I was told that I should go to a Carolina Hurricanes hockey game, and a UNC or Duke basketball game. And I mentioned that I wanted to go to a college football game also, because I heard they are so much better in the US than anywhere else.
They gave me the rundown of what to watch and who to see. Unfortunately, I will have to keep working on finding someone to go with me.
When we were eating, ESPN was on the TV in front of us, and it was completely and totally focused on football. Editor 1 mentioned that he was sick of how the media treats football here, spending six days talking about games that happened and games coming up, and then a day of games, and the same thing again.
I told him that’s exactly how hockey is treated at home. When I said the forbidden Toronto term consisting of the word “hate” and “Leafs” in the same sentence, he mentioned that it seemed like everyone either loved the Leafs or hated them, with no in-between.
Even though I may feel the way I feel now, it wasn’t always the case. When I came to Toronto in January, I was pretty neutral. That was before I was bombarded by Leafs fans all the time, in person, on TV, anywhere they could be.
In Toronto, you just can’t get away from the Leafs. I think I solved that problem though. North Carolina is no hockey town. Not that I’ve really been anywhere outside of Baseball America, but I’m fine with that and will continue to think that it is so.
Then they started trying to name players on the Raptors. It was pretty hard without Chris Bosh to discuss. But I mentioned that he is still the talk of Toronto basketball, so his is still a legitimate name to throw out there.
We talked about plenty of baseball, too though. I told them that I had been to 19 ball parks, and they seemed a little impressed by that. When I mentioned that on my last trip, when I went to see the Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, I just happened to catch the Major League debut of Aroldis Chapman, I think they were more impressed.
They asked if Brandon Morrow’s amazing game was in Toronto and if I had seen it. I told them that I did see his 17-strikeout, 8 2/3 no-hit bid against the Tampa Bay Rays, and it came after the fantastic debut of J.P. Arencibia, making for the best baseball weekend ever. But, I told them, it wasn’t the highlight of my season with the Blue jays.
Father’s Day held one of the best baseball moments I have ever witnessed, and it was because of Toronto fan favourite John McDonald. When I said that, Editor 2 seemed to have an idea of what I was talking about, but Editor 1 seemed unfamiliar.
So I explained.
McDonald’s father died this season, and he left the team to spend two weeks with him, on bereavement leave. While he was with his dad in Connecticut, the two discussed John’s style of play and his hitting. The older McDonald told his son to hit his next home run for him. John explained that it wouldn’t be so easy, but he would.
When John came back to the Blue Jays, I think it was the day before Father’s Day. His dad had passed only a couple days prior, and I think he was eligible to play on the Sunday.
The Father’s Day game wasn’t a great one for the Jays. They were getting blown out by the now-World Series champions San Francisco Giants. Manager Cito Gaston decided to go to his bench. He put McDonald in as a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning.
The veteran shortstop, who in 12 big league seasons only notched 14 long balls to that point, got up to the plate and knocked one out of the park. A wave of emotion went through the stadium when that ball went over the fence. And if I could feel it up in the control room, I’m sure down at field level it was something else.
But I told my new editors about my favourite moments of the season, and described the work I had done for the Blue Jays.
We talked more sports and made our way back to the office.
When we got back, I went straight to work, and continued on my summer league updates.
My time to leave came and went, and I kept working. Finally, I emailed what I had done to the person who had assigned it to me, and told Editor 1 what I had been working on. I mentioned that I had to meet my mom, and he told me to go.
I would have stayed as long as they would have kept me, but I realized my mom is only staying for another day, and I am going to have a lot of alone time when she is gone, so I should see her while she is around.
I left and picked her up at her hotel.
After we had dinner and loaded up the car with some of my stuff, we went back to my new apartment. I don’t think it was a coincidence that the doormat was now outside of the door. I guess Thing 1 just didn’t want to leave my keys outside, but she could have mentioned it.
I struggled with the keys at first, and was convinced that I had not been given the right ones to get in. I knocked on the door to no avail. But eventually I figured it out. Doors can be tough.
We got into the apartment and had to figure out which room was mine. But it wasn’t hard since the girl who left had also left a piece of paper with her name on it, taped to the door of her bedroom. Well, I guess it could be considered my bedroom now.
But I was just there to drop things off. I wasn’t staying. I am going to remain at my mother’s hotel until she leaves to head home.
We got all my stuff from my car to the room, with only one minor mishap, when the bottom fell out of a box I had filled with all kinds of tiny stuff that surely we didn’t get all of off the ground where I dropped it.
Then we set sail for Wal-Mart. I typed it into the magic little GPS, putting all of my faith in the direction diva. We followed it right onto some sort of pitch black back roads, definitely full of deer waiting to jump in front of my car. Not scary at all.
The first hazard we came across though, was a car accident. We think the car might have hit a deer, but there was no way to tell. Well, there probably was a way, but we didn’t really look into it. You can assume it was a deer.
I was completely frightened by an actual deer not far from the accident. I was sure it was waiting to jump out in front of me, but it didn’t. And I scared my mom with my gasp of terror at the moment I saw it.
She was the one who scared me next though. There was a cop car coming at us with lights flashing that scared her. It was really loud, and driving really fast, but it still shouldn’t have been anything to panic over. We figured that since we were in the middle of nowhere it was probably heading to the accident we had passed.
When we finally made it to Wal-Mart, we pretty much vowed never to go there again. At least not in the dark. There seem to be deer running in front of cars everywhere here, and driving in the dark probably isn’t the safest thing to do on those back roads even without the wildlife. We had more excitement on that drive than necessary.
But Wal-Mart is always a fun time, so that almost made up for it. I got a whole bunch of UNC-themed bedding for my new accommodations, perfect for the dorm room that I ended up in.
Leaving was interesting because it was my task to get the GPS to take us back a different way than we had come. I did so successfully, but the road that it took us on wasn’t that much better.
Nonetheless we made it back just in time to see the Giants take the World Series. Maybe Brian Wilson will shave his beard now. But one can only hope.
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