It's been a while. Let's do this.

Posted by Molly at 4:55 PM EST

Updated: Tue 01/17/2023 5:54 PM EST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Minor league baseball, at least at its highest level, is a bit of a strange animal. You have the guys who are on their way, who are sure to make it, who have their whole lives in front of them. And then you have the guys who made it, already, but they got hurt, or they got figured out, or whatever, so they're trying to make it back. 

Unfortunately when I worked in minor league baseball, I was not equipped to deal with these players. There was a bit of hero worship, I suppose, going on, and I was sort of in awe. (I finally think I could handle it, now. Haaaaa.) Anyway, sticking to the theme of poignant memories, I present: the locker room, circa early 2000s.

Molly, to former big leaguer trying to get back: Hey, what's your hitting intro?
FBL: I don't know, I never picked one. Can you do that?
M: Yeah.
FBL: I never had one, even when I was in the big leagues. They just played whatever.
M: Can you hear it? Do you even notice it?
FBL: Yeah, you notice it sometimes. I just notice the one they've got now, it seems so ... tired.
M: Well you should pick something out.
FBL: Yeah, that'd be good. I always thought, you know, I'd pick out something really cool, but then no one ever asked me, and then it didn't matter.

SO SAD.

Later that day, FBL calls me back to the locker room to get the song. I get in there, and he is playing Minesweeper on the computer. I guess playing baseball is not unlike every boring corporate job ever. (Ha.)

FBL: I don't know what that song is. Hey, [future star], what's that song?
FS: *waits a beat* Oh yeah! That song. [he rolls his eyes, laughing]
FBL: I know what it is. [he gets up from the computer and FS takes his place]
FS: I just need an opening here...
FBL: It's that song, the one by Nickelback that [second baseman]'s always playing.
FS: Uhh...
FBL: The one, it goes [he hums a beat]
FS: ...Yeah, I don't know what you just did, but that was not Nickelback.
FBL: That one, the one I sing other lyrics to.
FS: The one about [pitcher]?
FBL: No! That other one. I made up other lyrics to it but I can't sing them with her in here.
M: [dying from trying to stifle laughter] Yeah if you can't sing them in front of me, I don't wanna know.
FBL: I'll think of it, just give me a minute. 

Eventually he thinks of it, but the ballpark entertainment folks don't have that CD (I am OLD) so they play "How You Remind Me" and then the pressbox attendant who was a fixture there, says, "It's about time [FBL] changed his song, because that other one was old and tired and boring."

Posted by Molly at 2:01 PM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

At one point in my life, I actually did fun things. I went out at night. I met up with friends. We talked and laughed. It was nice. It was nice having friends. 

I made some ... questionable ... decisions my first year working in Memphis, so the next year I had resolved to really buckle down and work hard and make it back to the big leagues. But that same year I made a lifelong friend, let's call her Sarah, and one night when we didn't have a game, she asked me to come out drinking with her.

We ran into some ballplayers. One of them, let's call him Mike, said this year he just found everything funny. He never used to, but this year it was just funny. He said to one of the other players, let's call him Chris, "You're the only one who laughs with me. Like when [second baseman] didn't call you off and you had to keep running and running. Or when you tripped rounding third base. I almost did that, too. I couldn't believe I was out there running. I mean, I'm retired, and suddenly I'm out there pinch-running."

This was news to me. Apparently Mike had retired. 

Eventually, Chris, Mike, Mike's brother, Sarah, and I went back to Mike's apartment. He put on some music, and Paint Me a Birmingham came on. I like and identify with sad, sad country songs, so this became a Moment. "Country music makes me want to do it," said Chris, who at that time was wearing only a cock sock and making out with Sarah on the couch. 

I asked Mike if he was really retiring. 

"Yeah," he said. "I guess I'm going to go watch the game at the park tomorrow. I don't know what I'm going to do. ... It's the first time in 25 years that I won't be playing baseball. It's kind of weird. ... I'm a little nervous, but it's exciting." 

He walked me back to my car in the parking garage. Sarah and Chris ... went elsewhere.

The next day, he was at the park in street clothes. He watched the game, and then he left. 

After that, every time I heard Paint Me a Birmingham, I would think of that night. Occasionally I would look up these guys, see what they're up to now. Well, it turns out they died. Cancer sucks. 

Life is short. I miss my friends. Rest easy, guys. 

Posted by Molly at 6:07 PM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

In an effort to distract myself from my ongoing mental breakdown, I got the bright idea to read my excruciating old diary entries. That obviously was dumb, but I did write other stuff down, too, like the time I met Kurt Browning. I used to love watching figure skating growing up, and he was my first favorite skater. Years later I was working in baseball and worlds collided.

It was the very beginning of the baseball season, and Stars on Ice was in Houston, and the skaters came to the game. The ballpark entertainment staff wanted Todd Eldredge to throw out the first pitch, but I guess they asked Kurt instead because he had done it at other venues. (Obviously he's the best so he should have been the first choice anyway. Ha.) Then SOI gave the ballpark entertainment folks tickets to the show the following night, which was getaway day, so they could go. Shockingly they did not use all their tickets, so they gave an extra one to me. 

So we went to the show (where Browning and Eldredge "recreated" the first pitch but on ice) and afterwards we got to go backstage and meet Kurt Browning (!!!). He had a signed picture for the ballpark entertainment staff, which he has signed "I had a ball!" which is just the cutest thing ever. The SOI pr guy says the skaters really enjoyed the game. "Well...the girls got tired of it around the fourth inning, and they left, and the Russians didn't really get it... But the American men had a ball!" (Not so cute that time.)

"Oh yeah!" Kurt says. "It was great. You know, I thought I was gonna throw out the first pitch, get accosted by a fellow Canadian and then they were gonna lose. But I was a good luck charm! And your third base coach, I don't know why he held up the runner. I thought it was all over right there. That was the tying run." (He apparently was rooting for his fellow Canadian and the opposing team, lolz.)

Kurt Browning talking baseball is awesome! Then he posed for a picture and shook everyone's hand. The ballpark entertainment staffer went and got Katarina Witt's autograph. "I'm a dork," he said, "but it's okay because I know it." 

Posted by Molly at 4:48 PM EDT

Updated: Fri 05/06/2022 11:21 PM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Anne and I had more (ridiculously tame) hockey adventures this week. We went to the C@nes-K!ngs game which the home team somehow won convincingly and went afterward to stand in the cold and wait for autographs. Sadly after a big win, not very many players stopped, but it was still rather entertaining.

This was due mainly to the head coach, who pulled his truck over to inform the small crowd that "the players are still in the locker room but I had to get out of there quick, I have to go give my wife her Valentine!"
Crowd, as one: OOOOOOOOH.
Coach, laughing: Not like that!

He shook his head and drove off.

The other funny thing was this one 7-year-old who was there with his dad. Dad had trading cards for the players to sign but he wasn't always quite sure who was who. But he did get it right when TVR pulled over, and told the kid to wait his turn and then politely ask if TVR would sign his jersey and card.

So, when it was the kid's turn, he held out the card and said, politely, "What's your name?"

TVR, looking slightly pained and peering at the dad: ...Trevor.
Kid: Will you please sign my jersey?
Dad: *facepalming* 

After TVR drove off...

Dad: You don't ask them who they are! You just take the autograph if they're nice enough to give it to you!
Kid: I didn't ask who he was! I asked what his name was! He was a creepy van guy!

Sadly, Commie was not there to sign my #22 jersey. 

Posted by Molly at 1:25 PM EST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

At the doctor's office, Patrick suddenly said, loudly and worriedly, "I don't want to have my testicles removed!"

I laughed somewhat nervously and the doctor said, "Oh, do you have a dog that just had that done?"

Patrick said no, and then he asked if it would hurt.

I said he didn't have to worry about getting his testicles removed, but if you had surgery they gave you medicine to make you sleep and you didn't feel it.

Several minutes later I realized he meant tonsils. 

Posted by Molly at 12:01 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Back in North Carolina last month, we watched Trolls for the first time when it hit Netflix. Audrey was immediately smitten, and so was my mom. Yet after repeated watchings, we still didn't have all the troll names down.

When Mom was up here in Ohio last week, we watched Trolls again. At one point Princess Poppy says good night to all her friends, including Satin and Chenille.

Audrey: "Mom! Their names are Satin and Chenille!"
Grandma: "Oh? Captain and Tennille?"
Me: *hysterical laughter*
Grandma: I think there's a generation gap here. 

Posted by Molly at 10:38 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Last Sunday, my mom, my Aunt Chris, me and Audrey went to see Ok!ahoma! at the Er!e Playhouse. I was ... not super excited. I'm just not that cultured; I don't love plays, and I was worried about how Audrey might act. She's fine sitting through a movie, though, even a non-animated one, so I figured we could give it a shot.

We arrived just a few minutes before showtime and got settled. Oddly, the playhouse had a movie screen in front of the curtain and was showing previews/ads. Eventually the orchestra started playing. I (again, uncultured) assumed that this was the intro and that any moment the curtain would rise. This was not the case. The music went on and on. The curtain remained stubbornly down. Audrey was already bored.

Finally the curtain went up. There was a nice lady pretending to churn butter in the middle of the stage. Up and down, up and down. Things did not improve from there.

None of us actually knew anything about the play. Aunt Chris and Mom knew a few of the songs. But we really had no idea about the plot. So when, midway through the first act, the cowboy started trying to convince the guy in the smokehouse to hang himself, we were a bit taken aback. Audrey was blissfully unaware of this, having draped herself across my lap to proclaim that she was hungry! And thirsty! And really hungry!

Since I was mostly trying to keep Audrey from complaining too loudly, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to Mom and Chris. Until Mom's phone started ringing. She just got a new number last month, and apparently Steve or Jerry who had the number previously, didn't inform his friends of the change. So Steve/Jerry's friend had something important to say on a Sunday afternoon, and Mom had forgotten to silence the phone. It took 4 rings to silence it, and by then the (mostly very old) people around us were starting to look unhappy.

Aunt Chris leaned across and whispered, "There's only two more songs until intermission." Sadly, she had miscounted. Two songs later began the 15-minute-long drug-induced dream sequence ballet portion of the play. I will hand it to the folks at the Er!e Playhouse. They were true to the movie, at least. At this point, I noticed that Aunt Chris was fanning herself with her playbook. It WAS a bit stuffy in the theater. A few minutes later, still in the midst of the awful dream sequence, Aunt Chris began fanning harder. I looked over and noticed that tears were streaming down her face.

Turns out that when the overly skinny dancing cowboys had come onstage, THEY HAD NOT BEEN DANCING IN UNISON. This set Mom off. She had a prodigious laughing fit and could not contain herself. Aunt Chris was trying to hit her while also not looking at her because SHE couldn't contain herself. Mom began trying to do some Lamaze breathing techniques.

Luckily, FINALLY, one hour and 49 minutes in, intermission came. We marched out into the lobby and Aunt Chris announced that there was no chance we were going to stay for the second act, and we walked out.  

Posted by Molly at 7:22 PM EDT

Updated: Wed 07/26/2017 10:34 AM EDT

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink

Once, many years ago, one of my very dear friends said to me, "I wish I could be as obsessed by something as you are with baseball." Regardless of how it was meant, I took it as a compliment. And now, finally, I have found someone who feels the same way about something. And that someone is another dear friend of mine, Anne, and that something is ... stalking hockey players. 

One of the goalies for the local hockey team was having an autograph session at a local taco establishment. We decided to go. And also to eat tacos and drink tequila. Anyway, as it often is, it was me and Anne and the three kids. She had brought lots of things (for Will) to get autographed, and she had two extra posters for Patrick and Audrey to take up there. Audrey, of course, refused to go anywhere near the table. She has still not recovered from the First Goal program. So the boys went up, got their stuff signed, posed for pictures. I handed my phone to Patrick and asked him to take a picture of me and Anne and Edd!e and so he took about 17 terrible ones. We thanked Edd!e and went back to our seats.

Anne said that maybe when the line had died down we could go back up and have an adult take our picture. So we did that. Then, Anne mentioned to Audrey that if she'd go up and pose for a picture, Anne would buy her an ice cream. Audrey refused. But Will heard the magic words "ice cream." So Will and Patrick went back up to chat with Edd!e. Patrick asked him if being a goalie was hard. ("Sometimes yes and sometimes no so much.") Will asked him if he'd come over to the table and see Audrey. Audrey heard this and looked stricken. I reassured her that he wouldn't come over.

Then Edd!e got up to go to the bathroom. Suddenly Will disappeared. And then reappeared. And announced, "He's coming to our table."

Lo and behold, Edd!e emerged from the bathroom and came over to the table to pose for a picture. Audrey was mortified and buried her head in my shoulder. Anne grabbed her phone to take a picture and motioned the boys over. "Ahh, a family picture," said Edd!e, who is totally awesome and grinned and posed for the picture. He then went back to his chips and beer and autographs and we left.

In the car on the way home, we had the following discussion.

Anne: Will, did you follow Edd!e into the bathroom?
Will: ...no.
Anne: You won't be in trouble, we just want to know.
Will: No, I didn't! I didn't follow him into the bathroom.
Anne: Are you sure?
Will: ...yes?
Me: Was he peeing?
Will: No! He was just washing his hands! ... Okay, I followed him into the bathroom.

Posted by Molly at 8:06 PM EST

Updated: Thu 02/09/2017 8:10 PM EST

Share This Post

Post Comment | Permalink