Going the Other Way

Note: This is the third time I've tried to write this particular blog. What follows may suck worse than anything published in the history of the world, but it'll be done.

I've often thought to myself that if I was a homosexual baseball player who waited until three years after I stopped playing to come out of the closet and another five years to write an autobiography about it, I'd probably title the book 'Going the Other Way.' So when I came across a book by that very title about that very subject in the Books-A-Million bargain bin for two bucks after Christmas, I figured I should probably pick it up to see if it's anything like the book I'd imagined writing were I in that situation. Since the player had a professional writer do the heavy lifting of actually writing the book, I imagine it's a lot better than anything I would have come up with.

Billy Bean (not the General Manager of the Oakland A's and the subject of Michael Lewis's fantastic book Moneyball, that Billy Beane spells his name with an 'e' at the end) spent parts of six seasons playing Major League Baseball for the Tigers, Blue Jays, Dodgers and Padres. Even die hard baseball fans have little, if any, recollection of Bean as a player. He hit a grand total of five homeruns in his career. He does, however, hold a record that only ESPN's Tim Kurkjin could love - he holds the record for most consecutive hits as a pinch hitter (because you're wondering, he got five in a row.). Were that the end of the story, it'd be a book even Kurkjin wouldn't read, and he's the man that once said he's "always been fascinated by the sacrifice fly."

But Bean takes us on his journey of both discovering who he is and then spending years hiding it from his teammates, family, friends and himself. Bean used sports, particularly baseball, to escape a troubled childhood that saw him moving from apartment to apartment in Los Angeles as his mother struggled to make ends meet. On the outside, he had the life every little boy dreams of. He had a college scholarship to play baseball, a beautiful girlfriend and was a top prospect expected to be drafted early in the draft.

He's eventually a top-10 pick and quickly makes his way through the minor leagues to the Big Leagues where he gets four hits in his major league debut. After his initial success, Bean struggles to get regular playing time, which is essential for a baseball player to keep his timing. Timing for a batter is critical in a sport where swinging a fraction of a second late can be the difference between a hit and an out.

One day shortly after his call to the majors, Bean finds himself in the training room where a trainer's hands get a little further up his thigh than he'd expected. Rather than recoiling in horror, Bean finds himself excited by it. He spends the next several months trying to forget about his moment in the training room, but the more he tries to forget, the more it consumes his thoughts. He eventually meets 'Sam' and Bean starts leading a double life - his public life in baseball and his private life as a gay man with a hypermasculine profession. As you would expect, he has difficulty keeping his private life private, including a time when Sam cooked a nice dinner for the two to celebrate Bean's first home run, only to have a couple of  Bean's teammates show up for an impromptu celebration. Sam has to scurry to the car where he spends a couple of hours alone in his car in the garage while Bean celebrates with his teammeates.

Without getting bogged down in details, Bean suffers and AIDS scare and eventually tires of leading a life in which he's on pins and needles about someone find out about his sexual orientation, so he retires. He then finds out about the death of one of his best friends that affects him profoundly. Shortly after that he gives an interview about a restaurant he's been running with his business and romantic partner and admits to the reporter that he's gay. He'd been out of baseball for three years and didn't really think it'd be that big of a deal. However, the reporter turns the story from a restaurant profile to a story about a former ballplayer who is gay. Suddenly he's on the front page of the New York Times and being discussed on SportsCenter all for something he'd spent the majority of his life trying to keep hidden from others.

Hitchhiker's guide to Southeastern North Carolina

This is the sixth part of my 323-part series.

Song: Sweet Hitchhiker
Artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival 

I always feel bad for hitchhikers. Not bad enough to actually stop the car and pick one up, but bad in the 'I hope I never have to hitchhike and someone like me drives by and ignores me.' kind of way. Seeing them standing along the side of the road, hoping some stranger on his way back home to Iowa after having taken a reclusive writer to a baseball game and seeing a mysterious message flash on the scoreboard stops to pick you up in his van to take you to his baseball field carved out of a corn field seems like a less than ideal way to travel.

So in the interests of anyone reading this who has considered trying to hitchhike their way across the country, I've come up with a few helpful hints to make your hitchhiking experience a sweet one.

1. Be an attractive female - Face it, if a guy's driving down the road, he's not stopping for another dude. Sure, it's sexist, but that's just reality. And a woman isn't going to stop for a guy for fear he's a serial ax murderer who has the entire cast of Criminal Minds searching for him based on information like 'most serial ax murderers are male' and 'hitchhikers with bloody axes are more often than not murderers on the run from the law.' As with most things in life, being an attractive female has its advantages, and among the most advantageous, is being able to be picked up when hitchhiking.

Probably not hitchhiking.

2. Don't be too attractive  - Guys can't pick up any girl who looks better than their significant other. It's true. One hundred percent of the women I asked said their significant other wasn't allowed to pick up a hitchhiker who looked better then they did. (Ok, it was Yes Dear, and she won't let me pick up any hitchhikers regardless of their appearance, but were I allowed to, the fact remains that I wouldn't be able to pick up Adriana Lima should her tour bus break down on the way to a Victoria's Secret fashion show. I'd never let her hear the end of it, but I'd keep driving. (I'd also spend the next six months writing about my brush with fame.)

3. Don't be weird  - Weird is an intentionally ambiguous term as each driver has his or her own definition of weird. If you're going to spend the three hour trip from Southport to somewhere three hours from Southport talking about your cats, odds are you're weird. Filing your toenails would also be considered odd by the overwhelming majority of the hitchhiker picking up public.
That’s pretty much what I’ve got for you. Granted, the sum total of my hitchhiking experience can be summed up in the word ‘nonexistent.’ But just because I’ve never done it, never really thought about it before now and never picked up a hitchhiker doesn’t indicate I don’t know what I’m talking about. The fact that I don’t know what I’m talking about should indicate that fact instead.


On Deck: If I finish the book I'm reading, I may write a post on that. If not, I'll be going with U2's One Step Closer.

New Year, same old jokes

I could give you a litany of excuses as to why I haven't posted anything since mid-December. I could tell you that I've been out of town, either at my parents or Yes Dear's parents from December 9 to December 28. I could tell you that from December 29 to January 1 Yes Dear's parents came to visit El Casa de Martin. I could tell you that my computer's wireless connection doesn't always work and we didn't take it out of town only to have it become a traveling word processor. I could tell you that I just haven't felt up to writing anything since the new year as I've been trying to catch up on my rest. I could tell you that I've started exercising and reading more and in doing so, my time for writing has diminished considerably.

But I won't tell you all that because you, in your unforgiving ways, don't care about my excuses (especially fake one's like the last one I listed.) You, in your insatiable desire for interweb distractions, just want something to distract you from reality for a few minutes before you go back to whatever it is that you do when you're not wasting time reading my ramblings. (I like to assume my readers spend their time saving the world and only read my blog because it's part of their 'saving the world' goal because they know if I get no readers, I'll fall into despair.)

It's a new year now, quite possibly our final full year in existence if the Mayans are correct. So we probably need to make the most of 2011, you know, just to be on the safe side. To that end, I present to you my New Year's resolutions.

Not the Prize for a Fantasy Football Title

Win a Fantasy Sports Title - I came close this year, finishing third in a football league. I'll spare you the details, but if I didn't suck as a manager, I think I could have won it all. With the prospect of no NFL next season due to a lockout and the 2012 season being cut short what with the end of the world and everything, my only hope is fantasy baseball. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I've continued to suck at it the past few years. I blame the kid. Before he came along, I still sucked, but I didn't have him as an excuse. Now I do, so I can blame him.

125 Blog Posts This Year - That's really an arbitrary number. Essentially it's 10 posts a month, which seems doable, but then again, a lot of things seem doable at the beginning of a new year. By the way, please don't start sending me messages like "hey, you're two posts behind the pace you need to be at to reach your goal," or "You've got to write 123 posts in the next three days if you want to meet your resolution." Also, should the opportunity arise and I guest blog on someone's else's site, I'm totally counting that towards my 125. I'll post a link here, so that would count.

That's pretty much the list. Sure, lose weight, eat healthier, not do heroin are on the list, but they're always on the list. (I generally fail at two of those three.)

Next Up: Back to the Walk Through My iPod

I say I don't care, but I do

This is the 5th installment of my 323 part series.

I wish I Felt Nothing

Artist: The Wallflowers

There are things I care about and things I don't care about. And then there are things I care about that I wish I didn't care about, both good and bad. This is that list:

Politics - On one hand, I don't figure that my vote matters, even if I vote in every election. I'm cynical enough to know that I don't have the money or the power (mostly the money) to influence . . . err 'lobby' any politician. I'm also cynical enough to believe that politicians don't want to actually solve problems, only score political points. I'm tired of talking points and empty rhetoric, but I repeat myself. On the other hand, I terms of the world population, I'm among the most well educated and wealthy individuals on the planet. In those terms, I feel a social obligation to follow and care about the political outcomes, both in the United States and worldwide. So I end up caring about what happens without feeling as though I can do anything to affect the outcome.


The Media - Yes, I'm aware the media isn't one giant cabal that meets on Tuesday mornings in their secret lair to set the national agenda for the week. It's much more sinister than that. Actually, that's not totally fair. All the media does is what any business does, which is try to find ways to make a buck. If that means spending more time on car chases and Hollywood starlets and their legal troubles than actual news, then by God, the media will focus on that. The one story I hated, more than any other, when I worked in newspapers was the "Man on the Street" story in which I'd go ask people their opinions on a news event and then publish their responses. Why the opinions of an unscientific sampling of people who happened to be walking around the Mall when I was there was news I still don't understand. Surely there was actual news and not what Jane Mallwalker thinks about marginal tax rates and their impact on growth projections for the next decade.


Sports -  Jerry Seinfeld once said that cheering for sports teams is essentially cheering for laundry. Deep down, I realize this is true. As much as I try to deny it, I know that a player I hate will suddenly turn into a player I love if he's wearing the right jersey. I'm fully aware of this, and yet, every spring, I get excited about the Chicago Cubs and every September, I start to care about the Georgia Southern football team. Other than going to school at Georgia Southern, I have no connection to the current players. Sure, we walked through the same classrooms, but does that mean I need to cheer for them based on that simple fact? Apparently it does, and I do. But there's a part of me that can't help but think I'd be happier if I didn't care so much about the outcomes of games. Then again, that might be due to the fact that I'm a Cubs fan and I'm often on the losing end of those games.

Note: I left my iPod at home, so the next song will be added when I get back home.

Quick Programming Note

Ok, so busyness has gotten in the way of blogging, and it's not going to slow down any time soon. Who would have thought that the holidays would be hectic? So here's the deal. My brother is getting married this weekend, so I'll be doing that.

Unlike in April when I wrote 4,500 words over five posts about the wedding, I will likely not be writing anything about this one unless something completely unexpected happens. Otherwise, it'll be just your standard, typical (to me anyway) wedding complete with all the boring stuff that make all weddings the same. I'll still feel bad for the preacher who is left at the alter when the bridal (groomal?) party recesses down the aisle.

Following that, I'll be at my parents until Christmas and then at the in-laws for a few days. My parents still lack wireless internet, and secluding myself in their computer room to write seems like a poor use of time there. That said, I may need some time barricaded in a room by myself to preserve what little sanity I still have. With luck, I'll knock out a couple posts while I'm there.

Until then, happy holidays everyone.