The one person most responsible for my wife being a baseball fan

LaTroy Hawkins signed yesterday with the Colorado Rockies. This isn’t all that big a deal (well, other than the fact that he’ll be 41 at the start of next season and still playing in the Big Leagues). But I think I can trace my wife’s embrace of baseball directly to Mr. Hawkins.

When we first started dating, my wife tolerated baseball. She knew I enjoyed it and made the effort to like what I liked. But I don’t think she enjoyed it. It was just something she had to put up with to date me and for whatever reason, she was willing to do it.

In 2004 we went to a Braves/Cubs game in Atlanta and Hawkins was playing for Chicago. She didn’t understand why, but I wanted to get there early and watch batting practice and see the Cubs warm up as well as the chance to get a few batting practice home run balls when the crowd isn’t so big.

So we’re in the left field bleachers about two hours before the game and suddenly the players she’s only seen on television become real to my wife. “There’s that guy. There’s that other guy.” Players that until recently had only been people on the screen were now real. She’s genuinely excited.

And then, Hawkins starts tossing a few balls into the stands. He eventually makes eye contact with my wife and tosses her a ball. At this point she’s beyond excited. A major league player tossed her a ball.

That was it, from then on she was a fan. Even when Hawkins started to, how can I say this nicely…, when he started to suck, my wife still liked him because he gave her that ball.

Hawkins eventually left the Cubs after about a season and a half, but his contribution to my happiness by making my wife a baseball fan lives on. So good luck, LaTroy, in Colorado and thanks for your little gesture that’s made a big impact in my life.

Letters to Cleo

My five-year old loves geography. Like seriously loves it. He was putting his United States puzzle together when he was three and shortly before he just turned five he was able to identify the state just by me saying the capital city for each one. He's got a world map on his wall to help him learn different countries. He's wanted to read the atlas that came with a world map puzzle instead of stories before going to bed. 

Knowing this about him, my sister-in-law has sent him postcards from Salt Lake City and from New Orleans during the conferences she's gone to the past few months. My son was beyond excited to not only get mail, but to get postcards from different states.

So tonight I had an idea. I wonder if I could get him postcards from all 50 states. And by “I could get him,” I really mean “friends online mail them to him.”

I realize that I can’t really be picky when asking friends (or internet friends, or even friends of internet friends) in this endeavor, but should you choose to help me out here, he’d love one that highlighted whatever state you’re sending it from, such as a map of the state or something symbolizing your state (like Mt. Rushmore, for example.)

If you’d like to help me out, please contact me either on twitter (@lukermartin) or email (luke.r.martin@gmail.com) and I’ll get you the relevant information (our address, his name, ect.) thanks in advance.

Don't Know Much About History

I failed a history test yesterday.

In my defense, I haven’t been to class all semester - or even this decade. In fact, I haven’t been in a history class since the turn of the century. But the fact is, I failed. I freely admit I got a 64 on the test, which covered roughly the years 1800 to 1835.

So why am I taking a history test? Boredom and curiosity mostly.

I had some downtime at work on Thursday and one of the professors on campus had mentioned that he was giving his students a test that day. I thought it would interesting, and possibly humiliating, to see how I’d do on an era of history that I have long since stopped thinking about. Except for the HBO series on John Adams, I’m not sure I’ve read or watched anything on this era since I last studied it in school sometime in 1999 or 2000.

The test was a 50-question, multiple choice test so just by guessing I should have gotten a 20. (There were five potential answers for each question.)

There were a few things on the test I actually remembered learning in school, such as Eli Whitney inventing the cotton gin or Robert Fulton inventing the steam engine. Ok, I wouldn’t have gotten Fulton correct if it was a fill-in-the-blank test, but seeing his name triggered the knowledge of what he invented.

But I had no clue why Andrew Jackson wanted to kill the Bank of the US in 1832 or what the name of the scandal involving Jackson’s Secretary of War and the recently widowed Peggy O’Neal was called. I didn’t even know there was a Federalist meeting at the end of the War of 1812 where they threatened to secede from the US over the war let alone what the meeting was called. I also had no idea what the Tallmadge Amendment of 1820 was, though now I know that it’s what the Missouri Compromise attempted to address.

I’m slightly disappointed I only got a 64 on the test. Going it, I was kind of hoping for at least a 70, but I knew that was a lofty goal. And who knows, maybe I’ll take another test from another professor in a different subject and see how I do on that one. To be honest, it was kind of fun taking the test and challenging myself that way. In related news, I need to reexamine my definition of fun.

Looking deeper at "The Will To Win"

I freely admit there are things that bother me that I really need to let go of. I know people are going to continue to say “podium” when they mean “lectern.” I know people will continue to say “ATM machine” when the M in the acronym already stands for machine. Same with “PIN number.”

I realize in the grand scheme of life, people using redundant phrases falls between “Netflix no longer streaming that movie you were eventually going to get around to watching, maybe” and “your favorite store no longer carrying the brand you use so now you have to go to a different store two minutes farther from your house to get it” on the list of things to worry about, but I do.

So when I saw this status update from Georgia Southern Athletics reminiscing about the Eagles’ first national title in 1985, my “this really isn’t that important, why is it bothering you” alarm went off.

“A second-year NCAA Div. I-AA program, Georgia Southern had an improbable run through the playoffs and won a championship with teamwork, the will to win, more than 300 yards passing in the second half, and a confident freshman who grabbed a helluva pass for the game-winning touchdown.”

Improbable run through the playoffs? No issue

Teamwork? Absolutely necessary.

300 yards passing in the second half? Vital to the victory.

The will to win? WHAT?

What does that even mean? As best as I can tell, it means they wanted to win. Perhaps badly, even desperately. Their opponents, the ones also playing for a national title, clearly they didn’t have the will to win. Sure, they were one of the last two teams playing and had spent hours upon hours of practice developing their skills, making sacrifices to give up time with friends, family and any number of other things, but they didn’t have the will to win. They were just kind of out there, playing for the enjoyment of physical exercise and didn’t care about the outcome of the game.

“The Will To Win” (TWTW) is right up there with “Wanted It More” as phrases people go to in an attempt to explain outcomes of games. Both teams played hard and it was close, but in the end, it came down to who wanted it more. It’s nonsense. It came down to highly skilled athletes playing hard and a break going one way instead of the other. It’s got nothing to do with desire or heart or other explanations used to try to explain the randomness that is sports.

The problem with using those phrases is when you don’t win. To believe teams that win have this innate desire for victory means the opposite must also be true. This year, Georgia Southern is 4-3. Presumably that means there have been three games this year when the Eagles’ players had no will to win while in four games the players actually wanted to win. It would mean that the losses in the semifinals each of the past two years, the players decided they’d had enough and no longer had TWTW. Otherwise, they would have won. But since they lost, it’s clear, if not stated outright, that the players and coaches don’t have TWTW. Otherwise, they’d have won, right?

So let’s agree that we’re smarter than this. We don’t need to fall back on meaningless clichés to try to explain the outcome of a sporting event. We’re better than this.

The absurdity of the pregame show

I grew up watching sports on television. From getting to stay up late on an October Saturday night to watch the World Series when I was six or seven to spending Fall weekends watching football to lazy summer afternoons watching the Cubs, it’s pretty much how I can mark time in my life.

All that sports viewing also means I’ve spent hours and hours watching pregame shows. “Experts” who would analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each team and then try to predict what they thought the key matchups would be. Then they’d make a pick for who they thought would win. Sometimes they’d be right. Often they’d be wrong. But ultimately it didn’t matter because it was sports on tv and it’s what I was interested in.

I really hadn’t given much thought to pregame shows until a few weeks ago when I had on an NFL pregame show while doing some things around the house. At one point there were highlights on the screen and my son said “Is football on?” I told him it was about to be, but this was a pregame show.

“Pregame show?” he asked, slightly confused.

“Yeah, it’s a show that talks about what they think is going to happen in the game,” I told him.

“So they’re just talking?” he asked.

“Well… yeah, they’re just talking about the game,” I said.

And that’s just it. That’s all they’re doing is talking about the game, and yet they are huge. CBS and FOX dedicate an hour each week to previewing the games. ESPN takes it a step farther with their three-hour NFL Countdown show.

And people watch. They watch people just talk about games that haven’t happened yet. They watch people who are no better at picking games than anyone else. Yet we believe these experts have insights that can tell us how the game will unfold.

I can’t back this up with any stats from anywhere, but I get the feeling that someone who is going to sit down and watch a 3-hour pregame show probably has spent a little time during the week reading, watching or listening to other NFL news and notes. I’m not even a huge NFL fan and yet I spend between four and five hours a week listening to a daily podcast about the sport (well, it’s more about fantasy football, but it’s NFL related.)

I’d never stopped to think about pregame shows until the conversation with my kid. It was always just something that was a part of being a sports fan. But that was in a time when we didn’t have 24/7 access to information and entire television networks devoted to covering one sport. Maybe there was a time when you needed a primer for the game, some of the key players and who is or isn’t hurt. That time has long since passed. I have access to more detail and more team (or game) specific information in a minute of searing online. I don’t need to wait for a pregame show to hopefully spend 10 minutes on the game I want to see.

And as my son astutely points out, they’re just talking. Thinking about all the time I’ve wasted on these shows makes me sad. But now I turn on games when they start. The football game starts at 1 p.m., I’ll turn on the tv at 1 p.m. The World Series game starts at 8:07 p.m., I’ll turn it on at 8:07. I’ve been freed from the shackles of the pregame show.