I woke up and had to finish the questions that I had postponed writing. I looked at the Wikipedia page for Mike Young, knowing the information found would obviously be stellar, being that it is Wikipedia after all.
I learned a few things about Youngy that I probably should have known going into our meeting on Tuesday. He’s apparently been one of the most influential baseball people in the game of cricket. Now that may not be a huge deal, because I’m not sure that there are too many baseball people in cricket, but he’s definitely made an impact.
He’s a former minor league baseball player and manager, with a few stints managing in the Blue Jays farm system. He also managed Australia’s national team. Young came to Queensland in 1981 as a player and a coach for the Rams (baseball), and won a Claxton Shield championship right away. He won a couple more as a coach and some medals in two Intercontinental Cups, and then somehow got into cricket. He delved into the area of fielding in cricket, something not many people focus on. In cricket, errors aren’t counted or recorded, so there aren’t too many coaches who focus solely on the fielders because it’s not obvious when they’re doing anything wrong.
I came up with a bio something to the effect of that and then centred my questions around cricket and baseball and their relationship. It’s a lot easier to catch someone’s attention here when you’re talking about cricket, rather than talking about baseball. I figured I had enough to satisfy the needs of all the Bris31 viewers and a good list of questions for Campo to ask Young during the interview.
After that I put together a short list of questions for Campo to ask Justin Erasmus as well, because he will also be making his debut on The Rookie when it airs next Monday night. Hopefully the show will go better the next time around.
I tried to call Carl and wish him a happy birthday, since my attempt at midnight had been unsuccessful, but I still couldn’t manage to get through. I called and then texted and then called again. His birthday will last all day though, so there will be plenty more time. I did make him a birthday peanut butter sandwich though, the best present I could come up with.
When I got to the field I saw Whitey running around the outside of the field. I waited until he came past me, but he just kept right on going. I figured he would be done soon, but obviously not at that moment. I went to the locker room to start finding the things I would need for cleaning. Outside of the clubhouse on the other side was Steve, the groundscrew guy, with a saw and a drill, putting together two-by-fours in L-bracket form so that we would be able to stabilize the boards behind the back net. What a guy.
When Whitey finished running he wanted to try and finish putting the banner up with the boards, so I held stuff together while he tried to use the drill. Unfortunately the drill was either dead or someone didn't know how to use the charger, because it wouldn't work. It tried for a little while but it was a pretty pathetic attempt at power drilling. I mentioned to Whitey that I thought Steve had one though so maybe we could borrow it inbetween his construction of the brackets. Steve did, and we finally finished what we had set out to do. We were much more productive with a working drill than a sad, dying one.
While we were doing that, Campo showed up at the park to talk over the script for the show with Whitey. The Rookie is being filmed from the home plate lounge this week, during batting practice, so Campo got the lay of the land and then they set to work. I didn't really contribute anything to the script, aside from the questions and Mike Young bio, and while they were talking I got started on cleaning up the garbage. It's becoming routine now.
Though I had forgiven Carl in my mind for not showing up on time, since it is in fact his birthday, it didn't change the fact that cleaning up by myself sucked. Because we had picked up the garbage on the Sunday after the last series though (and it is now Thursday), it wasn't so bad. Until I got to the members' stand. I was scrubbing down all the rows of seats with a bucket of water and disinfectant soap and a sponge, but the stands were so especially dirty after some rain that I had to change the water four times. And there aren't that many seats up there. I should take pictures of the entire stadium sometime soon, so that everyone knows what I am talking about. I'll do it one day after we clean though, so you know that we're doing our jobs.
When I left the stand one of the times I had to change the water, I realized how disgusting the locker room was. So I decided to take a break from scrubbing to pick up more garbage. I got three industrial-sized garbage bags worth of trash out of there, changing the bags in their bins and picking things up off of the floor. I think the boys are supposed to keep track of the locker room themselves, but if they are, it appears that no one told them about it. I wanted to leave them a note, but in the end I decided, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all (not my usual policy).
Carl showed up at some point during my locker cleanup, only a couple hours after the time that he thought he was going to arrive. I gave him his birthday peanut butter sandwich and he was pumped about it, though I'd left the crust on. I'm still striving for perfection. Carl had been Skyping with people from home, and receiving birthday wishes all morning. Can't blame a guy for that.
BFC was ready to work just in time for Gonzo to come back to the field with a late lunch. Gonz had brought everyone hamburgers and fries, and even ordered one for me without mustard because he saw me scraping it off of the last burger I'd had. How thoughtful.
After lunch Carl got to work and I went back to work, remembering that I hadn't written Coshi's script yet for the game. I borrowed a computer and someone's iPhone to get onto the Internet and sent it away. I'm sure it wasn't the finest piece of literature I've ever thrown together, but Coshi seemed happy with it. He still adds his own information, and an Aussie touch. I also never write about the visiting team, but Cosh always seems to have information on them. He does more work than I do.
After all of that was done we still had the banners on the back net to deal with one more time. We had to untie the ones on the end because someone had pulled the nets up as high as they could go (why didn't we think of that before?) and then realized that the banners were too high. Carl and I were busy cutting zip ties and putting new ones up when the other team came onto the field. All of the Adelaide players walked by us and sat down as we were working hard on getting things game-ready.
I talked to Mike, a guy who Whitey introduced as the media person for the Bite. But if he's in the same position as me or Carl, why does he get to travel with the team? Food for thought. I mentioned to him that I need to write a story on the All-Star Game for Baseball America and that maybe I should talk to the all-stars from Adelaide so the story isn't just Brisbane-oriented. He said that was fine, but I wanted to head home to shower, so I suggested that perhaps it happen tomorrow. He was also agreeable with that, so we went our separate ways.
I did head home to shower, mostly to make everyone around me a little more comfortable, and then I walked back. Before the game, I wandered around helping out with little things, like setting up tables in the home plate lounge, where the show had been filmed, and fixing and moving other stuff.
I also had a chance to talk to SJ and Maestri about our Christmas plans. We are heading to Byron Bay, which is apparently a really awesome, beautiful destination, and one of the places on Maestri's list of sights to see while he's here. We've been talking about it for awhile but we haven't really done anything about it yet. We were waiting to see when Maestri was going to be back from the All-Star Game. He informed us that he'll be back around 4 o'clock on the Thursday after the game (a week from today) and that we should all try to head out then, and stay in Byron for two days. SJ and I had no qualms with that so I said I would find a place to stay and book it as soon as I got home after the game.
For the game, Carl gave me the choice between doing the game recap and the sound effects. I opted for the recap because sometimes the sound effects just get to be too repetitive. Plus, I don't want to be to blame if people don't like them, or if someone's walkup music is wrong, or anything like that. I don't think that either of those things would actually be my fault.
At one point I went to get food from the concourse and Gonzo wanted me to put an order in for him. He said he wanted his usual, which was tuna rolls and chicken things. It sounded pretty good to me, so when I went down and asked for it for him, I asked if I could just double the order and have the same thing for myself. While the tuna rolls probably weren't awful for me, the fried chicken embodies most of the qualities of everything that I have been eating lately, none of them good. I maybe need to take a break from eating pizza, burgers, burritos and fried food all the time. It doesn't matter if I run twice as much as at home if I eat three times as much, right? Oops.
During the game I learned that Carl's girlfriend has been reading my journals, or at least a few of them. That led to the discovery of how much I actually talk about BFC, a topic that has probably been mentioned to me before. Much of our interaction is forced, but he is my friend and neither of us really has many other people to hang out with, especially me. He's been a good all-in-one substitute for my friends, my family, a tour guide, and a co-worker. But when his girlfriend does get here, I will likely have to find some new friends. Hopefully there are some available for the holidays.
The Bandits played a good game and were up by three runs in the ninth. That's a save situation for those of you who don't know baseball. Then again, if you don't know baseball, you probably don't know what I mean by save situation. The normal closer for Brisbane has been veteran Chris Mowday, but he hasn't really appeared to have his best stuff as of late. Apparently someone else thought the same because SJ came in to close it out. I'm happy for him, if he is going to take over the closer's role, but I also wonder how Mowday feels about that.
SJ didn't have the best appearance he's ever had either. He gave up a home run to the first batter he faced, followed by an immediate single. I was writing the game over, so I thought I would be optimistic and I began my next sentence with "the right-hander settled in". And it worked. SJ got the next batter to ground into a double play. Unfortunately though, he then gave up another single. I am pretty sure those three hits are more than he's given up during all of his other appearances. When the Bite brought in a pinch hitter to bat next, I thought I would try some optimistic game-over writing once again, since it worked so well the first time. I wrote "Jarrett notched his first save of the season two batters later, striking out pinch hitter Ben Wigmore to end the game." And that worked! I should just start writing the articles about the games before they even take the field. Maybe they would win more if I did that.
Post-game, Carl wanted me to go down to the field and interview the all-stars for Fox, because they were at the game filming. BFC wanted me to do it because he was supposed to be busy sending out the game recap I'd written. But when I got down to the field and did one interview, I realized Carl was right behind me so I let him do the rest. I gave him my recorder though because I figured that if I need to write a story on the all-stars, and he is already interviewing them, we might as well kill two birds with one stone. Hopefully he managed to learn to turn my recorder on at all the right times.
On my way down to the field, I had whizzed by Durket's host family and said I would be back to see them, so I went back to where they were and spoke to not only them, but I met his real family too. His entire real family has come down under from California for both his birthday (coming up on Saturday) and Christmas. While I am a little jealous, it's awesome that they're here. I wish my family were here. Mom.
I talked to his mom and dad and his host mom for a little while, and they seem like awesome people. I asked about their plans for Sydney, which is where they are heading for Christmas, and we talked about the article I'd written about Durket. I feel like I should call him Jon a little bit now, because his parents call him "Jonathan". I feel like quotation marks are a little inappropriate there because it's his real name, but still weird. We had a good talk, but his dad was still all over me for writing that the younger Durket needs to learn to command the zone a little better. Oops again.
When they left it was time to get back to work and finish up everything. Carl still had to send the story out and he came back with my recorder, and it appeared as though he was successful with it. I'll find out later I suppose. Gonzo mentioned that we should all go out for drinks to celebrate with the birthday boy, but in the end that didn't happen at all. Whitey was too tired to do anything and I'm not sure anyone was in the right mindset, so we decided to postpone until tomorrow.
I walked home and when I got there I got a call from SJ. I almost didn't answer because he pocket-dialed me once and I figured this was probably same thing, but I did, and it wasn't. He was actually on the other end. He told me not to book a place yet for Byron Bay because Steven Chambers knows someone who knows someone who has a place there or something. I think his parents' friends have a Byron home and they rent it out to people, so the guys thought it would be smart if we waited to see if it was available. And, Chambers is going to come with us. So now Maestri, SJ and I are going to take the train to the Gold Coast, which is where he lives, and we will all drive together from there to Byron.
During my phone call with SJ, I also brought up the homer that he gave up. SJ does not enjoy when I talk baseball with him so he tried to ignore me. But if you know me, you know I can be pretty hard to ignore. Probably just when he was about to hang up on me I changed the subject. I mentioned that there is a Twenty20 cricket match on Tuesday and he should think about going. I think that some of the guys are going to go and it should be a pretty good time. SJ seemed interested so I told him I would keep him posted on that. He won't talk baseball with me, but he'll talk cricket. Go figure.
And now it's time for bed and then more of the same tomorrow. More garbage-picking, more baseball, hopefully less home runs.
When Whitey finished running he wanted to try and finish putting the banner up with the boards, so I held stuff together while he tried to use the drill. Unfortunately the drill was either dead or someone didn't know how to use the charger, because it wouldn't work. It tried for a little while but it was a pretty pathetic attempt at power drilling. I mentioned to Whitey that I thought Steve had one though so maybe we could borrow it inbetween his construction of the brackets. Steve did, and we finally finished what we had set out to do. We were much more productive with a working drill than a sad, dying one.
While we were doing that, Campo showed up at the park to talk over the script for the show with Whitey. The Rookie is being filmed from the home plate lounge this week, during batting practice, so Campo got the lay of the land and then they set to work. I didn't really contribute anything to the script, aside from the questions and Mike Young bio, and while they were talking I got started on cleaning up the garbage. It's becoming routine now.
Though I had forgiven Carl in my mind for not showing up on time, since it is in fact his birthday, it didn't change the fact that cleaning up by myself sucked. Because we had picked up the garbage on the Sunday after the last series though (and it is now Thursday), it wasn't so bad. Until I got to the members' stand. I was scrubbing down all the rows of seats with a bucket of water and disinfectant soap and a sponge, but the stands were so especially dirty after some rain that I had to change the water four times. And there aren't that many seats up there. I should take pictures of the entire stadium sometime soon, so that everyone knows what I am talking about. I'll do it one day after we clean though, so you know that we're doing our jobs.
When I left the stand one of the times I had to change the water, I realized how disgusting the locker room was. So I decided to take a break from scrubbing to pick up more garbage. I got three industrial-sized garbage bags worth of trash out of there, changing the bags in their bins and picking things up off of the floor. I think the boys are supposed to keep track of the locker room themselves, but if they are, it appears that no one told them about it. I wanted to leave them a note, but in the end I decided, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all (not my usual policy).
Carl showed up at some point during my locker cleanup, only a couple hours after the time that he thought he was going to arrive. I gave him his birthday peanut butter sandwich and he was pumped about it, though I'd left the crust on. I'm still striving for perfection. Carl had been Skyping with people from home, and receiving birthday wishes all morning. Can't blame a guy for that.
BFC was ready to work just in time for Gonzo to come back to the field with a late lunch. Gonz had brought everyone hamburgers and fries, and even ordered one for me without mustard because he saw me scraping it off of the last burger I'd had. How thoughtful.
After lunch Carl got to work and I went back to work, remembering that I hadn't written Coshi's script yet for the game. I borrowed a computer and someone's iPhone to get onto the Internet and sent it away. I'm sure it wasn't the finest piece of literature I've ever thrown together, but Coshi seemed happy with it. He still adds his own information, and an Aussie touch. I also never write about the visiting team, but Cosh always seems to have information on them. He does more work than I do.
After all of that was done we still had the banners on the back net to deal with one more time. We had to untie the ones on the end because someone had pulled the nets up as high as they could go (why didn't we think of that before?) and then realized that the banners were too high. Carl and I were busy cutting zip ties and putting new ones up when the other team came onto the field. All of the Adelaide players walked by us and sat down as we were working hard on getting things game-ready.
I talked to Mike, a guy who Whitey introduced as the media person for the Bite. But if he's in the same position as me or Carl, why does he get to travel with the team? Food for thought. I mentioned to him that I need to write a story on the All-Star Game for Baseball America and that maybe I should talk to the all-stars from Adelaide so the story isn't just Brisbane-oriented. He said that was fine, but I wanted to head home to shower, so I suggested that perhaps it happen tomorrow. He was also agreeable with that, so we went our separate ways.
I did head home to shower, mostly to make everyone around me a little more comfortable, and then I walked back. Before the game, I wandered around helping out with little things, like setting up tables in the home plate lounge, where the show had been filmed, and fixing and moving other stuff.
I also had a chance to talk to SJ and Maestri about our Christmas plans. We are heading to Byron Bay, which is apparently a really awesome, beautiful destination, and one of the places on Maestri's list of sights to see while he's here. We've been talking about it for awhile but we haven't really done anything about it yet. We were waiting to see when Maestri was going to be back from the All-Star Game. He informed us that he'll be back around 4 o'clock on the Thursday after the game (a week from today) and that we should all try to head out then, and stay in Byron for two days. SJ and I had no qualms with that so I said I would find a place to stay and book it as soon as I got home after the game.
For the game, Carl gave me the choice between doing the game recap and the sound effects. I opted for the recap because sometimes the sound effects just get to be too repetitive. Plus, I don't want to be to blame if people don't like them, or if someone's walkup music is wrong, or anything like that. I don't think that either of those things would actually be my fault.
At one point I went to get food from the concourse and Gonzo wanted me to put an order in for him. He said he wanted his usual, which was tuna rolls and chicken things. It sounded pretty good to me, so when I went down and asked for it for him, I asked if I could just double the order and have the same thing for myself. While the tuna rolls probably weren't awful for me, the fried chicken embodies most of the qualities of everything that I have been eating lately, none of them good. I maybe need to take a break from eating pizza, burgers, burritos and fried food all the time. It doesn't matter if I run twice as much as at home if I eat three times as much, right? Oops.
During the game I learned that Carl's girlfriend has been reading my journals, or at least a few of them. That led to the discovery of how much I actually talk about BFC, a topic that has probably been mentioned to me before. Much of our interaction is forced, but he is my friend and neither of us really has many other people to hang out with, especially me. He's been a good all-in-one substitute for my friends, my family, a tour guide, and a co-worker. But when his girlfriend does get here, I will likely have to find some new friends. Hopefully there are some available for the holidays.
The Bandits played a good game and were up by three runs in the ninth. That's a save situation for those of you who don't know baseball. Then again, if you don't know baseball, you probably don't know what I mean by save situation. The normal closer for Brisbane has been veteran Chris Mowday, but he hasn't really appeared to have his best stuff as of late. Apparently someone else thought the same because SJ came in to close it out. I'm happy for him, if he is going to take over the closer's role, but I also wonder how Mowday feels about that.
SJ didn't have the best appearance he's ever had either. He gave up a home run to the first batter he faced, followed by an immediate single. I was writing the game over, so I thought I would be optimistic and I began my next sentence with "the right-hander settled in". And it worked. SJ got the next batter to ground into a double play. Unfortunately though, he then gave up another single. I am pretty sure those three hits are more than he's given up during all of his other appearances. When the Bite brought in a pinch hitter to bat next, I thought I would try some optimistic game-over writing once again, since it worked so well the first time. I wrote "Jarrett notched his first save of the season two batters later, striking out pinch hitter Ben Wigmore to end the game." And that worked! I should just start writing the articles about the games before they even take the field. Maybe they would win more if I did that.
Post-game, Carl wanted me to go down to the field and interview the all-stars for Fox, because they were at the game filming. BFC wanted me to do it because he was supposed to be busy sending out the game recap I'd written. But when I got down to the field and did one interview, I realized Carl was right behind me so I let him do the rest. I gave him my recorder though because I figured that if I need to write a story on the all-stars, and he is already interviewing them, we might as well kill two birds with one stone. Hopefully he managed to learn to turn my recorder on at all the right times.
On my way down to the field, I had whizzed by Durket's host family and said I would be back to see them, so I went back to where they were and spoke to not only them, but I met his real family too. His entire real family has come down under from California for both his birthday (coming up on Saturday) and Christmas. While I am a little jealous, it's awesome that they're here. I wish my family were here. Mom.
I talked to his mom and dad and his host mom for a little while, and they seem like awesome people. I asked about their plans for Sydney, which is where they are heading for Christmas, and we talked about the article I'd written about Durket. I feel like I should call him Jon a little bit now, because his parents call him "Jonathan". I feel like quotation marks are a little inappropriate there because it's his real name, but still weird. We had a good talk, but his dad was still all over me for writing that the younger Durket needs to learn to command the zone a little better. Oops again.
When they left it was time to get back to work and finish up everything. Carl still had to send the story out and he came back with my recorder, and it appeared as though he was successful with it. I'll find out later I suppose. Gonzo mentioned that we should all go out for drinks to celebrate with the birthday boy, but in the end that didn't happen at all. Whitey was too tired to do anything and I'm not sure anyone was in the right mindset, so we decided to postpone until tomorrow.
I walked home and when I got there I got a call from SJ. I almost didn't answer because he pocket-dialed me once and I figured this was probably same thing, but I did, and it wasn't. He was actually on the other end. He told me not to book a place yet for Byron Bay because Steven Chambers knows someone who knows someone who has a place there or something. I think his parents' friends have a Byron home and they rent it out to people, so the guys thought it would be smart if we waited to see if it was available. And, Chambers is going to come with us. So now Maestri, SJ and I are going to take the train to the Gold Coast, which is where he lives, and we will all drive together from there to Byron.
During my phone call with SJ, I also brought up the homer that he gave up. SJ does not enjoy when I talk baseball with him so he tried to ignore me. But if you know me, you know I can be pretty hard to ignore. Probably just when he was about to hang up on me I changed the subject. I mentioned that there is a Twenty20 cricket match on Tuesday and he should think about going. I think that some of the guys are going to go and it should be a pretty good time. SJ seemed interested so I told him I would keep him posted on that. He won't talk baseball with me, but he'll talk cricket. Go figure.
And now it's time for bed and then more of the same tomorrow. More garbage-picking, more baseball, hopefully less home runs.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.