It's not September 28th anymore (Day 56)

I got up early on the first work day of the week. I was showered, dressed, fed and ready to go well before Whitey was supposed to come pick me up. I guess I was feeling ambitious after not really working for a couple of days.


Whitey had informed me that he would be picking me up around 8:30 a.m. for the office, but that was of course in Whitey Standard Time, meaning that he would probably be over around 9:15 a.m. or slightly later. While I waited, I did some journal-writing. I believe that I will soon be back on track, and writing about the most recent day that passed, not having to go through my notes, writing about days beyond that. It will happen.


On our way to the office, Whitey asked if I had seen that Maestri was named Player of the Week for Round 8 of Australian Baseball League action. I told him that I knew, and that Justin Staatz, our newest American import player, was also named a runner-up. I made mention of both such facts in my story about the Bandits making their push for a playoff spot. We decided that instead of just making mention, I should write a story just about them and their personal accolades.


When we got to the office I started writing and decided that I needed quotes to make the story more interesting. It’s not that their pitching performances weren’t enough on their own, but just compiling a bunch of statistics from two games into a story doesn’t exactly suit the Australian audience. Though I will not stray from adding statistics and using baseball language in my stories, I do realize that Australian people don’t always pay attention to that stuff. So there has to be something else to add substance. I texted Maestri to see if he would send me a quote, and then decided to settle on a quote from our Assistant General Manager if that didn’t work out. Whitey came up with something that was good enough and as I was putting it in the article, Maestri got back to me. I had contributions from two sources. Perfect.


I got the story on the website and then asked Whitey to send it to the media. I have trouble sending things from my Brisbane Bandits email account with the proper attachments and formats, and I have a feeling some people would ignore emails from my Gmail account, so it was easier to get Whitey to do it. At least I knew everyone would get it that way, spreading the word about the impressive arms on our staff.


After that, it felt like a good time to have some lunch. I decided I would head down the street in the hopes that the sushi place would be open. If it wasn’t, for the holidays or whatever other reason people might have for shutting down their businesses, Subway is right next door, and always a good second choice. I told Whitey where I was headed and offered to pick him up something should he so choose. He gave me his Subway order and I was on my way. The sushi place was open so I placed my order and then made the short journey to get Whitey’s lunch. His was much faster than mine, though I must admit, mine looked a lot better.


As I usually do while I am eating in the office, I read articles about baseball. Apparently what’s big news in Major League Baseball right now is September 28 (or 28 September for the Australian readers). It was a pretty epic day, the final day of the regular season, seeing two teams overcome huge deficits in the standings to take wild card spots into the playoffs. But if MLB is searching for content that doesn’t happen to be about something that happened three months ago, they could certainly look down under. Right?


I’m not trying to take anything away from September 28, because I had a great time watching the four games that mattered, after seeing the final Florida Marlins game in person at Sun Life Stadium. I was in Miami with my mom and we both enjoyed watching Boston’s collapse in completion, followed by Tampa’s triumphant finish just moments later. But there is still baseball going on now, at this very moment. And I would love for people to hear about it.


I started transcribing my interview with Kenny Wilson after lunch, getting most of the way through it before finishing up the day at the office. Whitey had to leave to head to a meeting in the city and he took me home on his way so that I would be at the apartment when Erin came back from work, so I could let her in. He dropped me off at home, with the keys to the RNA so that I could let everyone in for training later in the day.


At home, I finished transcribing Wilson’s interview and started to think about how to approach writing about him. One of the questions I’d asked Wilson was about whether or not Canadians are different to play with, and how they might be different. He said that Canadians are “happier”, so I tweeted Michael Crouse to ask for his thoughts on the comment. Wilson and Crouse, a native of British Columbia, played a stint together for the Lansing Lugnuts two seasons ago. I thought I might be able to use Crouse’s response in my story but his reply was that he had no idea what Wilson might have been talking about. We are a happy people though. I would agree.


I gave up on writing about Wilson just before heading to practice and instead came up with questions for Josh Roberts and Rory Rhodes. I asked Roberts over the weekend if I could grab a few minutes of his time for an interview, but I never made it to him so I thought practice might be a good opportunity. And I figured I could be ambitious and try to get to talk to Rhodes too. I’m actually surprised that there hasn’t been a story on either of them already, by me or anyone else.


Rhodes is a 20-year-old Minnesota Twins prospect who managed to earn runner-up honours in the ABL Rookie of the Year award voting last season. He didn’t get off to a hot start this season, likely due to the fact that he had a couple injuries, but over the weekend against Canberra it appeared that he might have returned to form. He’s expected to make a big impact eventually though.


Roberts was the team MVP for the Brisbane Bandits last year, and leads the current team in most offensive categories. He made Team Australia in the inaugural ABL All-Star Game this year, getting an assist from right field and hitting a home run. There’s been some talk that he is making a quiet push for a spot on the national team, which would be fantastic for him, though I’m not sure it’s actually on his mind at all. I can ask him in the interview though.


As I got to the gates outside of the Showgrounds, I saw Durket coming from the other direction. We walked the rest of the way together, though the gates were open so I was wondering why I needed to be there in the first place. As we made our way around the field, I saw SJ in the bullpen, presumably giving a pitching lesson to two of the kids we had Christmas brunch with. On the other side of the fence, Watto was playing t-ball with his son Joshua. There were more kids under the age of 10 on the field than adults. I walked over to talk to Watto and little Josh, soon finding out that although the gates were open, the locker room was not, so I left them to solve that problem.


As I opened up the clubhouse, I ran into Gonzo outside. He asked if I had been paid, which I have not. We drove around to a place where we could park and I pulled out my computer so we could double check my account numbers. The people at the league office had told Gonzo that they had sent at least one payment my way, which seems impossible because I have received no money. In the end we concluded that they might have had my account number and branch number backwards, but Gonzo set to fix that right away. He also fronted me some money so I wouldn’t be living on my credit card for at least a few days, and could pay my rent and things of that nature.


When we were done dealing with the business side of things, Gonzo and I went to join in the fun on the field. We started playing some ball with Watto and Joshua, eventually just trying to field all the balls that Joshua was hitting off the tee. Joshua is only five and he has a better swing than I ever did. When he got tired of hitting to us, Gonzo and I started playing catch. Eventually KJ’s son, Younger KJ, joined us. Gonzo wanted to keep throwing harder and from further distances, both being potentially embarrassing for me. He wasn’t throwing hard to me though, because I am sure he was afraid of breaking my face or something. But as we moved back, I warned him that I didn’t think I could throw that far, and he told me just to add an arc to the ball. I did, but I probably erased any thought that I might have some athleticism from the minds of the players who were watching. My throws made it to the intended target, eventually, but it wasn’t always pretty.


When the team started doing their warm-ups, almost running over us in the field, we started to get the infield ready for practice. Gonzo, Younger KJ and I took the sandbags and tarps off the bases, brought the screens in from the bullpen and set everything up for batting practice. Then Gonzo and I sat and watched Younger KJ taking ground balls at shortstop from his dad. He’s a 14-year-old infielder for the 16U Queensland team, heading for nationals in a couple days, so I guess he thought he could use the extra practice. I am sure he didn’t anticipate the abuse he would take from Gonzo though, chirping him from the sidelines.


Practice didn’t last long, having only three groups of hitters and with the pitchers seemingly not doing much. I don't think too many guys needed to throw bullpens. When we were putting everything back on the field before heading home, I happened to run into Rhodes at first base, and asked him if I could grab five minutes from him before he took off. I don’t think he wanted to but when I offered alternative options of doing it another day, or via email, I think he realized that I wasn’t going to give up. So he gave in. My interview took almost six minutes, so I was slightly off on my estimate, but he wasn’t outwardly upset about it.

I missed out on Roberts once again, since he was nowhere to be found after I left Rhodes. I'll get those questions answered someday. On my way off the field, a few of the guys were standing around talking, and Maestri and SJ decided to bring me into the conversation and talk about my New Year’s Eve. Hopefully I can live it down someday.

SJ started telling me that he has a hilarious picture of me and I tried to stop him mid-sentence. I told him that I don’t want to know about it, nor do I want to see it. Although I convinced him not to show me, he proceeded to let me know that it’s a picture of me trying to send a text on my phone. I apparently have one eye closed, the other one is squinty and I am holding my phone super close to my face. It sounds like something I would do, so I don’t think I ever need to see the photo evidence. If it shows up on his blog somehow though, I am sure my mom will let me know. You’re a faithful reader of his now, right mom? It’s too bad he hasn’t posted anything new since Byron Bay, but he is still better with getting pictures up than I am.


I made SJ give me a ride home, despite how short of a drive it was. He and Maestri made fun of me a little more during the ride, making me happy that it didn’t last long. It made me feel pretty lazy though, so I decided to go for a run in the apartment building ‘gym’ after that.


I got downstairs and much to my surprise, someone else was in the treadmill/exercise bike room. I was beginning to think other people didn’t even live in this building, but there was one, on the treadmill I had been hoping to use. I got on the exercise bike instead, figuring I could wait out the walker. It didn’t take long, as she left after about 10 minutes or so. That’s when I switched to the treadmill, starting out my run at a pace I thought I could continue for a decent amount of time. I was wrong, clearly overestimating myself and having to slow down. It’s disappointing and I have some significant work to do on my running.


If I were back in the northern hemisphere right now, I would be heading to Florida at some point this week to run the Goofy Challenge at Disney World. I did the Challenge last year, and signed up to do it again before knowing that I was heading down under. The race consists of a half marathon on the Saturday and a full marathon on the Sunday. That’s 39.3 miles of running in one weekend, or 63.3 kilometres. The most disappointing part of that is that I wouldn’t have even been nearly ready for it. I really need to get back in shape and sign up for a race in the near future to keep me motivated. I should start looking into some.


After my disappointing hour in the ‘gym’ I showered and transcribed my interview with Rhodes before heading to bed. I had to do something productive to finish the day out on a good note.