Money money money money (Day 59)

I awoke from my slumber to a text from Whitey. He said he was coming by to pick me up in an hour, but on real time, not Whitey Standard Time. Arriving on time could be a hefty task, but he seemed to feel like he was up to it.

Before heading out I exchanged emails with my mom about the idea of staying in Australia for a little while longer. With Spring Training right around the corner, it may not be worth it to extend my stay here for just another week or two but it could possibly give me a chance to do some exploring outside of Brisbane and an opportunity to see a little more of Australia beyond the office and the ballpark. I still need to figure out things for Spring Training and when I am heading there and details like that before I can adjust my flight home though, if I do.  

When I went downstairs to wait for Whitey outside, I stopped by the office in the apartment building. The manager had left a note yesterday informing me that my new key was ready to be picked up, and when I called her, she said to come by first thing in the morning. But the office door was closed and she was nowhere to be seen. I called her cell phone and got no answer. So I gave up and continued outside to wait for my ride.

As I was standing outside, the building manager drove up the driveway and into the parking garage. She saw me and waved, which I figured meant that she recognized that I was waiting for her and my new key. I might have read too much into that, but I was hopeful. I turned around and went back inside to the office. She still wasn’t there. I saw her in her car in the parking garage and kind of awkwardly stared at her for a little while. When she didn’t get out of her car for several minutes I went back outside to find that Whitey and Carl had arrived. So I gave up on the idea of getting the key once again and took off. Please note, Whitey and Carl were only several minutes later than they'd said they'd be.

Whitey and I went to the office and Carl left with the car presumably to go home and shower, and perhaps get his work stuff. His girlfriend left Australia this morning to head back to the States so I guess that means the life swap between Whitey and Carl is complete. Whitey can go back to his bed and apartment and Carl can go back to his mattress on the floor. And for another week, neither of them has a girlfriend around, since Julie doesn’t come back down under until the 13^th. At least they have each other.

At the office I decided to try and write a story using quotes and information that I already have. During most of the interviews I’ve done here, I ask the guys what they enjoy about baseball in Australia and/or what people outside of this continent should know about the game down under. I figured I could come up with something with all of the answers I’ve received.

Before getting started, I called my mom. Instead of emailing back and forth about my plans and Spring Training, I thought I would take the opportunity to call. We talked mostly about baseball, except when she interrupted me to tell me about some obese Australian snake she had seen on the news. Apparently the fat snake had to have his diet cut from 10 goats per year to three, because he was on his way to death. I’m not sure why my mom felt that I needed to know any of that, but it efficiently distracted me from talking about baseball for a little while, if that’s what she was trying to do. I got back on track though, and tried to convince my mother that she should watch the Perth Heat stream of Saturday night’s game. It will start just after six in the morning in London, Ontario, Canada, so my mom can take in the whole game. She didn’t seem overly eager to do so but I felt like I was at least a little bit convincing. Mom, don’t forget to watch the game. This is the link. Just one Bandits game all year. You can do it.

At some point, a friend from the Blue Jays sent me the contact information for the Dunedin Blue Jays communications coordinator, so I emailed him about Kenny Wilson, also sending him the story I’d written. If Dunedin wants to use it for their website I am happy to provide them with content, and at the same time attempt to spread the word about the ABL.

Gonzo spent at least half of his morning trying to deal with people from the league about money issues, most of those issues surrounding my bank account. He had to call several people, and in the end they kept insisting that I had been paid. Unfortunately, my bank account begs to differ. The Gonz sent me a bank receipt that someone had forwarded to him, that did make it look like I had been paid, in contradiction with reality. So I called my bank and asked if they could check on the transfer with the receipt number and deposit information and whatever other numbers I had been given. I had no luck with the bank though, and they told me they could only deal with the transfer from the other end. Someone with access to the league’s banking information would have to call to sort it out.

I continued trying to work on my story about the greatness of Australian baseball while I let other people deal with the money. That lasted 10s of minutes before lunch came into the conversation. The first idea we had was to head to Cut-in-Half, but Gonzo warned us that they might not be open, since Australian people still seem to be on holiday time. Carl called and with no answer at the more amusing restaurant, we settled for Subway. I took orders and when Carl couldn’t decide what he wanted, made him come with me to get the food for everyone. I realized that was a poor judgment call when he tried to steal my sub. Okay, he didn’t really try to steal it, but he did mistake mine for his (we did not get the same thing), and started letting the Subway workers to put all kinds of vegetables on it before I realized. They scraped them off and put them on his sub eventually, but I was unimpressed.

When I got back from lunch there was money in my bank account! For the first time since I opened the account and they made me put 50 bucks in there, I have money! I hope the exclamation points are indicative of the amount of excitement that was bursting out of me when I made this discovery. My payment from the league for the month of November now actually belongs to me. It’s a good day.

While I ate my lunch I read about Carlos Zambrano heading to Miami to play for the Marlins. That could prove to be interesting. He and Ozzie Guillen have enough character for any team just individually, but the combination of them, plus Jose Reyes and others, should make for a fun season. I found it interesting that the Cubs are paying almost 75 per cent of Zambrano’s salary still owing, reminding me of the conversation between Brad Pitt and Stephen Bishop in Moneyball. Bishop plays David Justice in the movie, and Pitt reminds him while he’s in the batting cage that the Yankees were paying half his salary to have him play against them. Though the Marlins and the Cubs are not in the same league, I find an uncanny similarity between Justice and Zambrano in that scenario, though they are incredibly different players and characters.

After lunch and my thought-provoking reading, I got back to writing about Aussie baseball. The story was beginning to look pretty lengthy, but I felt like I was on the right track. I wanted to add another American voice to the story at one point, so I texted SJ. He didn’t respond, so I sent a message to Staatz. By the way, Staatz is an awesome name for a baseball player, right? Have I said that before? The California native gave me a usable quote and was happy with how I was using it in my story, so I was on my way to finishing.

Carl and Whitey took off in the early afternoon, without offering me a ride. Whitey was going away for the weekend somewhere and Carl was giving him a ride to his departure destination. I don’t really know anything more about it than that, but I did ask Gonzo if he would be so kind as to give me a ride home when he was going to leave the office because the other two had left me. I didn’t consider walking an option, though I probably should have.

I finished up my story and printed it out so Gonzo could read it. I wanted his opinion, since the article is about the league and why it’s great, and the Gonz is one of the biggest advocates for that cause. Originally I planned on getting a quote from him about it but the article was getting to be pretty long already. As long as it’s interesting throughout the whole piece, I feel I can get away with that. Gonzo read it, gave me a couple of suggestions, I made some changes, and we were done for the day soon after that.

On the ride home we talked about the idea of me coming back again for next season. It’s something that I am beginning to think that I really want to do. I am having a great time here and I think it that could continue for another year. It would be pretty close to being an entirely different experience too, since people like Carl and the player imports with whom I spend some of my time would be gone. With the advance notice I could also probably manage to get here before the beginning of the season next year, getting a jump on things and helping me to be more organized.

We also talked about the idea of going to Adelaide for the last Bandits series of the regular season. Gonzo mentioned that he might be going, because he was invited to play in some sort of old-timer’s game or something. I think if he were going, I would probably solidify my plans to go as well. That way I would at least have someone to watch the games with. And I could write a story about him playing in the old guys’ game. So I asked Gonzo to keep me posted on his plans. Adelaide? Perhaps.

When I got home the door to the office of the apartment building was open and I was able to get my new key from the building manager. I now have the ability to get into the apartment on my own. The independence is overwhelming.

Erin came home shortly after I did and we talked more about the possibility of me coming back to Brisbane for next season. We also talked about the potential for me to help spread the word about baseball in Australia with my writing. And if I have more time to be organized before the season, I feel like I could probably do more writing and more word-spreading.

After our chat, I settled in for an afternoon nap. I got a solid amount of rest and happily woke up on my own. It never feels as good when you wake up to an alarm. Forceful awakening is just cruel, though usual punishment. Feeling ambitious I decided to go for a run on the treadmill before game time. I ran a slow 10 kilometres, which I guess is good, but I need to start going faster and further in the very near future.

I came back upstairs from my run just in time for the Bandits game to begin. Ryan Searle made the start for Brisbane and pitched a great game, though I might argue that he stayed in a little longer than he should have. Hindsight is 20/20 though, right? He got through the first five innings allowing just two runs, on a two-run home run. He was effectively wild, hitting two batters and striking out eight. He started the sixth with another strikeout, but gave up another two runs before being taken out of the game. He had reached 100 pitches at that point, which kind of surprised me because I didn’t think the Cubs prospect would go over 80. And maybe he shouldn’t have.

The Bandits had 11 runs on the board at that point though, so the two extra runs he surrendered didn’t really factor into the equation. Finally the recipient of some run support, Searle got his first-ever ABL victory. It wasn’t easy though, as a one-time nine-run lead turned into a save situation for the visitors. John Veitch came in to close it out and pitched a 1-2-3 ninth, which is impressive for this team lately. The game ended 11-8 in Brisbane’s favour, keeping them in fifth place in the standings. That being said, they are also only two-and-a-half games out of the second spot. It’s a tight race.

I sent the story to the media almost immediately, before I realized that I had typed the score wrong. I sent out the final version of the story citing the score as 11-5. Oops. I followed up with another email to everyone to let them know of my mistake. I then got the story up on the website pretty quickly, only to find out that I’d written “offensive outburst” in two paragraphs in a row. I guess I shouldn’t rush things. I changed it on the website and the new version can be found here, but it will remain that way in the version that I sent to the media. Writing game stories in the middle of the night are not my forte. I will try again to be better tomorrow night.

During my website management, and trying to fix all of my mistakes, I got an email from the communications coordinator with the Dunedin Blue Jays. He said that he would be happy to use my story about Kenny Wilson on the website, and will get it up next week. He also asked some questions about my job with the Toronto club and here in the ABL. I wrote back about my experiences and reciprocated with questions about his journey to the minor leagues.

I talked to Carl after he was done working at his job at the bar and I was finished with the game. We had a conversation about what we’ve each been doing during our last couple of weeks apart. Carl spent a lot of time traveling around, sightseeing, being productive and getting away from work. My two weeks were less interesting, and are also documented for the world to read, so if he were truly interested, he could go through all the details. I told BFC how unimpressed I was that he was ignoring my calls and text messages, especially since I wasn’t just calling to be chatty, I had business to attend to. He was apologetic, kind of. We talked about his girlfriend, though technically she isn’t his girlfriend, and the fact that they had a good time together, I think causing him to wonder if they can work things out again when he gets home. That turned into a little bit of a talk about life though, because I don’t know if Carl knows where home is going to be when this season is over. He doesn’t really know what he’s going to do or where he’s going to go, and there wasn’t a whole lot I could contribute to that part of the conversation. Eventually our conversation ended, since Carl was too tired for it to continue.

I didn’t get to sleep until four in the morning, though I have no real explanation for why. Could make for a long day tomorrow.