What am I, writing about other teams now? (Day 57)

I got up long before I had to leave for the office once again, and decided to get straight to work and start writing about either Rhodes or Wilson. My motivation is overwhelming first thing in the morning. Too bad it always dies off before afternoon hits.

Before I interviewed Wilson on Saturday, I tried to contact the Toronto Blue Jays beat reporter for MLB.com to see if he would be interested in the story. I heard from him this morning, and he let me know that while he doesn’t control the content for the website (which I already knew), he would ask the person who handles the freelance material for the site and get back to me. Because of that, I thought I should perhaps think about starting the Wilson piece, but instead I opted to start writing about the hometown boy, Rory Rhodes.

I was interrupted in my writing about Rhodes by a text from Whitey, talking about picking me up on Whitey Time. The best part is that everyone knows how his clock seems to work, even him. So I had a little time to work on the article before heading to the office. When we did eventually make it to the office, I finished up the piece with few interruptions.

While writing, I did get a couple of emails that I needed to follow up on right away. The guy in charge of making the player cards had gotten back to me with the proper instructions on what was needed on my end, so I told him I would start finishing that up later today, though it might not be just a one-day job. Hopefully we can get those done for the final series of the season. Otherwise I guess all of the effort would be a waste.

Anna, the other main contributor to the Brisbane Bandits website, had also emailed me with a story that she had finished on first baseman David “Goofy” Sutherland. I wrote her back and said that I was trying to get a story up on the website on Rhodes at the moment and that I would hold hers until tomorrow morning, so that we have fresh content for another day. She seemed fine with that, and we continued exchanging emails about various other stories that we are working on or that we hope to get started. Anna is hoping that between us we can get a feature story done on each guy on the team, and I am confident that we can accomplish such a thing.

I got the story on Rhodes up on the website here and then got Anna’s piece ready so that all I will have to do in the morning is click a few buttons and it will be online right away. Anna and I made plans to meet for lunch to discuss our strategies for writing for the remainder of the season, and not long after I was through with my website managing for the morning, she was at the office waiting for me.

We went back to the sushi place around the corner that I like, which I felt was a good choice on Anna’s part, even though I just ate there yesterday. It was still good. We talked a lot about why baseball isn’t more popular here, though neither of us really knew the answer. It’s sad to know that people who work right down the street from the RNA don’t even know that there’s a ball team in town, but both of us have had instances where we’ve heard such responses. We also spent some time discussing all the reasons why the guys on the team should want to do our interviews. Most of them aren’t difficult about it, but whenever I have to ask for their time I feel like I am always taking them away from something more important. I get the impression they have better places to be, but I am just trying to spread the word a little bit about the team, the players and the league. Obviously that’s what Anna is trying to do too. We decided it probably would have been easier from the beginning if we’d had a proper introduction to the team and if they had known right away who we were and what we’re here for. I tried to introduce myself via email a couple weeks after my arrival, but it probably could have been done sooner and more effectively.

Our lunch went on for awhile, since Anna and I have never really gotten the chance to sit down and talk about everything before. It was a good time and good food, and as a pleasant surprise, Anna paid for everything. She said it was a business lunch, not allowing me to give her any money for all the food I had eaten. It quickly went from being a great meal to being fantastic, since free stuff always ups the ante.

When I got back to work, I set to task on writing about Kenny Wilson. I was having a tough time writing it, figuring out how I wanted to approach it so that various publications might want to use it. I decided to start with the angle of discussing former Blue Jays minor leaguers who have spent time in the ABL, including Vernon Wells, Shannon Stewart and Homer Bush, but even that was hard because records of the old league are kind of hard to find and figure out. As I was trying to sort through a book full of ABL records and statistics, Gonzo was going through another copy of the same book, looking at his own numbers. He told us all about his 2002 season, when he hit something like .476 with an OPS of around 1.500 or something ridiculous.

With everyone in the office watching the test cricket match and Gonzo talking about various baseball statistics, I was pretty distracted from my writing. I tried to get through some more of the Wilson story but it was going nowhere fast. It wasn’t long before Whitey, Gonzo and I left the office for the day though, and I started into it again when I got home.

When Erin got home from work, we talked about heading back to Downey Park for some circuit training. She was ready to leave but I thought I was close to finishing the article, so I asked if we could hold off for a little while. I finally got through the Wilson piece and was happy with the product I was putting out. I emailed it first to the Blue Jays beat reporter for MLB.com, letting him know that it was finished, should they be able to use it on the website. I then sent the story to the Assistant General Manager for the Canberra Cavalry, thinking that they might want to use it on their own site. And lastly, I tried to Canadian-it-up a little more, and sent it to the editor at Canadian Baseball Network. By the time I was through all that, the AGM from Canberra had gotten back to me, suggesting that I send the story to the Dunedin Blue Jays, where Wilson played last. I wrote him back thanking him for the suggestion but letting him know that I don’t have any contact information for anyone with the High-A team.

I was finally ready to leave and head to Downey Park with Erin. I needed the exercise, though I definitely could have used more than we got. Halfway through our workout, Erin noticed that the Queensland softball team (equivalent to fastball in Canada) was practicing across the park, so we went and watched them play for awhile. They were just running simple drills, so it wasn’t the most exciting thing to watch. After getting a few bug bites, sitting around in the stands as a spectator, we went back to our training and finished up at the park shortly thereafter.

We made it back to the apartment with enough time for me to work on the player cards before the Bandits game in Perth was slated to commence. I got about halfway through the cards, finally conforming to the proper restrictions. I emailed the guy who is waiting for me to finish, letting him know that I got halfway through and that I will be completely finished tomorrow. That’s the hope anyway, and telling him that makes it more likely that I will do it. Pressure's on.

The game in Perth started at 9:20 p.m. Brisbane time, with a two-hour time difference between here and there. I got to watch the entire game online, which is something I haven’t been able to do before. Heat TV is pretty impressive, at least for the standards I have in place for the league at this point. I was happy not to have to watch the game pitch-by-pitch on GameCast, so my night started off well. I can’t say the same for the Bandits.

Justin Staatz made the start for Brisbane, throwing a decent game, despite fighting command issues seemingly all night. He got through 5 1/3 innings giving up just two runs, but he walked five batters. Both runs were scored as earned runs, though the second one shouldn’t have been, in my opinion. With runners at first and second, Perth implemented a double steal on a third strike. Bandits catcher Ryan Battaglia threw down to third and missed, sending the ball into the outfield and allowing the runner to score. I believe the inning ended another batter later, causing me to wonder why that run was earned, but I’m not a scorer. So in my mind, Staatz only gave up one earned run, keeping the team in a very good position to win.

The Bandits didn’t score any runs until after he was out of the game though. In his 13 1/3 total innings over two games, the offense has only given Staatz two total runs of support. Tough break for the American right-hander. Brisbane did manage to tie it up in the seventh though, keeping it that way and sending the game into extras. Of course the game would go into extras when I was already tired and it started late. Makes sense.

During the extra innings, I found myself going through all of the other Bandits game scores to figure out how many times they have won and lost in extras, and what their record is one-run games, because it feels like they've had a lot of them. From the online broadcasters I learned that it was the first time the Heat had hosted free baseball at Barbagallo Ballpark. Lucky for them. And through my research, I discovered that heading into tonight’s affair, Brisbane has lost four extra-inning games (and won none), and has a 3-7 record in one-run games.

After the hometown team walked off on error to David Sutherland (which I think should have been scored a hit, but again, not a scorer), the Bandits record in one-run games moved to 3-8 on the season, with now five losses in extras. For some reason, they just can’t get it done in close-and-late situations.

When I finished the story about the game, I sent it away to the media, using my Gmail account for whatever its worth. Then I got the article up on the Bandits website, finally getting everything done at around 2 o’clock in the morning. The game lasted three hours and 43 minutes, so that means it took almost an hour for me to finish up the story, send it to the media and get it on the website. I am hoping to improve upon that number tomorrow.

I’m also hoping to get to sleep earlier tomorrow than tonight. Wishful thinking? I hope not.