Friday, December 14, 2007

I Am Santa

If you saw the news last night, you saw me dressed in full Santa Claus attire for the team holiday party, which had a sole purpose of celebrating area kids and their accomplishments. It's always fun to see a large group of 8 years olds laughing and singing, especially when they have no idea who we are. I could bet you $10 worth of team merchandise that 95% of the kids there never heard of Rick Churches, 96% have never gone to one of our games, and 97% don't like baseball. It's nothing against them. They're only eight years old. They got a free meal and their happy faces on TV. They sang and laughed, so they definitely had fun. But I question what the point is if we mean nothing to them. Do we invite these kids purely for the PR benefit? Do their school principals "know" someone in our organization well enough to get kids from their school invited, thus making the principal look good in the eyes of district parents and the superintendent? Could we have instead invited high school kids who may have been more impressed, more affected by a visit, but just don't happen to be as camera-cute as a bunch of inner city eight year olds in school uniforms? I guess it's none of my business. I show up, dress like Santa and try to pick caramel out of my molars with my tongue. I just think we could do a more targeted job of bringing joy to people. Eighteen year olds who would be more incentivized to go to our holiday party because they know they could meet members of the the team seem to be a better group, as they'd care and, therefore, you could get them to do positive things that would qualify them to see me lick my own mouth live and in person. It doesn't matter what I think. I'm just another cynical boy who thinks he knows everything every once in a while.

In other news, I got to have a nice lengthy sit-down with our new manager, Rick Churches, before we were introduced. He was a little upset that I was Santa and he was "my" elf. Because elves work for Santa, he felt the arrangement gave off the impression that he worked for me. Yes, he said this to me. I told him he was the only person in the entire borough of Manhattan who thought like that. He went on and on about how he's always been a lonely thinker and look where it's gotten him. I told him in that case not to look in a mirror. He'd be upset to see he was wearing a goofy beanie and silly green vest. I assumed he had tights on, but didn't want to bother him any more than he was. It's not good to have unhappy employees.

It was a pleasure to finally meet "The Jimmy Scott of Japan," Kai Goto. He was an elf and he didn't complain once. I think it's pretty clear to both of us that he's got a lot more left in the tank than I do, especially since he has a 6-year contract and mine is for one. So no lack of self-confidence there. He speaks a little bit of English, but we'll teach him all the finer points of the language in the clubhouse once spring training rolls around.

Felipe Castro also made a surprise appearance. I hadn't spoken to Felipe in a number of months and was happy to share a bear hug and ask how construction on his new house in Long Island is going. It's supposed to be something like 7500 square feet, this place. I told him his house will be nicer than our stadium, although he said he'd never invite 50,000 screaming strangers over to see.

And speaking of which, I chatted briefly with our owner, Mrs. Joan Delaney, who's campaigning very hard to get us a new stadium. She read of my conundrum in being invited to two parties tomorrow night, hers and commissioner Elliott Pollock's. She said not to worry, Vanessa and I can just go to Elliott's and have a great time. She was seeing me today. Because I have a mother who majored in guilt trips in college, I realized immediately that Vanessa and I should spend about 10 minutes at Elliott's party before rushing over to Mrs. Delaney's townhouse. Kai promised he'd sing karaoke. And Felipe was bringing his mother. Boy, that's going to be some shindig. I only hope Rick isn't too upset when we arrive and I ask him to hang up our jackets. Don't worry, Rick. We'll tip on the way out.

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