Shut Down

The MRI came back. Scar tissue. I don't have bone chips, tortilla chips or the t.v. show CHiPs floating around my arm like the ship in Fantastic Voyage. No need for another surgery and no reason to believe I can't come back sometime in April, possibly early-May.

But...

The team physician, my good Dr. McGee, said for now I have to shut down all "baseball activities." He meant don't throw a ball, but he made it sound like I couldn't talk about baseball, write about baseball or coach a Little League team, not that I'd be a good coach or that I'd even have the time or patience to coach a Little League team, but I'd still like the option to try.

Here's tomorrow's NY Post headline:

JIMMY SCOTT TO COACH LITTLE LEAGUE TEAM IN 2008

Not gonna happen, but go ahead and sell your papers. I read all my articles online - for free.

Yesterday's take by the various media outlets on my health and meeting with GM Alvin Kirby and Manager Rick Churches was interesting. Some quoted my blog. Others just quoted Kirby and/or Churches, who denied what took place actually took place. A few places referenced us both and realized we're in a "he said/he said/she said" situation (Rick is cringing as he reads this, wondering who the "she" is). Here's where we stand:

• Alvin Kirby and Rick Churches met with me and told me, for health reasons, I should either retire or expect to spend the year on the disabled list.
• I told them there was no need, I'd just been to the doctor and was on progress to pitch all year.
• They told me a second opinion - a doctor I never saw and still don't know the identity of - said my arm is in such a state that my career is over, barring a miracle.
• My arm did, in fact, have a setback that day. But I should, according to the team doctor, be able to start throwing again in a week to ten days.

Nobody is quoting this phantom "second doctor" and Alvin and Rick aren't even bringing up that part of the conversation. They're saying there is no second doctor. They're saying, basically, that I'm lying.

No matter. You'll see my official grievance against the team filed today by my super agent, Jack Perry. Our wonderful team owner, Mrs. Joan Delaney, left a message at my house apologizing for any confusion, even though she had previously talked to Jack and, following what is now/was then the party line, said she didn't expect me back this season.

This has all come out of the blue. For some reason, the team is suddenly (or they planned this all along) low on funding and wants insurance to cover my salary. Or they truly don't think I'll be able to pitch, and pitch well, this season and don't want to subsidize a long and pointless rehabilitation program. Or they just want me out. Conspiracy theories fly like fleas on poop.

The columnists I'm reading are saying the same thing as me. ESPN just treats it like a sideshow. Meanwhile, Pepsi called Jack and is considering pulling the ad we just filmed and yanking away my endorsement deal. Why? Because they don't want to pay millions to someone who won't be playing in 2008. My grievance against the team will take on much greater weight should Pepsi pull out because of the actions of two men who don't appear to like me.

Here's the deal for you all to see. I'll use bullet points, because I feel bullets have been shot at my head (none self-inflicted, for once):

• I will pitch in 2008
• The team will not get any insurance money...
• ...because I will pitch in 2008
• I will participate in spring training
• I will probably start the season in extended spring training in Florida or with a minor league affiliate. A warm one.

That's it. Don't believe everything you read (note how this can hurt me since I'm not talking to anyone, just writing). Just believe the source, me, when I say I will pitch this season. Betting is illegal in baseball, but if I were a gambler, I'd put my money on me. The payout will be huge.

Anyone going to guess on tomorrow's Daily News headline?

JIMMY SCOTT GAMBLING HABITS UNDER INVESTIGATION

Just want you to be aware of the source of their story before they report it.

Have a nice day.

Set Back

My house is not right on the road. There's a stretch of about six feet between road and the new fence we put up for security purposes. It's about 30 yards (or 90 feet, depending if you're a baseball or football fan) from the fence to our front door.

When I got to our new front gate yesterday, it wasn't working. I hit a remote. The gate remained closed. Got out of the car and hit a code on the new keypad nearby. Nothing. Already in a lousy mood, my mood grew still darker by the second. The pretty lighting switched on, making our trees seem like multiple-armed giants towering over me, their shadows and brightness now mixing about. I called the house to ask Vanessa to open the gate from there. No answer. I was stuck on the wrong side of the fence, about 93 feet (or 31 yards) from my house. The only thing to do was to hop the fence.

Only I couldn't. With timing straight out of an episode of Murder She Wrote, or more recently, Monk, my right arm - my multi-million dollar pitching arm which had been rehabbing incredibly well over the last two months - was dead. Long live the arm.

Okay, it wasn't completely dead. But it had been fine when I visited with my doctor earlier that day. It had been fine when I visited with GM Alvin Kirby and field manager Rick Churches. It had been fine when I made my call to super agent Jack Perry, telling him Kirby & Churches (not a law firm) wanted me to either retire or sit out the season due to last year's injury. It wasn't fine after I flipped close my phone - with my right hand - and slipped the phone into my pocket - with my right hand, wrist and arm.

That's where I injured it again...

As I walked and talked with Jack, holding my cell phone up to my ear with my right hand, coincidentally connected to my right arm - the injured one - I did something to the elbow that I hadn't done since the initial injury. I don't know what that something was, but whatever I did, I couldn't bend the arm anymore. I went from sitting down with Kirby & Churches, arguing that I'd be throwing simulated games by the end of spring training to hoping Dr. McGee wouldn't have to amputate by the time I got to the parking lot.

I looked at my house through the artificial light and saw a light inside flick on. A timer did it. Nobody was home.

I thought about my emergency return to Dr. McGee after my re-injury and how he took x-rays and did an MRI and twisted and massaged and stretched out my arm. "Scar tissue," he said. "Probably some got loose. At worst, you have bone chips in there floating around." I asked what his definition of "at worst" meant. "Another surgery. You might make it back on a mound by August or September."

In a baseball season, there's huge difference between August and September, even bigger if you're thinking August 1st vs. September 30th.

I said many bad words on the drive home. This is exactly what I didn't want, and I assume what Kirby & Churches did want. I felt betrayed by them; betrayed by the business side of baseball, a side that had always been good to me (proof is the distance between my very large house and quiet suburban street).

I sat in the car with the radio on, hoping for a song to cheer me up. Nothing. It was all hip hop or angst-rock. Even Lite FM was playing depressing stuff, "Another Day In Paradise" by Phil Collins, about homelessness. I looked through the gate at my house and couldn't help but feel a kinship for the homeless, as ridiculous as that sounds. I was trapped outside, in pain, wondering if I had a future or not.

By eight o'clock, Vanessa had shown up with Alyssa and Grace. They'd been out at the mall and her phone had been off (her friend down the street, Connie, is relentless with the phone calls). She hit a code on the keypad (the code I typed in was apparently my locker combination from junior year in high school) and the gate opened up. I twisted the key in my ignition and heard nothing. My car wouldn't move. The battery was dead. Or worse. Jumping it didn't help.

I looked up at my house like a runner on first base with two outs, hoping to make it to second on the next pitch and not get left stranded by strikeout. A tow truck would come by soon to take my car (actually a Hummer) down to the shop. I sat on the front seat and waited while my girls went into the house. One more setback on a horrible day. Somewhere, I could hear Kirby & Churches laughing at me.

My Arm

On Monday I had a checkup with the team's physician, Dr. Stanley McGee. He put my right arm, the one I throw with and, coincidentally, the one that was operated on by the aforementioned doctor last April 15th. Nine months and 14 days. I feel like an on-the-wagon alcoholic, counting the days since my last drink. Only I'm counting the days since my last operation. On the day of month ten, I report to spring training. As my mother used to say when she saw me bat in Little League games, "How queer."

Dr. McGee gave a positive report. All is well. He turned the arm and twisted the arm and stomped on the arm with a pair of lead boots. No pain. He squished it in a metal vice and stretched it like a noodle and bit on it with the jaws of a crocodile. No pain. "Strong as an ox," he said. Then he stuck his head out of room and said, "Next!" It was my turn to be examined.

Just kidding.

The examination went well. He gave me a clean bill of health and suggested implants for my semi-balding scalp. Since he's not a psychiatrist, I ignored his comments and decided to crawl into the fetal position on his examination table and suck my thumb. He's a good man.

Afterward, it was a meeting at the stadium with GM Alvin Kirby and new manager Rick Churches. They asked how the exam went, fully knowing since Dr. Stanley's report had been faxed over already and was sitting on Alvin's desk. But I played along. "Amputation scheduled for Thursday. I hope they chop off the right arm. Literally." We laughed. Well, I did. Rick doesn't laugh much. He's always been serious, but now, since he's our manager, he's intense. There are managers who are "players managers" and managers who are "field generals" and managers who don't know who the hell they are. I've played for all three. As long as the team wins, it doesn't matter who the old guy n the funny outfit is at the end of the bench. A manager rarely affects the outcome of a game. But they're lots of fun to criticize!

Being a starting pitcher all my life, I am generally up for criticism once every 5 days. A manager is available to have his ego dragged through the mud 7 days a week. It's not a job I would want, especially with my hair thinning on top. My ego is fragile without the public criticism.

It was a pleasant "sit down" at first, the meeting between Alvin, Rick and me. They asked how my rehab was progressing, asked if I planned on coming to spring training... I stopped them on that. What did they mean, did I plan on coming to spring training? Yes. I have a contract. I'm going to pitch. Then this exchange happened:

Alvin: We're not sure if your arm will be ready for the season.
Me: Dr. Stanley thinks it will be.
Rick: Does he?
Me: Does he? (I made fun of Rick's voice right there. Once again, he didn't laugh.) Of course. he told me himself.
Alvin: We have a second opinion that thinks your arm won't last a bullpen session.
Rick: No shot.
Alvin: You might want to consider retiring.

At this point, I was somewhat angry. Retire? Hadn't we been through all of this in December? We had a little contract trouble, but we worked it out. Then I started working out. I feel good. What were they doing.

Me: I think my agent should be here for this.
Rick: He doesn't have to be here.
Me: Neither do you. (That line pissed him off. It was so cool.)
Rick: I'm the manager of this team.
Me: One you're trying to break it up. Good job, skipper.
Rick: Shut the hell up -

Let me cut in and state some nasty words were used at this point by various parties, including a woman who came in to empty Alvin's ash tray (he's a chain smoker). Alvin asked her nicely to shove the ashes up her poop shoot.

With that in mind, the woman left and we continued with this shocking meeting.

Me: I feel like you guys are ambushing me. No agent. No warning that you now want me off the team. I'm not going to retire and give up the $9 million plus bonuses you're going to pay me.
Alvin: Then insurance will cover everything.

He held up Dr. McGee's report and said it, along with this phantom "second opinion," would be sent to the insurance company. I was welcome to come to spring training and "test out" my arm, but they expected me to spend the year on the disabled list. The insurance company would subsidize the cost of my contract. The team would pay nothing.

We didn't end the meeting on good terms. I stormed out when Rick started talking about team chemistry. The guy probably failed high school chemistry, and now he wants to talk about how he's going to motivate 25 guys to piss where and when he tells them to. I don't think so, Ricky.

I didn't make it 10 feet down the hall before I got a call from Jack Perry, super agent.

Me: Did you hear?
Jack: Mrs. Delaney told me.
Me: This isn't right.
Jack: I'm already filing a grievance with the players association.
Me: My arm is fine.
Jack: I'm sure it is.

We were done. I made it to the parking lot and tried to pull the car key out of my pocket. I couldn't. It was my right arm. Suddenly, I couldn't bend it.

With my good arm, I called Dr. McGee. This wasn't good.

...Something For Everyone

See the heading? That's Pepsi's slogan, or at least one of them. If I lead the league in strikeouts this year (highly doubtful), Pepsi leads the soft drink industry in slogans. I'm not really complaining. Not anymore at least. Let me start at the beginning...

I arrived at a New York City loft in the mid-twenties on Friday morning with Alyssa and Grace in tow. At the last minute, Grace had decided she did want to appear in the commercial. "I need the money," she had said. I told her the money was going to her college fund. "I'm not going to college then," she said. Then, I told her, the money will go into a when-I-say-you-can-have-it fund. She made a half-smile, not because I'm funny to her. I explained that the money will go somewhere, but she won't have access to it until she's 21; 35 if I want her to stick around in 6 years to clip my toenails on a daily basis. I told her not to ask any of her little friends to try to hack into Vanessa and my accounts either. Even though it's clear to me the geeks will inherit the earth, I don't want them to touch my money. "I don't have any friends," she said. Good, I said. Let's keep it that way. She came along and didn't talk for the rest of the day (except when her phone went off). Teenagers, you can't live with 'em and... Well, you can't live with 'em. Very moody.

At the loft, it was explained to us by David, the director of the commercial, that we would be doing a spot for the Lipton Brisk brands. I stopped him right there. "Pepsi," I said. "My contract is for Pepsi and a flagship brand." David apologized, said Pepsi corp. had made some changes. Q-scores... Focus groups... Gut instinct... Phrases were thrown around like Frisbees. I asked David if he had any idea what he was talking about. He said no. Those were just things he'd heard in a conference call the day before.

I called up Jack Perry, agent to the superstars - and me. The conversation went like this:

Me: It's me.
Jack: You at the Pepsi shoot?
Me: Yeah. They want us to do it for a ready-to-drink tea.
Jack: I heard.
Me: You did? When?
Jack: Doesn't matter.
Me: Oh, I guess it doesn't then. You're fired.
Jack: No I'm not.
Me: Then tell me why we aren't getting the Pepsi treatment.
Jack: You're too old, you're going bald, you're not a star - just a former star rehabbing. They don't know if you'll come back this season and mean anything or not.
Me: Good thing they're paying me millions of dollars.
Jack: That didn't change.
Me: So Lipton Brisk, huh?
Jack: It was either that or Propel Water.
Me: Never heard of it.
Jack: That's what I'm saying.

I flipped my phone closed, took a deep breath, and decided to live with it. Sure I felt old and inadequate. But there's no such thing as a Viagra to appease self-loathing. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right Dad?" That was Alyssa's take on the whole thing. Not sure what Grace's take was. She wasn't talking. Her eyes were in perpetual "roll stage." Love that.

I went back to David, the director. "What do you want us to do?"

They gave me a generic baseball uniform as Pepsi is not the official anything of the National Baseball League. Just vertical pinstripes that kind of match our team's pinstripes if you squint real hard for a few minutes and turn down the lights to strobe. Alyssa and Grace were given matching uniforms, although theirs were a little tighter than mine. Strange, I thought, since I'm the one who was 15 pounds overweight 8 weeks ago. Have I lost that many pounds? I tricked myself into thinking I had so I wouldn't have to deal with my girls being used as the sexy part of the ad. I considered not talking to anyone the rest of the day, but it would've been hard for me to say my lines. Instead, I plowed through and pretended I was happy.

Five hours later, we were done. We got to see a rough edit of the spot and congratulate ourselves for a job well done. My fake smile was perfect. You would've loved it. Nobody had any idea how depressed I felt.

Except Alyssa and Grace.

Here's a little of our conversation in the car on the way home:

Alyssa: Dad, you didn't look bald.
Grace: Mmm hmm.
Alyssa: And the soda machine in our school cafeteria has Brisk teas. I think.
Grace: Mmm.
Alyssa: Was today the first time you realized you weren't 25 years old anymore?
Grace: Mmm?

When I was 25, I won 19 games and led the league with 269 strikeouts. My first championship came that year, in Chicago. I earned $10 million in endorsements that off season and filmed a spot with Michael Jordan. Remember? The "Swish Spot" it was called. Third commercial to air during the Super Bowl. I have it on VHS somewhere, but I bet you can find it on YouTube. I was the toast of Chicago. I was young and had my life ahead of me...

When I was 25, Alyssa and Grace were born. I had been married already for 4 years. We had a house, I walked a dog, put out the trash (when I was home). We had car payments and mortgage payments and paid off Vanessa's student loans... I was doing responsible, adult things at 25 too. Just like now.

In fact, if you compare me at 25 to me now, there are only a few key differences:

1. Less hair, more body fat.
2. I play in New York, not Chicago.
3. My girls are considered sex objects in ads and I'm the "father figure"

I've lived a pretty good life. Lots of wins, lots of money, still married with two kids - one of whom is talking to me. Still have my parents, although I'd disown my father if I could find the right paperwork. I've still got fans who like me, who want my autograph. I'm not asked to sign many boobs anymore; instead my rookie card, from 1988, is the thing I'm asked to sign the most. Yes, the occasional boob gets stuffed into my line of vision, but it probably belongs to a grandmother. I'll sign it because I know it'll make the woman's friends down at the home all giddy.

In a way, I guess I've given a little something to everyone. Wins to the people in the past. Life to my two darling daughters. Agita to today's management and the media. A paycheck to Andy, my personal trainer. Fun to today's kids who are all "Internet savvy" and read blogs. Maybe Brisk was the right brand for me. Maybe I'll call Pepsi and let them know they made the right decision. Sales are going to catapult to heights unknown because of our association, I'll tell them. Just you wait!

Which they'll do as they tell each other it's gut-check time, find the results of my new Q-scores and see what the focus groups say about the ads. I'm under no illusions what those people will say. "Give us more of his kids. He's showing too much skin on the top of his head."

Yeah, they'll think I'm giving a little something too much. Maybe they can airbrush in a hat for me.

Having A Catch

It's Sunday, it's sunny and it's 22 days from the official start of spring training. My head has come a long way from being up my hole when I started posting back in November. Since then, my health has improved, the diet has improved, our team has improved... Well, the Cory Belle arrest from the other day may hurt us. But maybe not. If the league suspends him for his off the field problems, it'll hopefully just be for a handful of games and nothing crazy.

Anyway, back to Sunday sunny thoughts. Just wanted to throw a short post out to let you know I've begun throwing again. I quietly started about a week ago throwing from flat ground. No pain - in the elbow or the wrist. Today, day 7 of the throwing regimen, was great. My catcher was none other than my lovely wife, Vanessa. I paced her off about 50 yards (since it's still winter and we're a week away from the Super Bowl, that's half a football field) and threw. I wasn't whipping it, but I was able to put some pepper on it. I felt great.

You should know Vanessa's a good catcher. The fun thing about her is we do have a catch a few times a year. She was a standout softball player for her little hole in the wall college. She never had a shot at the Olympics or anything, but she was, from what she tells me, a solid shortstop with a little pop in her bat. So when I tell you I had a catch with her, it wasn't some lazy Sunday afternoon catch. I made her sweat.

Just wanted to make the official announcement. I visit with the team physician tomorrow in New York, meet with manager Rick Churches and GM Alvin Kirby afterward, and spend the afternoon working out with Andy, my personal trainer.

By the way, Andy is singing next week an open mic night at The Apollo Theater next weekend. Go and check it out if you're in the area.

Finally, the filming of the Pepsi commercial went great on Friday. More on that in the coming days. And I thought the Diane Sawyer special Friday night on ABC was pretty good. I looked balding though, didn't I? Time for some performance enhancers for my scalp.

The Boob Tube

Funny how something could be considered evil at one point in a life and, years later, be considered a Godsend. I'm talking about television. When I was a wee lad, my mother hated everything about it, from the steady cacophonous noise to the poor program selection to the killing fields of radiation spewing out into my eyeballs, resting 6 inches away.

Part of the problem, I know, was our TV was in black & white. Dad - "Red" - was traveling all the time, so he could watch color TVs in his hotel rooms. The family set was secondary to him. In fact, even when he was home he wasn't around us enough to watch the thing. He'd spend most of his time in another room in our apartment (usually mine) working on "plans" for some new business, idea or invention (more than once I had to push his sleeping body onto my floor so I could crawl under the covers of my bed and pray my mother didn't kill the man).

I don't think he realized our TV was black & white until he started one year - I think 1980 - unemployed. Playing career over for 2 years by then, he kicked around a St. Louis radio booth in 1979 filling in 4 to 5 times a week for the hard-drinking Harry Gallo and trying not to cough through the cigarette smoke of five-pack-a-day Rich Grodin. Not getting along well with either man, "Red" started the '80 season in our rented home in Medfield, MA. While Mom and I worried his lack of income would get us kicked out of the first house we'd lived in for 5 years, "Red" sat in his leather chair and watched Boston play opening day. I still remember his eyes fluttering, his lips quivering, and his hair, somehow, shaking independently from his head. "Peggy," he called, "something's wrong with the TV!" She ran into the room and saw my almost 12 year old face in my hands. "What?" she asked. "Red" didn't take his eyes from the screen. "Didn't you ever buy us a color TV?" Mom rolled her eyes and left the room to go back to ironing his underpants.

Criticize him all you want - please, I beg you to - but he's always been a huge baseball fan. If he had a gun at his head and was given the choice of letting his family survive or the game of baseball, he'd choose the latter. I'd yell and stammer bad things at the man. But he'd just nod and say nobody is bigger than the game, not even himself. That is his definition of loyalty.

"Red" tried watching games at pubs and by inviting himself into other people's homes, desperate to get as close as possible to the lush green field and hazy blue sky of a ballgame. But it wasn't the same. By May 1, he'd reached into his pocket and spilled for a full-color Magnavox set. The screen was only 13-inches and the back of the set protruded about five feet. Trying hanging that 50-pound box on a wall. The house would've fallen down. His timing, however, was perfect. Dad got a radio job for Texas about two weeks later. After the school year, we moved to a new apartment outside of Dallas. Sitting shotgun in the car next to Mom on the 20-hour drive was our 50-pound Magnavox, seatbelt secured.

I sat in the back on a box containing "Red's" colored and numbered thumbtack collection.

I think the post-playing career moving for Dad's fledgling radio/TV career added to Mom's dislike of "the boob tube," as she called it. She thought when he was done playing, we'd be done moving. We'd finally be able to settle down in one town and she'd be able to make a friendship that lasted longer than a nine inning game. But "Red" was starting from scratch, with no agent, so he had to move around and find openings with last place clubs as radio fill in, part-time pre-game host... whatever he could get. The money wasn't very good, but he loved being around the players, being around the game. We had to go along for the ride.

Mom loves TV now. Not because "Red," after many years, became a fairly well-respected television announcer making a very good salary. She grew to like it when she started seeing her son make an appearance every fifth day inside "the boob tube." Thanks to cable, videocassettes, and eventually satellite, my mother has seen, by her count, 465 of my career 484 starts. She's seen my public service announcements, my local and national television commercials. She even goes to YouTube now on her Mac to fire up old video of me doing post-game interviews. I know she's going to be watching ABC's Diane Sawyer tonight talk to Vanessa and me in our home, filmed here last week. And I know she'll be watching the Pepsi spot Alyssa and I are filming today when it airs in late-February.

She doesn't call it "the boob tube" anymore. Mom calls it "Jimmy's box" because she's proud.

And what did she do if I was playing in one city and "Red" was announcing a game in another at the same time? She always chose her son. That, to me, is the definition of loyalty.

Crimes & Dinner Conversation

I didn't predict it and I didn't wish it upon him, but by now you've probably read that Cory Belle, my teammate and chief critic, was arrested last night. This isn't good for a number of reasons:

1. This is his third arrest in two years. Our owner, Mrs. Delaney, and the league commissioner, Elliott Pollock, are going to find a problem with that.
2. A judge will find problem with that as well.
3. If Cory is incarcerated on opening day and not in left field for us, we'll be missing a pretty potent bat.
4. More than one call has come in asking if I set the man up.

Note that Cory was arrested in a Kansas City nightclub. Since the city/town closes down at eight o'clock every night, I have no idea what kind of nightclub this was. That's Red Flag #1.

Red Flag #2: The other guys arrested with him have no connection to the sports world from what I can tell. I Googled their names. Nothing came up.

Red Flag #3: If shots were fired in the parking lot and a gun was found in Cory's car two hours later, the evidence leads to me being glad he hung up on my the other day.

I wish the best for Cory, whatever that is, and hope he can get his life in order. And no, I had nothing to do with calling the police. I get up now at 5:17 every morning. You think I'm going to call the cops at 1 AM to blow the whistle on a teammate who's mad at me for blogging? I'm sleeping at 1 AM, dreaming about cartoons.

In other news that's somewhat related, I got word that Felipe Castro's mother, while still being held captive somewhere in the jungles of Venezuela, had a brief conversation with Felipe over the weekend. She's apparently healthy, which is great. But I know Felipe must be going out of his mind trying to get her back.

My dad, "Red" Scott, the man who a month ago suggested he switch places with Mrs. Castro to save her and get him away from the Northeast winter, actually used whatever baseball connections he has to get in touch with Felipe and suggest it directly to the man. From what "Red" said, Felipe was very polite and thankful, but he declined the invitation out of loyalty to me. If Felipe would have asked my opinion, I would said two words: Take him.

I'm serious.

But that horrible saga continues. And instead of sitting in a crumbling Venezuelan jungle hut, Dad/"Red" comes over to my house three times a week and complains to me that my vow of media silence will crush all of his plans as a broadcaster for the team this year. Hey, I tell him, it's hard for me. Before every sentence I say to him, I have to remind him it's off the record. It gets monotonous, and not just for he and I, but for the whole family, especially if we're at the dinner table:

Red: Want me to pass the potatoes, Jimmy?
Me: If we're off the record, then yes.
Red: Here you go, son.
Me: Off the record, I give you my thanks.
Red: How about that Cory Belle stuff?
Me: (mouth full of potatoes)
Mom: He's a bad man.
Red: Peggy - please!
Vanessa: Red...
Red: I'm sorry, dear. Jimmy, how about that Cory Belle stuff?
Me: (mouth still kind of full) Are we off the record?
Vanessa: Jimmy...
Me: (after swallowing) Sorry, dear.

And so on. He suggested we eat dinner in front of a new blog posting so I can type the minutes of our meal together, like a court stenographer. I told him, off the record, that I can't eat and type at the same time. He grunted something and stormed off to the bathroom for fifteen minutes of solitude.

I doubt he's reading this, but I wish both Felipe and Cory all the best. I hope their immediate futures turn bright and they overcome either the bad men or the personal demons that have taken over their lives. If either of them want my help, I know a certain former ballplayer/current broadcaster willing to take one for the team - As long as he gets a good story out of it for his first telecast.

Good luck with that.

Sniper Fire

I find myself in the sudden and unexpected awkward position of having to defend myself from comments one of my teammates said over the weekend. It feels very high school-ish to have to go to another source to express my feelings. It's like when I was a kid and I wanted to ask out a girl, I'd have my friend do it for me. I'm glad I'm 39 and not 14. Some change can be good.

Back on point, Cory Belle said this to the AP on Saturday when asked about his assessment of our 2008 squad:

"I can't worry about what other guys are doing and saying - or not saying. All I can do is focus on myself. It's easy to get caught up in all sorts of things, but let's just say I'm not going to be spending the next 4 weeks writing about it."

That's a little dig but not worthy of a major response. I get it. At this juncture in the article, Cory Belle is still an honorable man working on his own agenda for 2008.

But then he said this:

"I will be on that field opening day and I will be busting to win every game possible. I can't say the same for everyone else. And you can directly quote me on that."

Cory Belle is a smart guy. He's a good player. Yes, he had an off-year in 2007, but we all did. He was out there every day, playing hurt - we all do over a 162 game season - and doing his best. The team ultimately won 74 games, about 18 fewer than we had hoped for, and Cory, as well as everyone else in the organization, was frustrated. We've since gotten a new manager and new GM. We outbid and then signed Japan's Kai Goto for whatever many millions it came to. We traded for Lyman Gaye, which will help Cory in the lineup. And I'll be ready to throw off a mound on March 1. I don't expect to pitch with the team when we open the year in Philadelphia on April 1, but I should be ready within 2 to 3 weeks after that. We WILL be a better team in 2008.

I just answered the question asked of Cory by the AP reporter without hurting anyone's feelings. See? It's easy. Sure it would have been easy to do so and criticize this or that person, but it wouldn't help us win games. That's the bottom line for us: To Win Games.

Unfortunately, Cory wants to start up something else and win that too.

It's no secret he and I aren't the best of friend off the field. That's okay. I don't "hang" out with any of my teammates off the field, especially in the off season. I didn't at all last year because I was home crying because my arm hurt. So why did Cory feel he had to say what he did and hurt my feelings?

I called him to ask. Rather than get into a whole tiff that is resulting, I wanted to make sure he really said that stuff and let him know I'm working hard and we can count on each other in 2008. Here's the full excerpt from our call:

Cory: Hello.
Me: Cory, it's Jimmy.
Cory: Jimmy who?
Me: Jimmy Scott?
Cory: What you want?
Me: Did you really say that stuff?
Cory: Yup.

Then he ended the call. But like the good reporter I am, I went to the source and confirmed what it - he - said. He didn't want to talk about it with me, obviously. So I'm going to respond with a semi-prepared statement right here:

"My teammate, Cory Belle, made some unfortunate statements about me on January 19th that need to be addressed. He implied that I'm focusing more on my personal life than on the team. He also made fun of me for writing this blog instead of talking to the press.

"I am happy Mr. Belle is my teammate and hope he has an incredible 2008 season. I also hope he learns some discretion in 2008 and, if he has problems with teammates or others within the organization, he brings it up with them directly rather than going to third parties first.

That is the end of my statement. I'd like to add how proud I am of myself for the maturity and leadership I have chosen to employ during this difficult period.

I give the media full permission to quote any lines in this post. While Cory and I won't be going to the senior prom together this year, I think you can expect us both to share the dance floor without any problems.

As long as he stays away from my date.

Commercial Integrity

Last Friday was the day Alyssa and I were supposed to go into NYC to film the Pepsi commercial. We didn't make it. Alyssa had been sick all week. She probably could have appeared on camera on Friday, but I woke up a little off kilter and went downhill from there, spending the whole weekend in bed. Apologies to Pepsi and their promotional agency for the last-minute change. We're now looking at the end of this week to film it. Pepsi has an ad-run date that they're up against. They've already bought the advertising time for this unproduced ad, so they don't have much time to wait on us. They don't want to run dead air.

Spring training is less than a month away. I report on February 15th. By February 16th, we'll be filming all sorts of things for the league, our regional sports network, the major networks, various charities... It's like we go down to spring training to be movie stars instead of baseball stars.

Some guys enjoy that part. I'm okay with it. I know how to read, so I can usually be done with whatever it is within an hour or so. But some guys hate it. They freeze up. They read their lines like first graders. They move like robots. And some of these guys are big stars. For them, it's easy to stand in the batters box in front of a live audience of 55,000 and a TV audience of millions and stare down a 6 foot 10 lefty throwing fastballs 100 mph at their heads. They were born to do that, and that's why they're so good at it. They were not born to speak in front of a camera and promote Kahn's hot dogs.

There are always those guys who feel left out, too. A few seasons ago, Steve Emory, who bounced around pretty much every year with a new team, insisted he appear in a spot. He went to our then PR guy, Doc Castro, and made a major stink. "I've been playing this game for ten years. I've played for eight teams. People follow me around. They know me. I'm perfect for this." Part of his statement was true. "The Emory Board," a legion of four or five fans, did follow him around each year in the summertime for a couple of weeks. Steve was one of the more wacky guys and "The Emory Board" wanted to be associated with a wacky guy. I guess because they were wacky too.

So Doc relents and lets Steve appear in a radio spot they would air during the pre-game show. Steve wouldn't read the script. He kept ad-libbing, saying his material was better than Doc's. Doc, of course, didn't write the scripted material, which was: "This is Steve Emory and you're listening to Tom Myers on The Team, sports radio 820, WTEM New York." Steve didn't like this. He wanted to say: "Steve Emory here. Did you know you were listening to The Team? And did you know it was pre-game time? And did you know Tom Myers is The Man, telling it like it is? If you didn't, you do now."

"Too long," Doc said. The radio spot was supposed to be 5 seconds. Steve's version clocked in around 11 or 12, depending upon his usage of commas. Neither man would budge; Steve screaming about integrity and Doc just wanting to finish up so he could take care of some other tasks on his endless daily To Do list. Doc gave him an ultimatum of doing the spot as written or not doing it at all. To be fair, he was giving 11 seconds to decide.

From what I heard, they refrained from airing Steve's spot in spring training games just in case something happened. And it did. Steve was cut the last day of camp. When he cleaned out his locker, there was a cassette tape of his version of the spot resting neatly inside one of his dress shoes. Apparently, Doc, always the softy, had recorded both versions. That's how Steve got his pre-game gig on FOX later that year. From an audiocassette rehearsal tape. I guess it helps to have a little artistic integrity.

Slush Funds

For the second time in a week, the weather forecasters got their predictions wrong. No accumulation of snow last night into today. Just wet slush, kind of like a little kid finger painting and leaving big blobs of white and brown on the paper in random spots.

This weather reminds me of when we played a "spring training" game in Cleveland about 5 years ago to help open up their new stadium. Late-March in Ohio can still be cold. This day, it was about 35 degrees. Not cold enough for snow. Certainly cold enough for slush. Of course, a rainout can be commonplace in the spring, but slushouts are very rare. The team and league would do almost anything to avoid both.

The grounds crew did their best to keep the field clean, but what they should have done was take a massive hair dryer and aim at toward the outfield. That's the game where Omar Viscaye snapped his fibula sliding from center into left field against his will (both the sliding and the snapping). When you miss a whole season because of a spring training injury, it kind of puts a bad taste in your mouth for the great slushy white north. (Strange how Omar just signed a minor league deal with Minnesota last week. It's even colder up there. Maybe he prefers ice to slush.)

The whole reason for our playing in Cleveland - 2 games, not just 1 - at the end of spring training was because their ownership had cut a deal with the league. Two additional sell outs were good for everyone's pockets but ours. We have fixed, basically, contracts (incentives, weight clauses aside). But ownership goes into a season with projected revenue streams. They know what their costs are going to be. They know the revenues they'd like to earn. If they can garner a little cushion before the season even begins, even better for them.

It's like how this year, the season starts - actual games that count - on March 23rd. Cincinnati plays St. Louis in neither Cincinnati or St. Louis, but in Tokyo. Two games on the 23rd and 24th, then a week off before playing two more games against each other in Cincinnati April 3rd & 4th (by the way, Cincinnati's in Ohio too, where it's still cold on April 3rd & 4th). At least in Tokyo, they're playing in a dome.

The fact is, these two teams are playing in Tokyo not for the sake of the players and their incomes, but for the league and its foreign investment. Meaning, the league will benefit financially from this almost immediately. The players benefit to a degree, but not as much in the short term. If we eventually include Japan into our divisional structure and have real games against Tokyo and Nagasaki and Hiroshima, then we'll get lots more revenues from ancillary streams, meaning merchandise and other things I don't know about.

So why the rant? Guess I'm just a little peeved at my local weather man for making me think I could miss a workout by being snowed in. Yes, I'm supposed to be hungry to compete and make myself better and be the best I can be blah, blah, blah. But I'm also a human who gets sleepy. On days when I can't, I'd like to sleep in. That means I'd really like to sleep in on days when it snows, and I supposedly can, only I can't because it doesn't snow which makes me more tired.

I could just go to bed earlier.

Nah. It's more fun to watch The Weather Channel and hope for slush in Cincinnati. Maybe my friends can get an extra day off when they return from Japan and spend some of that league money on boots and parkas and earmuffs. Then when we strike later in the year, we can blame it on the weather. Not on the money.

Principles Are Made To Be Broken

There's a lesson for us all when someone makes a spontaneous decision that affects more than just him/herself: There will be untied loose ends. I know, I sound like a serial killer covering his (or her, let's be fair) tracks. In my case, when I made a quick decision to shun the media - all media - this season in favor of this forum you are reading right now, I forgot about certain commitments that had previously been made.

For example...

Yesterday, Vanessa reminded me to be dressed well. I asked her why. Diane Sawyer was coming over, with a crew, to talk about athletes and charity. The Jimmy Scott Foundation was one of the lead hooks to their report. (They had already interviewed on camera Kobe Bryant, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and Randy Moss.) When I stood in place and stammered a little, it hit my wife - I had pledged to only speak to the media through this blog.

She was rightfully concerned. The exposure for our charity was going to be huge. That's a key reason why we'd said yes in the first place. Last time we'd done something like this, a few years ago for Sports Illustrated, we raised an incremental $150,000 for M.S. research as a result. ABC gets more eyeballs than SI. That $150K could be a lot more by this time next week.

She told me I had to give ABC an exemption, like how the striking writers gave one to David Letterman's production company. I felt a little weird about that. What union makes side deals with management to let a small pocket of its membership go back to work? That's like when we went on strike in 1997, our union cutting a deal just with Detroit to let their bullpen come off the picket lines (not like any of us actually held placards and yelled silly nursery rhymes about our poor working conditions in the first place) and throw off of flat ground. It wouldn't have helped the greater cause, which is the rest of the union. Very strange.

I told this to Vanessa and she then said this: It was just me. I wasn't answering to anyone when I made this decision. I can go back on it for one hour, justify the cause as being in the name of helping people with a dreadful disease, then go back on my little strike against writers after the cameras have been packed up and driven away. "Put the issue above yourself, Jimmy," she said.

The guilt was amazing; amazing not in a good way. Thick guilt. Rabid guilt. I frothed at the mouth, like a frosty mug after a Heineken had been poured into it too quickly. My principles in baseball have shifted over the years, as they probably do for people as they get older. At first, in the minor leagues, my main principal was to do what it takes to make it to the big leagues. Work out like a maniac. Listen to every coach. Never show up late. Keep my mouth shut. I batted .750 with those principles but reached my goal anyway.

Then I subscribed to a new set of principles. Work out like a maniac. Listen to my managers and veteran teammates. Arrive early and stay late. Be humble with the media. Again, .750 was the magic number. Still worked. We won lots of games. A championship. Then I got traded to New York. Scared the hell out of me. Chicago is a big city, but it's not New York. I'd played games here and seen Cats, but that was it. I was married with two kids by now. Again, a principle shift took place.

With just about six years in the big leagues and some solid success, I put the following principles in place: Don't overwork and burn yourself out so you can get a great contract. Listen to the pitching coach and nod your head to everyone else (no offense, but I've yet to meet a NY manager who knows anything about pitching). Don't forget about the wife and kids. Embrace the media and be their most ardent supporter. Looks like .750 was turning out to be my lucky number (sorry Vanessa and daughters). We won two championships (now I had three). I won lots of individual awards. My kids were never arrested and secretly bailed out to avoid family embarrassment. And I'm on my fifth NY manager this year who... I'll stop there. No need to criticize before spring training begins. Rick - I promise to be on my best behavior.

Bottom line - my last set of principals have helped us raise over $38 million for The Jimmy Scott Foundation. "Embrace the media." Worked out well for me. Until they bit me on the ass and I shunned them. Do I unshun them for a greater good, our charity? Would the Amish unshun a man who looked at a Ferrari and said, "Cool wheels, dude"?

Diane Sawyer and her crew got here just after lunch. Their producer met with Vanessa and they chose a spot in the house to do the interview. I pretended to be in my home gym working out. Of course, I was just in the Entertainment Veranda (Guitar Hero III is the best!), ready to slap a damp washcloth on my face and call it sweat. I got my call and went upstairs. Forgot the washcloth and realized the plan was stupid as I couldn't appear on camera wearing a T-shirt that reads: Bastards Are People Too. Good thing I'd forgotten the plan in the first place and was already dressed for meeting a respectable journalist.

Here's how my first discussion with a major media outlet since my ban was put in place went:

Diane Sawyer: Hi, Jimmy. I've got to tell you I'm a huge fan. My husband is too. He's got season tickets. (Her husband, Mike Nichols, directed The Graduate, my all time second favorite film, and the recent Charlie Wilson's War and lots of others. I want to hang out with him forever.)
Me: (nodding, smiling)
Diane Sawyer: Are you speaking to me today?
Vanessa: Jimmy, this is off the record. The cameras aren't on.
Me: (quizzical look on my face)
Diane Sawyer: I'm just Diane right now, Jimmy. When the cameras are on and my makeup is done, then I'm Diane Sawyer, media person.
Vanessa: (looking at me like I'm an idiot)
Me: (turning red like a little kid holding his breath to get his way)
Vanessa: (punching me in the stomach, kind of hard)
Me: (exhaling kind of hard) Hi, it's nice to meet you.

I felt strange. Was I betraying myself? Vanessa, always, well, almost always on point with her views, looked at me. Had I not listened to her? This was for charity. The cameras were off. She was my wife. It felt more like I was betraying her.

Diane Sawyer already knew of my quandary and was prepared to talk about it. I suggested Vanessa take the lead in the interview, they use archival footage of me speaking at various charity functions, I nod and smile and laugh with whatever Vanessa said, Mike Nichols would spend time with me when he came back to New York, and at the end I would give a little speech, on camera, about just the charity. I wouldn't speak about my media ban, but they would mention my blog address. We shook hands. Diane Sawyer and I made a deal that I thought I could live with.

The special airs on ABC next week. I can live with my decision. Life doesn't always have to be about me. In my baseball world, that's what I'm used to. But maybe it's time I grow up just a little bit. Principles can be just like rules. And rules, sometimes, are meant to be broken.

Bad Sun Risin'

Not a good day yesterday. Let's set aside my personal issues with the media and baseball world for a minute and get back into reality. I got up early, 5:17 AM, and was out running by 5:31. My driveway was clear. My lawn was clear. Our new fence, which is to surround the perimeter of our home, has been partially erected. At least the front is done and part of the right side (the right side if you're facing the house from the front). We have a gate in front of the driveway that I jumped over rather than opened electronically. I don't know the combination yet and probably won't for another year or two. (Guess who could never get into his locker at school.) I started my run by passing our two garbage cans, set out neatly for garbage pickup.

It was a good run. My right wrist is no longer wrapped from my fall, and the pain has mostly subsided. I didn't have to pre-medicate myself with Advil before the run. The up and down shaking of my arms was painful in the wrist for about 3 weeks. Four or five Advil taken 30 minutes before a run would help the wrist. Probably did damage to my heart. I'll let you know when I'm seventy (or "sempty" as Grandpappy Scott used to say).**

I ran for about 45 minutes. Doing about a 7 1/2 minute mile, that means I ran about, uh... You know. You do the math. Fact is, I ran far and hard and wasn't struck once by any flying newspapers from the army of paperboys driving around town in their 1996 Caravans, Mega 97 blasting from their open windows like gunfire. When I was a paperboy, I rode a bike. And wore headphones. And listened to tapes of the Rolling Stones. Plus, I was not 35 years old. Where have all the 11 year olds gone? Here's why immigration is such a huge issue in the upcoming election. The Hispanic population has taken all of the good paperboy jobs from the domestic 11 year olds. Now these boys are stuck at home every morning, unemployed, sleeping and thinking about potential plotlines for Halo IV.

I'm cynical today; a little surly. That's because I finished the run, like I always do, with a walk of about half a mile. Made it onto my street, the sky becoming colored with the sun due to rise shortly. And I looked ahead and saw something on my driveway that wasn't there before. I stopped walking. Instead, I started to run again, got to my driveway and almost puked. The stench was incredible. Somehow, within the previous 45 minutes, somebody, or somebodies, had taken what looked like every garbage can in the state of New Jersey and emptied it onto the front of my driveway. I could tell because cluttered in front of my new fence, just slightly away from the torn up garbage bags and loose food scraps, wet paper towels, moldy cans, and influenza-carrying used tissues, were about 35 empty garbage cans.

Needless to say, I hopped the fence, ran inside and called the police.

This was all on a day when Alyssa and Grace had to get to school by 7 AM for their early-morning extra curricular stuff. The car couldn't get out because of the trash, so I got out a snow shovel and carved out a path for Vanessa's Hummer. She drove away, her tires covered in banana peels and gum.

The police were mad at me.

Policewoman: Mr. Scott, why did you move the evidence?
Me: So my kids could go to school.
Policewoman: You compromised a crime scene.
Me: Do you think the bad people who did this deed left a clue amongst the rubble of suburban life that is now trapped between the grooves of my wife's car?
Policewoman: You joke, yet keep in mind who's going to have to clean all this up when we're done.
Me: Who?
Policewoman: You.

They were done after an hour or so. By then, half the community had come to pick up their garbage cans. I wasn't sure how so many people could look at a large, gray cylindrical instrument of waste collection which looked just like the other 33 large, gray cylindrical instruments of waste collection, and know which one(s) were theirs. People must have a spiritual connection to their garbage cans, I guess.

Our newly installed video cameras didn't catch the perpetrator(s) of this crime. They'd just been installed last week and weren't pointed in the right directions. I think they will be now, after we sue the company for negligence. I mean, how hard is it to point security cameras at a home's point of entry?

By midday, the debris was basically gone. The cleanup crew missed a few scraps which had become embedded between tiny cracks in the driveway, but otherwise the place looked as good as it did before this fourth act of vandalism on our home.

I called the police around 4:00. No witnesses. No leads.

Somebody out there doesn't like me.

** Just kidding. There's no "Grandpappy Scott." My father, "Red" Scott, had his family deported to Scotland many years before English was the official language of the United States.

Agent of Change

I haven't given you much on where my agent, Jack Perry, stands on the recent decision to quit talking to the media. (Note: See how I wrote "the recent decision" instead of "my recent decision"? My always friendly and open team psychiatrist would say, in theory - since our non-disclosure states I can't quote him directly - that I'm already trying to pull away from my decision; I'm already leaving an open door to reconciliation with the media. I would respond with my now-customary favorite phrase, "No comment.") That's because Jack was on vacation someplace warm with his wife, Tina. Tina's nice. I give her credit for not only dealing with the 30 year age difference between she and her husband but also his intensity, which is very...intense. If Jack has something on his mind, he can literally see right through your body to the soda machine behind you. That's a secret nobody knows about him. He's baseball's best and toughest agent because he has X-Ray vision.

But in a nutshell: Jack is back. And pissed. I had a very pleasant phone call with him yesterday.

Me: Hi, Jack.
Jack: (expletives deleted)
Me: Didn't catch that.
Jack: (more expletives, some used in unique ways)
Me: Hold on. Let me put you on speaker.
Jack: (expletives)
Vanessa: Hi, Jack.
Jack: Oh, sorry, Vanessa.

See how classy a guy he is?

Anyway, Jack is a little upset that I made my decision to shun reporters and their like as quickly as I did without his input. He's upset because the people at Pepsi are upset. Alyssa and I are supposed to spend the day Thursday in the city filming the commercial. But Pepsi has become a little wary of working with someone whose image is being hammered on a daily basis by five metropolitan newspapers, two national all sports networks, and his agent (now that's he's back from a warm vacation with Tina, wife #3). I told Jack not to worry. I haven't done anything wrong. All I've done is stick up for my family. It seems my reasoning here has gotten lost in the posing by pundits who have nothing else to do, even though, as I stated yesterday, the Giants have won 2 playoff games and the Super Bowl is just weeks away. Come on, world, there's got to be something more interesting than a guy who doesn't want to talk.

Some people have seen opportunity in this. I have been solicited by four different publicists, each selling me on how they can promote this blog (hate the word b-l-o-g, sorry, but it sounds like something that comes out of someone's ass, not his fingers) so the world can fully appreciate it when I compare the word blog to solid feces. (It's comments like that Jack thinks Pepsi has a problem with. I don't disagree, I said as I sucked down a cool glass of Mountain Dew Code Red - a Pepsi brand for those of you not as in-the-know as me.) Two different web geeks also tracked me down, saying they can add so many features to this blog and integrate it with so many different websites that traffic to my posts will increase by, one quote, "1000 percentage points." That's a lot. One geek said he'd do it for free. The other wanted some signed baseballs for his dad. I'm waiting to see if the two join forces and offer to write the blog for me, saving me time to finish speaking with Jack on the phone.

Me: So, Jack, how was vacation?
Jack: Take me off speaker. Bye, Vanessa.
Vanessa: Bye, Jack.
Jack: Jimmy, you make these decisions without thinking.
Me: Vanessa told me that once.
Jack: I think you should re-think this one. You can still save face and call it an early April Fool's Day joke or something.
Me: Groundhog Day comes sooner.
Jack: (expletives)
Me: Didn't catch that?
Jack: Take me off speaker!
Vanessa: Bye, Jack.

Bottom line is Vanessa has asked me to reconsider. So have the kids. The attention paid upon us is more than we're accustomed to. And, at times, we've been accustomed to a lot. Like when I threw that no-hitter that won the pennant for us, or when... Vanessa doesn't like me to brag, so let's just say a winning pitcher in New York gets a little more public exposure than a winning pitcher in Kansas City, or even LA, where winning pitchers have to compete with Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg. My neighbor works on Wall Street and earned about three times what I earned in 2007. Yet nobody knows his name, the masses I mean, because he hasn't won two championships in front of capacity crowds after his team came back from a 3 games to 1 deficit. (Here's where Vanessa tells me to stuff my fat conceited head in the toilet and leave it there until she finds time to flush.)

I have reconsidered, by the way. I've thought about this decision and can't go back. And for that, I want to apologize to Vanessa and my two lovely daughters, Alyssa and Grace, in advance for the flack they may receive at school or in public. I should also apologize for the flack they've already received in both those places. Writing a blog about baseball wasn't supposed to be controversial. It was supposed to be fun. Jack didn't agree with that assessment in November, when I started doing this, and he doesn't agree now.

Jack: Stop. For the benefit of your family and career, put your pen down and talk to people.
Me: I type. I don't write the blog with a pen on paper and glue the results onto my screen. That's so 1997.
Jack: You know what I mean.
Me: I can't stop. I'd look worse for going back on what I've pledged to do.
Jack: You look pretty bad now.
Me: That's because I just got up. I still have bed head.
Jack: (expletives)

I'm not going to stop. I'm going to keep on keepin' on. In the end, Jack understood and hung up the phone with great force. His job is to counsel me against doing dumb things. But it's always the player's decision to perform the dumb things. I do not blame Jack Perry for what will happen because of this blog (A key difference between Americans and the French: The French would have a romantic word for blog, like "Chardonnay," while Americans employ a word that has the same number of syllables as "turd."). I do not blame Jack Perry for wanting me to go back and pretend this never happened.

It did. And he's coming along for the ride.

The Weigh In

Apologies for not posting last Friday (have you noticed I take weekends off for good behavior?). My decision to betray the media and ignore them has created a firestorm of propaganda that I expect will end abruptly since the Giants advanced to the NFC Championship game. I think their success is more newsworthy than me not talking. But as of Friday, and over the weekend, there was still "controversy" in my decision. In other words, it's a slow time for baseball. What else is there to discuss? It's ironic that all people in baseball circles want to talk about is my decision not to. Friday was especially busy because one person in particular wanted me to pay a visit to her baseball circle: our good owner, Mrs. Joan Delaney.

I don't know if I've weighed in on how much I like Mrs. Delaney. She's been willing to spend money when needed. And she's been kind to my whole family. You should see the size of the fruit cake she had sent to us for Christmas! Yes, she can be a little off-center. Eight cats in her office are about eight too many for someone allergic to cats, which I am not. I just don't like them so I pretend. And her "anti-green" campaign is not especially popular nowadays. But I know in her mind, recycling is more expensive than she likes. I don't think she should encourage turning Staten Island back into a dump for solid waste. That's what the ocean is for, right? (A joke. I was joking. It's okay to laugh at the environment's expense. Much healthier than littering.)

I stepped into Mrs. Delaney's office - just me, no agent or lawyer or entourage of men in black suits - and she asked me to sit. We discussed the weather, my rehab. She said I looked lighter. I told her I was only because I had just sucked on the helium from one of the Get Well Soon! balloons outside her office (Mrs. Delaney recently sprained one of her thumbs on a stairmaster). Then we got down to brass tax, which is a phrase I've never used before, mainly because I have no idea what it means. But if taxes were made of brass, I'd be doing something about it. You can bet on it!

Her main question: Why was I going to forgo the media so that I could have a little Internet folly? I reminded Mrs. Delaney I had made my decision, however swift it was, because:

1. I was mad at players for knowingly hitting on my underage daughter. Their inability to police themselves made me question whether professional athletes, baseball players in particular, thought they (we) were immune to laws of their choosing because they could hit a ball real far or throw it real fast.
2. I was mad that my other daughter found herself in the uncomfortable situation of catching another player, a teammate, literally with his pants down while in the presence of a woman other than his wife.
3. I was mad at my reaction to #2, which was to tell my daughter to pretend it never happened, even though it was obviously a HUGE deal to her. But do I put team before family every time? The way I see it, I have two families - The one that pays me megabucks and the one that loves me (allegedly). Love must come before money, especially when you already have a healthy bank account.
4. I was mad at how the press dumped all over Vanessa for a charity event she and two other wives had planned. Here she is, trying to do something good, and they bash her. It's not like she said anything disrespectful to a reporter, or acted in some fashion as to cause a major celebrity scandal. The way she sees it, she's not a celebrity. Her husband is. If she can raise awareness of key issues and also money for charities because of who I am, then she's going to do her best, something she's been great at for the last 15+ years. For reporters to take sides without coming to her for comment first is not only disrespectful, but it's bad reporting. And I don't want to have anything to do with a group that won't respect my wife's right to defend herself.

Mrs. Delaney nodded and said she empathized with me. Then she explained that our team is one that gets along with the press. Her players need to understand how important the press is to the process of promoting the game and promoting her team in New York (hopefully moreso than the other team in New York, which she doesn't own). She didn't want to mention how she was pushing the city for a new stadium. She did of course. Continuing, she said that players who make rash, unpopular decisions don't help sway public opinion to her side. And she needs public opinion, since their taxes will be footing probably 90% of the bill (making me happy I live in New Jersey).

The publishers of the Post, the News and Newsday had called Mrs. Delaney. They wanted to see if she could publicly weigh in on this issue. She supported me with a No Comment until she could speak to me directly (something the press should have done with Vanessa).

I restated my position which, no doubt, has softened since I made it. Time does that to a man's mind as well as his stomach. But I told her that I can't go back now, not after my big-ass announcement which included capital letters and proper punctuation. If I go back, I look like a man of little character. I want to be a man of big character, especially since I'm 6 foot 4.

Mrs. Delaney nodded as only she can, which means she was upset. But I give her credit for not ordering me, in so many words, to speak to the press. She told me she wants two things, to win and to get that new stadium. She was hoping I'd help her with both. I told her I will, as long as it doesn't cost me anything. She said I may have already spent all the goodwill I had with this city, and maybe this team.

I told her I'd think about it. I owed her that much.

But my final decision was made on the drive home. My dad, "Red" Scott, he who has now become the team's regional sports network's new voice in the TV booth, asked since I wasn't talking to the press, was he included? I thought the unpleasant thought of him following me around all season, his little microphone pack strapped to his belt and cheesy smile glued onto his face with duct tape. I thought of the road trips and the special treatment he was expecting. I thought of how I'd never eat dinner alone again, how he'd somehow end up sleeping in my suite and wearing my bathrobe and eating my breakfast while I showered. "Well?" my dad said, irritation mixed with expectation. I smiled a little, just a little, and said, "No comment."

No Comment

Wow. Lot's of reaction to yesterday's announcement. Very little of it good, that is if you read the mainstream media, which I do, because it's mainstream. It's what I'm supposed to read. And the mainstream media, which in my case includes print sportswriters, regional and national sports channels and radio talk show hosts, doesn't want people to read this blog. Why? Because I'm not mainstream. Yet here's the funny thing: They all wrote about this blog today. Check out the Post or the Daily News. They quoted me. Yes, some was taken out of context and twisted a bit. But the irony here is how the mainstream bashed me and this High & Tight blog, yet in doing so, publicized it and led you here today to read it. As my mother used to say when watching me dress for a night out with my friends in the mid-80s, "How queer."

The media is mad at me. I've always spoken to them and been there for them, whether I pitched like a star or like a thirsty double-humped camel. I've opened up and made myself available to pretty much anyone who wanted to talk. But now, since I won't be there for them, there is concern. Suppose I start a movement. Suppose, across the country, other big name players do this. Suppose it happens in the NBA, the NFL, the NHL, Professional Bull Riding. What if we all decide to blog instead of speak?

The media would be out of jobs.

Don't worry. This won't happen. It takes too much effort. I've been doing this since November and you'll see if you look back how some days are interesting and some quite dull. To rehab, do stuff with my family, worry about things, and then also keep in my head that I have to write this blog each day... It's too much for most guys (and "gals," as my mother used to, and I think still does, call ladies). So, my media friends, do not worry. Your jobs are safe. You just won't be getting any scoops from me.

I got seventeen calls on my cell phone yesterday by noon, all from news organizations asking me to discuss my "open letter." I picked up a few times and told them to write their questions in the comment section. I'd answer there. But as most athletes are too lazy to blog every day, most reporters, it seems, are too set in their ways to do something different. Write me a question. I'll answer it. I'm just not going to give you a verbal quote anymore. But they don't want to do this. Why should they print what has, in effect, already been printed if it's automatically "published" in this blog? I know they have deadlines, but what if I don't answer quickly enough? Plus, if they did print my answer, they'd have to lift it directly from what I said because if they change the context, tone or quote, anyone can look right back here and see they were being disingenuous to meet their own agendas. Quite the conundrum for them.

I'm sticking with this. To go back would make me disingenuous. I know I appear arrogant and selfish. But I'm really not. I'm just tired of doing it the same old way. And, if you read yesterday's, uh, thing that I wrote, you'll see I'm mad too. The game has changed. The players have changed. There's a new, young generation of guys who are incredibly talented. Most are good people. Some are amazingly stupid. If they don't want to listen to reason, if they want to go through their average 3 year career as truly arrogant and selfish, then they will end up reading about what they've done right here. Without the filter of a PR person or city editor. I'm my own filter now. And I've got lots of holes.

Finally, to those of you who keep calling and insisting on a statement from me about this new path I am taking, I have one word for you:

No comment.

An Open Letter To My World

Dear Friends,

It is with a heavy, angry, and somewhat curious heart that I make an announcement this morning. No, I am not running for president. My announcement is this:

Starting today, I will no longer speak directly with the media.

I could have written, Jimmy Scott will no longer speak directly with the media, but you would have made fun of me. So I stuck with the familiar first person and left it at that.

Your first thoughts are probably:

• Why?
• How come?
• Why?

2008 is going to be my last season as an active player on a professional baseball field. It will be my 20th big league season. In 20 years, I have experienced more, uh, experiences than you can imagine, if only because I spend my time with wealth, fame, privilege, and 24 other ultra-competitive individuals from America, Japan, Latin America, Canada and a few odd islands I still don't think really exist. I want to do something special this year. I want to remember everything without asking somebody to ghostwrite it for me. I want this to be my Swan Song.

Next question: What is the "this" you just referred to?

The "this" I referred to a moment ago is what you are reading. My almost-daily blog. Do you want to know how I'm feeling? Do you want to know what I thought after being taken out in the 5th inning with my team up by 2 runs? Do you want to know how my rehab is going? Do you want to know about my teammates, my family, my manager, how an organization is run, if we do drugs or hoard needles and steroids and ask our personal trainers' personal trainers to inject us because we're not scared of a 100 mph fastball coming at our heads but because two-inch needles give us the heebie-jeebies? Do you want to know everything?

You'll get it now.

Another Why? comes up.

Because, is my answer. Very childish, yes, but I don't want to go into the real reasons why. Wait. Look what I just did. I almost held back. You see, that's what we do. We are taught and trained and told to hold back. If a fan or reporter or wife or daughter asks you something about the road or your life or how you feel, we know, as if it's in our blood, to skirt around the issue. Say as little as possible. When in doubt, utilize cliche. Professional athletes, especially baseball players, would make great politicians.

Maybe I should run for president.

But here's why I am doing this. Remember, this is hard for me. And it'll get harder as the season progresses. More on that in a minute. I am doing this because I've had enough. I turn 40 on April 12. I think I'm going through a latent maturity period. We're little boys, the ballplayers you see on TV or the summer ballfield. We get paid insane amounts of money to play a game. Yes, it's a multi-billion dollar business. But for us, it's still the game we played in our backyards when we were boys. We get toys. We get little discipline. We get to yell and swear and use words in the locker room that would kill a presidential bid before the words "I'm running for president" were even written down. We get to fight. We get to meet women. Lots of them. We get to drink and carouse. We get first class treatment. Bottom line is, we get what we want.

I'm sick of it.

I attended a charity function last night. Mistakenly, I brought my two girls with me. They're both 15. I forget when they turn 16, but it's too soon for me. I'm proud of my girls. They're smart and beautiful, like their mother. But they're 15. While I'm going through a latent-maturity period, they still sleep with stuffed animals. I haven't done that in months. But they wanted to go last night. They begged. Pleaded. Vanessa was in Chicago at the wing of St. Barnabus named after us, giving a speech. She wasn't home to put her foot down. I was home and couldn't put her foot down. I told them okay.

They dressed nicely. 15 year old girls can easily look 23 if a parent with no feet lets them use makeup. I am 39 but looked 42 because of the hair recession and remaining pot belly from my months of heavy usage. The three of us entered the event looking unlike we usually do.

Here's where I get mad. My twin girls explored. I chatted with some guys, one of whom spent an hour asking me to help him get signed to any team that had a slot available. While I'm no agent, nor would I ever want to be one, he thought I could help him because my incredible success has given me the right to speak in the third person. Jimmy Scott said he'd try. I'm Jimmy Scott.

My twins split up at some point during this hour. I could see Grace at the bar, not drinking alcohol, but speaking with two players. They aren't teammates of mine, but they know who I am. I know who they are. (It's a fun game, but only a select few can play.) They apparently didn't know who Grace was. Before long, they were hitting on her. Big time. At some point, a little bird whispered in their ears that the girl they were hitting on was my daughter. And she was underage.

That didn't stop them.

Like I said. We're babies. We're used to getting what we want, especially off the playing field. They weren't going to win this prize tonight. I intervened, and let's just say, while I ended up on my back, I didn't get hurt. And most important, neither did Grace. These two guys made a mistake and will apologize to me soon enough. But the fact that they continued with their pursuit of my daughter after being given her identity still makes my blood boil.

To make matters worse, after grace and I collected our coats and Alyssa and were driving home, the following exchange occurred between me and Alyssa:

Alyssa: I saw your friend.

Me: Who?

Alyssa: XXXXX. (Ed. note: I won't reveal names. You'll have to settle for truth without them.) I saw him... You know.

At this point I squirmed a little, full knowing what she saw was probably (hopefully) the first time she ever saw something... sexual.

Me: Maybe you shouldn’t tell me.

Alyssa: Tell you what? I saw your stupid teammate screwing some stranger? What? Are you okay with that?

Me: No! No, definitely not.

Alyssa: Is that what you do when we’re not around? If we hadn’t gone with you tonight, would somebody else’s daughter have caught you -

See? Right there. Is there ever a father who wants his daughter to question his fidelity to her mother/his wife? Would any father ever want to be put in that situation? God, it was horrible. But, as someone in a latent-maturity period, I showed how I'm still more latent than mature. Read on:

Alyssa: Are you going to tell his wife?

Me: No.

Alyssa: Then I will.

Me: You don’t tell anybody. Got me?

Alyssa: Why? If we don’t aren’t we like accomplices?

Me: It’s... What XXXXX did tonight was his business. Not mine. Not yours. If he wants to do that to his wife then that’s his problem. I’ve seen too many clubhouse brawls over this stuff. Whatever you say’s just gonna come back to me. It’s best to let it go.

Alyssa: Fine.

Me: And don’t tell your mother about tonight. Any of it.

Alyssa: Great. Two secrets now.

What kind of father am I? I put my young, impressionable daughters in adult situations and then I blow it each time. My fault. I take all the blame. But I also blame the system. (Which means I don't take all the blame, obviously.) The baseball system. The player who cheated, the players who hit on my kid... They should know better. And they shouldn't involve teenage girls. My teenage girls. I never should have brought them with me. But they never should have had to deal with those situations BECAUSE WE SHOULD KNOW BETTER! We are grown men. We aren't boys. But we continue to act that way. With nobody to stop us. Now I'm stuck with my kids thinking I condone marital infidelity. I don't. But it's too late for them to believe me.

When I was a kid and I did something wrong, I got spanked. Dad was never around, but Mom's hand somehow was. I didn't always learn my lesson. Most times I didn't. But I did think twice before doing something stupid.

In this open letter, I want you to know I am spanking the system. I am upset. You want to know what really happens? You want to know what's really said? I'll tell you.

So why not just give interviews to the media? Because they've upset me too. Vanessa was in Chicago for one reason - to defend herself. She and two other wives came up with a campaign called Candles For Kids, in which kids are encouraged to light candles at dinner, bringing families together at least once a week and teaching about how to save energy and the environment.

She's been crucified. Not the other two wives. Just Vanessa. Why? Because she's my wife, she's outspoken, and because a fire warden who wanted attention thought it was dangerous. He even held a press conference complaining that this program will teach kids to play with fire. He said it could conceivably kill innocent children. The media, as you've seen, has jumped all over her. They don't remember that the program was to bring families together. Families include responsible adults (unless the father plays baseball for a living). Responsible adults would be present when candles were lit. But, because this was taken out of context, Vanessa is now a bad person, promoting childhood death.

I've been misquoted for 20 years. Or my comments have been misconstrued. I've had my comments taken out of context and wrapped around the agenda of the columnist or beat reporter. Yes, these people work hard and try to do their best. But the media has hurt my wife. They've caught me in a bad mood. I'm not going to address them directly starting today. If they want me, they can read all that I have to say here.

I haven't told Vanessa about this new plan. She'll probably not support it. She'll probably ask my mother to spank me because I'm making this decision on pure emotion. I didn't think twice. I thought once, as I wrote this. Here are the groups of people I am going to eventually anger or appear in conflict with because of my decision:

• Vanessa
• My daughters
• Their friends (eventually)
• My teammates
• Opposing teammates
• My manager
• The coaches
• Ownership
• Friends
• Neighbors
• The Media
• The commissioner's office
• Umpires
• My GM
• Ex-players/Ex-teammates
• Probably a batboy or two
• Our charity administrators
• Maybe my agent (there's no maybe here; he'll be furious)
• Me

I know what I'm getting into. But I also have no idea. I am going to be honest about the upcoming season. I'm not trying to hurt anyone. But I also want my world to grow up. The last thing I want is for any future baseball husbands and fathers to go through what I went last night. It isn't fair to the wives, the kids or anyone else.

Media: If you have questions, submit your comments. I'll answer when I get the chance. At least, for now on, if I'm misquoted, it'll be my own fault.

Now on with the campaign!

Sincerely,

Jimmy Scott

Home Security

Received an email today, and then the same stuff in regular mail, from NBL Security. A mass mailing to all players, coaches and management. It addressed the Felipe Castro situation, how his mother was kidnapped three weeks ago and how future kidnappings can be prevented. Scary stuff. Mrs. Castro has not been heard directly from since, although I know Felipe did receive some communication from her captors. From what I understand, he got an email from them that included video of her incarceration. She's alive and being treated as well as can be expected. Not sure if that's good or not.

I haven't spoken directly with Felipe since the abduction. What would I say? And why would he talk to me? He's got to be completely frazzled, worrying about the safety of his mother and the expectations from the team. If you're him, are you still working out? He uses this ocular enhancer machine that whips numbered tennis balls toward home plate at 150 mph. Is he using it to focus? Can he expend his negative energy toward swinging a bat extremely hard at balls being surged toward him even harder? Is he running and lifting and throwing? He had, for him, a horrible season last year (only 16 HR, down from 38 in 2006). I know he wanted to justify the $100 million the team spent on him. Now this.

Commissioner Elliott Pollock gave his state of the state, so to speak, address to reporters yesterday. In what was supposed to be his spin on how well the game is being run, much of the q&a period was about the collective bargaining agreement due to expire and security issues for players. Truth be told, there's not much the league can do in the off season for players in other countries besides send emails out with PDF attachments (and no pictures). Translation: Players care enough to open the attachments and try to read through the documents. They don't have the patience to make it through though. Just ask me. After page two of the first set of documents, my eyes grew as heavy as concrete pilings set into the ground to support a massive outdoor deck.

No, we're not putting a massive outdoor deck onto our house. Our neighbors are.

Elliott (our union head, Howard Philips, keeps begging me to call him Mr. Pollock) mentioned my situation with home security in his speech. As you've read here and also in the papers, we've had three acts of vandalism on our property over the last two months. One man was caught last week, but was released. Like our stalking neighbor, Connie, who was keeping an eye on our house for us, this man was doing the same under his position with the Star Ledger. Seems he lives nearby and thought he'd have a great scoop if he could catch the perpetrator in the act. He got a couple of good articles out of it. Unfortunately, they were more about him than the bad man, or men, or men & women, or just women, who have papered our yard with toilet tissue and iced our driveway so badly that I slipped and sprained my pitching wrist.

We have installed some security measures here, none of which I am allowed to divulge. We thought long and hard about erecting a fence or wall around the perimeter of the property. But the expense was going to be incredible. And people can climb over walls. I suggested an electric fence or something with razor wire at its zenith, but Vanessa said the town would probably consider bleeding bodies hanging from our fence an eyesore.

The neighborhood watch program Vanessa started has been successful so far, in the fact that nobody around has had any problems with break ins or vandalistic acts. I think it's more coincidence than anything. We just had the holidays. Like how crime is always lowest on Super Bowl Sunday, I think the bad people out to get us just went away for a nice break. There's a big university in town. Maybe it's college students doing this. Classes don't start for another two weeks.

I have no leads. The police have no leads. Yet I still work out. I don't focus on these events, as I have little control over the actions of others. Instead, life goes on and I act as normally as I can.

I wonder if Felipe can do the same?

Three Faces of You

When I walk into a room or situation where human beings are present, I immediately categorize each into one of three categories:

1. People who want to be near me because of who I am
2. People who try desperately to appear normal and treat me normally
3. People who feel the need to one-up me or prove they're better than me

It comes with the territory, the way they feel and the way I react to their feelings. We're a celebrity-obsessed culture; we were before I was born. It seems worse now only because there are more outlets to express that culture - Internet, additional channel spectrum on TV, proliferation of magazines, etc. I'm a fan/geek as much as the next person, the only difference being I don't go ga-ga over baseball players.

The key to dealing with the three kinds of people listed above is to try to appear indifferent to each while in contact with them - while in contact with you. The folks in #1 desperately want to get close to me. They want to be able to tell their friends, but most important tell themselves, that they had an impact on my life. They want to go to parties at my house, have private conversations with me on our cell phones, talk to me one-on-one about...stuff. In effect, they want to feel special.

There's nothing wrong with this, by the way. Who doesn't want to feel special? Keep in mind I fall into the same three categories, only with other kinds people. So my point of view on this subject is the same as yours, but also from my own perspective, which 99.9% of the world will never really understand.

The other folks in #1 want something from me. They think I can help them. If they befriend me, which is virtually impossible to do (think about it, how many new friends have you made and kept since you got out of high school or college?), they think I'll be able to get them a job, or a phone number, or raise money for their charity, or host a dinner party in their honor at their house in front of all of their friends.

It ain't gonna happen.

Look back at previous posts. Find out how I acted when I met Steven Spielberg. I am you, people. We nearly always screw these chance meetings up. If you meet me, just ask for an autograph and move on to your inevitably more important next task in life, like curing cancer.

The people in the second category, the people who desperately try to act like they always do and treat me normally, are the easiest to get along with. Yes, there's always the unspoken "thing" between us. They always know I'm incredibly rich, incredibly famous, and one of the best pitchers to ever pick up a baseball. And I always know they know. Yet we both pretend I'm just a guy who shuns overalls. I'm just a 39 year old guy who has a wife and two kids and crazy work hours. Yeah, we share those traits in common. We can get along just fine.

Only I'm going to probably earn $17 million this year and, 6 years later, be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

You'll be scraping for pennies to send your youngest daughter, Ishtar, to her third year at Vanderbilt. And you'll be doing it under a cloak of regularness.

Let me interject quickly to state none of this means I'm better than you. We're just in different situations.

There. I don't seem like such a conceited jerk now, do I? (Vanessa implored me to put this part in. She says I seem like I'm a conceited jerk.)

The people in category #3, the ones who try to one-up me the second I'm in the room, are the hardest to deal with. There's friction. I mean no harm. None whatsoever. Chances are, I don't even want to be in the same room as you. Chances are good I'd rather be at home sleeping or playing games on my really, really big HDTV. And deep down, these people mean no harm. But they're either so unhappy with their lives, or jealous because a spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/son/daughter falls into category #1 around me, that they need to try to rise above my station in life by proving their worth. These people are completely self-conscious and lacking in self-confidence. These are the ones to fear.

Category #3 people generally don't cause physical harm. Those folks, the Mark David Chapmans of the world who kill their idols, are insane. Seriously. Category #3 people are not insane. They're just immature emotionally in this one part of their personalities. Which only makes sense. How many times do most people rub elbows with mega-millionaires who are incredibly famous for achieving something 99.9% of the population doesn't have the God-given skills or passion or luck to achieve? These people overcompensate for their inability to compete at my level - which is, in the scheme of things, a very unimportant level when you think hard about it. These people try to make fun of me. Or they try to fall into category #2 but fail by explaining how I'm not as good a pitcher as someone else. Or if I'm so great, how come the team doesn't win a championship every year. Or if I'm so rich, why don't I give most of my income to charities or poor, dying children in third world nations.

The best way to deal with people from #3 is to ignore them. Find someone in category #2, who might stick up for me in a rational manner. Even someone in category #1 will come to my rescue. Of course, they'll want me to repay them by guilting me into having dinner with them at their house. (The bodies of their families are in the basement, hidden under the concrete floor. Yes, the insane Mark David Chapmans fall into category #1.)

So how do I cope? I just do. Part of the price of being someone in my situation is to shrug my shoulders and just plow ahead. There's a yin/yang principal to life, the yin being the good and the yang being the opposing force. For every good thing that happens, an opposing bad or more difficult force arises. My success, fame and fortune are the yin. Everybody else in the world is the yang.

Looks like I'm outnumbered.

I'm told this particular yang eases after retirement. I'll be no longer active, no longer in the headlines. But there will always be the three categories for the rest of my life. Retirement just gives gloss to #1, a stronger handshake to #2, and power to #3 (they're still working + I'm not = I'm a no good bum).

After I retire, investigators will one day discover my career, hidden under the concrete in the basement. At least I'll be around to positively identify it at the morgue.

Cordial Invitations

Vanessa and I received a "Save The Date!" card in the mail today from "Dan & Krissy." Apparently, Dan & Krissy are getting married on July 19, 2009. We're very happy for them and will certainly be sure to save that date, and every date from today until our lives end. As to whether or not Vanessa and I go to Dan & Krissy's wedding, there's only one problem.

We don't know who they are.

These things happen more often than we care to feel guilty about. Maybe in 2008 we'll (meaning Vanessa) keep track of how many events we've been invited to. We can have two categories: People we know and People we don't know. My bet is the People we know column will edge out the other, but just barely.

We've been invited to bar mitzvahs, bat mitzvahs, sweet 16s, baby showers, 20th, 30th, 40th, 50th, 60th, 70th, 80th, 90th and two 100th birthday parties. We've been invited to Christmas parties, Republican and Democratic parties, office parties, bachelor parties... Yes, Vanessa has a number of fans in the male population who would like nothing better than for her to attend their bachelor party. So far, she's said no (or not responded) every time. So far.

We get it. I had a colleague once who invited the Rolling Stones to play as his wedding band. Of course, there was a DJ at the actual reception, but the colleague had a good story telling people the Stones were "tied up" that day.

When strangers/fans/strange people invite Vanessa and me to their events, it's more on a lark. They don't really expect us to attend. Which is why it would be funny if I was the one who popped out of Dan's bachelor party cake sometime in May of 2009.

I'm not sure if the general population knows what it takes to get people as famous, noteworthy and incredibly beautiful such as Vanessa and me (well, maybe Vanessa) to attend their functions. Here are some ways to get commitments from the rich and famous:

1. Make sure proceeds from the event are going to The Jimmy Scott Foundation. That way, after we skim a little off the top, we can distribute to our earmark charities fighting Lyme Disease M.S.
2. Provide exit strategies for your "special guests" should crowds of fans and onlookers end up soaking their fingernails in our gazpacho.
3. Don't heat the gazpacho!
4. Security should be ample. Dogs, police on horseback, and many guns will make us feel safe.
5. Provide transportation for us. Sure we can afford it on our own, but we're better than you. This is something we expect. Along with...
6. The best seats at the event. Maybe the groom and bride should just scoot over a bit.
7. Goodie Bags. Candy and saran-wrapped picture books won't do it. We need the items in each goodie bag to carry an aggregate value of a minimum $12,000. We're going to redistribute everything to charity or a jerkoff cousin, but the rich and famous need to feel important. So please, give generously and wisely.
8. Clothing allowance. You don't think I'm going to pay to rent a tux for your event, do you?
9. Private bathrooms. If you think somebody like me is going to stand at the urinal next to some guy who's pissed (no pun intended) I ruined his fantasy team in 2007, then you're nuts. We need private facilities. Again, if the rich and famous don't get constant validation that they're better than you, we'll make a scene which you will inevitably regret.
10. Don't expect an RSVP. We may decide to show up at the last minute. Or we may decide to blow it off at the last minute. Or we may, all along, have thought your event unworthy of our presence. Either way, it's rude of you to expect us to respond to your request. If you want us there, give us the space we need to make a decision based upon our desires, not yours.

There you have it. In a year, I'll publish how many invitations we received from people like you. We can share a drink over it.

Or maybe not.