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.