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?