A Tale Of Two Parties

Two invitations found there way into our mailbox today. One from Mrs. Joan Delaney, owner of my beloved New York baseball franchise. The other from Elliott Pollock, commissioner of my beloved game of baseball. Both invitations were for "holiday" parties. Both requested my presence this coming Saturday. And both were for 8PM.

Coincidence?

Being that ownership and labor has had a history of often cantankerous relations, better lately, but still skating on ice that never really gets thick enough for the Zamboni to clean, I found it interesting that both owner, who employs commissioners, and commissioner, employed by owners, invited me, a member of labor, to their upcoming soirees. Being that both are New York-based, one would also wonder how many people were invited to both, and why neither invited the other to their individual soiree. Don't these people communicate with each other? And why are they inviting me 4 days before their New York-based soirees?

Complicated.

When I was in the sixth grade, I couldn't wait to be invited to "holiday" parties. I remember going to a bunch one year. Loved them all. Each would end with Donna Summer's "Dim All The Lights" playing and each of us trying to pair up with a member of the opposite sex. 1980 seems a long time ago.

But now, I wish I'd been invited to neither of these. Too much politics. Obviously, there's some strained blood going on between Mrs. Delaney and Elliott (I can use his first name because I'm older than he is). I'm sure they know of the competing soirees the other is hosting. Maybe it's a big game of chicken for them and they're waiting to see who will postpone first. Otherwise, there will be lots of people running around from East Side to West Side in New York City this Saturday trying to appease the warring factions.

Counsel is appropriate in times like these. Vanessa thought we (I keep saying "I" but she'd of course come along with me since she's my spousal equivalent) should go to Elliott's first, hang out for an hour or so, then go to Mrs. Delaney's and stay until the sun rose. She is the one, after all, who ultimately signs my checks.

I called Jack Perry, agent who descended from the heavens and is the spawn of Miraculous, the Greek God of renegotiation. Jack said to do the opposite. In his opinion, and he was invited to neither, Elliott has consolidated more power than the last three commissioners combined. If he wanted me at his party, I should spend the bulk of my Saturday night there, bowing down to the man and telling him how nice the second coat of lead paint looks on his dining room walls.

Howard Phillips, union head who rarely leaves his office before three PM for lunch, said the best course of action was to call both, thank them for their invitations, and fly to Venezuela for the weekend to buy an oil farm.

So many conflicting opinions. I decided to get one more from my two-headed monster I call twin daughters, Julia and Grace.

It's not easy to get them in a room together. It's like asking Simon & Garfunkel to make one more record just for the fun of it. My girls like each other enough, but they say their powers of twin-dom allow them to know what the other is thinking far too easily. As a result, they don't get enough privacy. When they graduate high school, they each want to go away to college in a foreign country, like Indiana, where they can complete their educations following their own agendas. I fully support them in whatever they want to do, as long as I don't need to obtain a passport to visit them.

I told Julia to come down to my Entertainment Veranda to give me a concert of the latest songs she's written. She plays her acoustic guitar constantly and prefers to sing rather than speak, stating speaking is a Cro Mag Non form of communication and singing virtually Renaissance. I was never a good history student and the music room back in high school was replaced with a men's weight room, so I tell her to stick to her principals, whatever the hell they mean.

Grace was harder to get down. Since this third papering, she's been pretty distant. Yes, it's only been a day, but she locked herself in her room last night, went to school today and locked herself in her room when she got home. The only way we could communicate with her was to text message her on her cell. I found it humorous how one daughter will only sing and the other will only type. Which, I wondered, was more advanced in terms of human development? I lost my train of thought pretty quickly on that one, so typed to Grace (it only took an hour to type a stupid text message) that if she didn't come downstairs immediately I'd have her phone sent to the Smithsonian for the 21st Century Modern Woman exhibit. She was down in a flash.

I laid out for both of them my quandary: Two parties, same time, different places, both equally important to the industry I like to call baseball.

They agreed that both parties should be attended. They also agreed that Mrs. Delaney should get the bulk of our time because she not only signs my checks, she also, allegedly, really likes me. She once stated of this blog, "It's so cute. If you ever write anything badly of me you'll regret you were ever born." She's a great woman. Did I ever mention that?

So as Julia strummed along with a Pepsi commercial that came on the TV (we are endorsers, after all) and Grace ran back up to her locked up room, I called Jack's assistant and told him to RSVP for Vanessa and me. We'd be going to both parties. We'll see if we have any fun.

Crank Calls And Steven Spielberg

The first call came Friday night. I was setting up the X-Box someone at Microsoft sent to me (just in case I wanted to "be involved" in some of their game marketing) when the phone rang. I waited for another member of my family to pick up, remembered I was alone in the house, and did the dirty work myself.

Me: Hello.
Guy: (large intake of breath)!

My first thought was that the caller was a representative of Morristown Memorial's ER unit, about to ask for a donation. It would have been an animated way to get my attention. My first thought was incorrect.

Me: We kind of have a wing named after us in Chicago at -
Guy: Jimmy Scott!

My first thought at hearing my name called out, exclamation mark attached, was that the guy from Microsoft wanted his game back. Jeez, I hadn't even called customer service yet to demand they send an installer over or they could kiss their marketing scheme goodbye. My first thought was incorrect.

Me: I don't even like video games. My mom once bought us this Atari knock-off -
Guy: Look outside.

Click.

The male voice, one that failed to identify itself like polite people do on the phone, didn't frighten me. I've been harassed by fans before. That's who this was. One more fan excited to get the object of their affection on the horn. If they catch me, they usually have little to say that I can understand. They don't know it, but I get how they feel. A few years ago I had the chance to meet one of my heroes, Steven Spielberg, at a game in LA. He shook my hand. We had a picture together. I'm still not sure if I used verbs or not when I spoke to him, and I'll never know, having deleted the file from my brain. Short of just bringing this up to you, I've successfully pretended my meeting with Mr. Spielberg never happened and there's still a shot for him to give me a cameo in the next Indiana Jones prequel. The male voice that spoke to me on the phone, albeit briefly, was just an excitable boy who had a few unchaperoned moments with his hero. It's happened before and will happen again.

They don't usually ask me to do anything as simple as looking outside. If they have the confidence to speak full sentences to me, they usually want money or my "influence" (of which I have none pretty much in every category) to help them attain some goal, like a job in baseball or an appearance for their local charity or a signing of their boobs with a Magic Marker. But to just look outside? Interesting.

I was in my Entertainment Veranda. Switching on some outside lights, I was able to get a good view of the backyard. Nothing interesting. Just a few brown leaves hanging onto trees for dear life and lots of grass that would not be green again for four months.

I shook my head and went back to my X-Box. What's a USB cable? And what's a USB port? Totally confused (I tried to follow the directions in Spanish at first, but that challenge lasted no further than "Hola." I wasn't a very good student of Western European foreign languages.), I lifted up the phone to call Microsoft. But instead of getting a dial tone, I got a voice. The same one as before.

Guy: You didn't look outside.
Me: How'd you...? The phone didn't ring. And I did look outside.
Guy: Kizmet. And the backyard doesn't count.
Me: You weren't specific.
Guy: Look outside.
Me: Meaning the front, right? That's a given here?

Click.

I dropped the X-Box box onto the Davenport and trounced upstairs. My mood was quickly turning sour, as Mr. Spielberg's did when I may have mentioned to him Munich was a real downer and I hoped he could make something with a happy ending again, like another Schindler's List. I was free to do a screen-test between October 31st and February 14th. And just to get my point totally across, I asked for his home phone number, "in case we want to continue this dialog lots more and stuff." His PR person was able to stand in front of me at that very moment. When I got back into position, Mr. Spielberg was gone.

The front door was closed, as it should be. Safety first is my motto when I begin to feel stalked by a telephone. I unlocked the door, pulled it open, and was astonished at the sight. More toilet paper! It was everywhere. This was, by far, the worst papering we'd had of the three. I can't begin to describe the budget these vandals had, but it was pretty hefty compared to what I would spend on a prank like this.

The ringing phone called me back inside.

I shut the door, locked it, and lifted up the receiver.

Guy: You see what we did?
Me: A-Ha! So you admit to it.

Click.

Furious, I dialed the first person who I thought could help, someone with a mind that could read through B.S. and get to the point. What made me even more furious was the person I was calling was my father, "Red" Scott. He picked up on the first ring. This is one guy who loves it when fans call his house. I swear, he must put his phone number in a Yellow Pages ad he enjoys the spotlight so much.

"Red" Scott: "Red" Scott.

Even he uses the quotation marks when he says his first name.

Me: Dad, it's me.
"Red" Scott: Mrs. Jackson?
Me: No. It's -
"Red" Scott: Hey, Jimmy, remember when the Army called for your brother, and they got you on the phone instead, and they thought you were a girl because your voice didn't change until you were 17.
Me: Now I do.
"Red" Scott: That was funny. You have any more stories like that? I want to use them next time you pitch.
Me: I should have retired.
"Red" Scott: So far, every time I've called one of your games, I've been able to distance our father/son connection -
Me: Something I've been trying to do for years.
"Red" Scott: ...but I think since I'll be calling all of your games this coming season, the fans want more from "Red" Scott. Don't you think?
Me: I don't think you should refer to yourself in the third person. That's very nineties.
"Red" Scott: Just leave the announcing to "Red," okay my boy? Any you were a boy for a long time, weren't ya? When I was your age, you were just having your first wet dream while I'd been shaving for 3 years and getting laid -
Me: Okay. Bye.
"Red" Scott: Bye.

Click.

My mood was even worse now. The man could ruin the greatest moment of anybody's life - birth of a child, wedding day, saving a bushel German Shepherds from a burning dog kennel - by simply showing up. Is it wrong for a father to compete with his children? I remember, when I was with Chicago, we had the two Gambles playing side by side in the same outfield for one "magical" September, father and son. You'd think, and the writers did, about what a great story this was. Father wants to extend his career, play as long as possible, so he can play next to his son in the same outfield. Only in this case, father wanted to play as long as possible because he just didn't want to stop playing. I don't think he really cared about who played next to him, as long as he was still in that outfield catching flies (both kinds - it is a summer game) and living The Life.

We know the story after that. Father was cut in October, now is a roving instructor for St. Louis while son is still playing for Chicago, having broken all the records his father ever set years ago. It is my assumption that Mr. Gamble and Mr. "Red" Scott would have a lot in common if one of them ever had the capacity to listen to what someone else had to say.

Around this time, Vanessa and the girls got home. They'd seen the mess outside and were slightly unnerved. We'd have to reach into the girls' college funds once again to pay for landscapers to clean everything up.

Vanessa called the police. The first two paperings seemed like your typical neighborhood vandalism. This one, with the crank calls, had increased the tension. We needed professionals.

Julia was pretty good about it. But Grace really took it hard. She stared straight ahead when I explained all about my X-Box debacle and the content of the crank calls, then excused herself and quickly ran upstairs to her room. She's always been the sensitive daughter. Julia has a little "Red" Scott in her, even though I remind them both to keep their distance from each other, not easy when a grandfather and granddaughter are so fond of one another.

The police said they'd step up neighborhood patrols. I thanked them but got a little worried when Vanessa started talking about what happened to Val and Aaron Daly, he late of the Pittsburgh franchise before breaking his leg (and ending his career) while running after a bunch of kids one Halloween who had "accidentally" (according to their lawyers) pelted his SUV with more than two dozen cage-free brown organic-style eggs. The first rule of being in the public eye is to never attack kids. Rule two is, if you ignore rule one, be sure to get away quickly so you can have the maximum allowable time to create an alibi. Or call you agent and let him do it. Aaron fell on his retreat, breaking his leg. The kids had been ready. When the police and ambulance came, he literally had egg on his face.

I promised I wouldn't pull an Aaron Daly on anyone, even though all the kids these days are obese because they only play video games, thus making them more easily catchable than in '96. Still, my blood boiled at the thought of being a victim of toilet paper all over again. One day, I would enact my revenge. Until then, I'd wait for Microsoft to send their guy over to set up my X-Box so I can play the new Steven Spielberg Presents: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull game before the rest of the world. Or at least before any kids armed with eggs, cell phones and my phone number.

Papered Again

While running early this morning, the paperboy in his '96 Voyager hit me twice, once with a Ledger and once with a Times. The Friday Times, especially thick, grazed my forehead and threw me off stride. Almost slipped off the sidewalk. But I didn't. Because I'm so damn great. He also missed 10 times. Ten for twelve is a damn good batting average.

Lots of debate in the papers about our pitching staff now. I especially liked the picture in the Post with Kai Goto's head on my body and vice versa. I would make a very attractive Japanese man. Kai, however, looked a little out of shape.

Speaking of which, there was an anonymous quote by a "source close to the team" that "internal discussions" were going on about whether I would come back as a starting pitcher or a relief pitcher. Of course, that was one of the hot topics on the radio today as well. And on a football Friday no less. I threw two pitches all last year and can still command Tony for Staten Island to claim I'm not only a bum, but a rich one. Tony - you're right. Where's the problem?

Disconcerting was the amount of toilet paper strewn about my property today. Volleyball season is done. So is high school football season. Thus, "friends" of Julia and Grace would not do this because there's no reason to. Is it a copycat paperer? The worst part was the poor quality of toilet tissue. Last time's two-ply Charmin was replaced with single-ply store brand. So the copycats did more with less quality. Sounds like how my 2008 season's expected to go.

Big workout session with Andy today. He wants me to swim. Vanessa stayed up all night sewing my initials onto my designer life-preserver. I'm not a strong swimmer, so keep your eyes on the headlines. I may show up missing at sea.

8 Weeks

Too snowy and icy to run this morning and too early to go anywhere to work out (Andy, as strong in mind and body as he is, took an oath many years ago to never rise before or during an hour that begins with a 6), I put an old tape into the VHS player and tried that out. It was a workout tape called "8 Minute Abs." I am under no illusion that I can make my abs look like the host's abs in 8 minutes. I'm pushing for 8 weeks. That would be the start of spring training. In Florida. Where's it's not snowy and icy.

The music sounded like it was transferred from a porn film. The two actors working out with the host sported funny hair and clothes. I looked at the box and saw the tape came out in 1991. I hit pause, found a photo album, and looked for a picture of myself from 1991. There I was at Christmas time. I had more hair then. I remember the style was called a "ledge." My barber, Pete, said it was all the rage. I liked it so much that when I went back 8 weeks later to have my head re-ledged, Pete said the rage was over and he wouldn't cut another ledge, unless the rage came back. Now look at me. If the rage came back, I wouldn't have enough hair to be retro-ledged. Quite upsetting.

I finished the abs video and went upstairs. The rest of the house was still asleep. Actually, the occupants were asleep. A house cannot sleep because it is not a living being. Like barbers and 8 minute ab actors. Went into the kitchen and peered into the fridge. There was some good stuff there. Why?

Not only did the team get me a personal trainer, but they got me a personal chef as well.

There, I said it. One person's sole job for the next 8 weeks is to build up my body. Another person's sole job is to feed it. Tomorrow I go to the team psychiatrist. He's not my personal one, however. I'm not afraid to share.

I grabbed an avocado stuffed with ricotta cheese and flipped on the kitchen TV. ESPN was somewhere. The remote was somewhere too, but I couldn't find it, so I had to flip the stations from 2 to 36 by hand. I think it's lazy of TV manufacturers to not build TVs that change channels on verbal command. Why should I have to get off of my stool and reach over to flip a channel. Not fair.

Made it to ESPN and saw two major headlines.

1. KAI GOTO SIGNS $108 MILLION 8-YEAR DEAL WITH NY.
2. NY TRADES FOR KC OUTFIELDER LYMAN GAYE.

Wow. I sleep for 7.28 hours and look what happens. We give the team's second biggest contract of all time to The Jimmy Scott of Japan and then trade for the batter Jimmy Scott - me - was throwing to when his (my) elbow suddenly decided to have an out of arm experience. Overnight, we're a better team. I don't know Lyman very well. I know about his supposed baggage, but the man sure can hit and field. I think he had 20+ home runs last year for the 4th year in a row. And they (scouts, not computer guys) predict Kai to win at least 15 games. (The computer guys say he'll win 14.4 games.)

I swallowed my mouthful of cheese and looked around for someone to share my thoughts with. It was 5:56 AM. The house was as quiet as a mouse, aside from the TV, my clicking jaw, and a hair voluntarily falling out of my head and parachuting to the floor. Good things are starting to happen again. My only wish is that I could share my feelings with someone. We'll see what my personal team psychiatrist says about that tomorrow. He'll hopefully give me some good advice that gets me through the next 8 weeks, or at least lasts longer than my next haircut.

I'm A P-U-S-S-Y

A very sore me was up and running this morning, my feet on the pavement by 5:29. Still dark. Very dark. I need to remember to wear something white or reflective, maybe a miners helmet. My local paperboy, driving around his '98 Voyager, nearly hit me four times with newspapers. But, one excruciatingly long day of working out with my new very, very large African-American personal trainer, Andy, has loosened me up. The first paper, a heavy (since it's Wednesday) NY Times, shot right past my chest. I was able to pull away before impact. I'm lithe, you know. The second paper, still a NY Times (I can tell by the blue plastic covering), almost got me in the head. I ducked quickly, like a duck sticking his head into a pond for raw fish (would ducks like sushi?). I'm a nimble S.O.B. The third and fourth papers, yellow plastic so I think Star Ledgers, were jumpers. They met my destination on their downward trajectory, so my feet needed to lift off the ground with the quickness of a cat, but not a house cat. More like a wildcat (not the High School Musical kind, either). Like a bobcat. Yes. A bobcat. With the quickness of a mountain bobcat, my feet leaped off of the ground, narrowly avoiding a midair collision with two separate yellow plastic-clad Star Ledgers. I'm speedy. I'm wry. (I don't know what "wry" means.) I am a M-A-N.

I haven't worked out in public for a long time. The gym Andy took me to yesterday was a simple YMCA, although our YMCA was recently remodeled and appeared to have every piece of equipment (including fresh juice bar) known to ever have any positive affect on human biology. People stared, of course. I'm a famous person. I'm not being narcissistic when I say they want to be like me. The reason they want to be like me is because I play baseball, earn a ton of money, own a huge house, and am married to a beautiful woman who, in eighth grade, won the coveted Miss Yell position on her cheerleading squad. However, the number of people who want to be me took a hit yesterday when they saw me at the gym. I no longer have a Superman physique. My hair is thinning to the point that I'm constantly trying to make comb overs with my fingers. And, apparently, I am a pussy. Point number three alone was enough to make some heads shake and some onlookers pray for me. If a stranger looks at you in a public gym and, as a result, pulls out their rosary beads and quietly begins to move their lips while still looking at you, chances are they're thanking their lucky stars they don't have to submit themselves to public ridicule by being called a pussy by a very, very large African-American man who sports a booming voice and 30-inch triceps.

In high school, we'd lift in a former music room across from the gym that had been turned into a weight room. We'd do curls and presses and squats. And we'd take turns spotting each other, especially for the bench press. I remember laying (or is it lying?) on my back, lifting the barbells off the holder and pushing up, pulling down, pushing up and pulling down. Maybe I had to do 10 reps. Could have been 25. I don't recall. I usually had 2 or 3 to go before my spotter, usually another kid like me who used Clearasil the way Michael Jackson used makeup, would start yelling at me. Pussy! Wussy! Pussenheimer! Well, nobody ever called me a pussenheimer. But still, I'd get yelled at. It didn't work. Just because I can't lift 150 pounds a 24th time doesn't make me a pussy. Most adults can't lift it once. Instead, I used my superior mind skills to create conflicts. The zit-faced spotter was blocked out (like his zits - Thanks Clearasil!), replaced by my desire to get signed to a big league contract or to win the heart of a senior girl who was dating a football player. (In my high school, football players who were future UPS drivers were higher on the social scale than baseball players who would eventually earn millions of dollars playing baseball. The football players thought we were pussies.) I usually bench pressed that 25th rep. Sometimes I even got to 26. Such was the power of a strong mind.

Andy thinks I'm weak in both mind and body. He always asks me questions. "Do you really want to do this? Why don't you just quit? You suck." The last wasn't a question. It was more a declarative statement. Doesn't sting like pussy, but it's still a present-day truth.

Andy wants to build me back up in mind, body and spirit. I asked him what the difference is between mind and spirit. He quoted a former Navajo warrior. Unfortunately, he did his quote in Navajo, so I still don't know the answer. I'll check later on Wikipedia to see if he even spoke in Navajo or if it was just pig Navajo.

While I may be a pussy who sucks, I have seen a slight change in my habits. I woke up this morning at 5:17 without a kick to the intestines by Miss Yell. After a half-mile or so of running, the soreness crept away. And my mountain bobcat body was able to avoid the shrapnel of paperboy cannon fire. I'm far from the guy who won 24 games three years ago. But I'm closer to him than the guy who spent hours crying in a hospital room last April because my elbow had fallen off of the rest of my arm. I'm all sewn up and getting back to the shape I need to be in to compete.

I'm just hoping the pimple on my chin goes away before opening day. 10% benzoil peroxide doesn't do the trick anymore when you're knocking on the gates of 40.

I'm A M-A-N

The doorbell rang pretty early yesterday morning. It was almost noon. I'd been so busy since I'd fallen out of bed, like with breakfast and stuff, that I hadn't been able to change out of my pajamas. Vanessa had a strange look on her face when she told me to see who was there. I grumbled something about missing the end of Good Times on my Tivo (it was a pre-Janet Jackson episode, so it hadn't jumped the shark yet) as I trudged to the door. She grumbled something about how I looked like I'd fallen right back into my bad habits. I twisted the doorknob in silent denial. It was just jet lag. It is a 3-hour flight home from Florida, after all. I pulled on the door.

A large - very, very large in every way- African-American man stood in front of me. He was smiling. No offense, but I don't live in a neighborhood filled with many smiling and very, very large African-American men. My life passed before my eyes.

And then he began to sing.

Very, Very Large African-American Man: Now when I was a little boy, at the age of five...

My eyes were closed. I could sense a large blunt object was going to strike me across the head. His voice struck me first. It was very good.

Very, Very Large African-American Man: I had somethin in my pocket, keep a lot of folks alive...

My life was still flirting by. I had just reached my early-twenties. He kept on singing.

Very, Very Large African-American Man: Now I'm a man, made twenty-one, you know baby, we can have a lot of fun.

I opened my eyes to see his looking right back into mine. It hit me - not the blunt object - but the realization that he wasn't there to rape and pillage me. I could tell because Vanessa had joined me at the door. She was laughing. The Very, Very Large African-American Man kept on singing.

Very, Very Large African-American Man: I'm a man, I spell M... A child. N...man. That mannish boy.
Me: Excuse me.
Very, Very Large African-American Man: I'm a rolling stone.
Me: Hi.
Very, Very Large African-American Man: I'm a roly-poly man.
Me: Do you speak or just sing?
Very, Very Large African-American Man: I'm a hoochie-coochie man.
Me: I'm becoming an annoyed man.

He suddenly stopped. I turned to Vanessa, who had tears in her eyes from her laughter. There was a joke being played, and since I was a little more than clueless, I could tell it was being played on me. I decided to be cool about it all.

Me: This isn't funny! We don't know who this guy is! You need to take life a little more seriously, Vanessa.

What a lovely woman. She patted me on the shoulder, smiled at the man, and retreated to another room. No doubt, she was muttering something about her devotion to me as she disappeared.

The man remained.

Me: What?
Very, Very Large African-American Man: I'm you're new personal trainer.
Me: I didn't hire you.
Very, Very Large African-American Man: Surprise!

I don't get surprised very often. And although I'd never heard of a singing personal trainer-gram, my immediate assumption was this man should have at least jumped out of a cake. Which made me hungry for lunch. I asked him in, told him I could fire up the oven and we could stuff a couple of personal pizzas in our mouths. He declined for both of us. All he said was "Get dressed." He waited in the front hall while I reluctantly went upstairs to change.

Vanessa was in the bedroom.

Me: Did you know about this?
Vanessa: Yes.
Me: Who arranged this whole thing?
Vanessa: The team that's going to pay you millions of dollars this coming season.
Me: They don't have the right.

Vanessa smiled and sat me down on the bed. I felt a little vulnerable as I hadn't finished changing yet. My underpants were all that separated my manhood from the dressing-down I was about to receive.

She said something like this: Jimmy, I love you. Your family loves you. Your team... doesn't love you the way we do. But they expect you to act a certain way. One of those ways they want you to act is like an athlete, a professional one. They'd like you to be prepared to earn the money they want to pay you. They'd like you to try to be a competitive person again. They'd also like you to see a psychiatrist to treat you for this depression.

I asked if it was the team or her that wanted me to see the psychiatrist. She patted me on the shoulder again and told me it didn't matter.

The point is, the team just signed The Jimmy Scott of Japan because The Jimmy Scott of America no longer exists.

Her: You need a kick in the ass.
Me: I need a stiff drink.
Her: No you don't. Your vice is bad television.
Me: Yeah, but you can't get drunk off of it.

I nodded my head, found some workout pants and pulled them on. She watched me, but not with the eyes of the 20 year old young lady I met and courted way back when Vanessa was 20 years old. No, her eyes now were the disappointed kind. I'd won championships, awards, set records, made millions upon millions of dollars...

And my wife was still disappointed in me.

Men don't cry. But they can sure swallow their pride when their backs are to the wall.

Me: I get it. See you later. I'm going to work out now.

Downstairs, the very, very large African-American Man stood waiting for me. I told him I was ready. Let's go.

For the next six hours, my diet consisted of nothing but carbohydrates and water while my body sweated in places I didn't think had pores. You know what? It felt pretty damn good.

Oh, my new personal trainer is named Andy. He's housebroken. I think we're keeping him.

The Subconscious Flight Home

There was no getting up early this morning, not after 10 hours of delays flying home yesterday from Florida and my body hitting the sheets after 3AM Monday. Had a nightmare flight, a delay that can only rival the wait at a local DMV to get a new driver's license, and, of course, some good news.

We'll start with the good.

We won the bidding for Kai Goto, so it looks like, if we can get him signed now, we'll be a team with a pitching staff that includes Jimmy Scott (me) and "The Jimmy Scott of Japan." It'll be like having two of me on one team. I mentioned this to Rick Churches.

Rick: No it won't.
Me: Yes it will. If you move him to the bullpen, after 8 innings I can relieve myself.
Rick: Always trying to piss me off, huh?

It was only upon reflection while en route home that I realized if Rick had been joking, he would have made an amusing remark, you know, referring to the whole urination... Forget it. Anyway, he was not joking. I still giggled a little bit in anticipation of passing along his subconscious humor. He was a broadcaster for 10 years. He's got to be at least a little funny, right?

Jack, my agent, is Kai's agent. I've tried to get in touch with him (Jack - did I mention he was my agent first?) but he's been busy negotiating with the team (I'm hearing Kai wants 6 years and $96 million) and preparing for the GM meetings which begin today in Florida. So Jack hasn't taken Jimmy Scott's calls because he's working on a big deal for my Japanese clone. No reason for me to be jealous, right? I feel I was very mature on my last call to Jack's office:

Me: Is Jack there?
Voice: To speak with Jack Perry, press 2, to speak with another agent, press...
Me: Hello? Where are you?
Voice: ...to return to the main menu, press star. If...
Me: Screw you, Jack!
Voice: ...repeat your options, press the pound sign or hang up.

I hung up. I had a plane to catch, after all.

Mini Minicamp was good. Because of its being unsanctioned by the union, we weren't allowed to pick up baseballs and throw them. I got there and remembered this from previous Mini Minicamps. I was glad I'd only brought 6 gloves with me instead of the 12 I like to travel with (8 for on field use, 3 for luck, one because it smells real nice). I met with our doctor, Carl Russo, who gave me a good once-over from neck down. He asked how my arm felt. I said the shoulder felt great. He said fine. What about the part of the arm he'd operated on. I told him my elbow was fine. He said fine. Then he performed a few stretching exercises on me that, well, my ears are still ringing from the screams. Doc Russo said this was just scar tissue stretching and breaking. Had I been following his rehab regimen? I told him no. It was no use lying, since he'd read this blog (everybody in the organization has read this blog) and knew exactly where I was in my rehab: At the beginning. I told him I'm better off than he thought. I'm a quick healer. He laughed, told me I was probably at 75% strength, and I should lose some weight and hit the gym.

Walking out, I wondered why he had laughed. A voice said, "Because you can't fool doctors." It was Rick. Apparently, I'd done my wondering aloud.

Rick: You can't fool me either.
Me: Not even a little?
Rick: No.

This from the guy whose nickname in the minors was Hot Foot because he never realized a pack of matches had been stuck under his foot and lit on fire until the 100th time it had been done to him.

Me: Wanna go for a beer?
Rick: No.
Me: Good. I don't drink.
Rick: Why did you ask me then?
Me: I don't know.

I didn't. I think I know now. It was my nervous subconscious speaking out. Rick is my new manager, thus, my new boss. If at any other job I had underperformed this much, I'd have been fired. Lucky for me, my track record is such that the team knows a Jimmy Scott at 75% is better than lots of other guys at 75%. I can already hear Rick's response out loud to that:

Rick Speaking Out Loud, Probably Alone In His Dark Bedroom In White Plains: You still can't pitch in a game at 75%.

In other words, I'm not helping him or the team by being only at 75%. I've got about 10 weeks to increase that 75% to 85%. I usually show up at spring training around 92.73%, so I'll be 7.73% off my normal pace. I can make that up by April 1st. As I told Doc Russo, I'm a quick healer.