Craig Calcaterra

Old Business

2012-02-15T16:44:00.001-05:00

It's an exaggeration to say that drafting legal documents is all copying and pasting, but not that much of one. At least if you sort of know what you're doing. Make sure you know what you're trying to accomplish, find a good form and pay attention to the local court rules and you're most of the way home. After substituting "Craig Calcaterra" and "Petitioner" for "State of Ohio" and "Plaintiff," I was on my way to turning my last legal brief -- written in 2009 -- into my divorce petition.

I had been putting it off for a while. For logical reasons mostly. I wanted to have everything settled between us prior to filing rather than make the court have to weigh in, and those negotiations took a little time.

But there was part of me that was procrastinating due to the unpleasantness of the task. To reducing 16 years of marriage to a pleading, two contracts and a handful of affidavits. Given my complicated relationship with the legal system, doing such a thing seemed like an even greater insult to the memory of my marriage than did its ignominious end.

But I got through it. To be honest, it was easier than I thought it would be. For as much as I disliked it when I was practicing, there is a certain calming ritual to legal writing. To formatting the page just so. To inserting just enough terms of art to make the document accomplish what it's supposed to accomplish without making it unintelligible and jargony. To going back and making sure that your editing didn't cause the numbered paragraphs to be non-sequential. To make sure your Exhibit A is, in fact, what you said it would be in the body of the document. After a little while I was able to forget that I was drafting the documents that would put an end to my marriage and just think of it as a necessary task.

Married: July 1, 1995 at Beckley, West Virginia ... Residents of Franklin County, Ohio since May 20, 1998 ... two children were born of this marriage ... Petitioners are separated, and have been living apart since October 21, 2011 ... the residence shall remain in the possession of The Husband ... a Shared Parenting Agreement has been entered into ...

After a while the words become secondary to the form and it all washes over you.

When I was done I secured the necessary signatures -- mine, hers, the notary and the witnesses -- and made the necessary copies. I was left with a neat stack of white paper, properly bound and ready for the clerk's stamp. I put them in my messenger bag and, for the first time in over two years, went to the courthouse.

In some ways it was more emotionally daunting to walk through those courthouse doors. I had a nice bit of catharsis upon my marriage ending and I'm moving on in healthy directions now. I still feel like I have unfinished business with the law, however. Maybe because I left it instead of the other way around. Whatever the case, I found the few brief minutes I spent there Monday morning mildly unsettling.

As the clerk took the documents and stamped each one, I was waiting for her to give them back and to tell me that they weren't in proper order. To tell me that the local rule I had followed in preparing them had been amended recently and that I needed three more copies, two more signatures and a different kind of fastener because staples were no longer sufficient. It dawned on me as I was waiting that the two biggest anxieties of my life -- my difficult legal career, complete with all of the little rules that always seemed to vex me, and the deterioration and ultimate failure of my marriage -- had joined forces. I stood there terrified that I'd have to redo the documents and prolong this unpleasant process.

But it all checked out OK. The clerk handed me back my copies and gave me a slight smile and nod, which is probably as close to a "have a nice day" a person who processes divorce and child custody documents all day can muster. I took the elevator back down to the lobby and walked out onto the sidewalk. It was cold, but clear and the air felt clean. I took a deep breath and exhaled, feeling lighter than I had in a long while.

The final hearing is set for March 20. After that, there will be no reason to look backward instead of forward anymore. And what has so far been a pleasant new morning can grow in to a bright new day, unimpeded by old business.

New Morning

2012-01-24T17:28:00.002-05:00

One day last October I wrote something raw and personal. She read it. She sent me a message saying "hey, I know you're gonna be OK, but hit me up if you ever want to talk." So we talked.

I didn't know her that well. We had been vague Internet acquaintances for some time, but not close in any way. But I needed to talk to someone like her. I had friends helping me deal with what I was going though. I needed those friends to help me recover from the past year and make sense of my new life. I still need them.

But I also needed a friendly voice and ear who wasn't immersed in all of that. Someone with whom I could talk about the present and the future, not the past. Someone with whom I could, however temporarily, forget about all that was troubling me. Someone with whom I could be myself, whatever that had become. She quickly became that person. But as the small talk grew larger, it became clear that something else was going on.

The random coincidences piled up. We shared the same interests. The same humor. The same temperament. So much of the same past. We didn't, as the old cliche goes, complete each other's sentences. We spoke them as the other formed the very thought. It was all light and casual and friendly on the surface, but I found myself talking to her all night and into the early morning. I found myself thinking about her more and more.

Then one night:

Am I allowed to wonder aloud what's going on here? Or does that ruin it?

I'm glad she said it before I did. It was so soon after my life spun out of control that I didn't know if I trusted myself or my feelings. I didn't know if I was misreading it all. It turns out I wasn't. And her wondering aloud didn't ruin it. It ignited it.

We spent four days together in Dallas in December. I just got back from spending five days with her in San Antonio. Every time I go away someplace I get a feeling of relief when I come back home. Happy to be back in my own space and in my own bed. For the first time ever I've not felt that same relief upon returning home. Being with her was so comfortable. So natural. I felt at home.

I know all of the objections those who care about me will raise. I'm not ignoring them. I know all of the obstacles we face. I'm not denying them. All that matters to me is that she brought me happiness and joy at a time when I figured I'd never feel those things again and that those feelings have outlasted the initial euphoria that often accompanies something new.

And all I know is that last week, at 6:30 in the morning, I woke up and for a moment and I didn't know where I was. Then she stirred. She wrapped her arm around me and kissed me softly. And nothing ever felt so right.

Shyster: Epilogue

2012-01-05T23:42:00.000-05:00

Here ends the little writing project. There were eleven installments before this. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 ,Part 6, Part 7 , Part 8, Part 9, Part 10 and Part 11.

I started writing this series for very personal reasons. A lot has happened in my life over the past couple of months. Some terrible. Some -- which I'll be getting to in future posts -- wonderful. I needed a project in which I could immerse myself. I needed to get down in writing what had been floating around my head for a few years. Other events in my life were going to eclipse it and I didn't want it to slip away.

But a funny thing happened as I gazed at my navel: a lot more people have been reading it than I ever thought would. And, apparently, a lot more people are going through the same career angst I went through over the past decade or so. In the last month I've received several dozen emails from people offering me encouraging words. Thanking me for writing it. Congratulating me on finding my way out of darkness and into light.

Most common, however, are people asking me if I have any advice for them. But even now I can't quite say why it worked out the way it did. I can't, as I am so often asked to do, give anyone any pointers. While it unfolded in somewhat orderly fashion in these posts I wrote over the past month or so, it felt like anything but orderly as it was happening. All I can say is that a writer writes, as the old expression goes, and I made a point to keep writing.

The key, though, is that at a couple of times in that process I stumbled over some good luck. Better writers than I never get a chance to make a living writing and it's not for lack of skill or lack of effort. It's just for lack of the good fortune I happened upon. Maybe it's silly, but I occasionally have something akin to survivor's guilt over the fact that I've been able to make this my career while those better writers did not or, as of yet, have not.

I also sometimes wonder if I have cost myself something for going so hard after what I wanted.

As I wrote a couple of months ago, my marriage is ending. I'm not going to suggest that my writing is the cause of that. Anyone who knows what actually happened with my marriage knows that's not the case. But at the same time, every action has a reaction. People are creatures of habit and routine. Who's to say that my refusal to be content with my professional life as a lawyer didn't upset the expectations of others? Who's to say that in doing what I did with my life, I didn't throw off my marriage's equilibrium, even if that equilibrium was ultimately unhealthy and unsustainable? Maybe my soon-to-be-ex-wife had settled on a world view in which I would go downtown and fight with other lawyers all day for the next 30 years, and my short-circuiting that was something she simply couldn't deal with anymore. Maybe my search for meaning and fulfillment spurred a corresponding one on her part and it simply wasn't compatible with us staying together. I have no idea. You have to ask her, I suppose.

The point of all of this is that, even though I laid all of this out as the straightforward narrative of a boy who made his childhood dream come true, nothing in life is so simple. There are no definitive paths. There are no definitive beginnings. There are no definitive ends until the day we die. I'm doing this now. I wasn't doing it before. I may be doing something else later. As all of that happens, other things happen. People come into your life and then leave. Others come into your life after that and, hopefully, stay. Those dreams you had once no longer hold currency. New ones crop up. No clear narrative of anyone's life can be written until they're dead and gone.

But what I've written over these past couple of months captures a chunk of it. An important chunk of it and one that will always be with me. And no matter where else life takes me, I will be able to draw on these experiences. To look back and say:

You once dreamed something big and made it happen. You once had big problems and overcame them. You once took risks that seemed unreasonable, but survived them. There is nothing you put your mind to that, with time, effort, perseverance and a little luck, you can't accomplish. And even if that luck doesn't come, you will be able to look yourself in the mirror with pride for having made the effort.

Thanks for hanging around for all of this. Now forward ho.

Shyster: Hardball

2011-12-29T20:51:00.000-05:00

I've started a little writing project. This is the eleventh installment. Here's Part 1, Here's Part 2, Here's Part 3, Here's Part 4, Here's Part 5 , Here's Part 6, Here's Part 7 , Here's Part 8, Here's Part 9, and Here's Part 10.

My most optimistic plan for full-time writing had been to get something working by the fall of 2011. This was based just as much on the scarcity of opportunities -- there aren't a lot of full time baseball writing jobs out there -- as it was on the convenience of life.

Things like my legal career being stabilized enough to where, if I left it for something else, I could go back to it without having burned any bridges. Things like the kids finally being in school all day. Starting a part time writing job with NBC in April 2009 seemed like it would keep things squarely on that track.

In less than four months, however, I goosed it a little.

One night in late July, after a bit of bourbon, I wrote down all of the things I thought were working well with the NBC blog and all of the things I thought could be better. Then I slapped that into an email to multiple NBC people. At the end of it all I quite immodestly suggested that if I was working on the blog full time and wasn't distracted by my legal career, I could do more to make the good things happen.

I didn't hear anything for two days. I assumed during those two days that I had overstepped my bounds and pissed everyone off. That's OK. Wouldn't have been the first time. Then I got this email from the guy in charge of everything:

From:
To: Craig Calcaterra
Date: Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 7:48 PM
Subject: Re: Thoughts on CTB

They forwarded me the note you sent on Sunday. I really agree with pretty much everything you said. What would it take to get you to do this full time?

I want you to think about all that and see what it would take to make it work.

I tend not to notice the momentous moments in life as they're happening. I live them and carry on and only a little later do I realize that, hey, something pretty major happened back there. This was not one of those times. My mind reeled. My heart raced. Adrenalin surged. I knew exactly what I had done. I knew exactly what the response meant. I knew that, at that moment, my life was about to change forever.

Everything I wanted to do at that moment -- respond immediately, scream from the tops of buildings -- crashed into everything I had learned about business and negotiation in the previous 14 years of my professional life. I almost had to handcuff myself to keep from writing back immediately and saying that they had me no matter what, pay me whatever they wanted. I mean, how long had I been doing this for free? One cent more than whatever would keep me out of poverty was OK, right?

I calmed down. After an appropriate time I responded and acted like a reasonable person, soberly weighing the risks of leaving my legal career against the rewards of living my dream. It took a bit of time to get everything hammered out because that's just how that kind of stuff works, but we came to terms. I worked my last day as a lawyer on November 27, 2009. When I left the building that day I didn't look back. Not even once.

On the morning of November 30 I woke up at 5:30 AM. I drank some coffee. I fed the children breakfast. I took a shower, shaved and got dressed. I walked to the den and sat down in the same chair I'm sitting in as I type this, and I began to do the same thing I had been doing every morning for nearly three years: I read the baseball headlines. Then I wrote what I thought of them all.

But for the first time, it was my job to do so. For the first time since I was a teenager, I was doing exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I was living the life I dreamed about over 20 years before.

And I'm still living it.

Head's up: there's gonna be an epilogue

Shyster: Circling the Bases

2011-12-27T19:28:00.001-05:00

I've started a little writing project. This is the tenth installment. Here's Part 1, Here's Part 2, Here's Part 3, Here's Part 4, Here's Part 5 , Here's Part 6, Here's Part 7 , Here's Part 8 and Here's Part 9.

After a month of unemployment I interviewed with the Ohio Attorney General's office. The people there knew me from my law firm work, much of which brought my clients -- many of them unsavory -- into conflict with various state agencies.

My interviewers asked a lot of questions designed to determine if I was what, during those cases, I pretended to be, or if I was something else. Most of them seemed satisfied that circumstances and not character caused me to take unreasonable positions in contentious litigation. In this they gave me more benefit of the doubt than I had been willing to give myself.

One other topic came up in interviews: the baseball writing, which I had included as an item on my resume. How serious was I, they asked? How much of a time commitment was it? I wouldn't be doing it on company time which, at this job, would be taxpayer time, would I? I downplayed the seriousness and commitment. Having never considered the idea that blogging from a state office computer would represent a misuse of public resources -- which is a misdemeanor in Ohio -- I paused and then said, no, I wouldn't be doing that. They offered me the job.

I began working in the AG's office in mid February. By late March, something strange was beginning to happen: I was beginning to like the law a little bit. Released from the billable hour and the need to manage insane clients, I actually started to warm back up to it. My colleagues and I sat around and discussed competing legal theories just like I imagined I would always be doing back when I was in law school but never really did in private practice. No one ever talked about the amount of attorney time being devoted to the case. Everyone wanted to win it and to win with their honor intact, but when the day was done, they went home to their families. Everyone was well-adjusted and had lives. It was almost enough to make a guy forget that he was making half of what he made back at the law firm.

I was still blogging, although my habits had changed. I made a point to write even more from home in the morning than I used to. Paranoid of breaking work rules and, by extension, laws, I never used a state computer or Internet connection to blog at the office. I brought my personal laptop and a mobile broadband card with me to work each day and would write a few posts during lunch. And, well, occasionally when I was supposed to be doing something else, but only when something fairly major was going on. It was a balance I could have maintained indefinitely if I had to. But the balance was about to be thrown off.

In late March I got an email from Aaron Gleeman, who worked for the Rotoworld website which was owned by NBC. I had met Aaron once before and knew him in that way you know people on the Internet, but I didn't know him particularly well. NBC was launching a new baseball blog, he said. It was called Circling the Bases and would be part of a relaunch of NBCSports.com. Aaron and Matthew Pouliot of Rotoworld would be writing it, but they felt they needed a third person involved to round out the coverage. In Aaron's words:

It's funny, when we first started talking about the need/want to have a third person involved, the NBC folks told Matthew Pouliot and I to both come up with a short list once we got off the conference call with them. We hung up the phone and immediately IM'd each other with your name. It was like a moment from the world's most boring, least romantic comedy or something. Some of the higher-ups weren't familiar with you, but after reading your blog and doing some Googling several of them basically came back and said, "I think this Craig guy would be a good fit."

I began contributing a handful of posts each morning to the tune of a couple hundred bucks a week. Basically, taking what I would have written for ShysterBall anyway and putting it on the NBC site. It didn't alter my legal workflow any. It did, however, start to prey on my mind. I wasn't making a living, but I was writing professionally. For a major media company who was invested in smart, sharp baseball blogging. Everything I had ever wanted to do -- the dream I had as a kid but buried for years and which I thought would be the end of me when it resurfaced -- was within my grasp.

The only question was whether I could balance the legal career with the baseball writing long enough to where I could make the latter pay off before the former crashed to the ground.

Again.

Shyster: Reckoning

2011-12-21T09:27:00.000-05:00

I've started a little writing project. This is the ninth installment. Here's Part 1, Here's Part 2, Here's Part 3, Here's Part 4, Here's Part 5 , Here's Part 6, Here's Part 7 and Here's Part 8.

On October 20, 2008 I was called to the managing partner's office. The conversation was quick.

Everyone likes you, Craig. You do good work when you're motivated, but you're not motivated. A law firm can afford to keep a nice guy like you around when things are going well, but things aren't going well. The firm needs to cut people. You're not going to make partner here, so you're one of the ones getting cut.You can have until the end of the year. We'll give a good recommendation to any potential employer. Your job between now and then is to hand off your cases and to find another job.

I knew on some level it was coming, so I didn't have much of a reaction. I think I even thanked my boss when he was done. I didn't feel much of anything for the rest of the day except maybe a small bit of relief if you can believe it. I had been worried for some time that I wasn't going to be able to reconcile my personal and professional lives. Now that had been taken care of for me. What lay ahead was harrowing, but I've always been better at dealing with adversity than anticipating it.

I left the office and got a drink. Then I drove up to the Ohio State campus, walked around for an hour or two and tried to remember how I perceived the world 17 years earlier when I first walked around the place. Nothing came of it so I went home.

After the kids were asleep I told my wife. I lied and told her that I was blindsided. I lied again and told her I knew that everything was going to be OK. How could I have any idea of that? The economy was in full collapse. People were being laid off by the thousands. Maybe I ruined us.

A sensible person would have taken that as a major wake up call. Would have realized that his pipe dream of being a writer derailed his legal career. Would have gladly traded any glimmer of hope that he could make a living doing what he loved for a steady paycheck doing what was necessary. I've always been a sensible person, but in this case I made an exception.

In early November I was asked to move Shysterball to The Hardball Times website and did so at the end of the month. I updated my resume and included the blogging on it alongside my other work experience. Maybe it would scare potential employers off, but I'd be damned if I was going to hide that part of my life any longer. I may have killed my legal career, but I wasn't going to kill the chance at having a writing career. Whoever took me next was going to take me for what I was, not something I pretended to be. Because we are what we pretend to be.

I didn't have a job yet when December 31st hit and began 2009 unemployed. I wrote my blog from home and hung out with the kids. When I was able to put the fear of being broke and maybe homeless out of my mind, I thought about how great it would be to do this all the time.

Shyster: ShysterBall

2011-12-15T09:00:00.001-05:00

I've started a little writing project. This is the eighth installment. Here's Part 1, Here's Part 2, Here's Part 3, Here's Part 4, Here's Part 5 , Here's Part 6 and Here's Part 7.

It's the spring of 2007. I wake up at 5:30 AM. I never used to do this. I am not a morning person. But I am training myself to be one. I just started drinking coffee at the age of 33. I need it now. The baby wakes up by 6:30. Never any later. Sometimes earlier. It's my job to go to him when he wakes up, and it is a personal goal to have written three blog posts by the time he starts to stir.

I scan the baseball headlines. The games don't interest me as much as the stories around the games do. The scandals. The human drama. The things that have enough of a connection to baseball to fit in what is nominally a baseball blog, but which have enough meat on their bones to where I can come up with an angle that justifies the exercise. There are hundreds of real baseball writers. I can't do what they do, because no one would care. But I can maybe do something that is different enough to where anyone who chooses to read my stuff will not have wasted their time.

There aren't many readers. Twenty. Then fifty one day. If I break 100 I am ecstatic, but I am happy with whoever shows up. Hmm. Half of today's readers were obviously looking for something else and quickly left. That's OK. Eventually more will show up. Eventually they do.

They start coming in real numbers when Rob Neyer takes an interest. Does he remember that he liked what I had written for Bull five years earlier? Probably not. It wasn't very memorable. But I write something about racial politics in baseball that ESPN might not let him get away with, and he links it approvingly. In an ESPN chat one day he says I'm his favorite baseball blogger. The traffic really starts pouring in then. I learn quickly to say what others can't or won't say for whatever reason. After all, I'm using a pseudonym -- Shyster -- so none of this can really hurt me. I want nothing more than to justify those readers' decision to give me their time. To keep them coming back.

By the summer I'm writing as many as six posts before the baby wakes up. Some are superficial. Some are deep. I'm learning, however, that the more you write, the more people want. It's not always about the unique takes, it's often about just being there and reliably updating so that readers always have something new. It's like working overnights back at the radio station: people just want a friendly voice sometimes. If you can make them laugh, all the better. If you can make them think occasionally you're way ahead of the game.

Soon those six posts before the baby wakes up turn into six before the baby wakes up and four at work before the day gets too busy. I'm still getting all my work done, though. Surely this isn't going to turn into a distraction like Bull did. I'm smarter about things now. Writing shorter takes. And unlike then, I have a family now. Real responsibilities at work. I'm on the partnership track. I'm not going to blow all of that over writing, am I?

For the past four years I had gone out for drinks with coworkers several nights a week. I do it less now. I claim that it's because of family obligations, but it's usually because I have things I want to write. A book I want to read. I'm drifting away from my coworkers because of this. The esprit de corps of the gang is suffering because of it. I regret this a little because I like these people, but I can't do anything about it. Drinking and sharing legal war stories with my coworkers is important for a lot of reasons, but writing makes me happy. It's been a while since I've been happy.

It's September 2007. The head of the litigation department calls me in to his office. There is no real purpose for the conversation -- he says he just wants to talk -- but soon he begins talking about entropy. About how, if you don't add energy to a given system, it declines and degenerates. A legal career is that way, he says. How if you don't constantly work at it, everything eventually crumbles. I know what he is telling me. I don't listen to him at all.

It's November 2007. I'm told that I'm not making partner this year. They just want to see one more year of solid production out of me. Which is what they said last year. They don't know that I'm writing a baseball blog every day. But they're not idiots either. They know my head is not in the game. They're giving me a chance. I know as soon as they give it to me that I'm not going to take it. In the previous seven months I've found something I enjoy more. I have no pretensions that it could ever be a career. I just know that, unlike everything else in my life, it brings me joy.

It's early 2008. I've dropped the pseudonym and blog under my own name. I'm not sure why. I won't get fired simply for having a blog, but I realize that I'm pushing it.

In June the Columbus Dispatch does a small story about me in a sidebar to an article about sabermetrics. They send a photographer to my office to take my picture. I'm sitting at my desk, legal books behind me, the glow of the laptop in front of me as I toss a baseball into the air. Some partners in the firm thought it was great. No one said it was bad. Many, however, were silent. Silence among lawyers is unusual and ominous.

Later in the summer American Lawyer does a piece about me on their blog. "Lawyers with hobbies" or something like that. I realize that I've made a big mistake. I told the interviewer the truth about how much time the blog consumes. Anyone can read between the lines to see my priorities are out of whack. I hear whispers that the firm brass is not pleased.

I know I should care. I know I should worry. I don't. I'm getting several thousand page views a day now. I'm not making a dime, but for the first time I start to get a sense that I could make a career out of writing. The only question is whether I can make that happen before I make a mess out of my career.

Shyster: One more try

2011-11-30T09:21:00.002-05:00

I've started a little writing project. This is the seventh installment. Here's Part 1, Here's Part 2, Here's Part 3, Here's Part 4, Here's Part 5 and Here's Part 6.

In hindsight I would have crashed and burned at the document review law firm no matter what had happened, but at the time it seemed pretty clear that Bull had done me in.

It was March 2003 and I was called into the managing partner’s office. He never mentioned the baseball writing – and I’m rather doubtful that he even knew about it – but he told me that I was obviously distracted and no longer productive. He said he wasn't firing me as such, but it was clear that I had no future there. They’d give me a more than reasonable amount of time to find something and they’d tell anyone who asked that I was leaving on my own accord. It was all very polite.

And really, given the good job market at the time, it wasn’t all that stressful. I knew that with my experience – not so much to where a potential employer needed to decide if I was partnership material immediately but not so little that I’d need to be trained – I could find another job fairly easily. And within two weeks I did. At a firm across the street.

The interview was a breeze. Three years earlier while working at the fixer firm I had represented the hiring partner and his wife, handling some ugliness with a home contractor. It was a favor to my old boss who was the hiring partner’s golf buddy. While that was going on the hiring partner -- the man who was considering whether or not to give me a job -- had been arrested for soliciting a prostitute in a grocery store parking lot at 9AM on a Tuesday morning and the wife had cried on my shoulder about it. That I hadn’t blabbed about that all over town probably sealed the deal for me. The hiring partner knew he could trust me. And unlike the last place, the hiring partner worked for a firm where fixers were still highly valued. I got the job.

I took a month off before I started work there and took a cross-country road trip. While on that trip I found out that my wife was pregnant with our daughter. That obviously changed the game for me. It changed the trip too from one of aimlessness to one of self-discovery. By the time I got back I thought I had found some contentment and new resolve to make my legal career work. And I worked at it for a while. A pretty good while, actually.

Motivated by fatherhood and the knowledge that this was my last shot to make something of myself as a lawyer, I worked hard. I shut down my baseball column at Bull. I worked long hours and worked difficult cases. I mentored law students and young lawyers and did my best to be reliable if not indispensable to the partners and the clients. I billed a ton of hours and settled in for what I thought would be a decade or two of keeping my head down and defining what middle age would look like.

But something happened as I delved back into the fixer work. Rather than experience a voyeuristic thrill from the foibles and scandals of my often noteworthy clients and their often newsworthy cases, I began to feel something else. Dread. Loathing. For my cases, my clients and eventually for myself. Maybe it was just because I was older or maybe fatherhood had changed me, but I couldn't just sit back and laugh and mock like I had before. Bad people were doing bad things, quite often my job was to either defend or facilitate that, and I started to develop a pretty major problem with it.

Not that this led to some principled stand. I never made one. Instead, I internalized my discontent and dealt with it in other, less-than-healthy ways. There are a million stories about this period in my life that I may tell one day -- maybe here -- but the upshot is that I began drinking more and began going out with coworkers too much, many of whom felt much the same way I did about our jobs and our place in the world. I'd unconsciously slow down work on cases I hated and overcompensate on cases I found acceptable. Which, however noble I wanted to pretend it was, was me not doing what I was paid to do.

All of this came to a head at the end of 2006. I had spent most of that year and the year before helping defend an embezzlement and public corruption case which was fairly big news here in Ohio. I threw myself into it with abandon. I got close -- maybe too close -- to my client. I lived it and breathed it. At the end of it all I wasn't sure who was right and who was wrong and whether my client deserved all that time in jail he got even though, in all honesty, the evidence required that he go there. Despite all of that I still think to this very day that the people who led the mobs after my client were every bit as misguided and potentially corrupt as my client was himself. Though I myself never crossed any lines, I still feel like I suffered a complete loss of ethical and moral gravity as a result of the experience.

My client went to jail in November. Despite this outcome I received considerable praise from my firm about how hard I worked (i.e. how many hours I billed) and how dedicated I was (i.e. how many hours I billed). I was told that if I had one more good year I'd make partner. Despite this, I was basically numb through the end of March.

One Saturday in April of 2007 I decided that I needed something positive in my life. I needed to get back that feeling that I had five years previously when, on occasion, I wrote about baseball and, on occasion, someone said that they liked it and that it was good. I sat down at my computer and opened up a Blogspot blog about legal issues that I had erratically maintained. It was called Shyster.

I deleted the legal posts, changed its name to Shysterball and put up a post about baseball. A few days later I put up another. I thought it would great if a handful of people read it. Anything else would be gravy.

Shyster: Bull

2011-11-28T21:56:00.000-05:00

I've started a little writing project. This is the sixth installment. Here's Part 1, Here's Part 2, Here's Part 3, Here's Part 4 and Here's Part 5.

Late in 2001 my friend shot me a column a notable national sports writer had put together. The point: Barry Bonds was about to break Mark McGwire’s single season home run record and the writer was not at all pleased with it. The Roger Maris card was played. A lot of nostalgia and "back in my day" was thrown on top and it ended up being something of a half-baked column. My friend ended the email with “good point, huh?”

I disagreed with the notion. While I drifted fairly far from baseball through the 1990s, in the previous three years I had become reacquainted and actually once again obsessed with the game via my exposure to Bill James, ESPN’s Rob Neyer and the sabermetric world. While no analyst myself, I shot back a sabermetrically-informed and profanity-laced tirade to my friend in which I outlined all of the reasons why the writer was wrong. I went on about how you can compare the olden days to modern times and put the accomplishments of each in context. About how you could separate the wheat from the chaff and, dear lord, you could not simply say things were better when you were a boy, because brother, they were demonstrably not.

My friend forwarded my rant to a friend of his who was launching a webzine, called "Bull Magazine." That guy asked me if I could clean up that rant for publication. I did so. And then I wrote some more. By the spring of 2002 I had a weekly column up that started to gain a bit of notice.

I don’t know what kind of traffic the place did, but my little bits began to get linked by some of the websites I frequented while trying to kill time between document review jags. Places like Baseball Think Factory (then known as Baseball Primer) chief among them. The twin highlights of my run at “Bull” were receiving emails from Neyer and from Keith Law, who had just been plucked from Baseball Prospectus to help run the Toronto Blue Jays. They seemed to like my stuff. It made my year. And it almost – almost – caused me to come to terms with the fact that I was finally, after all of these years, doing something that I wanted to be doing, even if it was then only a hobby.

But before I could do that, reality intruded.

Shyster: Fixer

2011-11-26T20:26:00.000-05:00

I've started a little writing project. This is the fifth installment. Here's Part 1, Here's Part 2, Here's Part 3 and Here's Part 4.

The early years of my legal career were superficially successful. I had parlayed my middling grades at a slightly above-average law school into a job at a litigation boutique of decent local renown. The work was fairly top-end as far as these things go, and I was more or less well thought-of. After a time, however, I came to be thought of as more savvy than traditionally talented, and a pattern began in which I was trusted with sensitive and even personal matters more than I was trusted with complicated and sophisticated legal assignments.

While colleagues handled the class action lawsuit, I handled the sexual harassment case involving the senior partner’s fraternity brother. While they defended the corporation, I defended the son of that corporation’s CEO from charges arising out a weekend bar fight. This didn’t much bother me as I am a voyeur at heart, and I found the often sordid underlying facts of my cases far more interesting than the underlying facts of real litigation. I took the fact that I was tasked with these matters as a sign that I was well-liked and was considered trustworthy. Every law firm has a fixer, and I was well on my way to becoming just that.

For a time I reveled in my clients’ greed, avarice, frailty, absurdity and loathsomeness, viewing it all as great theater and job security. I bought a house and filled it with nice furniture, top shelf liquor and cutting edge electronics and didn’t think twice about it. I traveled and ate well and bought expensive suits. When the dotcom boom created a ridiculous chain reaction in escalating legal salaries across the country, I jumped from my litigation boutique to a larger shop for money that was downright silly. And I convinced myself that I deserved every penny of it.

I continued my old work habits at the new firm – about 60% fixer work and 40% real lawyering – but that proved unsustainable. The same big business dynamics which had led to crazy salary escalation in a two-horse Midwestern town had also led to a mindset among management that the salacious, incestuous and petty legal/political problems of a two-horse Midwestern town were not the sort of thing upon which a valuable legal practice was based. When a new matter ripe for my fixing talents came my way, it was not enough for me to say that the client was the wastrel younger brother of the bank president who would be very grateful if I got his sibling out of a jam. No, I had to fight the business development committee to take the matter on and God help me if I couldn’t swear that it would lead to $100,000 in billable hours for fiscal 2001.

This dynamic led to some unpleasantness in the form of real legal work. As in, reviewing warehouses full of documents in some far-flung suburban office park to the tune of $300 an hour. It was soul-killing stuff for an easily-bored guy with a short attention span like me and it led me to look elsewhere for fulfillment.

By complete happenstance that fulfillment was found -- at least for a short period -- in my long-abandoned dream of writing about sports.

Shyster: Not-so-great Expectations

2011-11-22T21:16:00.000-05:00

For those just checking in, I've started a little writing project. This is the third installment. Here's Part 1, Here's Part 2, Here's Part 3.

Neither my SAT scores nor my college fund were good enough for the Ivy League. I applied to and was accepted to Ohio State and began my studies there with no particular plan. I never once visited the journalism school or even gave it a second thought. I took the classes that interested me – political theory, English and anthropology – with no care whatsoever about what kind of job I’d have some day.

I got good grades. I toyed with the notion of going to grad school and becoming, oh, I don’t know, a political science professor? A primatologist? To the extent writing entered the picture it was because I fancied myself a novelist of some sort. Of course that was a ridiculous exercise in image shopping and nothing more. I was convinced that if I could carry on like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer or Hunter S. Thompson it would somehow will me into being a writer, but I never really gave much thought to actually writing anything beyond the papers that got me those good grades. All of which led me to the same place it leads most people with my particular blend of talent, disposition and lack of ambition: law school. Training ground for those who love mahogany furniture, top shelf liquor and cutting edge electronics.

I drifted in college, but I simply went to sleep once I hit law school. I would make it to class, but I studied far less than most students. Probably because law school, like high school, is a place where peer pressure reigns supreme and I was fairly immune to law school peer pressure. I got married the summer before I enrolled at George Washington and I lived in Virginia, not the District, and as a result I didn’t do much socializing or anxiety sharing with the 1L crowd.

I’d go to class until about 3PM most days, bum around DuPont Circle until my wife and her friends got off work and then have a drink or two. Afterwards we’d get back to our apartment for a late dinner, watch a little TV and go to bed. I treated law school as a job with very low expectations. I was bright enough to get Bs without studying. Knowing that the ultimate plan was to get back to some mid-sized firm in Ohio rather than compete for jobs at the white shoe law firms in New York and Washington, the grades didn’t really matter to me.

I had a job lined up by Christmas of my 2L year. It was so … easy. And then I really went to sleep. For the better part of a decade.

Shyster: When I grow up

2011-11-21T20:47:00.002-05:00

For those just checking in, I've started a little writing project. This is the third installment. Here's Part 1, Here's Part 2.

When I was a teenager I truly wanted to be a sportswriter.

The first time I ever thought I could write about baseball for a living was in the spring of 1988. My dad had met a sports reporter for the Parkersburg Sentinel and told him that his 14 year-old kid knew a lot about baseball. The reporter, seeking an angle for a preseason article, asked me to write up my predictions for the coming season to compare to his own.

I spent a ton of time on mine, predicting not only the outcome of the pennant races, but postseason awards, random statistical events, and everything else I could think of. I typed it all out on the Speedscript word processor of my Commodore 64 – it was 15 single-spaced pages – and presented it to him. He had about a page and a half of handwritten notes with off-the-wall predictions like “Sam Horn will hit 50 Homers!” He ended up not writing the piece, but I kept the predictions. It was only Parkersburg, West Virginia and for all I know that guy was more frustrated political writer than he was sports reporter, but my predictions were better – and better-written – than the pro's were. After that I knew I could be a baseball writer if I set my mind to it.

And for a while I did. Rather than just perusing Sports Illustrated I’d study it. I got baseball books by the armful from the library. I’d watch ballgames with the sound off, pretending I was in the press box constructing game stories of my own. I stopped merely following my own rooting interests and did my best to understand what was going on with every team in the game. Late in the summer of 1988 I went on a family vacation to New York. While there I made my dad take me all the way up to 116th Street so I could have my picture taken in front of the Columbia School of Journalism, believing full well that if I did so I’d somehow find my way back there again someday.

And then I lost my way.

As I progressed through high school, girls, music, theater, drink and drugs started to overtake baseball and writing on my to-do list. None of these vices -- if they were vices -- derailed me personally, even as they crowded out my journalistic ambitions. Indeed, dwarfing all but the girls were late 1980s dreams of material possession and status which did more damage to me than any drug could ever hope to do.

I recall a strange creative writing teacher my senior year who ambushed us all with a writing project that doubled as an exercise in psychological analysis. We were given different starting sentences each day from which we were to craft a story. I took my narrative in an intentionally sardonic direction, never pretending to take it seriously. For a week I wrote of human excess and despair, infusing it all with as black a humor as I could muster.

When the story was finished the teacher read portions of it to the class and used the teaching/psychological aide which had launched the exercise to tell me that my future held a well-appointed urban home filled with mahogany furniture, cutting edge electronics and top shelf liquor, but the absence of love and warmth.

And I thought that sounded sublime.

Shyster: How Did I Get Here?

2011-11-20T12:36:00.000-05:00

I spent eleven years defending crooked politicians and embezzlers. Amoral and sometimes immoral corporations. The idle rich and – worst of all – the spoiled children of the idle rich. My unhappiness with my clients was only exceeded by just how unpleasant it was to do battle with the lawyers on the other side of the table. And as all of that played out my anxieties about making partner and providing for a growing family were ever-present.

I needed an outlet of some kind, and the closest one was at the bar around the corner from the office where I would spent late afternoons and early evenings with my similarly disaffected colleagues, engaged in a reality-obfuscating revelry. I was drinking a lot, probably too much, and there is no question that it was the highlight of my day for a few years.

In the office I was miserable. A procrastinator by nature, I’d tend to put off work until the deadlines started to loom. During the down time I’d ask myself how I got here.

In late 2006 I was 33-years-old. I had been practicing law since I was 25, having taken no breaks between college and law school. I had a two-year-old daughter, a one-year-old son, a wife who had quit her job to raise them, a mortgage and all of the other trappings of the early 21st Century burgher lifestyle. At no time, however, had I consciously planned any of it.

Things just sort of happened while I wasn’t paying attention. Law school? Seems like the thing to do. Marriage? Well, it is about time. Babies? How nice! A house in the suburbs? Seems sensible. A BMW? Allow me my one indulgence. All of it was pleasant enough. None of it was the result of a plan, let alone a dream.

But I had a dream once. Years before. What had happened to it? Where did it go?

Shyster -- Introduction

2011-11-19T08:16:00.000-05:00

I’m often asked how I got a job writing about baseball for a living. How I managed to turn a legal career and life in an office tower to blogging in my pajamas. The people who ask me that do so in the same way that they might ask a magician how he guessed the card they picked. As if there were some simple trick to it all that, were I so moved, I’d be willing to divulge.

I don’t have an answer for them. There was a lot of luck involved. Some of that luck was the residue of design. It wasn’t good design. Indeed, looking back I’m struck by how reckless I was to make many of the decisions I made while crossing over from the real working world to however you’d describe the world in which I’m more or less paid to argue with people on the Internet all day.

I write a daily recap of the previous night’s events in baseball called “And That Happened.” It doesn’t seek to explain all that much. It merely sets forth what occurred and tries its best to place those events into some kind of understandable context. That’s the best I can do with my career path as well.

I'm going to spend some time over the coming weeks writing down a bit about how I got where I am in life. A lot of it about my legal career and a lot of it about how I came to be a writer. Someone may find it interesting. But even if they don't, I feel the need to do it for myself. As the last few entries suggest, my life sort of blew up recently. I'm dealing with that pretty well all things considered, but I have been worried that all of this chaos will push all which came before out of my brain for good as I begin a new chapter -- hell, a new volume -- of my life. As a result, I kind of want to get that old stuff down before it slides out forever. For posterity, if nothing else. A demarcation between my old life and my new one.

Maybe this will work. Maybe it won't. We'll see.

Surprisingly, people don't suck

2011-11-12T00:57:00.004-05:00

Extremes aren't my thing. Stay the course. Steady as she goes. Peaceful equanimity. That's the stuff of my day-to-day, year-to-year existence. Let the other people have the drama. Humm-baby was Roger Craig's motto. Works for me too.

Life has conspired with chaos to make such a philosophy inoperative lately. That's OK. It happens. I'm fortunate that is hasn't happened to me more than it has before now. We all get a turn on on this roller coaster. Buy the ticket, take the ride. It's merely been my turn.

But a funny thing happened on the way to oblivion. At the exact moment when I figured that the abyss and I would stare at each other for a while and agree to sink into one another, a bunch of people decided that they wouldn't tolerate me doing that. Indeed, my long-held belief that people are, at best, self-interested and more often than not fairly awful has been seriously tested by several great people who have been fantastic to me lately.

Fantastic in different ways.

Some of them have taken it upon themselves to nurse me back to mental health, as though I were a patient in a mental ICU ward. I appreciate them so much for they obviously care so much. And while the reality is that my emotional paralysis only lasted a few moments and I don't really need that kind of attention anymore, it has been heartening to see how much they care. Those people understand my past and appreciate the gravity of recent events in ways that no one else could.

In contrast, there have been some people who have made it their mission to make me understand that my future is bright and that I need to be thrust into it now. Yesterday! Move on, lad, because that's where your promise lies! I am thankful for them too. Because, even if I'm not quite ready for that, I appreciate their optimism and I know on some level that I'll be there soon. Those folks represent everything I want to be and know I will be some day.

But at the moment, the present seems most important to me. In the midst of all of this drama, humm-baby normalcy has been really hard to come by. And I've pounced on any chance I've had to get some of it.

My kids provide it in spades and I thank the cosmos for them. There's nothing that keeps a person from disappearing into their own navel or their own ego like a couple of rugrats who only want you in the here and now. I worry about them so much these days, but they are actually my center of gravity and have been a greater source of strength to me than I've been to them. I won't tell them that now because it's no good to lay that kind of weight on them, but one day they'll understand just how important they've been for me.

But it hasn't been just them. There are a couple of people, and they know who they are, who have helped to make me feel human lately. People with whom I can just chat and bullshit and let the world wash over me the way I used to let it wash over me. Who don't see me as damaged goods or as some repository of hope and future bliss. They've been indispensable because they have made it clear that's it's OK to not have any answers or plans. That right now -- for whatever it is -- is important and valuable too.

To them and everyone, I want to say thank you. And to say that, despite the fact that you've forced me to have to consider a new personal philosophy that doesn't involve human beings being total scum -- and understanding that new personal philosophies require a lot of work -- I'm grateful for you being in and around my life.

We have no idea where we're going in this life. We rarely know how to get there. All that we can really hope for is some good companionship along the way. And I got it, baby. I got it.

What we pretend to be

2011-11-06T21:11:00.000-05:00

There were times in my legal career when I insisted that I played a role whenever I went into court. It didn't happen all of the time, but there were times when I'd yell, rant, rave and bring any other unpleasant tactic or rhetoric to bear as long as it advanced my cause.

I believed it was fake. That I was doing those things in a calculated manner in order to bring about my desired outcome. But I came to realize that it didn't matter what I thought I was doing. To the people in that courtroom, I wasn't acting like an ass. I was an ass. My intentions were irrelevant. It was what I did that defined me.

It's no accident that I lost my enthusiasm for the law around the time of this realization. I could no longer pretend that as long as I could come up with a justification for what I was doing that what I did was justifiable. Because it simply wasn't true.

There is not a "real" you or me underneath it all. We are what we do. We are how we treat others. It's OK to fail, because people fail. It's OK to fall short of our objectives because that happens too. And sometimes we simply don't have any choice at all and are forced to engage in the least odious of several odious options.

But it's not OK to create fictions about who and what we are or to hide behind our amorphously described better intentions when we willingly do wrong. There is no such thing as doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. It's just the wrong thing.

As the man once said: we are what we pretend to be so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Say what you mean. Behave how you'd like to be treated. Understand that you are not your only audience and rarely your most important one. It seems so simple. Yet so many people seem to have such a hard time with it.

Some other beginning's end

2011-10-29T10:54:00.000-04:00

We were just kids. Then in less than five years we went from kids to grownups to making a home and then into our careers. We traveled, we dined and we danced. We created a space that was ours and ours alone. We created our own language that no one else could understand. Elaborate secrets, rules and inside jokes requiring just a nod or a wink to the other for meaning to be clear. Most people didn't get us. And we were fine with that. We loved each other and nothing else mattered.

We had kids. Some people didn't think we ever would, but one day we just decided to. And we did. And then we had another one. They're perfect. We weathered the stress and storms that come with raising babies into children. And with getting older. And with careers maturing, changing and everything else.

One thing that is certain in life: it never gets easy. Just when you get through a challenge another one pops up and it never ends until your race is run. If you try to look forward to a time when there will be no challenges or adversity and you can just relax you're going to be in for a rude awakening because that's not how it works. The best you can do is set up a process to deal with the unexpected. You create fortifications that you hope will withstand an attack and a battle plan that you hope will win the day. And you hope to God that you never have to use them.

I thought we had a pretty good one. She apparently didn't. Or didn't believe in it. When the attack came -- a stealthy one that wasn't immediately apparent -- she broke formation. It was only a matter of time before the day was lost. After nearly 21 years together and 16 years of marriage, it's all over.

The details aren't anyone else's business and they're too painful to dwell on anyway. Someday I'll have some perspective and hopefully a little wisdom about it all, but right now I can't approach it rationally. The most I can say is that I was blindsided and that I'm hurt and that the dust is still settling.

I am lucky to have close friends and family and they have been indispensable for me in this time. I mentioned before about how life never stops throwing stuff at you. But at the same time, it's an amazing and wonderful thing that, at the exact moment you think things are about to become dark and hopeless, you're reminded that -- if you've set things up properly -- you always have reinforcements. I guess I set things up properly, because I have had no shortage of support from those close to me.

But most important is that my battle plan was adaptable, even if I didn't realize it before now. And my objective is crystal clear. My children will never want for love or happiness and even though this will inevitably change their lives, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure it is just change and nothing more. A new reality that, while not what was expected, will not harm them. And thankfully enough of the old battle plan is still readable and communication is sufficient that she and I agree on this. And as far as I can tell, her plan, for whatever the hell else it might entail, will also be centered around making life wonderful for the kids.

For me personally: it will take some time to recover, but I have no plans to pack it in. That stuff about "crisis" and "opportunity" being the same word in Chinese is apocryphal, but the sentiment is a valid one. You can pause to consult the map and you can change your course as circumstances dictate, but you can never stop moving. You can't break. Ever.

I have a great job that brings me joy. I have a fabulous family and good friends. I'm also smart, witty and -- if I may say so -- I'm a goddamn handsome man. Things are hard at the moment and there will be many more ups, downs, false resolutions and false starts, but I look forward to forging my future.

And I know it's a bright one.

Don't break. Ever.

2011-10-17T20:55:00.001-04:00

There are probably six people who read this half-dead blog from time to time who don't also read my baseball writing. I'd like to direct you six to something I wrote today about a man named Mac Thomason. Here's the full version. Here's the shorter version.

Most baseball fans start out as obsessive kids and then lose the game in their late teens and twenties, only to return to the game later. If they return. For those of us who do, something brings us back to the game. Someone gives us tickets. Or we get bored and start watching again. Or we have kids who get interested. Something kicks in.

There's a decent chance I wouldn't have gotten back into baseball as a twentysomething if I hadn't stumbled across Mac's Braves Journal blog in the late 90s. Actually, I probably shouldn't call it a blog given that it's been around since way before that term had been coined. Either way, Mac's work has been very important to me for many years. It rekindled the spark I had lost for a little bit. It got me thinking and talking about baseball again on a daily basis, and we all know where that eventually led.

Mac's been dealt a tough break. He's been battling cancer and it appears to have taken the upper hand. But as Mac said today it’s not hopeless. And as I said today, even if it was hopeless, I’m not going to give up hope. Why?

Because sometimes all we can do to keep our sanity in this world is to hold on to irrational hope. If not because it will make the situation better, then because it really, really pisses off the fates and dark spirits that seek to hurt us so. They want us broken. Don’t break. Ever.

I don't do religion. I don't believe that hope and hope alone is capable of overcoming the limitations of and the forces unleashed by the material world.

But I do believe in fighting tooth and nail for that which is important. And in never giving up, no matter the odds. And I also believe that when hope no longer makes sense, that we set the engines for ramming speed and take out as many of the enemy forces as we can. To make their victory as costly as is humanly possible.

Don't break, Mac. Ever. Let none of us ever break.

Interstate 71

2011-09-24T00:04:00.000-04:00

I know this road better than any road I've ever driven. I've been up and down it countless times. Up for court. For a meeting. For a firm retreat. For a ballgame. The first time I ever drove it was to take some eighth-rate speed metal band up to a gig in 1991. I was the only one in the dorm with a car and they paid for my gas and cover charge so they could make the trip from Columbus back to Cleveland and make a couple hundred bucks. Interstate 71. About 135 miles. I could drive it with my eyes closed.

It's been three years since I've driven it with trepidation, but I still can't feel at ease on this road. Back then I was on my way to a meeting in which I was told in no uncertain terms that I didn't have much of a future with my law firm. Before that I was on my way to a hearing in which the judge, my opposing counsel and my client all seemed to conspire against me. Before that it was for training. For recruiting. For an interview. I've driven this road with stress far more often than without. I tense up at Lodi. I sweat at Linndale. I get a feeling of resignation by the time I hit Ontario Street. I suppose it will always be this way.

I'm driving it today for a good reason. A baseball game. Invited to the Indians' social suite to take in one of the last games of the year. Jim Thome tribute night. I'm honored by the invitation. Surprised that anyone knows or cares who I am, let alone thinks enough about me to offer me a ticket to a baseball game. I park the car and enter the ballpark an hour before the game starts. I get a message from a reader who knows I'm here. He wants to meet me. I make my way to where he is. We talk for a few minutes. He's a lawyer too. We talk about old cases and people we have in common. I like to be reminded of my old life. It helps me remember how fortunate I am to have my new one. I value them both for different reasons. I don't think I'll ever be able to completely leave the old one behind.

Baseball has always been an escape. When I was a kid and we moved so often baseball was always a source of gravity for me. No matter where I was or what new school I had to become accustomed to, I knew where the ballgames were and they brought me comfort and constancy and predictability. When I lost my way in my professional life baseball was there for me again. It was the only source of hope I had for many years and it eventually led me out of the darkness and into happiness. Sometimes I think I was outrageously lucky that my little blogging hobby didn't ruin my life and that it was sheer dumb luck that I turned it into a career. Other times I am convinced that baseball knew that I needed it and saw to it that I would be taken care of.

Baseball is my job now, but it is still an escape. Life has grown complicated lately. For a number of reasons, happiness has been hard to come by for the past few months. I wonder what I'd do if, instead of baseball, I had to deal with some contract dispute or the defense of some spoiled son of a CEO during working hours. I'm pretty sure I'd simply fall apart. Instead I have baseball to greet me in the morning and to keep me company. It and the other people who write about it and the readers and everything else. It has saved me. It saves me every day.

There are around 2,500 baseball games played every year, but there is only so much that can happen in a baseball game. This one soon unfolds like any other game. The repetition is a comfort. Knowing that a ball hit here will end up there. That this pitch leads to that pitch and then on to another. This is mainlined zen, putting my mind and heart at ease. Each pitch, each putout helps me order my universe and helps me put my problems at a safe distance.

The game ends in spectacular fashion. There are two heroes. Thome, the man who's night it is and Santana, the man who was a kid when Thome's career began. I'm glad I'm not on the clock tonight, forced to write about the game. I've had increasing trouble writing about the specifics of any one game recently. The existence of 15 games a night and those 2,500 a year have meant way more to me. Baseball as a phenomenon, as a constant, has mattered to me in ways that actual baseball games have not. Any one game is but a drop in the ocean. I need to do something about this because it's making it harder to do my job, but I put that off and for tonight feel happy that there was a game in front of me, regardless of what happened. That there were 12 or 13 other played in other cities, regardless of what happened there too.

On the way back to my hotel room I stop in a bar and order a drink. A blues trio is playing. As I get lost in the whiskey and the music I try to think about where I am and how I got here. About the things that have preyed on my mind lately. There are problems in my life that need attending to. I don't know when or how I'll do that. This evening I can't really care.

Tomorrow I'll get back on that road. As I turn off Ontario Street, onto the freeway and past Linndale and Lodi, I'll again get five-year-old pangs of stress. Phantom pains from a distant life and time. It will always be that way. That will subside eventually, and I'll start to think about the here and now. The things that truly are problems. But at least I'll have another slate of 15 ballgames to consider. To serve as a stabilizing influence on my psyche. Not because of what they are -- indeed, I'll probably watch none of them and will only think of a couple -- but because I know they are there.

Today's hate mail

2011-08-19T19:42:00.000-04:00

I get a bit of hate mail from time to time. Not a lot. And even when I do get it, most of it is couched in at least a core of a legitimate complaint. And I usually take it in pretty good cheer.

This one that just came in didn't really have a core of a legitimate complaint. I mean, there are many factual assertions in there -- I do mix it up with readers, my comments section does occasionally get chippy, I have, from time to time, had little pissy battles with various other sports writers and I was, very briefly, considered for a job at ESPN -- but this one is just odd.

The things the guy complains of are, if legitimate, old, old news that, if they really bothered him, would have caused him to abandon the site a year or two ago. The reference to NBC's baseball content pre-me is also weird because there wasn't any. Really. It was just AP wire stuff.

But you know what? I still kind of love it. For reasons I can't explain, this little bit of bile made me kind of happy. Oh well.
-----------------------------------
The baseball portion of the NBC sports online operation is, and has been, going in the wrong direction for a long time. The day your Mr. Calcaterra came in full-time, in my opinion, it began its slide.

In a matter of months, the entire tone of this website changed from one of joy to one of contempt, disgust and insults. Mr. Calcaterra, who at one time wrote humorously, apparently now prides himself on finding the lowest common denominator to not only write about, but to solicit as readers. And he has done an admirable job.

Read the comments sections now, vis a vis days past. These days, the comments are - in many cases - from apparent paranoids intent on insulting each other. And in large part, your Mr. Calcaterra is responsible for this. Go back and read any criticism of Mr. Calcaterra. Any minor comment, no matter how insignificant, brings about a vicious attack from your Mr. Calcaterra.

It is obvious that he brings this on himself. One day he describes himself as a "highly-paid, high-powered attorney", the next day he's off driving his Honda and regaling readers with tales of his hapless plight as a non-partner associate at some Columbus, Ohio law firm. But don't
criticize him. That's not his style. His style is to launch a hate campaign against one of Sports Illustrated's baseball reporters, for some unspecified reason. I doubt if John Heyman cares, but to readers who originally followed your website to enjoy baseball - it brings up some very dark questions.

I realize Mr. Calcaterra was not considered for the ESPN job, but to take it out on other reporters for no reason is non-sensical. I do not enjoy reading your website any more. I do not enjoy reading comments from your - now - pack of ranting paranoids.

In fact, I am out. If you should persuade Mr. Calcaterra to return to his strength - writing humor - you might be able to right the ship, but at this late date, I am afraid that NBC Sports has done themselves in.

Just for once, let me look on you with my own eyes

2011-06-10T11:13:00.000-04:00

This is what happens when you reveal yourself to be a nerd to a video producer who knows how to use Photoshop:

Probably the highlight of my blogging career thus far, however.

The whole video in which this appears -- only for a second though -- is here.

PETA and the 1000 buckets of pig poop

2011-05-18T20:22:00.000-04:00

I told this story over at HardballTalk today, but it's the kind of thing I usually put here, so why not put it here where it won't get buried?

The last stop in my legal career was at the Ohio Attorney General's Office. One of my jobs there was to defend lawsuits brought against the state arising out of stuff that went down on the Statehouse grounds. Some of it was slip-and-fall cases, but the vast majority of the work involved helping the people who managed the Statehouse property approve (or not approve) petitions for people who wanted to march or protest.

Normally it was easy: they'd call, asking if they can keep some group off the capitol steps and I'd say "Nope, sorry. Gotta let 'em march." The First Amendment is so troublesome that way. But heck, several years earlier the KKK got to rally there, and if you can't keep them out, you can't keep anyone out. Besides, the guy who ran that operation was a cranky old guy who didn't like anyone protesting, so it was a lot of fun to tell him just how little say over the matter he had.

But then, in the summer of 2009, came PETA. Who, though I disagree with their stance on the tastiness of animals, their suitability for my barbecue and the comfort of their skin when put on my comfortable Eames lounge chair, I do respect in an odd fashion. They've got moxy and chutzpah and, though they're occasionally (frequently) insane, they usually seem to have a good sense of humor about themselves. Which is essential when you're wrong so often. Live and let live, I say (note: this motto may not apply to cattle, pigs, chickens and other things that I may want for dinner this evening).

That summer PETA wanted to stage a massive protest on the Statehouse lawn in which they would (a) place approximately 1000 buckets full of pig poop in neat rows; (b) place giant industrial-sized fans all around them in order to blow the stink all over downtown Columbus; (c) bring in giant amplifiers with which to project the sounds of pigs being slaughtered to a mutliple-block radius; and (d) erect giant video screens on which the horrors of factory farming would be displayed.

You won't be surprised to learn that the guy who ran the Statehouse called me, somewhat upset over all of this. And while I normally would just say "First Amendment, forget it" and go back to my clandestine baseball blogging, I felt that I needed to dig into this one a bit more. So I did. And I learned that PETA had just recently tried to do the same protest in Washington and maybe in a few other states besides Ohio, but were denied everywhere else. Indeed, it was my assumption -- based on the fact that they hadn't yet started suing everyone over it -- that the protest was never really going to happen and that they just wanted the headlines that the state's rejection of the application would provide. Smart!

The whole thing fascinated me, really, so I decided that rather than simply send a letter saying no, I'd try to find a legitimate yet innocuous basis for denying their application, putting the ball back in their court rather than letting them use my state as an example of intolerance and authoritarianism for their next press release.

After an afternoon of research with a summer law clerk -- who herself happened to be a vegan and former PETA member and who had quit the organization because this kind of nonsense bugged the heck out of her -- we found some obscure 19th century law that dealt with the storing of offal within the city limits. We didn't think that offal and pig poop were the same thing, but we figured it would be fun to make the PETA lawyers research that one and explain it in their letter objecting to our decision or in the lawsuit if it came to that. If they want to fight over the true nature of poop, by God, I'd fight that fight.

We sent the letter denying their right to rally on the Statehouse lawn. I spent another four months at the AG's office before coming to NBC full time. Never heard back from them, so even if it was just a phantom protest/publicity stunt, I'm still claiming that I'm 1-0 all-time vs. PETA.

Gosh, remembering that has me in a really good mood now. I think this evening I'm going to eat a really bloody steak in celebration.

And with that you can close the book on Calcaterra's legal career

2010-12-22T22:53:00.000-05:00

When a starting pitcher leaves a game with runners on base, he is still responsible for them. His day, statistically speaking, is not done until those runners either score, are retired or until the inning ends. When that happens the announcer usually says "you can close the book on" the starting pitcher, because nothing else that occurs in the game will be attributable to his line in the box score.

I just read in the Columbus Dispatch that the Ohio Supreme Court has finally ruled on a case involving the Ohio Legislature. The substance of the case would be boring for most of you, but it's interesting to me because I was the pitcher of record, having represented the Legislature while working for the Ohio Attorney General's Office. I had almost forgotten about the case in the past year. Reading about it this evening, it seems like something from a past life. Which I guess it is.

I took myself out of the game in November 2009 when I bailed for blogging, but there were still runners on base. The relievers who came in got me off the hook and, with today's decision, we ended up winning. Personally speaking I probably got a no-decision, but I pitched pretty damn well. Either way, I was glad to see the outcome. Not just because my side won, but also because it happened to be the correct decision. It's not often both of those things happen in the same case.

But win or lose, it was a great game. The case helped me rekindle, well, not my love, but at least my fondness and respect for the law that I had lost in private practice. I lived and breathed it for nine months. It kept me up many nights. But it touched on some elemental constitutional law questions. It required sophisticated legal thinking, writing and argument. My colleagues and I sat around and discussed competing legal theories just like I imagined I would always be doing back when I was in law school but never really did in private practice. No one ever talked about the amount of attorney time being devoted to the case. Everyone just wanted to win it and to win it with our honor intact. We did.

And now that it's finally over you can close the book on Craig Calcaterra's legal career. Because unless I'm mistaken, it was the last case I worked on as a lawyer that was still active. Soon the clerk will send the last file with my name anywhere in it to a storage room where it will be quickly -- and justifiably -- forgotten.

And though I probably don't deserve the honor, I have it on pretty good authority that Ohio Attorney Registration Number 0070177 will be retired. Not a bad way to end a career, no?

Where's home?

2010-11-27T22:50:00.001-05:00

My mom and dad were born and raised in Detroit. After their first two years of married life in Alaska, they moved to Flint, Michigan in 1969, set up housekeeping and had my brother and me. He was 13 and I was 11 when we moved to West Virginia. After 13 years away, my parents moved back to Flint in the late 90s -- same neighborhood even -- and stayed until around 2006 or so. They live near my fortified compound on the outskirts of Columbus now.

On Thanksgiving my dad and I were talking and the subject of Flint came up. Though he knows it's a hole now and said that he couldn't see the point of living there again, it seems pretty clear that he and my mom will always think of it as "home." Or at least as close to "home" as anyone who has lead lives as itinerant as theirs can. Conversations with my brother suggest that he thinks of Flint as home too.

It's not my answer. When people ask me where I'm from I invariably say Beckley, West Virginia. I lived there from April 1988 until I left for college in September 1991, and again for the summer of 1992. That's it. A little over three and a half years. I lived in Parkersburg, West Virginia around the same amount of time but if asked to give a quick biographical sketch I usually leave Parkersburg out completely. I lived in Washington D.C. around the same amount of time and that's quickly referred to as the time I was in law school with no attempt to make a connection between the place and my life as a whole. Counting college, I've lived in Columbus for a total of 16 years -- almost my entire adult life -- yet it's always where I live now, not where I consider home. And I often make a point to say that, if given the chance, I'd love to live in any number of other places.

What makes Beckley my hometown to me when at least two other places -- Flint and Columbus -- have much stronger claims?

Maybe it's the coming of age thing. I got my driver's license after I moved to Beckley. My first job. My first real kiss (spin the bottle in junior high school doesn't count) and first real girlfriends there. I graduated high school there. I met the woman who would become my wife there. She's a native, and for years when we went home for the holidays, Beckley was where we went. A lot of the important stuff in my life happened in Beckley.

But most of the same could be said for my brother too, and he doesn't call Beckley home. My parents did all of those things in Detroit, and that place seems consigned to ancient history for them, with Flint taking greater prominence. And really, it's not like Columbus has just been a way station for me. My entire professional life is here. I bought my first home here. I've had and have raised two children here. Everything that's important about me as an adult can be explained by this town. But it's still not home.

It makes me think that home is merely a state of mind. That we can be, technically speaking, from anywhere, but we can choose what is home based on just about anything. Maybe it's time. Maybe it's people. Maybe it's an emotional connection. Why Beckley? Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's the topography. A lot of it is probably the memories. More than anything I think it's because I've always felt at peace there in ways that I've never felt peace here.

Where's your home? Is it a multiple choice question for you like it is for me? Am I odd in thinking that I can just choose the place I call home? Am I a central Ohioan or a Michigander in denial?

This is the stuff you think about on a Saturday night when everyone else is asleep, the ABC affiliate is carrying the crappy football game instead of the good one and you just had a tall glass of Maker's Mark.

The Shyster Chronicles: The Interview

2010-11-12T23:47:00.004-05:00

Before reading this, please read this.

I knew him, but I wasn't sure if he knew me.

Oh, he knew my name, my work experience and my education because my resume was sitting on the desk right in front of him. He knew that my morning had gone well so far and everyone else had been nice because the interview had been going on for five minutes. But did he remember me? Did he remember that two years ago I was, nominally at least, his lawyer? Did he remember that I was assigned by his friend -- my old boss -- to counsel his wife as she fought some petty little battle with a home remodeling company who had screwed up the basement renovation? The lawsuit was filed in his name too because he owned the house and paid the bills, but I never spoke with him. I only spoke with his wife, who made sure I knew which furs were damaged by seeping ground water and which family photos were curled by the moisture and flecked with mold. Long conversations, mind you, that went on for as much as an hour after I had obtained the information necessary for the latest demand letter or the latest draft of the complaint. She went on about the contractor. On about the neighbors. Occasionally she went on about her husband too, who at this very moment was asking me about where I saw myself in five years while -- maybe -- trying to figure out why I seemed familiar to him for some reason.

Those long conversations with Mrs. Morton ended abruptly. I was to call her on a Monday morning and she didn't answer. When two days passed without hearing from her I called her husband, but he didn't answer either. Emails went un-returned as well. I drove by the house, but no one was home. I was a bit worried by this, but only a bit. Mostly I was just happy that I was being given a break from this dreary little case, the time for which I wasn't even allowed to bill thanks to it all being a big favor from my boss to the Mortons. With them incommunicado I could get back to the cases which actually interested me and, more importantly, for which I could bill my time. I was having a rough enough year without having to spend so much of it on this pro bono nonsense for my boss' golf buddy.

A week later I finally heard from Mrs. Morton. It was a short call. She sounded as is she had been crying. She told me to dismiss the lawsuit. When I asked her why, she would only say it was a personal matter. She thanked me for my time and effort and that was that. I told my boss about it, but he acted as if he already knew. In fact, he seemed surprised that I was still in contact with the Mortons at all. He asked for the file and told me to move on to other things. Oh, and not to talk to anyone about the matter. Which was easy because I didn't know what was going on.

I finally figured it out a few weeks later when my boss' secretary spilled the beans: Dan Morton had been arrested for solicitation of a prostitute the morning I was supposed to have spoken to Mrs. Morton. It was kept quiet -- didn't even make the police blotter because of who Dan was and who he knew -- but he couldn't keep it from his wife. After picking him up at the police station -- his car had been impounded -- she packed a bag and flew down to the condo in Ft. Myers to clear her head for a few days, a lawsuit over home improvements the last thing on her mind. My boss was doing his best to smooth things over legally for his buddy Dan. He probably would be successful in doing so, but no one knew for sure about that marriage. Or what might happen to Dan's standing at his firm or in the legal community at large.

But he somehow gutted it out. The charges were dropped, because in this town they're always dropped when they involve guys like Dan Morton. Word got around about the indiscretion, but not too widely. Somehow Dan kept his job as managing partner at Hicks Henderson & Foley. Somehow Dan and Abby Morton stayed married. I went back to work on billable matters.

Over the next two years I lost momentum at my old firm. I wasn't happy with my cases and my boss was increasingly unhappy with me. I felt I needed a change of scenery and figured I'd try to jump someplace else before I was inevitably pushed. When the recruiter told me that Hicks Henderson was looking for a mid-level litigator I didn't give a second thought before telling her to go ahead and send them my resume. I didn't even think of Dan Morton until I got my interview schedule the day before and saw his name on it. And now, here I was, sitting across the desk from him, the managing partner of their Columbus office, making small talk and wondering if he knew that I knew that he was busted in a Walgreens parking lot trying to pick up a $25 whore on a random Monday morning two years ago,

He knew.

"You're probably curious to know what happened with that business with the basement," he said. "We settled. It all worked out OK."

I told him I was happy to hear that. After what seemed like a long silence he went on.

"When I got your resume the other day, I showed it to Abby. She said that I should hire you. Said you were . . . supportive back when the case was pending. I appreciate that."

Again, I thanked him. But I can't say that I liked his look. He was clearly uncomfortable talking about this, even if he seemed compelled to cover this territory. And after an interview in which he had been far more content to talk and talk rather than to ask me any questions, he now seemed like he was waiting for me to say something. When I did nothing more than offer a closed-mouth smile and a slight nod, his expression brightened. He may have been waiting for me to talk, but he was happy that I didn't. And my silence apparently sealed the deal.

"Welcome to Hicks Henderson, Mr. Sullivan. I'd like you start as soon as you can."

Great Moments in Product Placement

2010-10-13T09:29:00.001-04:00

Reason number 346 why I want to move my family into a fortified compound:

Darren Rovell of CNBC is a sports business expert. His beat: Ticket sales. Team marketing. What ads were up behind home plate when the no-hitter ended. What logo the tennis player had on the towel with which she wiped her face just before winning the French Open. How much free exposure Anheuser-Busch got when the basketball player flew into the crowd and knocked over the beers. This stuff is occasionally obnoxious because, really, people don't want to be constantly reminded of just how for sale everything is, but Rovell is really good at what he does. And he's probably right that everything is for sale anyway. I read and link his work all the time even if it drives me a bit nuts on occasion.

Last night, though, was a new low. Or high. I'm not sure which.

I was on Twitter, bullshitting with baseball and media people during the Rays-Rangers game. Just as the game was put out of reach, the first Chilean miner was pulled up from the hole. Everyone in my little clique of virtual friends was going back and forth between the game and CNN and everyone was talking about both things. Then this exchange happened:

Rovell: "1st miner was wearing Oakleys. I estimate worldwide exposure of a least $100 million for company"

Me, retweeting him: "Not sure if serious . . ." Really, I figured he was just cracking wise "in character," as it were. Which would have been pretty funny, actually.

Rovell, in a direct message to me: "dead serious. scroll back your TV, Craig."

Me: "I don't doubt he was wearing Oakleys. I was just surprised that your first thought at this was the marketing angle."

He ignored me after that, but tweeted a bunch more stuff about how Oakley provided the glasses, how Oakley has offices in Chile, and that sort of thing.

Again, nothing personal against Rovell because that's the sort of work he does and he probably can't help himself. But I think it may have been the most depressing Twitter exchange in the history of Twitter exchanges.

I am about the least sentimental and emotional person on the planet when it comes to news stories like these, but man, we were watching a rare moment in which the human spirit peaked out from behind all of the awfulness in this world, and people are thinking about . . . product placement.

Boys

2010-10-02T18:28:00.003-04:00

Carlo hit a kid at school a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't a major incident. More of a reflex than anything else. The kid pulled on his backpack. Carlo hates it when people do that so he turned around and slugged him in the gut.

The teacher saw it and tried to explain to Carlo that it was the wrong thing to do. There was no getting through to him, though, because Carlo tunes out disapprobation, 100% of the time. "I'm awesome and righteous," he thinks to himself, "so there is no way this angry person could be talking to me." The teacher wisely escalated the situation: she sent Carlo to the principal's office and the principal forced Carlo to call Carleen at work and tell her what he did. This got through to him and he realized that he was wrong. I spoke with the teacher the night before last, and she said Carlo's been great since then. He either learned his lesson or the kids are all too scared to mess with him.

He's playing soccer this fall. That's probably worth its own post, but for now just know that he generally likes it. Apart from his stunning good looks he'll never have anything in common with David Beckham, but he's not the worst kid out there either. And he has a great attitude too: he runs around, has fun and doesn't care if he scores goals or if the team wins or not and that's probably all anyone can ask.

The games have all gone well until today. I should have known that it was going to be a bad day when the other team showed up and started doing highly regimented group warmups before the game. Kindergarten soccer teams don't do that. They run around and kick the ball a bit and talk about Batman. These other guys drilled like the Soviet army. Maybe they were having fun with all of that, but I'm not sure how it could be possible.

The worst part was that they played like goons. They pushed and they shoved and they tripped and they tackled. The referee must have had other things on his mind, because apart from some half-hearted "let's keep it clean out there, boys" he really wasn't all that into restoring order. The other coach seemed pleased that he had turned five year-olds into thugs, because no matter how ugly it got out there, he just clapped his hands and told his kids that they were doing a great job.

Carlo doesn't get the ball very often, so he wasn't getting shoved, but a couple of his teammates -- the fast, skilled little guys -- were taking a beating. One kid came out of the game after getting shoved to the ground, landing hard on his head. At one point, when our boys started to get discouraged, our coach gathered them together and told them -- loudly, so that others might hear -- how proud he was that they were playing "good clean soccer." It was heartening to hear.

But it wasn't enough for me. Seeing the rough play made me think of how bad I felt when I heard that Carlo hit that other kid. It made me think of little incidents I had with other boys when I was young. It made me think of how difficult if can be to be a boy. To have society's expectations of what it means To Be A Man come into conflict with my own, non-aggressive and non-violent values so very often as I grew up. It made me think about the fine line a young man must walk in order to avoid becoming either a brute or a victim.

I can't communicate these feelings with Carlo yet -- he's far too young -- and even if I wanted to, I couldn't at that moment because the game was going on. But what I was seeing go down this morning was starting to prey on me, so I did the only thing I could do: I stared at Carlo's head as he ran up and down the pitch, willing him to hear the psychic message I was sending him:

"Carlo: it's wrong to hit. I'm so glad you learned that after what happened at school that time. You are a sensitive boy, and I understand that your emotions sometimes get away from you. That happened to me when I was your age too. It will be hard to learn to control yourself sometimes -- you'll want to scream and lash out and cry to the heavens when things don't go the way you want them to -- but you'll learn to reign that in. I did. I know you can, because you're intelligent, and strong-willed and wonderful.

"But let's leave that until tomorrow. Right now I want you to chase after that tall boy with the blond hair on the other team who just shoved Aiden, and I want you to body slam his skinny punk ass to the grass and whale on him until he cries for his momma."

Carlo didn't hear me. It's probably for the best that he didn't.

Raising a son is hard.

Free Tiffany!

2010-09-09T21:46:00.000-04:00

As I've mentioned, I have a little studio in my basement. Each morning I spend fifteen or twenty minutes down there taping the HBT Daily videos that get posted on the blog and various other places in NBC land. The host is Tiffany Simons. She does her thing from the main studio in Connecticut. We hear each other via our little earpieces and see each other on video monitors. She sets up the segments and shoots me questions designed to make me look smart.

Everyone should have someone who does that for them, by the way. Not just about sports, but about life in general. Imagine if you were driving down the street and, rather than merely ranting when a jerk cuts you off, a pleasant young woman says "Craig: that guy who just cut you off looks like an asshole. Why don't you tell all of us the ways in which you're a better driver than he is."

Wouldn't that be great?

Anyway, Carlo is usually home when I go downstairs to tape. He has seen the studio equipment and he has seen the end product online, but he has never seen me actually tape a segment (which he thinks is TV). I didn't think it really interested him much until tonight when we had this conversation:

Carlo: Did you do the TV thing today?

Me: Yep.

Carlo: Is that lady still living in our basement?

Nope. That's not creepy at all. Not one bit.

Why Working at Home is Both Awesome and Horrible

2010-09-01T06:40:00.000-04:00

This is stunningly accurate. Really, apart from the fact that I wake up even earlier now that I work from home than I did when I had an office job, the dynamic -- if not all of the specifics -- is pretty much dead-on.

What do I do? Why, I'm a . . .

2010-08-12T22:04:00.001-04:00

In the last eight months there have been several occasions on which I've had to name my occupation. Forms at the doctor's office. Surveys. Applications for this or that. It used to be easy. I'd write "lawyer" or, if I was feeling a tad pretentious that day, "attorney." It's not as easy anymore.

The most technically correct term for what I do and what I am is probably "blogger." But for as much as I love and defend the fine art of blogging, the title "blogger" sounds a bit, I dunno, silly. And even if didn't sound silly it's not always a useful term. Sure, anyone reading this or generally surfing around the web will be cool with it, but anyone who isn't at least moderately Internet savvy -- which is a lot more people than you may realize -- has trouble with the term. If they've heard it at all, it probably was used in some bullshit newspaper trend piece about how the lowering of journalistic standards is ushering in the End Times. If they haven't heard the term it takes so much time to explain what I do that the thumbnailing purpose of a title is defeated anyway.

I've toyed with "writer," but that's even more pretentious than "attorney." For one thing it's vague. What do you write? Are you a writer of novels? Children's books? Instruction manuals for washing machines? Saying you're a "writer" is less a description of one's occupation than it is a lifestyle statement. A person who says that they're "a writer" -- and nothing more -- is usually trying to tell you that they're an intellectually-inclined soul who wears interesting and/or complicated glasses, doesn't hold up all that well when their political assumptions are challenged and likes jazz a little too much. Or they're trying to get laid. Either way, the only people who can really get away with calling themselves "writers" are people who have written a novel, a thin volume of half-decent poetry and an interesting though ultimately rejected screenplay. The rest of us are poseurs.

That led me to "baseball writer." First time I whipped that one out, however, I was asked which team I covered and why I wasn't at the ballpark that night. That aside, it's the best I had been able to come up with and -- after explaining that I'm closer to being a columnist than a beat writer -- it satisfies most people.

But it's not perfect. No, the closest to perfect is a description my friend Ethan came up with this morning:

I just realized: You're a DJ for the baseball news. You don't create the news; you aren't the news; you just riff on the news. You keep the music (news) going. You know you have to play what's hot, but it's your mix and your patter, and you throw in an oldie or an obscure Smiths single when you want to, dammit.

I've taken to telling people that I've only had two jobs I've ever liked. Turns out they were the same job all along.

How to Become a Famous Blogger

2010-08-02T16:18:00.000-04:00

The bike wreck

2010-07-11T23:31:00.000-04:00

I recently pulled my bike out of storage for the first time in five years. Kids and work and laziness and everything else kept me from riding it, but now I'm back in the saddle as it were. After a few short warm up rides I've done a 28 mile trail ride a few times. I'll probably keep doing that most weekends until the weather gets cold. I'm happy to be cranking again, at least in my own modest, flat-terrain, not-so-fast way.

There was a time when I rode more often. Between 1998 and 2003 I tried to do a substantial ride once or twice a week if I could. Nothing serious, really -- maybe 20 miles here or there -- but enough to keep the head clear and to keep sloth and obesity at bay. I rode much more seriously when I was in college, though, often doing 30 miles or more a couple times a week in addition to my usual riding around campus thing. At least until the bike wreck.

It was the summer of 1994. Unlike the previous summer when I worked two jobs and tried my best to keep busy, the summer of '94 was all about drinking beer -- I had just turned 21 -- throwing a baseball around and generally goofing off. I had a job at the Ohio State bookstore, but it wasn't particularly stressful. I worked at the office supplies counter. If I didn't feel like going in on any given day, I just didn't. If I felt like leaving two hours early on a given day, I just did. I'm still not sure how I got away with that.

I used my ample free time to ride around Columbus. Sometimes it was a purposeful ride on a trail. Sometimes it was a long stamina-builder out in the country. Sometimes -- usually with my friend Todd -- it was just riding aimlessly all over the city. We'd head downtown and ride down parking garage ramps. One time we rode through a hotel lobby and across a pedestrian walkway over High Street. Wherever it was, and whether I was with Todd or not, rare was the day when I didn't ride somewhere.

August 21st was going to be a great day. It was a Sunday, and I had tickets to see Bob Dylan at the Ohio State fair that evening. My first Dylan show, and I had been looking forward to it for a long time. Figuring I couldn't just wait around all day, I decided to kill some time with a ride. I hit the trial that follows the Olentangy river up to Worthington and back. It had rained the night before and there were a lot of puddles on the trail. I took things slower than usual from campus up to Worthington, but by the time I turned around to come home I was getting pretty confident. Too confident, it turned out.

I was somewhere between Antrim Lake and Whetstone Park, buzzing along at full speed, when I hit a puddle that turned out to be more mud than water. My bike slid out from under me but I kept going. As I hurtled head first -- and, alas, helmetless -- towards the pavement, I didn't panic. I didn't go blank. My life didn't flash before my eyes. Rather, I simply had this casual, almost lazy thought that more or less went "well, isn't THIS fucking great." I was more disgusted with myself than anything.

I don't think I went unconscious, but I don't remember the impact either. I was laying on my side, not yet feeling any pain, and feeling an immediate, inexplicable need to get back up. I struggled to my knees and then to my feet and turned around back the way I had come. Two rollerbladers were slowing down as they approached me. The woman went wide-eyed. The man started yelling at me: "Jesus! Are you alright! Jesus!" I really had no idea. Indeed, I hadn't really had a conscious thought yet. As he started yelling it dawned on me that I could be injured. I decided to take a look at myself and see if I was.

"Hmmm. That left arm is hanging a bit lower than usual and I'll be damned if I can move it," I thought. "More blood than one usually sees on my forearms and knees too," I calmly went on. I concluded the assessment by noting how difficult it was to triage the situation what with everything spinning around like it was. I was interrupted at that point by Mr. Rollerblader grabbing onto my good arm and my back and telling me in very slow and soothing tones that I'd be better off if I sat down on the ground. That was probably a good idea, because I'm pretty sure that I did lose consciousness a few seconds later.

I woke up, lying on my back. Mr. Rollerblader was hovering over me. He had been joined by a jogger and another couple of bikers. Rollerbladder was holding a little white towel to my head. I heard him say to one of the others that his wife had skated back to Antrim in order to call an ambulance. I also heard him say something like " . . . I don't think so, it's just bleeding a lot." I think he meant my head looked ugly but that he didn't think I had a cracked skull or anything. At that point he noticed that I was awake. He told me not to move. I tried to sit up anyway because I'm kind of an asshole when it comes to stuff like that.

I made it to a sitting position but I couldn't do any better. My head was throbbing, but the real pain was in my left shoulder. I looked down and, just as I saw how low it was sagging, Rollerblader said that he was pretty sure I broke my collar bone and maybe separated my shoulder. I felt nauseous and dizzy and I couldn't hear very well. Eventually he eased me back to my back, saying something about how anything could be broken, so I probably shouldn't move.

I have no idea how much time had passed when I heard the helicopter. It hovered several hundred feet above us. There was a lot of confusion -- they weren't airlifting me out of there, were they? -- but it flew away a minute or two later. Turns out it was just trying to pinpoint where I was so the ambulance could find me. A few minutes later it backed slowly down the trail to where we were. I remember thinking how badly I wanted to ask the driver how hard it was to back all that way down the trail.

The EMTs got out and took a look at me. One of them moved the towel from my head and got what appeared to be a satisfied look on his face. He told Rollerblader that it was just a gash and didn't look serious. They got a backboard and a gurney out and rolled me onto it. They also put a neck brace on me. Rollerblader and the others gave me little pats of encouragement and some assorted take it easys and were on their way.

Once in the ambulance the EMTs asked me questions and shined lights in my eyes to see just how messed up I was. I answered a couple of questions at first, but the neck brace was starting to freak me out. I'm claustrophobic and I have an intense fear of suffocation and I felt like the thing was smothering me. Instead of responding to their questions I repeatedly asked them to take the neck brace off. They said no several times, but after I insisted they went through what sounded like some legal routine in which they asked me if I understood what I was asking them to do, whether I took full responsibility for whatever happened without the neck brace and a lot of that kind of thing. I apparently satisfied them that I was lucid enough to make the choice, so they took the neck brace off. One of them told me that if I ended up paralyzed that I shouldn't come crying to them. I think he was joking, but I'm not sure. I'd like to think that if they really thought I had a neck or a back injury that they would have just ignored me.

The hospital was rather anticlimactic. By then they had figured out that I wasn't a serious trauma case, so they had me cool it on a gurney for what seemed like forever. Eventually I was shuffled into an X-Ray room. Then I was shuffled to an exam room where I waited for an even longer time. At least there was a baseball game on TV to help me pass the time. Eventually a doctor came in, examined me a bit and did some more light-in-the-eyes stuff. He told me that I had a clean break to my left collar bone and a concussion. The gash to the head was pretty minor and didn't even need stitches. Same with my legs and arm. The treatment: lots of gauze pads, a funky looking brace that fastened with velcro straps to keep my shoulder immobilized and a big honkin' prescription of some big honkin' pain killers. I'd have to fill that myself later, but the doctor gave me the first dose and I was soon feeling pretty groovy.

When they went to discharge me they asked me who would be picking me up. Good question! Carleen was in France on a study abroad program, so she was out. My parents lived hundreds of miles away. Todd and just about any friend I could think of who could get me was out of town. My friend April was the only person I had them even try to call, but she wasn't home. They ended up just giving me a cab voucher.

In the cab on the way back to my apartment it dawned on me: the Dylan show! I had been in the hospital a lot longer than I had realized and the show was going to start in a little over an hour. There was no way I was going to be able to drive in my condition -- too many meds, way too dizzy, too much pain -- but something told me that I needed to go anyway. I asked the cabbie if the voucher was good for two stops. He told me it was good for anything, so I had him take me to my apartment and had him wait outside while I changed out of my bloody and muddy clothes. It took forever in my condition, but I did my best to wash up, put on some clean clothes, grabbed my ticket, got back into the cab and told him to take me to the State Fair. I'm pretty sure he thought I was a loony, but the fact that I let him fill out the voucher himself -- tip line and all -- probably made up for it.

I found my seat a few minutes before Dylan took the stage. He began with "Jokerman" which was a song I never much cared for. "Lay Lady Lay" was a bit better because he lit into it like he was angry, kind of like he did on "Before the Flood." "All Along the Watchtower" was good, but rather rote. Things ticked up nicely by the middle of the set with some "Blood on the Tracks" tunes and then a couple of obscure things like "In the Garden," which was easily the best song of the show. He didn't play "Like a Rollin' Stone" at all, though, which would have shocked me if my fuzzy, drug-addled head had allowed me to feel shock. As it was I was groovin' and I didn't really care.

I headed for the parking lot and walked around for a good five minutes trying hard to remember where I parked before it dawned on me that I was stranded. I waked back into the fairgrounds and stumbled through the midway a bit, trying to think of how to get back home. I could walk it, I thought, but it was a few miles through some bad neighborhoods to get back where I needed to go, and I wasn't in any shape for that. I wasn't hopeful when I called April again -- for all I know she was out of town -- but thankfully she answered.

April met me at the gates of the fairgrounds and I got in. My shoulder was starting to ache again, and I remembered that I needed to get my prescription filled. April drove me to an all-night pharmacy way up in Dublin and then took me back home. When we got there, her husband Brian was waiting on my front stoop. Though newlyweds, neither of them were 21 yet, and I had spent the summer buying them beer. Brian got the lowdown on my bike wreck and suggested that, in celebration of my survival, we all get drunk. Seemed like a great idea to me, so we walked across the street, got a couple of cases of lager and spent the rest of the night in my apartment drinking beer and listening to Dylan. I didn't go to work the next morning. Since I didn't wake up until after noon, I didn't even bother to call in.

That all happened sixteen years ago, and a lot of things have changed. I ride a bit slower now than I used to. I also wear a helmet when I ride these days. Dylan's shows have gotten a lot tighter since then. I don't mix heavy prescription pain killers with alcohol anymore and I haven't slept past noon for any reason in over a decade. Brian and April are divorced and presumably buy their own beer. People carry cell phones around now, which would have been handy a couple of times that day. One of the few things that hasn't changed is my regret over the fact that I didn't get Mr. Rollerblader's name so I could thank him.

If you're out there, dude: thanks.

Adventures in Video

2010-06-03T22:09:00.004-04:00

So I've done two videos from my spiffy basement studio so far. The first one was yesterday. The second one was today. I think we'll be doing them weekly at first. If they get popular we may do more. If they don't get popular I suppose we'll burn the tapes and pretend it all never happened, like "Fletch Lives," "After M*A*S*H" and "The New WKRP."

Ever hear yourself on a tape recorder and think you sound awful? Multiply that by a gabillion for video. People are telling me that they're coming out OK, especially for a hopeless newbie like me, but I'm not so sure. I have a face and a voice that lend themselves to the written word.

This is not evidence that I lack self-confidence. Quite the contrary, actually. I have no problems being pasty and bald, for example. But when you're bald you don't spend all that much time looking in the mirror, and as a result you start to think you're thinner, more handsome and less pasty than you really are. And my inner monologue voice sounds a lot like Cary Grant and that just somehow doesn't make it to tape. Having an overly healthy self-image challenged in such a head-on way is a rather sobering experience.

But I suppose I'll press on with it. I'll admit, I was more comfortable today than I was yesterday. I'll likely feel even better about it next week and the week after that. By mid-summer I'll be yelling at production assistants and shunning my unfamous friends like a genuine TV star.

The Basement Studio

2010-05-31T22:45:00.000-04:00

NBC decided that it would be a neat idea to set me up with a little studio in my basement to do video for the blog. Ten boxes and six hours with a technician in my basement setting it all up later and the thing is operational.

You've heard people tell stories about getting drunk and making cell phone calls they regretted the next morning? Imagine what might happen if I stumble into my basement after half a bottle of Wild Turkey and start broadcasting stuff . . .

Anna's adventures in Wonderland

2010-04-19T20:53:00.000-04:00

We've been reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to Anna at bedtime. We do a chapter a night. When we leave the room, however, she picks up the book and goes on reading, getting about halfway through the next chapter on her own before she goes to sleep.

I finished "Lobster Quadrille" before I left her room a few minutes ago, but waited outside her door to listen to her begin "Who Stole the Tarts." She read to herself out loud, handling 19th century rhythms much better than I do when I read to her.

After a few moments I poked my head back in her room, making the excuse that I thought I had forgotten to shut her window, but mostly because I just wanted to see her lying in bed, reading the book. As I left the room I asked her what she thinks of nonsense.

"Daddy, it's not nonsense. It's Wonderland," she said, not taking her eyes off the book for a second.

My Usual Day at Work

2010-04-09T21:07:00.000-04:00

The Complete Spring Training Report

2010-03-15T19:24:00.005-04:00

I'm back after eight wonderful days bopping around Florida. The product as written over in baseball land ended up being about 60% travelogue, 40% baseball, so it may be of interest to the dozen and a half people who read this site. Here are links to all the posts, in chronological order:

Greetings from Spring Training

Day with the Mets Part 1
Day with the Mets Part 2
Day with the Mets Part 3
Day with the Mets Part 4

Meeting Old Gator

Day with the Twins Part 1
Day with the Twins Part 2
Day with the Twins Part 3
Day with the Twins Part 4

Red Sox Nation South Part 1
Red Sox Nation South Part 2
Red Sox Nation South Part 3

Arrrrgh! The Pirates Part 1
Arrrrgh! The Pirates Part 2
Arrrrgh! The Pirates Part 3

An Aborted Trip to Steinbrenner Field

Phun with the Phillie Phanatics Part 1
Phun with the Phillie Phanatics Part 2
Phun with the Phillie Phanatics Part 3
Phun with the Phillie Phanatics Part 4

Spring Training Trip Wrap Up

If you have the patience to get through all of that you probably enjoyed it.

To beard or not to beard?

2010-02-25T20:42:00.000-05:00

Things you can do when you work from home: 1. Grow beard; 2. Pretend to be 19th Century president; 3. Pretend to be Elvis; 4. Go back to normal.

Fear and Loathing in the Sunshine State

2010-02-18T23:03:00.009-05:00

I got my itinerary this afternoon. The flights and hotels are booked, the rental car is reserved and the media credentials are (almost) squared away. I'm going to Florida the second week of March to cover spring training. I'm going to once again do battle with a state with which I have never really gotten along.

There were, I believe, three childhood vacations to the sunshine state. Maybe four -- they kind of blend together so I may be mixing up the continuity a bit -- but none of them were unequivocal successes. The earliest was a classic "let's pile six people in a Buick and drive 1,500 miles -- why? -- because it's the 1970s and that's just what people did back then" trip. The two extras were a young neighbor couple, friends of my parents. I think I was six years-old. Must have been at least six, actually, because we were driving the light green '79 ~~LeSabre.~~ [UPDATE: My dad notes: "It was not a LeSabre. It was a full deuce and a quarter. Electra 225 Limited. Strictly class."] A celadon green, I'd say, which my parents called "the thick and chewy Buick" because of the soft cushy vinyl -- or whatever it was -- on the roof.

I dwell on the car, because I remember almost nothing of our time in Florida itself. Just the interminable drive from Flint, Michigan to Key Largo, two adults and a child in the front seat, two adults and a child in the back. Plus purses. And pillows. And books. And Kleenex boxes. And shoes. And a cooler full of sandwiches and sodas, because it was Jimmy Carter's America and malaise meant only eating at restaurants once a day no matter how far from home you were. And it was always a Howard Johnson's.

The next trip I remember was just the four of us. It started out as another driving trip, but Ronald Reagan was in office by then, and he turned us all into men and women of action. 20 miles from home my dad hit an ice patch on the highway, decided that he didn't need two days of this crap, diverted to a pay phone and booked us on a same-day flight from Windsor, Ontario to Tampa. Well, next day, technically, as the flight left at what I remember as 3AM the following morning. We waited things out in a Travelodge motel sort of sleeping, sort of not. Once we got on the plane my brother ordered an orange juice and the flight attendant brought him a screwdriver.

The trip itself was generally OK. We went to the pre-Epcot Disney World, which I imagine today would be considered quaint. We made it down to Key Largo again, staying in a mobile home that belonged to my grandparents. I don't think they had been down there for some time, as the inside was covered with dust and grease and all manner of nastiness. The first morning there my mom turned on the oven and the whole place filled with noxious fumes. The room in which I slept was full of my grandmother's trashy romance and horror novels. One of them had a hyper-realistic cover picture of a man being hanged. It haunted my dreams for the rest of my childhood. I can still picture it, quite vividly, nearly 30 years later.

But the real downer of that trip wasn't the trailer -- you can overlook a lot when you're near a nice beach in January -- it was a short visit with some people we used to know named the Keefes.* They had been our neighbors in Michigan for a time. The father sold cars (Buicks, natch). The mother, who seemed on the young side and was rather loopy, worked at a record store. Their daughter, Janie, was a year younger than me, and we were more or less inseparable when we were five and six years old. My dad built a ladder that straddled the backyard fence so we could visit one another. I swam in Janie's pool, she played with her Barbie dolls in my basement and we decided that when we grew up we'd get married and work together as garbage men, Janie driving the truck, me riding on the back, emptying cans. She was my first best friend.

One day, however, the Keefes just picked up and moved from Michigan down to Florida. I don't think that I ever knew the details, but I recall vague talk of scandal -- maybe drugs -- and other unseemliness. I can only assume my parents decided to visit them for my and Janie's sake, and I remember being glad to see her. Their home in Florida, however, was a disheveled mess. The morning we went to Disney World -- Janie and her mother came with us -- the power was turned off at their house and some mention was made of "confusion" over the electric bill. I was too young to know what was going on, but I knew something was amiss. The day in Disney was fun, but the visit has become overshadowed by a certain sadness in my mind and memory, partially because of Janie's apparently unfortunate circumstances, but also because it was the last day I ever saw her. I've often wondered how her life has gone. I worry that it hasn't gone particularly well.

The next trip to Florida started off with such promise. It was April 1984. My parents were coming off a couple of years of relative prosperity and we were making the trip in a motor home with a boat in tow. In addition to the four of us, two of our best friends -- the Yoder brothers -- were allowed to come along for the trip. The two days on the road were great fun. We brought thousands of baseball cards with us and we sorted and traded them all the way down I-75. Day three was spent out in the great big ocean in our little boat speeding around, jumping waves and having a grand time. It had all the makings of an epic vacation.

That night, however, my father was paged by the campground office. The call was from Michigan. My great Uncle Harry -- who was really more like my grandfather and who may be more responsible than anyone for me being the baseball fan I am today -- had suffered a massive heart attack and died in his back yard. We started back home that night. His funeral -- a Jewish affair, held an extra sundown to accommodate our journey -- was the first one I ever attended. By the end of this ordeal I had come to associate Florida with sorrow and disaster.

It would be 21 years before I'd get back there. This time I was there on legal business, dispatched to Sarasota under outrageously stressful circumstances. I wasn't exactly told to obstruct an official investigation while I was down there, but it was pretty clear that everyone on my side of the table would have been happier if the investigation went slowly and was hopeful I could make that happen. I wasn't exactly being followed by government investigators while I was down there, but they certainly knew where I was at all times during the trip. I wasn't exactly threatened while I sat in a warehouse full of rare coins for three straight days, but the fact that the security detail that guarded them openly and freely brandished Israeli assault weapons didn't make me feel all that comfortable either. On the bright side I billed a shitload of hours that week and back in those days that was pretty much all that mattered.

My last trip to Florida came on the same case a year later when I visited my indicted client and his wife in their stately Florida Keys home to prepare him for his criminal trial. I'll admit, the place was fabulous. Great views. Expensive wine. Wonderful steaks, seafood, sunsets and swimming. But for as nice as the accommodations were, an air of dread hung over the entire trip. I won't say my co-counsel and I knew exactly what was coming, but we did know there were rough days ahead. I remember floating in the pool and looking at the stars one evening when Tom walked out on to his bedroom balcony above where I swam. He raised a toast to me and told me that the next time I came I'd have to bring my family. I knew there wouldn't be a next time. I don't know if he did too and was merely playing the role of charming host or if he really felt he'd beat the rap. Whether it was hubris or denial I still don't know, but it cast a pall over the entire trip.

It's been four years since that visit, and again, I prepare for Florida. Will this be the time nothing goes sideways for me down there? The first time that no bad news, bad cars, bad hotels, bad vibes or bad people come between me and all that the Sunshine State is supposed to offer?

I'm hopeful. After all, I'm going down there for baseball. To grok the spring training zeitgeist in the service of my dream job. I'll be armed with a press pass an expense account and a vague-to-nonexistent mandate to meet people, watch games and write stuff, which is something I'm fairly confident I can handle. No amount of bad Florida juju can mess that up, can it?

Wait. Don't answer that. If you need me, I'll be checking out the cactus league schedules and checking to see if my airfare to Miami is refundable . . .

*As is the case in many of these tales, some names have been changed to protect the innocent, the guilty, the vaguely shifty and the morally dubious.

New Albany

2010-01-17T22:44:00.006-05:00

I like to tell people that I live in a fortified compound on the outskirts of Columbus, but I really live in New Albany.

New Albany was a genuine little village dating back to the 1850s or so, though not much of one. As late as the mid 80s it didn't have much more going for it than a feed mill, a general store and a high school for the farm kids. Like so many other Ohio farm towns it was well on its way to oblivion. Then the New Albany Company came.

The New Albany Company was, for all practical purposes, Les Wexner and Jack Kessler. Wexner, Columbus' only billionaire, was the founder of The Limited, which spawned and/or bought and subsequently grew and/or spun off Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch, Express, Bath and Body Works and all manner of other stores that fill your local mall. Kessler was a developer. The two of them decided that conquering the retail world was not enough. They wanted to make a more permanent mark. They wanted to make the prairie bloom. So they bought up a bunch of land in and around New Albany through shell corporations, made some shady deals with the Columbus city council to get the water and sewers sent out this way and started building faux Georgian mansions everywhere. The first one built was Wexner's house. At about 22,000 square feet, it's a modest little country place for his family of four.

At the time they told the locals that if they put a blindfold on and came back in 20 years they wouldn't know where they were. And they were right. Most of the farmers were bought-off and left, their land replaced with neighborhoods with names like Alban Mews, Clivdon, Edge of Woods, The Farms, Fenway, Hampstead Heath, Lambton Park, Lansdowne, and Upper Clarenton. Instead of soybeans, this land is now used to grow the over-privileged offspring of bankers, insurance executives and lawyers. They go to school on a campus of buildings that looks as though it was transported in toto from the University of Virginia. Leisure trails snake through the village -- don't you dare call it anything other than a village, even though legally speaking it became a city once it surpassed 5,000 residents -- and the entire community is lined and surrounded by miles of its signature white fence.

There are still a few pre-New Albany Company old timers living in their lower-grade, early postwar homes. They were never farmers, really. They were just people who thought they were moving out to the country once upon a time. Their housing stock is mostly run-down, early postwar ranches with aluminum siding, basketball hoops on the garages, shaggy evergreen shrubs and chain link fences. They're the kinds of houses that, were they on New Albany Company-controlled property, would be regulated out of existence as eyesores and threats to property values.

Some of these pre-Wexnerite residents are a plain nuisance. Indeed, a couple of them have managed to stick on the village council somehow, and there they sit, voting their consciences as if they still matter. For example, when it came time to re-zone some land for the new private surgical hospital and professional park, it was only approved on a 5-2 vote. When the new sign law was proposed (the one that was designed to put that ugly gas station near the village center out of business) it was approved on a 5-2 vote. When it was time for the appropriation to build the quaint traffic circle with expensive landscaping just south of the country club, it too was approved on a 5-2 vote. Those two are just trouble. Ingrates really, unaware of how lucky they are that they were saved from the barbaric and unsightly country living they endured just a couple of decades ago.

But while the old timers' efforts to retain the last bit of country in the face of all of this country club are routinely thwarted, they somehow managed to prevent the removal of the ugly but earnest War Memorial near the village center. Constructed in the heady days of the Great War, it recorded all of the names of the New Albany farm boys who died from Tayacoba in 1898 to Tet in 1968. When we moved here in 2005 it appeared to be a bit neglected. A few months later, however, a New Albany native died in Baghdad.

He was not the son of an attorney or insurance executive and he didn't live in Landsdowne or Alban Mews. He grew up in an early postwar home with a basketball hoop on the garage and aluminum siding, about a half mile north of where the famous painted white fence stops and Main Street turns back into plain old Rt. 62. After he died, the war memorial was gussied up with a wreath with his name on it and a new spotlight installed to illuminate it at night. It was soon covered with flags and ribbons, and quickly became something that no New Albany Company Community resident would ever be allowed to put on their lawn. I'm sure most of my Range Rover-driving, latte-sipping neighbors don't notice it on their way to pilates class.

One day, I imagine, the last of the old timers will be gone and the war memorial will be taken down and replaced by something far more tasteful closer to the new village hall. Given the prevalent demographics, it probably won't grow much going forward.

* * * * *

We moved to New Albany in 2005 when our daughter was barely a year old and our son was on the way. We were convinced that our 75 year-old house in the city was too small and too drafty in which to raise babies, and we knew that the schools in the area were sub par. We were probably right about most of that, though whether that demanded that we move to New Albany remains an open question.

Still, I can't say I hate it here. There were several times over the past five years when the level sidewalks and nicely landscaped village green right outside our window provided a calming counterbalance to the chaos inside the house. Anna's school is very nice. The snow is cleared off the streets quite quickly. It's quiet at night.

But though our neighborhood is among the most modest in the village, to the old timers we're no different than anyone else. Sure, I drink regular coffee and not lattes and sure I could point out the subtle differences between our Volvo wagon and those Range Rovers, but I'm not sure it would help my case. We're part of the new New Albany. The people who destroyed the village in order to save it.

Appellant's Convictions are Affirmed

2010-01-10T23:46:00.005-05:00

I received a blast from the past last week when the decision came down in a case I left a long time ago. The case? State v. Noe, one of my three forays into criminal defense work in my eleven-year legal career. The decision: Tom Noe's conviction affirmed. His eighteen year sentence -- which still has around sixteen years left on it -- upheld. I wrote that appellate brief a good eighteen months ago. Maybe longer. Glad to see the wheels of justice spinning so swiftly.

For reasons that aren't worth going into here I think it's an awful decision.* Most people familiar with Tom Noe's story don't lose any sleep over him rotting in jail, but the fact is that Tom was unconstitutionally overcharged, shafted on a dozen procedural motions, convicted in the press long before a jury was ever seated and handed a sentence that outstripped his actual transgressions by orders of magnitude (query: how does one engage in a criminal conspiracy with oneself? Only that Lucas County jury can say for sure). Still, there's a difference between not guilty and innocent, and when you play the kinds of games, make the kinds of decisions and make the kinds of enemies Tom Noe made in his life you're not going to get a lot of calls in your favor. The upshot: I'm not terribly surprised by the outcome even if, legally speaking, it's the wrong outcome.

People who know about that case ask me how I, a liberal guy with a strong aversion to backroom political messiness could defend a hardcore, admittedly corrupt Republican dealmaker like Noe for as long as I did. I have two answers to that. Well, two answers other than "he was my boss's client so I had to do so if I didn't want to get fired."

The first one is the boring one: I truly do believe that quaint stuff about people being innocent until proven guilty, about the government having the burden of proof, about the Fourth Amendment protecting people from illegal searches and seizures and about people being treated equally under the law. Tom Noe deserved a defense just like anyone else, and if he was going to choose my boss and, by extension, me to give it to him, I felt duty-bound to give it to him.

It was the second reason, however, that made me quite happy to defend Tom Noe day-in-day-out for nearly two years: he's a neat guy. He's funny. He's strange in a harmless though highly interesting way. For all the malevolence of which he has been accused (and convicted, I probably need to add), he's the kind of guy you just want to hang around. And before you assume that I was either a victim of Stockholm syndrome or hypnotized by his power, wealth and charisma, let me note that by the time he entered my life he had no power or wealth left and little in the way of charisma, if indeed he ever had any. Because of the scandal and media circus that preceded his indictment, by the time I met him he was basically an unemployed guy living off of the generosity of his family and the very small number of friends who hadn't abandoned him while waiting for his inevitable trip to prison.

I have about 50 Tom Noe anecdotes, most of which I can't share due to the attorney-client privilege. This one, however, kind of sums up his personality during his limbo of 2005-06, and it's the kind of thing that made me come to like him.

Tom was living in Florida when he got indicted. The indictment came down on a Thursday. He surrendered himself to the local authorities, was arrested, booked, and cavity-searched on Friday, flown to Ohio for his arraignment on the following Monday during which he had to pledge both his home and his elderly mother's home in order to make bail. He was given the perp-walk to end all perp-walks, his kids were tracked down and interviewed at school, and his name and face led every newscast in the state. When he was finally released late Monday evening he flew back home to Florida.

Our co-counsel up in Toledo was handling the nuts and bolts of the arraignment and bail, so I hadn't heard from Tom this entire time. On Tuesday morning he calls me. I answer the phone.

"Hey buddy!" he says cheerfully.

I jokingly ask him if anything is new.

"You bethca! They gave me a first class upgrade on the flight back last night. Free booze! And man, there's a lot of legroom! You shoulda been there! Really nice. You and me fly anywhere, we gotta fly first class. It's the best!"

I laugh, thinking he's joking around, but Noe is genuinely jazzed about his upgrade. Talks about it forever. Asks me to help him figure out the best way to get upgrades the next time he flies. This, by the way, from a man who was just indicted for stealing tens of millions of dollars. If he actually had any of the money they said he stole, he certainly wasn't using it on airfare.

Anyway, it was at that point I decided that Tom was either (a) in total denial as to the seriousness of his situation; (b) had plans to take a boat to Belize soon; and/or (c) was some kind of sociopath criminal mastermind like the Joker or something, completely dismissive of the trouble he was in. It's been nearly four years since that conversation and I haven't been able to rule out any of those options (though if he still has plans to book it to Belize, it's gonna take a jailbreak at this point). All I know for sure is that he spent three nights wearing blaze orange in jail cells, and first class seats on a two hour flight home was all he wanted to talk about.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not defending any of Tom Noe's actions here, proven, alleged or otherwise. And none of this makes Tom Noe a good guy. The judicial system and public opinion has decided pretty clearly that he isn't. I'm just saying that little stupid things like that are the reason I liked defending the guy. And given how few of my clients in my eleven years of practice I can say that about, it has to count for something.

*Given that I haven't worked for my old law firm since 2008 and haven't talked to Tom Noe since well before that, it should probably go without saying that the opinions expressed in this post are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of my old law firm, Tom Noe or anyone else except me. I'm sure the old law firm will give a bunch of no comments about the court's decision if they haven't already and would probably call me a whack job if asked about that. At this point I'm sure Tom Noe would talk to you if you asked him.

The Car Wreck

2009-12-26T00:15:00.007-05:00

I don’t recall exactly how or when I met Shawn and Dave. I just seem to remember them hanging out around backstage during play rehearsals and near the sidelines at football practices. They weren’t in the plays and didn’t play football, mind you. They were just there, and eventually I began spending more and more time with them. They weren’t bad guys, really – I’d call them nothing worse than low-grade knuckleheads – but hanging out with those two brought me closer to real trouble than anything else I did growing up.

I had my first beer with them. A Bud Ice on a cold March night when we were in the eighth grade. Vile stuff, which I choked down while pretending I really liked the taste. Many more followed in the next year. Getting the beer was easy. Shawn’s mom managed a convenience store and the three of us would stop in while she was working. While Shawn would distract her with some invented problem, Dave and I would swipe a case from the cooler and sneak out the back.

There was an elementary school nearby that you could get up on the roof of pretty easily, and we’d drink up there while looking at the stars and listening to Metallica or Iron Maiden or something while never thinking all that much about the ethics of theft, underage drinking and trespassing on school property. When I’d come home the next morning and my folks would ask me how my sleepover went I’d tell them that nothing really happened. And I actually believed it. We never really felt like we were raising any kind of hell. We figured that all of the fourteen year-olds were out drinking stolen beer on rooftops somewhere.

The beerfests – maybe one or two a month – continued until April of my freshman year. My family was moving to another town that month, so the parties were going to end, at least for me. My sendoff was one final sleepover at Shawn’s house, which included one final stop by the convenience store. Unlike previous affairs we had another kid with us, Jeff, who was basically the same brand of knucklehead as Shawn, Dave and me. This time it was going to be a late night outing, so rather than going straight to the school after snagging our beer, we hid it in Shawn’s garage and hung out in the basement watching TV until we knew his dad was asleep. It was just after midnight when we grabbed our stash and slipped out of the house and down the road to the school.

The four of us each had three beers, killing the 12 pack we had ripped off. After a few minutes of staring at the spring stars, a beat up Chevy Chevette squealed into the parking lot and came to a stop. Behind the wheel was a kid named Scott. We knew him, but not well. What we did know was that Scott had failed at least two grades and was the only person in our ninth grade class with a driver's license, which he obtained barely a week before.

Scott climbed up to see us, saw that we were out of beer, and suggested that we get some more. We thought that was a great idea, but another trip to Shawn’s mother's store wasn't an option seeing as we were all supposed to be back home asleep. Scott claimed he knew a place where he could get some, so the five of us piled into his Chevette and drove off into the night.

Though Scott hadn't had anything to drink that night, getting into the car with him wasn't the smartest thing we had ever done. We all liked him well enough, but he wasn't a bright kid, and after a mile or two in his car, we realized he wasn't a good driver. The trip to the store was fairly terrifying, but we somehow made it. After a couple minutes inside, Scott came out with a case of Budweiser, and we were off again.

Scott’s driving was no better coming back than it was heading out. Two miles from home he took a sharp curve too fast, the front wheels went off the road onto the right shoulder, he over-corrected left, and the car flipped over.

I was sitting in the back seat directly behind the driver. As we began to tumble I reached out for the headrest in front of me and held on. Everything began to move in slow motion and take place a step or two removed from immediate reality. The sound of the roof hitting the pavement was nothing more than a distant and muffled thump to me. When I noticed that my feet were above my head, it was much like you might notice when some clouds moved in on an otherwise pleasant afternoon. “That’s strange,” I thought. “This was not at all what I was expecting. The car should be proceeding upright, and yet it’s not. Hmm.”

Just as I was about to turn to my right and ask Shawn what he felt about this most curious turn of events, the car stooped flipping and came to rest upside down in the middle of the road. Real time and my appreciation for the gravity of my circumstances returned as soon as the car stopped. I instinctively reached for the door handle next to me, opened it, rolled out, realized that I was laying in broken glass and sprang to my feet. My heart was racing, but a quick self-examination confirmed that I was not bleeding and that all of my parts were where they were supposed to be. I didn't even get a scratch. Soon Shawn, Dave and Scott appeared, and with the exception of small bloody scratch to Dave’s cheek, none of them were hurt either.

Jeff wasn't as lucky. Sitting in the passenger seat with the window open, he had been partially thrown out of the car as it flipped and came to rest half in and half out, seemingly pinned by the collapsed passenger door. He was conscious, but the back of his head was bleeding badly and his hands were shredded due to the impact with the asphalt.

As we ran to his side, he seemed stunned and non-responsive. Then, in an instant, he thrust himself out from under the door and leapt to his feet, shouting that he smelled gasoline, though none of the rest of us did. He paced around for five or ten seconds before he noticed his hands and felt the blood running down the back of his head, at which point he crouched to his knees and started breathing in and out slowly and deeply.

As the Chevette lay on its back with its rear wheels still spinning, four shocked teenagers paced about, and twenty four cans of beer littered the road. Within a minute or two a sheriff's deputy rolled onto the scene, lights flashing. Shawn, his priorities not exactly in order, ran to the beer cans and began pitching them off the side of the road and into a ditch when he saw the deputy, apparently believing that being caught with some beer was our most serious concern at the moment. Maybe the deputy’s priorities were screwed up too, because rather than rush into the scene to see if everyone was OK, he shined his spotlight on Shawn and yelled at him to quit tossing cans. Once he saw bloody Jeff he left Shawn alone, but not before ordering him to go and pick up the cans he had already thrown down into the ditch.

An ambulance soon arrived. They looked Jeff over and found that his injuries weren’t anywhere near as bad as they looked. His hands were a mess, but the head injury, though bloody, was fairly superficial. Rather than put him on a stretcher or anything, he climbed into the ambulance himself and sat down when they took him away.

A couple more deputies showed up. Scott was ushered away from the rest of us to take a sobriety test, which he passed. He was still taken away though, for paperwork, to have his parents called and to do whatever else they do to sixteen year-old drivers who flip cars at 2 A.M.

Shawn, Dave and I sat in the back of the first deputy’s cruiser as they dealt with Jeff and Scott. Eventually the deputy came back and asked us to tell him what happened. I did most of the talking, giving him as much of the truth as I felt he needed (i.e. I didn’t think he needed to know that we had been drinking up on the school roof before everything went down). Then the deputy said something quite unexpected:

“You boys got somewhere to be?”

We nodded.

“Then y'all best git there,” he said.

He didn't need to tell us twice. We ran off on foot, covering the two miles back to Shawn’s house in what seemed like a minute. After sneaking back into the house undetected, we crawled into sleeping bags on his basement floor and eventually managed to get to sleep.

We woke up the next morning and had breakfast with Shawn’s parents, who somehow didn't notice Jeff's absence. After ten minutes of wondering if we had truly gotten away with it, the phone rang and the jig was up. It was my mom. Jeff's mother had called her once she realized that there were other kids in the wreck besides her son. To say that my mom was angry and hysterical would be something of an understatement. I didn't help matters when I calmly asked if we could discuss all of this later, seeing as Shawn, Dave and I had plans to go bowling that morning. There would be no bowling.

Everyone's parents were at Shawn’s house within an hour taking turns yelling at the three of us. Dave more or less saved our butts when he reminded everyone that the sheriff's deputy just let us go like he did. In an instant all of the grownups’ ire was off us for being dumbasses and onto the sheriff’s office for being outrageously negligent. Sitting here more than twenty years later I can’t remember what, if anything, happened as a result of all of that. I mean, I have to think that someone’s parents complained, but no one ever asked me to go on the record about anything. Maybe our parents just let it drop to save us some sort of charge related to the beer all over the road. I have no idea. At any rate, by the time our parents' attention was turned back to us, their anger had subsided and was replaced by relief that we weren't hurt.

My mom and dad took me home, constantly watching me as we drove, wondering why I wasn't nervous to be in a car so soon after being in an accident like that. Not quite sure how to react when I told them I was fine, they eventually settled on trying to convince me how terrified and damaged I should truly be. Later that day they took me to the hospital to visit Jeff, who had been kept for observation. If they intended this to be a sobering experience, it backfired massively when Jeff, seeing me come in the door, smiled broadly, gave me a bandage-covered high five, and said “Dude! How cool was it that we walked away from that shit?!”

By that evening I was back to normal activities: watching an Atlanta Braves game while shooting stuff on my Commodore 64. I think such normalcy must have pissed my parents off something fierce, because it was only then that they came into my room to tell me that I was grounded. Still, it was a fairly empty gesture given that six days later we would be moving to a different town where I knew no one and would have nothing to do anyway. In light of this, I think my response to the grounding was “um, OK, whatever. Is that it?” I really wanted to get back to the ballgame. I’m surprised my parents didn’t give up with the constructive discipline and just smack the living shit out of me.

It would be several years until I would truly appreciate how idiotic we had been and how lucky we were to still be alive. Hell, if anything the wreck made things worse for a while in that it gave me a vague sense of indestructibility that lasted until well after I got my own driver’s license a year later. I sometimes marvel that I got out of my teens alive.

They were great guys and all, but if I hadn’t moved away from Shawn and Dave, I might not have.

My Christmas List

2009-12-19T21:05:00.002-05:00

Since Anna started reading herself she doesn't usually want us reading books to her before bed anymore. Instead we talk or, more recently, write things with her or watch her write in her little spiral notebook. Sometimes she draws pictures. Sometimes we play hangman. Sometimes she writes stories or lists.

This week it's been Christmas lists. She wrote one for herself (Barbies, Littlest Pet Shop toys, a fuzzy sweater). She wrote one for her stuffed cow (hay, hay, fuzzy sweater). She wrote one for Carlo (seventeen Bakugans; fuzzy sweater). Not sure where she got the idea that everyone wants a fuzzy sweater, but I probably need to go to the store tomorrow and get her one.

Tonight she decided to write one for me, so as I sat next to her in her bed, she asked me what I wanted. I decided to be Super Dad and say "I just want to be with my family."

Anna protested. "No, daddy, we have to write something for Santa to bring you." I didn't want to offer up anything real because then she'd just bug Carleen to go out to the store and buy it for me. So I said "I can't think of anything I want. How about you just write what you think I want."

So she did. And the first four items she put on it were "beer," "wine," "a sandwich," and "fuzzy sweater." Then she drew a picture of a Christmas tree with all four of those things underneath it and the words "for Daddy" above it.

If you're looking for me this Christmas, I'll probably be talking to Children's Services.

Fruit Helper

2009-12-17T21:52:00.002-05:00

Today was Carlo's preschool Christmas party. So instead of picking him up at 3:15, I went at 2:45 to help out and join in the festivities.

When I got there all the kids were at their tables waiting for snacks. Two or three moms were there to help out. I was the only dad. The teacher put us all to work handing out the plates, cups, napkins and food. My job was to hand out the apple and pineapple slices. Carlo said I was the "fruit helper." Soon the other kids called me fruit helper too. A couple of them called me "Mr. Carlo's daddy."

As the kids ate, the moms and I stood to the side and talked. One of them asked me "So, what do you, um . . ." and left it hanging, obviously intending to ask me what I did for a living. In half an instant, her brain seemed to process the fact that she was talking to a jean-sneakers-and-hoodie-wearing, one-or-two-day unshaven father who was free to hand out fruit in the middle of a Thursday afternoon, and realized that I was quite probably unemployed.

I get the sense that your average suburban mom doesn't encounter too many dads at these sorts of things.

I briefly toyed with the notion of allowing her to feel awkward for a while, but I let her off the hook and told her what I do now. "Oh, like the guy from 'Everybody Loves Raymond!'" she said. That's the second time I have heard that this week. Do people not know what sports writers do outside of the context of that show?

The party soon broke up and I took Carlo home. In the car he told me that I was a really good fruit helper.

"Thanks Buddy."

"I don't have school again for two weeks. That's fourteen days."

"I know Buddy."

"It'll be 2010 when I go back to school."

"Yep, Buddy."

"That's next year so it's a long time."

On the whole I'd rather be in Darfur

2009-12-13T22:35:00.000-05:00

I spent most of last week in Indianapolis covering the Winter Meetings. All of the baseball stuff can be found over at NBC. The best thing that happened there, however, had nothing to do with the game.

Tuesday night: Though it's a under a mile from the meetings to my hotel, I take a cab back because it's snowing and blowing and the temperature is plummeting. I love talking to cab drivers for some reason, so I immediately launch into conversation with my driver, who is quite obviously a newcomer to our shores.

We talk about the weather. He says it's very hard for him to get used to, what with him being from Africa and all. Yeah, that would be difficult I agree. Africa, eh? Whereabouts? Darfur, he says. Wow, I'm impressed. I've never met anyone from Darfur before. Must be some culture (and weather) shock to be in Indianapolis, eh? Yeah, he says, but Indianapolis is way better than where he spent the first few months after he got to the U.S.

Me: Where was that?

Him: Lima, Ohio.

Me: What did you think of Lima?

Him: After two weeks there I wanted to go back to Darfur, and people were trying to kill me there, brother.

Radio Days

2009-11-29T14:42:00.005-05:00

I got my job at WCIR through my dad. He had met the program director, who let slip that he was in desperate need of a gopher/office slave. Dad told him I’d be interested and soon enough I began sorting cds, copying reel-to-reel tapes, handing out contest prizes, setting up the transmitter for remote broadcasts and doing all sorts of other odd jobs for the radio station to the tune of $3.35 an hour, which was the minimum wage in 1989. I was 16, though, and it seemed like a pretty good deal.

I didn't really have a desire to get on the air, but eventually did as the result of some dumb luck. There was a week-long teacher's strike in March 1990. With no school, I’d drive up to the station every day to see if there was anything they needed me to do. One morning I arrived to find the P.D. in a heated argument with the overnight guy, whose shift had ended an hour or two before. The overnight guy had somehow locked himself out of the station at 4AM, leaving nearly two hours of dead air until the morning guy arrived, making no effort to bust back in or call anyone about his dilemma. He just sat on the hood of his car and smoked. The P.D. hadn't planned on firing Mr. Overnight, but when people argue for a long enough time someone is going to eventually say something stupid. Mr. Overnight did, and he was gone.

A few minutes later the P.D. came by where I was copying some tapes and asked me if I wanted to go on the air. After an hour or two of the most basic training, he told me to go home and come back that night, as I would be working the 11pm-6am shift until the teacher's strike was over. If things worked out, the weekend overnight guy would move to full time, and I would take over the weekend shifts. Things worked out, and I had the job for the next couple of years.

Like almost everyone else at the station, I was given an awful air name. Following 1950s-era conventional wisdom which held that people won't want to listen to a DJ with an "ethnic" name, the P.D. changed me from Craig Calcaterra to Craig Miller. Within the first couple of weeks the jock who worked before me took to calling me "Madman Miller" as I was coming on the air. While it was stupid I didn't really object, and Craig “The Madman” Miller stuck.

Though it was by far the biggest, most popular station in town, WCIR had antiquated equipment, making the technical part of the job pretty easy. The 1960s-era control board consisted of several round mixing "pots" as opposed to the more modern sliders and equalizers, and the two cd players were haphazardly patched into the board. A rarely-used turntable sat off to the left. Commercials were all played on cartridges that resembled old eight track tapes which would give off a deep and satisfying clunk when you pressed the play button. Rather than sit as if at a desk, the DJ would stand in front of the board while on the air with the microphone hanging at mouth level, much like it would in a recording studio. There was a comfy leather chair in which to sit for the three to five minutes one had to wait before the next station identification, weather report, or segue between songs.

And, oh, were those songs terrible. The pop charts of the late 80s and early 90s were dominated by hair metal bands singing power ballads and some of the most soulless R&B ever recorded. There were some bright spots – REM had a couple of mainstream hits by that point, and you could always count on war horses like Tom Petty and Madonna to have a hit or two – but my play lists were dominated by the likes of Milli Vanilli, M.C. Hammer, Wilson Phillips, Poison, and Michael Bolton. Since the P.D. slept during my graveyard shift I could get away with a bit more freelancing than the other jocks, but I usually found it easier to simply play what was programmed, mostly because people would call in to complain if I didn't play the hits on a constant rotation. Today there is no small amount of grumbling about the bland repetition of top 40 radio, but Clear Channel and the other corporate radio behemoths are giving the people what they want. Or at the very least, are giving the people what they've trained them to want and with what they now feel they cannot do without.

Music aside, I loved the job. No dress code. No paperwork. No manual labor. Working from 11pm until 6am gave me almost total solitude, and as long as I was able to do the station ID at the top of every hour, play the commercials when programmed, and segue from song to song without dead air, I could do almost anything I wanted. Some nights I spent reading a book. Others I spent on the phone, talking to girlfriends, buddies, or whoever was bored enough to call the DJ to chat. When I got really bored I would make up contests. Within a month or two of beginning the job, I met the guy who worked the same shift at the big country station in town, WJLS. He and I would talk on the phone all night, comparing the weirdos who would call in and daring each other to do silly things on the air.

Perhaps the oddest thing about the job was that there were groupies. I thought the P.D. was joking when he told me to expect it, but I’ll be damned if I didn't have women calling me at all hours of the night. I was flattered at first, but it quickly became obvious that only the truly deranged among us obsess about someone just because they’re on the air at a piddling little radio station in a podunk little mountain town. Maybe “deranged” is too strong a word. For the most part they were simply lonely people who felt comforted by a familiar voice coming out of their radio each night. In this way the DJ isn’t all that different than a bartender. You listen to people talk. You act interested but you never pry. When the person asks for a drink – or in my case a song – you give it to them.

I never had a stalker, and despite some random threats over the phone, I never came face to face with an angry fan. The weirdest thing that would ever happen would be when women would call in and ask me how old I was. Seeing no reason to lie about it, I would tell them that I was sixteen or seventeen or whatever. Most giggled about it. A visible minority seemed aroused by the idea, which creeped me out quite a bit. One took to calling me "baby," and referred to herself as "mama." I quickly memorized her phone number and avoided her whenever it popped up on the ID. For the most part, however, it was harmless, and given the format of the station, the vast majority of callers were teenagers wanting to here the latest tripe from the New Kids on the Block or Bell Biv Devoe. I got a lot of nice cards and letters from twelve year-old girls.

Within a month or two of starting, the guy working the weekday overnight shift quit, and it would be over a year until the P.D. could find a stable replacement. Despite school still being in session, I pulled several seven-night weeks during the frequent intervals between replacements. I would work until 6am, leave the station, grab breakfast, and then go on to school. I'd go home after school, crash for a couple of hours, eat dinner with my parents, and then crash for a few more until it was time to work again. I'm sure all of this was in violation of all kinds of labor laws, but as long as my grades stayed solid Mom and Dad didn't much care.

After some initial bumps I quickly developed a fairly smooth and confident on-air persona. Maybe too confident, as I found myself in trouble on a few occasions for being a smartass. The first time was when I introduced a Wilson Phillips song by saying something like "here’s that new girl group; you may have seen them on MTV; the one with the two hot women and the fat chick . . ." My phone line lit up. It was a woman angry that I'd make fun of someone's weight problem. I asked her if she was mad because she herself was a fat chick. She hung up. The next morning the P.D. came in to tell me that the woman I was insulting was the wife of a friend of his. Turns out I hit the nail on the head about her being fat. The P.D. thought it was kind of funny but he made me write a letter of apology anyway.

On another occasion I got in trouble for allegedly interfering with police business. On most Saturday nights, the first hour of my shift was a remote broadcast from the lobby of the movie theater, promoting the theater's Midnight Movie series. Following my last break at 11:45, I would get in the car and race to the station, hopefully in time to make my first commercial break after midnight. If I didn't, the guy who played the prerecorded show from 8pm until midnight and manned the boards for my remote would have to do the break. I hated that, so I usually drove like a maniac to make it.

One night, doing about 60 m.p.h. in a 35 zone, I was pulled over by a policeman running a speed trap. Obviously dead to rights, I figured that I would quickly cop to being a lead foot, accept my ticket, and do my best to get to the station as soon as I could. The cop, thinking he had pulled over a partying teenager on a Saturday night, took forever to walk up to my window. When he got there I apologized for my speed, explained that I was late for work, and basically did everything I could think of to make the whole transaction go smoothly. Rather than ticket me, he asked a hundred questions about where I was going and why. He thought I was lying about working at the radio station and gave me a hard time about that. Then he made me get out of the car while he gave the backseat a once-over, looking for drugs or beer or whatever he assumed I was on. Eventually he went back to his car. After an extended lecture about my speed (which I deserved) and a bunch of criticisms about the radio station (which I didn't) he gave me my ticket and let me go. The stop probably took three times as long as a usual traffic stop and by the time I finally got to the station I was pissed and the guy working the board was having a meltdown.

During my first commercial break I took the opportunity to alert anyone who may be out driving where the speed trap was and to watch out because it was manned by a cop who liked to hassle people. About twenty minutes later someone at the police station called me. It wasn't the cop who had pulled me over, but he was angry all the same. Immediately sensing that I may be in trouble, but not knowing for what, I hit "record" on the reel to reel machine attached to the phone. After a minute it seemed clear to me that the call was less than official. Yes, it was a cop (caller ID confirmed that), but it wasn't anyone in a position of authority. Maybe Officer Speed Trap's buddy. He complained that by saying what I said I not only was disrespecting a police officer, but I was "interfering in official law enforcement business." Though I knew enough about the First Amendment to be pretty confident that I hadn't done anything wrong, I kept my responses to simple "yes sirs" and "no sirs" out of an abundance of caution. After a couple of minutes the cop hung up.

I got my wits about me and listened to the tape. I hadn't realized it during the call, but it turns out that the conversation was pretty damn funny. As my "yes sirs" and "no sirs" got quieter and less respectful, the cop got angrier and angrier. Eventually he was ranting incoherently, calling me "son" and starting every sentence with "listen here!" and stuff like that. I decided it was too good not to use, so at the next break I took to the mic in a solemn tone, referenced my earlier comments about the speed trap and apologized for being disrespectful to the professionals of the Beckley Police Department. Then I played the tape over the theme to the Dukes of Hazard. A couple of days later someone at the police department called my boss to voice his "profound disappointment" that a station as active in the community as WCIR would exhibit such an immature disrespect for law enforcement. I had to write another letter of apology. If I wasn't working an impossible-to-fill shift for minimum wage, I suppose I could have been fired.

I manned the DJ booth from March 1990 until I left for college in September 1991. Just before leaving, the P.D. sat me down and told me that, my mouth aside, he thought I had what it took to make a career out of it, and that he'd be willing to offer me a full time job on the spot with actual adult pay and benefits and everything. Though I agreed to think about it for a couple of days I knew I would never seriously consider the offer. I didn’t yet know what I wanted to do for a living, but I knew I wanted something more stable than radio. For all of the fun and flair of the job, the DJ was becoming increasingly superfluous to the modern radio business. My sense was that any stations that weren't already automated or run by giant corporations soon would be, and even if you could make a life out of radio, it would be a pretty itinerant one. I thanked the P.D. for the offer, politely declined, and went off to college. With the exception of a couple of months back at the station the summer after my freshman year, my radio days were over.

Though I still have a lot of life left at this point, I’m pretty sure that I'll never have a better job. And that’s true even if it would take me a decade or so of full time overnights at the wages I made back them to make what I now make in a single year.

Great Moments in Mix CDs

2009-11-25T11:54:00.003-05:00

As I'm winding up work this morning, a law student who has worked in my office as a clerk since the beginning of summer left me a mix CD entitled "Music that Craig Likes?" She and I have been friendly enough, but we've never talked about music or pop culture or anything like that. Certainly not about anything of enough substance that would give anyone a sufficient lead to go and pick out 15 songs that are likely to be up my alley. Skeptical, I put the CD in.

The results: fabulous. Mostly old school punk -- Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Stiff Little Fingers, The Damned, and more mainstream stuff like the Ramones and the Clash -- but also some nice 80s and 90s flavor like Billy Bragg, Nick Cave and the Pixies. To top it off, she ended it all with "The Breaks" by Kurtis Blow because, hell, just because.

All stuff I love, but mostly stuff I last had on Memorex tapes circa 1990 and lost somewhere between then and real adulthood. If she had merely parroted my current record collection she would have gotten points for coming up with a good profile. Putting together stuff I (a) love; and (b) have lost turned what merely could have been a fabulous mix CD into a transcendent one.

Is this law clerk some sort of mind reader or, as another coworker said a few minutes ago, do I merely give off a super obvious aging hipster vibe? I don't think it's the latter. In fact, I've always assumed most people who meet me figure that I'm an old fart who generally wants people off his lawn. Which is true, of course, but either way doesn't lead anyone to think that I'd actually enjoy a CD full of punk.

But I do enjoy it, and I suppose the lesson here, such as there is one, is that you just never know, ya know?

Jobs I've left: an inventory

2009-11-23T11:17:00.001-05:00

As I wind up my last week of legal work before starting in with NBC, I'm nostalgic for the many, many jobs I have left in my 20 years in the workforce. An inventory:

Little Caesar's Pizza: My first job. I worked there for two weeks in August 1989. I was scheduled a grand total of three shifts. First shift: I scrubbed out used pizza pans. Second shift: I put the little prefabricated dough balls into some dough stretching machine despite the fact that you were supposed to be 18 years-old to operate it. Third shift: cheese and sauce station. The franchise owner moved me off sauce because he said I was making "race tracks" with the ladle. Then he moved me off cheese because he said I was "gonna put [him] in the poorhouse" because I was too heavy with the cheese. Best part: I'm not entirely sure that in 1989 Little Caesar's was using real cheese. After the cheese he sent me back to the pans. I quit the next day.

WCIR FM: What started out as a gopher job around the radio station turned into a full-blown gig as a weekend overnight DJ (though I often worked during the week too, in violation of child labor laws). Great job, even with the bad 1989-92 top 40 music I had to play. Best job I've ever had. I kept it until I left for college and even came back for the summer after freshman year. My last shift was seven straight hours of non-format music from my personal collection. My boss figured it was easier to let me do that than to argue about it.

A Columbus, Ohio public opinion polling company whose name I honestly can't remember right now: I worked there a month during my sophomore year in college. Seemed like easy money until you realized that people hated me calling them to interrupt their dinner and/or "Wheel of Fortune" watching even though I wasn't selling anything. I quit without really telling anyone. They called me three weeks later to ask me if I would ever be picking up my last paycheck.

Ohio State University Bookstore: Office supplies counter. I had this job for the balance of college. It was about half student employees, half-lifers. The lifers were a bit scary. One of them said that the worst thing that could ever happen to him would be for him to win a lottery when the jackpot was below $20 million. Why? "Because there are certain things I'll need to do if I win, and I'll need all of that money." His expression when he said that was serious, approaching dire.

Limited Credit Services: A second job in the summer between sophomore and junior year. Fielding customer service calls from people with Limited, Victoria's Secret and Express credit cards. Most of it was fielding calls from mall stores where the account holder wanted to buy $250 worth of ugly clothes but only had the credit limit to buy $150. I was a bit of a pushover and usually let them have it, so I'm probably partially responsible for the state of our debt-heavy, consumerist economy.

Department of Justice, Antitrust division: unpaid clerkship the summer after my first year of law school. Since they weren't paying me I could pretty much leave whenever I wanted to. They called it the "13th Amendment Schedule." That summer they were going after Ticketmaster for gumming up the concert industry, Microsoft for monopolizing the operating system market and was looking at GM for trying to put entrepreneurial electric car companies out of business. My contribution: I searched LEXIS for criminal cases with interesting fact patterns that I could maybe one day adapt into a mystery novel.

Law Firm Number 1: A litigation boutique here in Columbus. Crazy screaming partners who always made you feel like crap. Insane hours. I quit to make more money at Law Firm Number 2. When I quit, the screamers said that I was making a huge mistake and would regret it for the rest of my life.

Law Firm Number 2: A big, international law firm here in Columbus. Crazy, passive aggressive partners who never let you know where you stood. I preferred the screamers. It was a pretty big mistake leaving the screamers, and I did regret it for a time. Insane hours. I quit to go someplace less passive aggressive. When I did, they sort of casually let me know that they were probably going to let me go soon anyway. Did I mention that they were passive aggressive?

Law Firm Number 3: A big national law firm here in Columbus. Crazy partners who had all kinds of humanizing personal problems but who were, on the whole, nice to me. The place actually worked out OK for a good long while, but I soon started to realize that my life might be better if I didn't go out drinking after work every night and living and breathing the facts of my ethically-shady clients to the exclusion of quality time with my growing family. Naturally, such a decision was terrible for my career, and after a year or two of coasting, I was laid off. But hey, at least I started up the baseball blog during the coast.

State Government Job: Started back in February, leaving on Friday. Bad money, but good work. Nice people. The first time in 11 years that I realized that one can practice law for a living and actually be happy. If it weren't for the NBC gig, I probably would have stayed there until I retired or until the state pension system went broke, whichever came first.

So, doing the math, that means I average a new job every two years. I'm 36 now, so I only have, what, fourteen or fifteen jobs until I retire? Watch this space for coming career announcements!

Programming Note

2009-11-03T22:21:00.008-05:00

When I started writing ShysterBall in the spring of 2007, the idea was to give myself a place to be where I could escape the stress and unpleasantness of my legal career, if only for the briefest of moments. As time went on, it began to consume more and more of my waking hours and, in all honesty, interfering pretty significantly with that legal career. No, I never dropped the ball on a case, but it has been a struggle. I mean really, how is someone supposed to prepare for an oral argument when Roger Clemens is testifying before Congress? I'd like to say that I eventually managed to find balance with all of this, but that would be a lie. My life hasn't been in balance since at least 2006. Maybe earlier. Something has to be done. So I'm doing it:

I'm quitting the law. Starting November 30th I will be writing about baseball full time for NBC Sports.com at the Circling the Bases blog.

Obviously this wasn't a unilateral decision on my part. NBC has decided that they want me all-in on Circling the Bases, and that's not the kind of thing you have to ask me twice. The people over there have been fantastic to me since I started moonlighting back in April. They've never censored a word I've written. They've never declared a topic off-limits. Their instructions to me when I started were to make some fucking noise, and they've allowed me to do that non-stop since. When they asked me to do it full time, it was a complete no-brainer.

I don't yet know how it's going to all work out -- the enormity of this is just starting to sink in -- but to say I'm excited would be something of an understatement.

How I Got to Ohio

2008-06-06T09:22:00.013-04:00

A ShysterBall reader asked me the other day why I lived in Ohio (he actually asked me why anyone would live in Ohio, but I can't really answer that question). The short answer is that I'm here because I went to Ohio State for college and decided that, after three years of law school in D.C., Columbus was a nice compromise between my country upbringing in West Virginia and the increasingly annoying big city. How I got to Ohio State, however, is a longer story.

Aside from a couple of semesters of messing around at commuter schools, neither of my parents went to college. Neither did my grandparents. Neither did most of my friends' parents or any of my neighbors. While my folks weren't themselves blue collar, we just happened to live in places where blue collar people could make a decent living, so college just wasn't a major factor in anyone's life. Still, once I started getting good grades and scoring really high on achievement tests as a kid, it was always sort of assumed that I'd go someday, even if no one really planned for it. Really, we were all kind of casually ignorant about the whole process.

Despite some struggles with math and science, my overall grades were above average. I scored respectably if unremarkably on the SAT and ACT exams. On the power of those things, nearby Concord College and Marshall University sent me letters offering tuition waivers during the summer before my senior year, so it seemed that at the very least, I would be going somewhere. Not that I was all that enthusiastic about staying in West Virginia for college. Neither a Marshall nor Concord degree really travels, and the career pickings for those staying near home were pretty damn slim. Unless I wanted to teach school in Beckley – which had actually crossed my mind for a while – I knew I needed to go out of state.

So I sent away for applications from a half dozen places like UVA, Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, and UNC, with the idea being that (1) if I went to school out of state, I would want to be within a day's drive of home; and (2) if I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do with my life (I didn't), I had better go someplace big where I would have a lot of options. I received unsolicited packages from dozens of other places, mostly smaller liberal arts colleges in Virginia and Ohio. Over the course of a few weeks I tried to imagine what each of these places would be like. Given that the only concrete information I had to go on in those pre-Internet days was their brochures, they all seemed like they'd be nice, leafy places with stately buildings and a charmingly multicultural student body.

I was far more concerned with how I was going to pay for it all. Having moved several times, Mom and Dad were never more than a couple of years into a thirty year mortgage and, let's face it, we had always lived a little bit above our means via credit card debt. We took a lot of nice vacations, but as a result, there wasn't a college fund waiting for me upon graduation. As such, I was looking at either a scholarship or hefty loans. While I ultimately went with the latter option, I ran out all of the ground balls on the former one, which included a several-month flirtation with the ROTC.

Not that I was enamored with the military. To the contrary, by virtue of typical teenage rebellion and the fact that most of the considerable amounts of pop culture I had consumed growing up was informed by Boomer-era anti-establishment sensibility, I had quite the aversion to the military. This despite the fact that my grandfather, father, and brother had all served in the Navy. I may have been painfully naive, but as far as I was concerned, the liberals, punks, and hippies were right about everything that mattered, and the military was full of wannabe Nazi squares, with the possible exception of my brother. The Kurt Vonnegut books I had recently gotten into didn't help matters.

Still, I was either cynical or deluded enough to think that I could endure four or five years in the military if it meant a free college education. After all, if I were to take an ROTC scholarship I would likely be an office bound officer as opposed to some piece of cannon fodder. If things got bad enough once I started active duty I could just pretend to be gay or crazy and get myself booted. Finally, thinking that in the event a war broke out I'd rather have the bad guys shooting at whatever it was I was driving as opposed to shooting at me personally, I sent off applications to the Navy and Air Force ROTC programs.

The Air Force must have just been giving them away, because they responded almost immediately, offering me a scholarship and telling me that I could go to any college I wanted as long as I majored in computer science or engineering. This struck me as crazy. I mean, they already had my transcripts, so they must have seen my dreadful math and science grades when they made their offer, right? Grades aren't everything -- mine may have been more a function of my lack-of-interest as opposed to a lack-of-aptitude -- but on what possible basis could anyone conclude that I'd make a good engineer? The Navy seemed to have their shit together a bit better. They took longer to respond, but when they did they conditioned my scholarship on my passing a series of aptitude tests.

That October, my Dad and I drove down to Virginia Tech's campus in Blacksburg, Virginia where they would be administered. Though I wouldn't be obligated to go to VT even if I got the scholarship, my observations of the place gave me serious pause about the whole endeavor. Virginia Tech's ROTC program was different than most. They call it the "Corp of Cadets," and it's run like a mini-West Point rather than some unpopular extracurricular program. As I walked around Blacksburg that day I saw nothing but overclocked adrenaline junkies in their pressed gray uniforms yelling "boo-yah!" and the like to each other at every opportunity. It wasn't the sort of thing that made me want to join their ranks, but I took my tests – passing them all – and a few weeks later got essentially the same offer from the Navy that I did from the Air Force.

While I tried to figure out if I could actually stomach the life of a military engineer, Saddam Hussein decided to invade Kuwait. President Bush sent my brother (and a few others) to the Persian Gulf to straighten it all out, and suddenly being a cheerleader for the military was no longer unfashionable. I worked at a radio station at the time (more on that in another post), and that fall I was tasked with playing hastily-recorded, jingoistic anthems by guys like Hank Williams, Jr. Mom and Dad took to watching CNN 24 hours a day. After more than 15 years of the post-Viet Nam blahs, everyone was war crazy again. While I'm certain that there were a dozen other things that would have eventually caused me to reject the ROTC scholarships anyway, the outbreak of the war is what ultimately turned me off to the whole idea, and it all came to a head one morning in Columbus, Ohio.

I had recently been accepted to Ohio State, and Dad and I drove up to visit the campus and the ROTC program to see if it was the right place for me. It was January 17, 1991. The fighting in Kuwait had started the evening before, and Dad and I had watched it unfolding in real time from our hotel room. While we would have preferred to stay glued to the TV, we had an appointment with the Ohio State's Commandant at 9AM, so we reluctantly came to campus that morning.

Upon arriving at the ROTC building, we passed a student lounge with a television tuned into the war coverage, surrounded by a couple dozen of uniformed cadets. Cheers and high fives erupted with each bomb blast and Tomahawk missile strike. The cadets' glee at the outbreak of war was obscene to me, and not just because I was a anti-establishment kid conditioned to think such a thing by Boomer culture. I had a brother there. Though it would soon become the popular – albeit erroneous – consensus that the first Gulf War was an unequivocally righteous and bloodless triumph, I knew that each of those blasts meant the deaths of several people. No matter if they were Iraqis, Americans, angels, or Nazis, this was nothing to be cheered.

Leaving the lounge, Dad and I went to meet with the Commandant. He was a nice enough fellow who was far more scholarly than I would have expected. Still, he couldn't go three sentences without making excited reference to the day's carnage, no doubt thinking it would help him sell me on the scholarship and his program. I was getting sick to my stomach as the conversation continued, tuning him out until it was eventually just him and Dad talking.

We wrapped up our meeting and walked outside to take a stroll around the campus. The farther we got from the ROTC building the better I felt. By the time we made it across the Oval and down to Mirror Lake, I knew that I wasn't going to be taking any ROTC scholarship. Having made this decision, I was overtaken with relief. A positive mojo beam from deep within me, bouncing off the buildings and back at me, intensifying the euphoria. I hated those bastards at the ROTC building, but I was liking Ohio State, because it was the first place I had felt content about college and my future since the whole process had begun.

I didn't tell Dad that I wouldn't be taking the ROTC scholarship for a few days. He wasn't particularly happy about it – it meant some huge college debt was in the offing – but he didn't give me much grief either.

Within a few weeks I would receive rejection letters from Michigan and Virginia (justified, in my view, based on my lackluster SAT scores) and acceptances from Penn State, North Carolina, and a couple of small liberal arts colleges that I was never really considering. Having been in the south for a few years and wanting out, going to North Carolina seemed like a step in the wrong direction. Another gigantic state school, Penn State seemed interchangeable with Ohio State in my mind, but got demerits for being in the middle of nowhere. Of course, given the good vibes I had felt at Ohio State that January morning, I had pretty much made my decision already.

I moved into the dorms at Ohio State on September 21, 1991, started classes four days later, and graduated on June 9, 1995. For all of the stuff you hear about big football schools, I think I got a pretty fabulous education. Following three years of law school in Washington, I moved back and have been here ever since.

There's a lot I like about it. There's a lot I don't like so much. Either way, I've now lived in Columbus longer than anywhere else, so there's no denying that it's home.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Epilogue and Forward Ho

2008-05-20T15:06:00.003-04:00

I went back to work a week after getting back off the road. While I'd like to say that I grew as a person as a result of my experiences, the truth is that I still look out the window and daydream too much. I've been at this job for five years now -- nearing ten years as a lawyer overall -- and while I am far less prone to existential angst these days, most of the time I feel like I would be happier doing other things. I think most lawyers feel that way, honestly, and the ones that don't aren't the sort of people you really want to talk to.

But things are better. Until my road trip, I struggled to simply get through the day most of the time. Now I have something to get me through when the going gets tough. Two somethings, actually:

Anna was born on December 15, 2003. Carlo followed on July 19, 2005. They and their mother are the best things that have or ever will happen to me. When they're old enough I'm going to take them out west and show them how a big sky and all the time in the world to ponder it makes life's problems feel pretty small. Until then, we're just going to have fun.

The other thing that keeps me sane is writing. I sort of lost momentum at my new firm last year. ShysterBall saved me. Now, no matter how bleak things get at the office, I have something to look forward to every day. It's hacky to quote Whitman about this, but I'll do it anyway because it's true: "It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us." Maybe it's not as much the American game now as it was in Whitman's time, but it's still true for me.

But it's not just baseball, it's writing about it. Actually, as I've found over the past month or two in this space, it's writing about anything. Everything. Writing is the one thing I do better than almost anyone in the law and is probably my only distinct talent in life at large. I wanted to be a writer when I was a kid, but I suppressed that, because I didn't know any writers and didn't really think it was a job that real people actually did. Writers, I assumed, lived on other planets with rock stars, athletes and cowboys. You couldn't just become one. You had to be one already.

I know that's not true now. Sure, it's still a pretty tough trick to make a living at it. I'm not even close to that yet, but it probably doesn't matter. I've been paid for a handful of writings in the past year, but the fact of payment added exactly nothing to the experience for me. For me it's all about getting an idea, transferring it from my head to the screen, and working to polish and complete it. Making a living at this would be wonderful, but I get the same sense of accomplishment writing one of these installments for an audience of 50 as I do writing a book review for the New York Post that will be seen by half a million.

And really, that's what this space is for: writing for the hell of it. I have some odd autobiographical things I've always wanted to write down, so you'll see some of those going forward. I'm going to do my best to keep this from becoming an excessively bloggy space, but I might put down the random news-inspired thought here from time to time as well. I'm going to do my best to put something new up once a week or so, but don't hold me to it. If there hasn't been anything new in a while, click over to ShysterBall to make sure I'm still alive. If I am, come back later. There will be something new eventually.

I hope you enjoyed reading the story of my little trip as much as I enjoyed writing it. For those of you whose minds are still on the road, the pics from the trip can be found here.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 14

2008-05-10T18:07:00.002-04:00

We woke up late, got showers, and headed out in search of a bookstore and then breakfast. The bookstore was to figure out where to eat breakfast, because neither of us had an Austin city guide of any kind. We found a great bookstore near the UT campus and an even better breakfast at a place called Trudy's. The people watching was pretty interesting too. There's a definite Texas type, even in an otherwise oddball town like Austin. Every man's hair is neat -- I suspect hairspray is involved -- and every woman is blond and essentially beautiful in a very different way than blonds are usually beautiful. Striking, yes, but almost alien in some important but indescribable way. There were many couples with matching polo shirts. It was just an odd scene.

We found a more suitable hotel after breakfast -- the Radisson at the corner of Congress and Caesar Chavez -- dropped our stuff off, and went walking around. Sixth Street is the main drag of bars and music clubs and we figured we'd spend the day and evening hanging around there. As luck would have it, the biannual Old Pecan Street Festival was happening that weekend, so there was a lot to see. The live music that usually comes out of every storefront on Sixth had moved out onto the sidewalks, and the street was filled with arts and crafts booths.

After checking out the artists' wares, we stopped into Joe's Generic Bar for a few beers and some music. As it was still only early afternoon the acts weren't exactly headliners, but the guy playing when we came in -- a Stevie Ray Vaughan wannabe -- was a lot better than the best you ever see in places like Columbus. I'm a big Lucinda Williams and Hayes Carll fan, and I've read just how tough a go they had in Austin. I can't imagine how tough it is for the guys we were watching to make a go of it.

We drank a few Shiner Bocks and enjoyed the music. It was a dive, but I liked it. I was surprised, then, to read a couple of years later that the guy who owned the place -- Joe Bates -- had closed up shop in September 2004, citing his disgust with Sixth Street (he called it "sick street"). According to the article I read, when he first started Joe's "things were great for an entrepreneur. But when the street got really popular, the city stepped in and ruined the party." The rent had quadrupled and the city was cracking down on open container laws, which really killed the bar-to-bar business. Joe had had it, and was going to move to a better, less commercialized location in Austin. He never got the chance, though, because less than a month after he closed the bar, he was found murdered in his home. Joe's Generic is now a tattoo parlor. From what I can find online, many in Austin believe that live blues hasn't been the same since.

I left the bar before Ethan was ready to go. It was hot that day -- high 90s, and the beer and lack of air conditioning was kind of getting to me -- so I went back to the room to shower (again) and cool down. Ethan came back about an hour later and told me that he had chatted with the fake Stevie Ray after his set. I probably should have just sucked it up and stayed because I imagine that would have been an interesting conversation. Still, Ethan and I ended up having an interesting conversation of our own about human nature, the war, and a hundred other things while we killed time before dinner.

Ethan and I had pretty different upbringings. He didn't watch TV growing up and isn't the more or less cliche pop-culture-fueled product of the 70s and 80s that I am. He read far more books and had parents that were simply more serious about things like religion and work ethic and all of that than I did. This made for some pretty radical differences between the two of us back when we first met in college -- I was something of a naive, knee jerk liberal because that's pretty much all I knew; Ethan, while not fitting the conservative stereotype as such, was definitely way to the right of where I was. Over the years there has been something of a role reversal. Nothing radical to be sure, but I am fairly certain that he is now to the left of where I am politically (not that I'm too far right). Maybe it's because he's been in the Bay Area for most of the past 15 years and I've been to law school and the Midwest. Those kinds of things matter.

More pronounced than the political shift is the cultural one. There was a time when I would sit and educate Ethan about popular music, movies, and whatever cultural ephemera seemed to matter to me at the time. These days, mostly because I've had kids, I have no clue what's going on in music anymore, I don't see many movies, and basically lead a pretty insulated life, culturally speaking. As I'm writing this I'm listening to the Rolling Stones' Let it Bleed. That's partially because it's a kickass album, but partially because I haven't bought a new CD in about four years. In contrast, Ethan will email me several times a year now to tell me about a concert or a play or a movie he just saw that I have simply never heard of.

There's no real point to this digression except that, as I sit here now and think about it, I'm pretty sure that conversation we had in the hotel room in Austin was the last one before our cultural and political vectors crossed and headed off in different directions. Not that it matters all that much. I'm pretty sure that Ethan and I would remain friends and confidantes regardless of where things stood culturally and politically, and I really can't say that about anyone else in my life.

Dinner that night was at the Bitter End Bistro and Brewery. It was quite the place at the time, but I read now that it has closed its doors to make way for a hotel. And so it goes. Dinner was great, though. The wine was better. Ethan -- who knows wine better than you know your first born -- ordered three bottles, and each time our waitress -- Martha -- came back to tell him, sorry, they were all out of it. As a peace offering, Martha gave us a bottle of 1996 Opus One at the price of whatever the last wine it was we tried to order but couldn't have. I think it ended up being a $100 discount on the Opus One, which these days sells for something like $350-$450.

The wine was wonderful and so was the dinner. Martha was great too, and all of the good juju of the evening inspired Ethan and I to flirt with her a bit. I quickly came clean as a married father-to-be, however, and asked Martha if she had any suggestions for baby names. She suggested Tyler. Alas, even if I was interested, there was no future for a person like Martha and me. She came through much stronger, however, when we asked where we should go after dinner. She suggested the Elephant Room across Congress Avenue, and it was a dynamite suggestion. Dark, unpretentious, and cozy (it's in a basement), we sat in the Elephant Room and listened to some fabulous jazz for a couple of hours and, of course, engaged in some deep conversation. The topic: my concern that Ethan will never find contentment and Ethan's concern that I will never find excitement or true satisfaction in life. It was a conversation fueled by just as much mutual envy as it was genuine concern. It's also a conversation we've had pretty frequently since 1991 and will probably have it until we die.

And with that, the real business of the road trip ended.

The next morning meant an early wake up call and a 200 mile drive to Dallas where I dropped Ethan off at the airport for his flight back home to San Francisco. I had a thousand more miles ahead of me, but I knew they'd be quick ones. I had seen enough for one trip and wanted to be home. I also knew that I'd be back on the road one day, and still know five years later that I certainly will be. I let East Texas, Arkansas, and Western Tennessee buzz by with nothing much more than a glance as I kept the music cranked and the pedal to the metal.

I made it all the way to Nashville that night. I might have gone even further if it weren't for terrible storms in Tennessee. They were part of an unusual outbreak of tornadoes that hit the south that week, killing at least 39 people in Tennessee, Missouri, and Kansas. I had trailed the storms for a hundred miles or so, but had no idea how severe they were until I stopped in Jackson, Tennessee for gas and found a devastated town with no power. The tornado had hit less than two hours before I got there. I'd read later that eleven people died and hundreds of homes were damaged. As I looped back to the freeway I drove past dazed people, not yet aware that, in all likelihood, someone they knew had just died.

I made it home just after noon the following day. Carleen was still at work. I didn't unpack the car for a while. Instead I came inside and sat down in the silence of my living room. I thought a bit about the job I would be starting in a week. I thought a bit about the baby that would be coming in December. But mostly, I thought about the road and how good it had been to me for the past month.

Come back soon. I've got an epilogue in mind.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 13

2008-05-02T22:45:00.000-04:00

We awoke at 5:30 the next morning, packed up, and made our way back down the mountain and into Saguaro National Park for some hiking on the Tanque Verde Ridge Trail. It's about 14 miles and serves as the main access to back country camping, but we had places to go, so we only went a couple of miles in and a couple of miles back. There was a pretty tough climb about a mile into the hike. Given the quickly rising temperature that day, it was quite a workout. Ethan got stuck with several cactus needles. I somehow made it though unscathed.

Once we got back to the car we headed out of Tucson, passing a large bone yard where the U.S. Air Force mothballs planes in the event the Russians or the Martians or someone invade. I don't know much about military aircraft, but Ethan said most of the ones he could see from the road were Vietnam-era fighters. Later -- after a long drive during which I saw at least a half dozen military planes flying and the u-turn shaped contrails of fighter jets -- we arrived at the White Sands Missile Range Museum, outside of which sits a bone yard of old missiles, rockets, and bombs.

As Ethan and I climbed on disarmed weaponry, the United States Army was busy subduing a foreign country because it dared acquire some of their own. Or so we were told anyway. The case for WMDs in Iraq has been thoroughly discredited by now, but it was pretty questionable even then. At least I thought so, as did just about every smart person I knew at the time. Nevertheless, our soldiers had invaded in March and President Bush declared that the mission had been accomplished just the day before. We know now that the mission, such as it was, may never be accomplished and its undertaking was always a mistake. While there was a time a few years ago when I would engage anyone in an argument on the pros and cons of the war, I can barely discuss it anymore, even with those who share my opinions about it all. Especially with those people, actually. When it comes to Iraq and what our country has become because of it, right and wrong are virtually meaningless to me anymore. All I can feel is sorrow.

After leaving the range, we stopped at White Sands National monument. It may as well have been the surface of the moon, with gypsum dunes covering hundreds of square miles. We took the road into the monument until we lost sight of gypsum-free land, parked, and hiked into the dunes. After walking around half-century-old monuments to the destructive force of man a mere half hour before, there was something refreshing about making tracks and footprints which would be covered up by nightfall.

Twenty five miles later we were in Alamogordo, where we stopped to pick up food for another night of camping. I sat in the car as Ethan went into the grocery store. Looking out the window, I watched a poor-looking Mexican woman struggle with a baby and two bags of groceries. Looking in another direction I saw an old, beat up Chevy Impala filled with four or five kids waiting for their parents. Since I became a father, there's a feeling that I get when I see children in what I perceive to be less than prosperous circumstances. It's not pity, but it's not not pity if that makes any sense. Whatever it is it makes me sad, even if I realize that it's mostly a function of my shallowness, naivete, and insecurity. That afternoon in Alamogordo was the first time I ever really felt it, and I've not been able to shake it since.

Ethan got back with the grub -- chicken this time -- and we made our way to a campground just outside of town. Unlike the night before, this was a flat utilitarian place in the shadow of a mountain rather than atop one. I was quiet that evening, wrestling the anxiety of impeding fatherhood that had been creeping over me since we left the grocery store. Ethan could obviously sense that something was up with me -- I'm pretty sure I came off more standoffish than introspective -- and he soon found a comfortable place to sit down and fired up his laptop. As it grew dark, bugs descended on our campsite. I got into the car to escape them and to write in my journal.

I crawled into my sleeping bag a few minutes later, but sleep wouldn't come quickly. My head was filled with the notion that I didn't know the first thing about being a father, and the thought had me on the verge of panic. I know now that that feeling of fearful ignorance is about the best thing that can happen to a prospective dad because, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel in the short term, it certainly makes you pay attention once the baby comes.

As usual, I felt better by the morning light. After cleaning up camp, we headed east on US-82, which took us up into the Sacramento Mountains. It was beautiful country that reminded me an awful lot of West Virginia (which is what I consider home, for those who don't know). The only thing that ruined it was an over eager sheriff's deputy who decided to tag me for going 60 in a 45. Amazingly -- after days on-end of setting the cruise control at around 100 -- I get a speeding ticket for going 60. To this day I consider it a horseshit ticket, though Ethan maintains that I deserved it. Given that I've gotten something like seven or eight tickets in the nearly 19 years I've been driving, he's probably right.

We came down out of the mountains near the town of Artesia, and then headed south towards Carlsbad Caverns. We were eager for some subterranean hiking, but once we got there and saw the tour buses and old people with fanny packs, we realized that there wasn't anything all that rugged about it (this is what happens when you don't read guidebooks). Carlsbad Caverns is basically a leisurely stroll down a paved trail. There's even a snack bar at the bottom.

Despite all of that, Ethan and I made the best of it, taking our time to walk and talk as we descended into the cavern. About Ethan's marriage mostly, and how he wanted to arrange his life going forward. Would he date? Would he dive headlong into work? Would he travel? Knowing Ethan like I do, I assumed the answer would be "yes," and I was more or less right. As a guy who can't juggle two balls at once, I have always been amazed at Ethan's ability to juggle five.

The biggest mistake of the day -- and maybe the trip -- came next, and that was taking the guided tour of King's Palace, which is a set of large rooms at the bottom of the cavern. The tour group was large and disorganized. The guide -- a ranger named Clint -- was an information-free bore. We entered a large room and were put to sleep with irrelevant geological details, tangents about the difference between cavers and spelunkers, and more bad jokes than you could shake a stick at. At the one-hour mark, the group began to turn on poor Ranger Clint. People were openly groaning and grousing, and some asked his young assistant if the tour could simply be stopped. Ethan corrected Clint when he claimed that his aluminum flashlight was steel. A middle-aged woman loudly described the tour as "an interpretive nightmare." By the end of the tour I almost felt bad for Clint, but those feelings were far outweighed by my joy that it was all over.

The original plan was to find someplace else to camp that night, but it was barely mid-afternoon when we got back to the car so we decided to press forward and see how far we'd get. Crossing into west Texas was a load of fun, as we took an empty bit of highway (Texas route 652) across some open range over to US 285. Strangely, after nearly a month of crossing deserts and mountains and canyons -- after standing on the edge of the Pacific Ocean and lying awestruck under the Milky Way -- nothing made the world seem larger, and myself smaller, than the open ranges of West Texas.

We cut down US-285 with the intention of hooking up with Interstate 10 in Fort Stockton. We encountered a slight detour in the town of Pecos, however, when a truck pulling a trailer with an extraordinarily large boat had managed to get stuck in the middle of the junction through which we had to go. The police officer at the scene said it would be at least an hour before they could get a crane in to clear it out. This didn't bother me especially, because it gave us the opportunity to travel down another empty highway (county road 17) which, while taking us about 40 miles out of our way, afforded another opportunity for blazing speed and open spaces. Unfortunately it was a bit too much speed, as I saw the flashing lights of the Texas Rangers in my rear view mirror right after we hopped on I-10. I pulled over to the side of the road cursing my bad luck (certainly I bore no responsibility for this terrible misfortune).

Based on some accounts I've read, Ethan and I fit a pretty questionable profile that afternoon. We hadn't showered or shaved in a couple of days and we each looked like hell (my respectable bald pate was covered by shifty looking corduroy Kangol). The car was an absolute mess inside and out. We were a mere handful of miles from the Mexican border, hauling ass, with out-of-state plates. When I saw the big white cowboy hats and mirrored sunglasses walking up towards us, I fully expected the car to get tossed for drugs or, at the very least, to be given an extremely hard time.

We need not have worried. The two rangers who pulled me over were the most polite law enforcement officers I have ever encountered. They called me sir and asked us how we were enjoying our trip. Yes, they gave me a ticket -- I was really going like a bat out of hell -- but they marked it down as 89 mph in a 80 zone, which is at least ten miles per hour slower than I was really going. The day's tally: $270 worth of speeding tickets. I rationalized this by amortizing the amount in my mind over the course of the whole trip, convincing myself that it was no different than paying $10 a day for a license to speed, which I would have gladly paid beforehand. Unfortunately, neither Carleen nor my insurance agent saw it the same way.

We had planned to just drive until we got tired and found a hotel, but there isn't a hell of a lot in west Texas. It was a nice evening though, so we drove. And drove. And kept on driving. We came close to running out of gas just before Sonora, but just made it into town on fumes. As I filled up the tank, Ethan decided that we should pool our money and open up a gas station ten miles to the west to take advantage of all of the desperate folks like us who thought they wouldn't quite make it. We'd call it the Pump 'n Dump (we really needed a bathroom by the time we hit Sonora as well). It would make us rich, he said. Sadly, we neglected to follow up on the idea when we got back to civilization.

It was getting good and late by the time we made it to Fredericksburg and we were ready to stop for the night. We couldn't, unfortunately, because a biker rally had taken all of the hotel rooms, so we pressed on to Austin. It was nearly 1AM when we stopped at the airport Ramada, which was the first hotel our weary eyes could see from the freeway. We checked in and passed out.

The day's tally: nearly 800 miles, 2 speeding tickets, a wasted trip down an overdeveloped hole in the ground, and about 17 hours of good conversation. I'd take that just about any day.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 12

2008-04-25T15:41:00.001-04:00

We hit I-80 heading east just after breakfast. In Sacramento we switched over to US-50 and made a beeline for the Sierras, reaching South Lake Tahoe in time for a Rooty-Tooty-Fresh-and-Fruity lunch at IHOP. I’d been to Tahoe once before, joining Ethan and some friends of his for a ski trip. It usually takes me two visits to a place to get and hold a clear picture of it in my mind, but Tahoe was pretty much how I remembered it.

After lunch we cut over to US-395 and turned south down the back of the Sierra Nevada mountains for several hundred miles. I had long been looking forward to this portion of the trip and was disappointed that the weather had kept me from taking this route a couple of weeks before. I was anything but disappointed that day. The Sierras give you a thousand different looks. They're the most beautiful mountains I've ever seen.

We turned east again just past Lone Pine, with Mt. Whitney in the rear view mirror, and Death Valley straight ahead. The most significant direction, however, was down in that we went from 5000 feet elevation to –190 in the space of about 100 switchbacking miles of highway. I had expected stifling heat, but it was probably only about 85-90 degrees on the valley floor that day which, as so many have said, is quite comfortable in the desert. I had likewise expected Death Valley to be bleak and barren, but the desert bloomed with wildflowers. Even the sagebrush took on a green tint, making this legendarily desolate landscape one of the more welcoming places I had been on my trip.

We stopped the car when we reached sea level to take pictures of some sand dunes on the north side of the highway. It was unnaturally quiet. No cars passed us the entire time we were stopped. For some reason, I felt compelled to lie down in the middle of the road. I’d been in a fabulous mood since my epiphany that morning, but lying there, staring at the desert sky, transported me to a higher plane of relaxation and contentment. Soon the sun began to set and we continued on our way.

I have mixed feelings about Las Vegas. 30 million people go there every year, primarily to gamble, and if you read the Ely and St. Louis installments of this diary, you know my feelings about gambling. Las Vegas' isolation and uniqueness temper those feelings somewhat. Though I know it's more complicated than this, I allow myself to believe that, unlike the riverboat casinos in Missouri or the Hotel Nevada up in Ely, Vegas isn’t being kept alive by people making quick stops to blow the grocery money on their way home from work. It’s a destination, I tell myself, and budgeting to blow a few thousand vacation dollars at Caesar’s Palace is no more offensive than budgeting to do the same thing at Disneyworld. Maybe less offensive. Gambling aside, the place, its history, and what it represents in American culture and psychology just fascinates me in ways that sad-sack southern towns with faux riverboat casinos simply never will. I'd like to write a book about it one day.

We checked into the Mirage just before 8 P.M., stowed our bags, and went down to get some dinner. Ethan had called ahead earlier in the day and got tickets to see a show. It was a lot of fun, but road fatigue got the best of me about halfway through. We had a couple of drinks back at the Mirage after the show, but by then I was dead on my feet. I managed to engage in some conversation with Ethan regarding the end of his marriage and the beginning of his single life, but my head wasn’t really in the game. As I went to bed I hoped that I didn’t give him any bad advice. Of course, after all of these years, he’s no doubt an expert at sorting through my bullshit.

I awoke the next morning to the buzzing of an alarm clock – the first time I needed one since my last day at work. I guess the previous day's drive had taken more out of me than I thought. I let Ethan drive out of Las Vegas. After stopping for a quick breakfast in Henderson, we snaked over the Hoover Dam. Neither of us felt all that compelled to stop for what is, essentially, a lot of concrete and a lot of tourists. As we crossed over I prayed for a pre-cision earthquake (yes, I know that was a different dam).

Highway 93 south through Arizona is dullsville. Nothing but miles and miles of, well, nothing interrupted by the occasional mobile home squatting on land selling for $500 an acre and a waste of money at half the price. It was the perfect landscape for our purposes, though. Whereas the day before was full of long stretches of silence as we took in the beauty of the mountains, lakes, and deserts, this day was full of conversation. About change, mostly. Ethan's soon-to-be-filed divorce. My soon-to-be-born baby. Career uncertainty for both of us. The feeling that we were getting older and exactly how we felt about that. This last bit was underscored by a call from my Dad when we were just south of Kingman, telling me that he had decided to retire. The only constant in life is change.

Soon after my Dad called, Ethan’s prospective landlady back in Berkeley called me to check his references. I suppose it might have been awkward if she had asked me any tough questions, him sitting a foot away from me and all. Amiable hippie landladies from Berkeley aren't ones for tough questions, though, so she asked me a series of odd ones like “what is his favorite kind of pizza?” and "is he a complete person?" We drove out of signal range before she had a chance to ask me what kind of tree he would be.

We pulled into Tuscon at around 5:30, made a quick stop at a grocery store for camp grub, turned onto the Catalina Highway and started up Mt. Lemmon and into the Coronado National Forest. U2’s Joshua Tree blasted from the cd player as we raced up the switchbacks, stopping every so often to take in the view as a golden sunset cast the day's last light on the valley floor below. We were on a combined music-driving-scenery-altitude high as we stopped at Spencer Canyon Campground, about 8000 feet up the mountain.

It had been over 90 degrees down in Tucson, but it was already well below 60 and dropping fast as we made camp. Ethan built a fire, over which we cooked our manly feast: cocktail shrimp, peppers, onions, and tomatoes, marinated in sesame oil on bamboo skewers (I kept my wedding ring and a picture of my wife close by just in case we encountered harassment). We continued to camp like morons as I stirred the fire with my car's jack handle rather than seek out a thick branch. I would end up forgetting the jack handle when we left the next morning. A massive fire burned much of Mt. Lemmon just over a month later. As I watched the news coverage back home, I wondered if anyone would find the jack handle next to the fire pit and assume that some greenhorn had accidentally burnt the goddamn place down.

For the past several months, each night's sleep had been preceded by several minutes of building anxiety. If dreams came, I didn't remember them. When morning came, I couldn't wake up.

That night I zipped into my sleeping bag and stared up at a billion stars, framed by a proscenium of Ponderosa Pines. Sleep came quickly. My dreams, vivid.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 11

2008-04-23T13:31:00.004-04:00

Things were much better by the light of day. I dropped Carleen off at the airport at 11:00 A.M. and, amazingly, the world didn’t end. Within a few hours she’d be back in Ohio, falling back into her routine and I’d have no basis for projecting my anxieties about us being apart onto her. It was a beautiful sunny Bay Area day -- a bit cool, just how I like it -- and with spirits bright, I drove over to Arthur's house in Berkeley to pick up Ethan for a day of amiable pointlessness.

He wasn’t there when I arrived. Instead, I was greeted by a rather tense and grumpy Arthur. He loosened up as he and I talked about nothing important for a few minutes, but the tension returned when Ethan came back. After a bit of three-way conversation, an uneasy truce regarding their unexplained dispute seemed to be forming, but it was hard to say how long it would last. Regardless of what they were fighting about that morning, the larger issue was probably the fact that Ethan was going on a second week on Arthur's couch, and as most people know, it's not easy for grownups used to their own space to live together for any extended period of time. Ethan had an apartment in the works, but it wouldn't be ready for a couple of weeks, so he decided to get out of town for a while and join me on the road for the drive back east.

We left Arthur’s and went to a cool little Italian place in Berkeley to plan the route. The planning took about twenty minutes. The usual bullshitting about life, the universe, and everything took about three hours. That usually happens when Ethan and I get together with time to kill. Despite the fact that I've known the guy since freshman year at Ohio State, and despite the fact that we've exchanged several thousand emails of often preposterous length since we graduated, we never run out of stuff to talk about. As far as road trip companions go, you can't do any better.

The general plan we had come up with was to head east the next morning, hang a right at Tahoe, head down US-395 along the backside of the Sierras, hang a left into Death Valley, and hopefully make Las Vegas by dinner. After that it was a bit more vague, but the general idea was to go south towards Tucson, then east into New Mexico, cut across the width of Texas to Austin, and then up to Dallas where Ethan would catch a flight back home and I would head back to Ohio.

The only specific thing we had settled upon was that we'd camp for a couple of nights. Seeing as though I didn't have any gear with me, I went to the REI store after lunch to buy a sleeping bag, a decent fleece, and a couple of other random things. After that it was a haircut and a trip to the laundromat, during which time the Albany, California police gave me a parking ticket that, as I sit here five years later, I realize I never paid. Two hours later I was in San Francisco with Ethan, Arthur (détente achieved), and Ethan's friend Liz, drinking beer at the 21st Amendment outside of Pac Ball Park in advance of seeing the Cubs-Giants. Despite a pretty stiff wind out to center, neither Bonds nor Sosa homered. Ray Durham and Moises Alou did, however, and Kerry Wood pitched a pretty good game on a really cold night. Cubs 4, Giants 2.

We lost Arthur and Liz after the game, but met up with another friend of Ethan's and headed to the Mission to get a late dinner and some mojitos. Between the rum and the wonderful day I was buzzing quite nicely as we crossed back over the bridge and into Berkeley. I dropped Ethan off at Arthur's and -- assuming that Arthur wouldn't want yet another squatter in his house -- I checked into the Hotel Durant for the night, eager to get on the road the next morning.

Except when the next morning came I wasn't so eager. I don’t know if it was one too many mojitos the night before, or my room’s broken radiator and banging pipes, but I slept terribly and I was in a gloomy mood when I woke up. Sitting on the bed as the room went from black to gray, I started thinking that whatever illness had prompted me to get on the road in the first place had long since passed. I no longer wanted to find myself, or see the world, or do whatever the fuck it was I was supposed to be doing. I had to scuttle the rest of the trip, burn ass eastward, and get back into my normal routine as soon as possible. I had to be home with my wife. I had to start painting the nursery or buying life insurance or fixing the wreck that was my career. I had to do something -- anything -- that smelled of responsibility and structure.

I called Carleen, hoping against hope that some minor disaster that urgently needed my attention had befallen her. Nothing serious, mind you, just something big enough to justify me ditching Ethan and the rest of the trip. Unfortunately, everything was fine. I then lobbed her a wonderfully spineless, passive aggressive batting practice pitch, hinting that I was thinking of breaking off the trip and asking her if she’d like (rather than needed) me home. I waited for her answer, thinking that all I needed was a “well, of course I’d like it if you were home,” which would give me an excuse to get on I-80. It didn’t come. Instead, she told me that I should do whatever I thought was best in the short time I had left before I started my new job, and if that meant traveling, I should travel. It figures: the one time in my life I wanted Carleen to be all hysterical and irrational about something, and she pulls this level-headed, understanding shit on me. Jeez.

Disgusted with my wife's thoughtfulness, I called Ethan and asked him if it would mess his week up if I bailed on the trip. In my anxiety-clouded state, I had decided that the only possible way for him to react would be to unleash a classic male pep talk in which he'd tell me to grow some balls, man-up, or whatever it is guys are supposed to say to each other at times like these. Indeed, I was hoping for this, because if it came, I could counter with haughty indignation at the assualt on my manliness. I’d declare that there were far more important things for me to be doing than dicking around in the desert with my friends, and that I was shocked -- shocked! -- that he couldn’t understand that. It would be the perfect cover for a strategic retreat east.

Ethan failed me too. Instead of acting like a typical guy, he acted, as always, like a true friend. He told me that I had to do what I had to do, and that he’d be fine no matter what I decided. He continued, however, by explaining that there were many objective reasons not to rush home, all of which he then listed in a calm, sober manner. Sure, I’d be home in a couple of days, but all I’d do once I got there was watch baseball, mow my lawn, and read books, and though this seemed comforting to me at that moment, it would be a source of regret in the future. I’d never have a chance to do this again. Carleen was pregnant, and once my child came there would be little time for hikes in the desert and 500 mile drives with my best friend. Sure, I may travel out west again – maybe dozens of time – but every time I did it, I’d be reminded that I passed up the opportunity to do it when I was a young man and still relatively free of responsibilities.

Of course he was right, and I knew it as soon as he said it. I thanked him and told him I'd call him back to let him know what I was going to do. I pulled the chair over to the open window, took in a deep breath of fresh air, and gathered my thoughts.

What had come over me? Why was it that when faced with a completely blank slate -- in this case, a month's worth of zero responsibility and carte blanche to do whatever I wanted short of adultery -- I am invariably drawn to the safest, least creative alternative? Wasn’t it exactly this sort of behavior that led me to two legal jobs I hated and a desperate need to find myself? I gazed down Durant Avenue and watched UC Berkeley start its day. How many of those students down there wake up afraid of being away from home? How many of them are overcome with anxiety when forced to do something other than their normal routine? Not many of them, I'd wager.

I sat there, thinking that there would be no hope for me if I didn’t somehow manage to break old patterns. No, I wasn't going to do anything radical, but I had to start testing my boundaries from time to time. To push back against that which predisposes me to be safe, fat, seemingly-happy, but boring. I wasn’t about to abandon my career, sell my house, and become a drifter, but I was going to stop allowing myself to compulsively take the path of least resistance.

I didn't call Ethan back. Instead, I got dressed, packed up, and headed over to Arthur's house. He was a bit surprised when he saw me at the door.

"You here to tell me goodbye?" he said.

"No. I'm here to tell you 'let's go.'"

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 10

2008-04-17T15:02:00.001-04:00

After looking out over the Bay for a while I decided to call my parents. They were happy to hear from me. Probably happier to hear me happy after months of my job-related venting. Picking up on my good mood, my mom told me that I should be a writer so that I could have the freedom to travel like this. The freedom to explore. The freedom to live wherever I wanted. Maybe I’ll be able to do that someday.

I returned to the hotel as Carleen was getting out of the shower. We were planning on meeting our friend Ethan for dinner in Mill Valley. The steaks at the Buckeye Roadhouse were excellent. So were Ethan’s powers of observation, as he pegged Carleen as pregnant the moment she ordered a club soda with lime before dinner.

The next day Carleen and I took the ferry over to San Francisco for some urban exploring. The weather wasn’t ideal, and the rain frequently chased us into hotel lobbies and stores. We nonetheless managed to take a cable car up Nob Hill, walk over to Union Square, backtrack over to North Beach for some lunch and more bumming around, and then meander our way back to the wharf, where we caught the 4:05 ferry back to Sausalito. A power nap and a couple of showers later we were on our way to Berkeley for dinner at Chez Panisse. Dinner was excellent, but the day's walking had taken its toll on Carleen, and she fell asleep while we were crossing the San Rafael Bridge on our way back to Marin. I fell asleep about ten minutes after reaching the room. You can’t stop Craig and Carleen; you can only hope to contain them.

The next morning we drove over to the Marin Headlands to take in the views of the Golden Gate and the Bay and kill time before lunch in Berkeley with Ethan and Sonja. While they had been married close to five years at that point, they had recently separated. In the car on the way over Carleen and I speculated about how awkward this would be (lunch together was Sonja's idea, not ours). After discussing it a bit, however, we decided that it wasn't exactly our problem. Would they, like most couples in that situation, be subtly staking out claims to friends and restaurants and the elusive moral high ground? Probably. But given how seldom we saw either of them anymore -- and given how we were determined to remain friends with both of them regardless -- we figured we were pretty low on the list of claims to stake.

Upon arriving in Berkeley it became clear that lunch wasn’t going to happen. Ethan’s car had been broken into the night before (he hadn’t realized it until ten minutes before we arrived). It was totally cleaned out, with three busted-out windows and a mutilated dashboard. Carleen and I grabbed a burrito while Ethan took an inventory, talked to insurance people, and seethed. We called Sonja and changed lunch to dinner. Ethan eventually got things as sorted as they could be, and the three of us spent the rest of the afternoon shuttling around the Bay, first to drop off Ethan’s apartment application at his prospective landlady’s house -- he was sacked out on his friend Arthur's couch for the time being -- and then to pick up Arthur, who had just returned from a SCUBA vacation in Honduras and needed a lift from San Francisco back home to Berkeley.

Arthur thankfully accepted our invitation to join us for dinner, which meant that there would be an extra person there – complete with fresh tales of Central American adventure -- to diffuse any Ethan-Sonja awkwardness that may have arisen. The gambit worked, with unpleasant stories of broken eardrums, blood blisters, and the bends filling the spaces where unpleasant divorce talk could have otherwise arisen.

The next day was Napa. We had planned this before we knew Carleen was pregnant, but it was still a nice enough afternoon even without her being able to actually swallow the wine she was tasting. I was not so limited, but I have to admit that wine tastings are nearly wasted on me. I love good wine. I enjoy it immensely. I'm even capable of swirling it around a glass with a contemplative expression on my face, but if I'm honest, I have to admit that my palate doesn’t tell me much beyond whether I like something or not in the most basic of ways.

It began to rain as we headed back to Sausalito. Carleen was leaving the next day, and this fact combined with the dreary weather was depressing me. We shopped in Berkeley a bit and then had a nice Thai dinner, but I was still in a funk. As she drifted off to sleep that night, Carleen said that she wished that I could race her plane back home and be waiting for her when she got to Columbus. She wasn't serious about this, but it hit me kind of hard. Being out on the road seemed selfish while I had a pregnant wife back home. I knew Carleen was a big girl and could handle me being gone for another week or two, but at that moment I wanted nothing more than to throw all of my things in the car, race east on I-80, and be home in three days. It was a fleeting feeling, but one that would return to me more than once before the end of my trip.

I sat by the window listening to the rain and pretending to read as Carleen drifted off. I watched her sleep for close to an hour.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 9

2008-04-14T15:21:00.004-04:00

I put the day-to-day journal on hold for most of the next week as I was travelling with Carleen. Part of this was because it seemed rude to whip out my little black book in front of her each evening, but mostly because recording everything kind of defeats the purpose of taking a vacation with your wife, which is the creation of mutual memories. The sort of living memories that sharpen, fade, or change based on which of us tells a given story and how over the years.

For example, on the first day after leaving Los Angeles, we stopped in Santa Barbara around lunchtime to visit the mission there. Sure, I could sit here and tell you all the details about how we walked up to the place, saw a big line, and impulsively decided to sneak in the exit gate and wander around on our own rather than wait and pay for a guided door, but what would be the point of that? As I type this, we're five years out from that happening, and Carleen and I already have some vaguely accurate, two-person shorthand of the story that we share at dinner parties, usually when the subject of the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church comes up. It no doubt strays a bit from what actually happened, and over time, will begin to stray further. Our kids will one day groan when they hear us tell whatever time-addled version we've settled on by then. And you know what? That's how it should be. On some level, marriages are about agreed history, and something is lost when one person takes ownership over a mutual memory in the name of petty accuracy.

Not that I won't sketch the outline of our trek up the coast a bit.

After learning that I’d be a father come Christmas, we spent two fun days hanging around Los Angeles, sometimes with Todd, sometimes without. Having only been there one time before, we still hewed pretty closely to the conventional: cruising Mulholland Drive; watching surfers in Malibu; walking around Santa Monica; paying $5 for a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice in Beverly Hills. You know, the usual California things.

We had done the traditional Hollywood stuff when we were there in 1997. It didn’t impress us all that much, so it certainly didn't merit a return-visit. Disneyland and the other artificial attractions always were out of the question. If there were ever any doubts on this score, they were settled when I read about the then-recently-opened California Adventure theme park, which hustles its visitors through simulated California landmarks and experiences such as virtual orange groves and synthetic redwood forests, complete with artificial smells pumped in. While I could almost see the value of such a thing if it were in, say, North Dakota, its existence in California is deeply disturbing. I suppose the only place left to go after that is a theme park-themed-theme park.

On day three we took off up the coast, stopping, as I said, in Santa Barbara, but only long enough for the mission tour and lunch. I did drive around the town long enough, though, to check and see how different it looked from my mental image of Santa Teresa, which is Ross Macdonald's fictionalized version of his adopted hometown. Assessment: a surprisingly small number of eccentric oil tycoons, missing heirs, and intense yet mysterious matriarchs protecting decades-old family secrets of unspeakable scandal. Sad, really.

By late afternoon -- following a brief, kitschy detour to the Madonna Inn -- we were in Cambria, where we stayed for the night at a nice little B&B. It was kind of fun talking to the other guests at breakfast the next morning, but truth be told, we're not really B&B people. We all tell little lies to ourselves in order to get through the day, and one of the lies I'm fond of is that no one besides me has ever slept in the room in which I'm staying. It's not really easy to believe a whopper like that, but if you try hard enough, you can almost construct a scenario where you were the first person to ever use those sheets, blankets, and pillows. That they emerged from a factory and then a laundry sterile and pure mere days before your arrival. You can't maintain that fiction, however, when you share olallieberry French Toast with some fat Lothario from New Mexico who comes back to the joint every year and tells you about how he and his "lady friend" used to stay in your room but changed because the bed springs squeaked too much.

Hearst Castle was up next. I enjoyed it an awful lot despite the fact (or because of the fact?), that in many ways, it's merely a grander version of the Madonna Inn. The primary difference, it seems, is that Alex Madonna realized that he was putting together a kitschy pastiche of clashing styles when he was building his Xanadu, while Hearst actually thought he was making some sort of architectural statement. Well, I suppose he was making a statement, even if it wasn't the one he intended. It was a fun stop, though, and one gets the sense that it was a very interesting place to be in the 1920s and 30s. By the way: the tour guides at Heart Castle do not think you're funny when you add "Cost: No man can say!" at the end of every one of their comments, nor are you the first to ever have said it.

That afternoon we drove up Highway 1 through Big Sur. While I'd hate to be stuck on this road behind an R.V. on a summer Saturday, it was as wonderful as-advertised on a traffic-free weekday afternoon in April. People more eloquent than I am have described the isolated beauty of the place a thousand times before so I'll spare you my stab at it, but suffice it to say that they're right.

After a stop to look at seals at Point Lobos State Reserve, we made it to Carmel by late afternoon and checked into the Sandpiper Inn. The Sandpiper had seen better days, but it was cozy and pleasant. It was also something of a tonic to all of the conspicuous wealth of Carmel which residents and planners have tried hard to hide behind the village-in-a-forest facade, but which can easily be seen in the cars, shops, and people lining the streets of this former artists' colony. I actually thought I saw a poet for a second, but it turned out to be a smudge on my glasses.

Not that I'm some sort of aesthete or anything. When I'm honest with myself I admit that my reaction to places like Carmel is informed just as much by envy and avarice as it is lamentation for a bygone (well, fantastical) egalitarian age. Proof: today I live in an upscale suburb which pretends that it is still the same old farming village that sat here before it was taken over by lingerie magnates, country clubs, and faux Georgian mansions 20 years ago. I spend far less time railing against this place than I really should. Wealth would not be as corrupting as it is if it wasn't so attractive to begin with.

We ate another wonderful meal that evening and spent the next day exploring the Monterey Peninsula. The weather was pretty bad, though, so we ended up spending much of the day in the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Carleen and I wanted to take home a couple of sea otters but gave up on the plan when we assumed that there were probably, you know, laws against that sort of thing.

The rest of the day was spent on a slow drive around the bay, a quick stop in Santa Cruz and a meandering cruise up the coast past Half Moon Bay where we stopped for a late lunch. It wasn't long before we had made it through San Francisco's rush hour traffic, across the Golden Gate and to the Hotel Sausalito, which would be home for the next few nights. Carleen -- still pregnant -- took a nap soon after we got there. I set out on a brief walking tour. As is the case with most of my solitary walking tours, this one took me by a pub (it's the damnedest thing, really). A couple of beers later -- and a nice conversation with a guitar-weilding hippie -- I was sitting by the same dock of the same bay which inspired a nice little song a long time ago.

But I wasn't really thinking about Brother Otis all that much because I couldn't get Roy Orbison's "Dream Baby" -- the first song that ever comes to mind whenever I'm feeling happy and content -- out of my head.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 8

2008-04-10T15:30:00.002-04:00

Carleen flew into LAX the next morning, and I was happy to see her. Sure, I had enjoyed the week since I left home, but every single thing I did in those six days would have been improved by having her with me. Well, maybe not the long stretches of driving. She hates really long drives. And probably not the baseball game, because she doesn't like baseball at all.

Hmmm . . . maybe this trip was perfectly planned just the way we were doing it.

We headed out to grab some lunch. I didn't really know where I was going, so we settled on some random pizza place that seemed nice enough.

“This place is ok, isn’t it?” I asked as we sat down.

“It’s fine," she said, "I’m pregnant.”

I didn't exactly have a response for that.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been shocked by this. While it would have been inaccurate to say we were trying to have a baby, we had certainly stopped trying to prevent a baby in January. Carleen had been on some un-fun meds as a result of her optic neuritis at the time, and she decided that she didn't want to be putting chemicals in her body anymore. I totally understood. She was miserable on the drugs, and I supported her decision to go off the pill. Did we want to have kids immediately? No, but if it happened, great.

Still, the possibility of having a baby didn't seem all that real to us in those first couple of months of that year, especially as I was mentally, and then literally, checking out of my job. To be honest, each of us probably would have bet that, after a decade or so of birth control, it would have taken several months for her system to clear out enough for it to even be possible. The lesson: don't bet against nature.

Not that this was unwelcome news. It was wonderful news, actually. It was news, however, that required some heavy processing on my part. I mean, here I was, in the midst of the quintessentially selfish pursuit: the quest to find oneself on a solitary road trip. A venture which, at its very heart, is all about sloughing off responsibilities and escaping Real Life for a few short weeks. And what happens? Real Life hires a skip-tracer, tracks me down and hogties me in the middle of pizza place in West Los Angeles. To say I was off my game for the rest of the day would be a bit of an understatement. I soon got my head together, though, and within the space of a couple of hours I went from "WTF?!" to wondering whether I would have a son or a daughter.

After lunch Carleen and I checked into the hotel we had reserved in Beverly Hills. It was a nice place. Certainly much nicer than the joints I had stayed at the previous week in that I wasn't afraid to touch the bedspread. After dropping our bags and freshening up we swung by to pick up Todd and do some shopping, walking, and general farting around in Santa Monica. We went back to the hotel late that afternoon so that Carleen could rest a bit, after which we got some Mexican food at El Cholo.

We had made a plan at lunch not to tell ANYONE about the pregnancy until we had time to process it ourselves. That plan lasted about seven hours when we spilled the beans to Todd over two margaritas and a water with lemon.

If you couldn't tell, planning isn't exactly our strong suit.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 7

2008-04-08T11:18:00.001-04:00

It was nice to wake up and know that I didn’t have to drive somewhere. Well, somewhere out of town at least, because L.A. is all about being in the car.

Todd was still asleep when I got up, so after showering I decided to explore a bit. I started down Santa Monica Blvd. looking for a Jiffy Lube that, according to Mapquest anyway, was supposed to be there. I couldn’t find it. Hungry, I cruised over to Melrose Avenue and found a funky little café where I had breakfast. The actress Jami Gertz came in right after I did and sat down at the table next to mine. I've never understood the impulse to get autographs or say something to famous people -- what are they to me? -- so even though there was nobody else in the place I let her enjoy her breakfast. I couldn't think of anything I would say to her even if I wanted to. "Loved you in Quicksilver, Jami!"

After breakfast I meandered east through Hollywood to US-101, up to 405, down to Redondo, up through the Beach Cities to LAX, past the giant donut, and then back to the freeway and Todd’s house. I didn't really stop anywhere. Traffic was light this early on a Saturday and I just wanted to get the lay of the land. My overall assessment of L.A. after a few trips there: Brentwood, Westwood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Manhattan, Hermosa, and Redondo are all pretty cool, while the rest of the place consists of endless, faceless sprawl for which I don’t have much use. I would live in L.A. before, say, New York, but only if I didn't have to commute downtown to a normal job and could stay in my own neighborhood most of the time.

Todd was up by the time I got back. He led me to the Jiffy Lube that had somehow eluded me, after which we headed down to Redondo Beach to toss a baseball, play video games and air hockey and generally screw around. Todd and I are really good at this. The year before he had visited me in Columbus and we spent the day going to a ballgame, getting milkshakes, riding go-carts, and playing miniature golf. It sounds corny, I suppose, but I love doing this sort of stuff. I only seem to manage to do it when I’m with Todd, though, and it’s afternoons like these that make me regret that one of my closest friends lives thousands of miles away.

After the beach we hit an In-and-Out Burger and then made our way down to Anaheim to catch the Angels-Mariners game. The ride to the stadium was endless, partially due to traffic, but mostly due to the fact that we missed the exit for highway 22, which cuts from 405 back over to the Big A. As a result, we had to take 405 all the way down to where it ends at I-5, and then jog back north to Anaheim. We missed batting practice, but we did get more time to gab about life, the universe, and everything.

Angels-Mariners would have been a relatively easy ticket to score in April 2002, but a year later the reigning World Champion Angels were a much hotter attraction. The ticket lines were dreadfully long when we arrived, so we looked for a scalper. While I took a call from the fraud department at American Express (they noticed that someone had taken my card and had absconded out west with it, racking up hundreds in gas and hotel charges) Todd stumbled upon some guy whose friends couldn’t make it and was trying to recoup his losses. He was selling them for less than face value, but Todd still managed to talk him down even further. There are many times I've thought that maybe Todd should be the lawyer, because he’s much better at that kind of stuff than I am.

We didn’t ask where the seats were located, because when two guys under the age of fifty go to a ballgame, it’s all about trading up, and by “trading up” I mean “squatting in good seats that don’t belong to you and hoping the owners don’t arrive.”

Trading up is an inexact science, dependent upon many variables such as overall crowd size and usher-tenacity. Given that it was a beautiful weekend evening, an attractive opponent was in town, and they were giving away stuffed Rally Monkeys, none of the variables seemed to be in our favor that night. We nevertheless set off for the good seats along the first base line, because to admit defeat before even trying would be downright Un-American.

To ensure a successful trade-up, you must avoid the ushers, but you can’t look like you’re avoiding them. You must walk with confidence and sit down in your chosen seat as if you were its lifetime season ticket holder, but you must be prepared to execute a friendly relocate if the rightful owner arrives. This entails looking at your ticket stub, mumbling something about being in the right row but wrong section, and quickly moving along. The very appearance of arguing with the seat’s rightful owner is unacceptable in that it risks an usher spotting the exchange, coming down, and attempting to resolve things. If this happens you might as well head straight for Suckerville (the middle rows of the left field bleachers where your true seats are located ) because you’re going to be watched like a hawk until at least the sixth inning. And no, trading up after the sixth inning doesn’t really count.

That night’s game was the most difficult trade-up of my life. We had to execute multiple friendly relocates before we found a permanent seat, and even then it was difficult to get comfortable given that we were getting a serious eye-fucking from one of the ushers. He was obviously on to us. The only reason I can think of why he didn't evict us was that he felt he needed some kind of probable cause he didn't yet have. Everyone kept their powder dry, however, and we managed to settle in nicely by the time the third inning rolled around.

Oh yeah, the game wasn’t half bad either. Kevin Appier -- one of my favorite players from the 90s -- started for Anaheim, but he left early with an injury. Reliever Scot Shields was no help, and the Mariners jumped out to a 6-1 lead. The Rally Monkey was in the house that night, however, and the Angels mounted a comeback, capped off by a three-run rally in the bottom of the ninth. Final score: Angels 7, Mariners 6.

I was both happy and expectant as we drove back to Todd's place. Why expectant? Because Carleen was flying in the next morning and I couldn't wait to see her. I wasn't until I picked her up the next morning that I had an idea of how expectant I really was.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 6

2008-04-04T22:12:00.001-04:00

I woke up at 5:30 A.M. the next morning without a plan. There had been one – heading south from Reno, through the Lake Tahoe region, and then along the back of the Sierras and into Death Valley – but I temporarily abandoned it. For one thing, when I opened up my curtains I was met with a heavy, steady snow. If Reno was getting this, the mountain passes on US-395 would probably be even more of a mess. After driving in the snow the day before, I decided that I didn’t need any more of it.

For another thing, my friend Ethan had called me from Berkeley a couple of days earlier and said he was free to join me for my drive back east. We didn't have anything definitive planned out yet, but it made perfect sense for us head east from the Bay Area and make the same Tahoe-Sierras-Death Valley drive then.

Above all else, however, was that when I woke up that morning, I was possessed by a somewhat surprising lack of enthusiasm for another day on lonely, desolate highway. The two previous days had been almost perfect, but with that itch temporarily scratched, I decided that I wanted a little bit of civilization. Absent that, I'd settle for the civilization overload that is Los Angeles.

After a shower, a shave – five days worth of stubble was starting to get to me – and a better breakfast than I would have gotten if I had stayed at the Heart O’ Town, I got on I-80 for the trip up and over the mountains. The snow stayed heavy and roads slick until I reached Donner Pass ("Cannibalism free since 1847!") where the sun came out. Winter had turned into summer by the time I completed the 7000-foot descent to Sacramento. I opened the sunroof and looked for a car wash. As the Silver Fox got a much-needed bath, I called my friend Todd to let him know I'd be in Los Angeles a day early.

I'm one of those people who have always preferred a very small group of close friends to lots and lots of casual acquaintances. I don't like parties much. I don't like small talk. For the most part I just like to do my own, mostly solitary thing. This has created problems on a handful of occasions, such as when I needed a ride to the airport or something, and it certainly means that you don't have a lot of backup options when you drive 2700 miles and need a place to crash. The beauty of it, though, is that when you make plans with a really really close friend like Todd, you don't often need backups. Todd was totally cool with me showing up a day early, and if he wasn't, he probably wouldn't have said anything anyway.

I-5 through California’s central valley wasn't as boring as I assumed it would be. I live in farm country and have long since learned to ignore the crops along the highway, but California’s relatively exotic produce – apricot trees, grapes, avocados, kiwifruit, pistachios, etc. – were interesting to a boy from corn and soybean country. Well, interesting enough to keep me from falling asleep anyway. At some point, though, an interstate is an interstate is an interstate, so I was into hardcore daydreaming by the time I got to Coalinga and stopped for lunch.

I made it to L.A. just as Friday afternoon rush hour was picking up. The 405 was a parking lot from Sherman Oaks to Todd’s exit at Sunset Blvd., but based on the stories I've head of L.A. traffic, I suppose I could have done much worse. I was at Todd’s place just before 6. We got in the car and tooled around West L.A. for a while (he drove). One Jamba Juice with a protein boost and a wheatgrass shot later, I knew I was in Southern California.

We drove up to Malibu and walked on the beach for a bit before Todd had to leave. Seems he and his girlfriend had plans that night and he had to get ready to go. If he told me he had plans I wouldn't have imposed like I did, but see above about how cool close friends can be. The plans were very L.A.: once-and-future Smashing Pumpkins' leader Billy Corrigan's new band – Zwan – was playing a show someplace (for reasons that were lost somewhere in the mists of 2003, this was something of a big deal at the time), and Todd and his girlfriend were going to crash it. How? By using their youthful good looks and sunglasses-at-night cool to walk right past security and into the backstage area without paying, the theory being that people tend not to mess with folks who look like they belong.

There's a lot to this theory – it's amazing how little hassle I get in even the most secure buildings when I suit up in full lawyerly regalia with a briefcase in hand – and I had no doubt that Todd could pull it off in the setting of his choosing. For a teacher’s kid from Ohio, he had soaked up Los Angeles to the bone since arriving there eight years before, and could definitely look the part of backstage VIP if he tried. People might think to ask who he was and what he was doing, but they'd stop themselves short because, man, how embarrassing would it be to find out that the guy you're hassling was the bass player for that up-and-coming band whose album Billy Corrigan was producing next week?

Todd extended a courtesy invite for me to join him, but I'm certain I would’ve sunk the whole operation. It would take a team of plastic surgeons and wardrobe consultants for me to look like I belonged backstage at a glittery, sold-out rock show. It made no difference, though, because I was tired from the road and looked forward to spreading out in his apartment. He dropped me off at his place and left for the night. I put on Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, fired up the computer, and reconnected with civilization for a while. Later I raided the fridge for a couple of beers, pitas, and hummus.

Then I put in a movie. It was Dead Man, starring Johnny Depp, which is about a businessman from Ohio on a fool journey out west.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 5

2008-04-02T11:28:00.001-04:00

Susan had implored me to hike something a little more challenging and less touristy than Wolfe Trail, which is the trail that leads to Delicate Arch. I decided to do it anyway. This was my first time out here and I wanted to see the big famous rock formation that they put on the license plates. Besides, I think Susan took me for a more experienced hiker than I really was, so I figured that taking her advice would only invite trouble.

In hindsight I’m glad I made this decision: about two weeks after I hiked Arches, a hiker named Aron Ralston, who was hiking alone in a remote Utah canyon not far from where I was, was forced to amputate his own arm with a dull knife when he became trapped under a boulder. Would that have happened to me? Probably not. Could it have? Why the hell not? Hiking alone in unfamiliar country is none too smart, so I decided to hold off on the serious stuff until I could come back with a friend. Today would just be sight-seeing.

I reached the trailhead and started hiking before dawn, making what I thought to be pretty good time up the moderately steep slickrock. I assume the the hike is an easy one for most hikers, but it was exercise enough for a flatlander schlub like me. Between the striking silence of Arches at dawn and my relatively poor conditioning, my beating heart and heavy breathing were the loudest things around as I covered the mile and a half and 480 vertical feet of the trail.

You first see Delicate Arch at the exact moment you think it’s not worth the trouble to get there. It sits down below you as you round a rock wall after a fairly steep climb. I got my first glimpse of it just as the first rays of morning sun cleared the La Sal Mountains. I was awestruck. By the Arch itself, sure, but also by the sudden appearance of a miles-wide vista of cliffs, dry washes, and valleys, the likes of which I'd never seen before. I marveled at treasures which had stood unmolested, uncommercialized, and unencroached upon for so long in a country that seems to make a special effort to molest, commercialize and encroach upon all that is beautiful. While in later years I would learn that things aren't quite that simple, at the time I stood there transfixed.

I sat on a boulder overlooking Delicate Arch for perhaps an hour, completely alone, losing myself in thought as I watched the sunrise. Thoughts about scale. Perspective. About how easily and completely the city in which I live would be swallowed up in this immense landscape. About the insignificance of the things which bother me on a day-to-day basis. About how this landscape looked exactly the same is it does now before I was born and how it will remain unchanged long after I've worried myself into an early grave. About how little it would matter in the grand scheme of things if I never showed up at that new job next month. How easy it would be to simply stay here forever.

Most of all I just thought about how happy I was to be there that morning, thousands of miles from whatever it was that had bothered me so much in the last eighteen months. Life at that moment seemed impossibly simple and, for the first time in a long time, impossibly good. After a while, I realized that I had a big goofy grin on my face, which made me grin even wider. I started back down the trail before other hikers could intrude on the moment. I probably grinned all the way back to the car.

The original plan was to finish my hike early, grab a shower and some breakfast, and make the 420 miles to Ely, Nevada by late afternoon, staying there that night. Within an hour of leaving Moab, however, I realized that I needed to think bigger, or at least further, because US-50 across western Utah is an impossibly scenic -- and practically empty -- stretch of road.

Presented with roads like these, I put six Dylan cds in the changer, lashed the wheel and sped like mad over the deliciously interminable straightaways that cut through the Great Basin Desert.

I got to Ely far earlier in the afternoon than I figured I would. I'm glad I did, because one look around the place made me realize that it wasn’t where I wanted to stop for the night. Cold, gray, and dirty, Ely was a rather depressing way station. I stopped at the Hotel Nevada, the city's main tourist attraction. Though it had a certain shambling grandeur about it from the street, its charms disappeared once you got inside and spied the rows of video poker machines and the Marlboro huffing, sweatsuit-wearing people plugging dollar after dollar into them. It seemed a wretched place, and I stayed only long enough to have a Coke, check my map, and pick up my official “Loneliest Road Passport,” which I was going to have stamped at each of the flyspeck towns along US-50 between Ely and Fernley.

I ran into a pretty major snowsqual at the first mountain pass ten miles west of Ely. When I could no longer see the road, I decided to turn around, head back into town, and assess my options. I found Ely’s public library, where I got online to check out weather and highway reports. The Nevada Department of Highways told me that it was smooth sailing all the way to Carson City, but the two inches of snow on my car told me differently. Just as I as about to play it safe, give up, and check into the depressing Hotel Nevada for the night, I overheard the librarian talking to some local about the roads. Seems the local was a truck driver who had just come over 50 from Reno, and by all appearances survived. I butted into their conversation, pleading Easterner, and asked whether I would make it through the squall I had just seen without snow chains, a St. Bernard, and a cask of brandy.

The trucker told me that I’d be fine this late in the Winter (silly me, I thought it was Spring) if I took it slow over the first two passes and did my best to follow a truck or someone else who could make some tracks for me. I followed his advice, waited for a truck to follow, and started back on the road. It was white knuckles for the first 20 miles, but after that I came down from the snow line and was cruising along at close to 100 m.p.h. again.

The Loneliest Road was quite impressive, though like most things, the less-publicized competition – that stretch of US-50 between Delta, Utah and Ely – was more impressive. Lonelier. Faster. Prettier. A man can get some serious driving done there. The most notable thing about this stretch of road was when I paid -- gasp! -- $2.50 a gallon for gas in the little town of Austin, which at the time was the highest price I'd ever seen in my life (my, how things change). 310 miles and four passport stamps later I rolled into Reno, where I lost $45 gambling without stepping foot in a casino.

My primary guide for the trip was a book called Road Trip USA by Jamie Jensen. While it's a great book -- I tend to read it more when I'm not travelling -- I decided not to rely too much on it this trip. I used it to locate routes and sights, but for the most part found my own food and accommodations. Euphoric from a wonderful day on the road, however, I was in the mood to try something different, so I let Mr. Jensen guide me to some local color in the form of a motel he called "quaint" and "retro" and "charming" named "The Heart O' Town." This was a mistake.

From the street it looked, well, OK. It had a neat neon sign and didn't look too seedy, so I figured what the hell. I went inside to ask for a room. The office -- attached to the manager's apartment -- smelled like cabbage. An old lady came out and took my name, money (cash only, please) and gave me a room key. I was already starting to regret handing over my money and giving my real name, but after my Arches-euphoria, I decided that I could handle anything that day.

I walked up to my room and opened the door to see: a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. A TV from the Ford administration. A red velvet bedspread with multiple questionable stains. The stench of bug spray and (maybe) death. Before I let my bag hit the floor, I turned on my heel and walked out.

Back in the office, not wanting to insult the proprietor, I mumbled something about making a mistake or mixed up plans or something and meekly expressed my desire to get my money back and leave. The old lady wasn't having it, though. No refunds. No way. Not possible. Because I was on a hiatus from practicing law -- and thinking about maybe never going back to it -- I had no stomach to argue my rights. It wasn't a lot of money, and I was willing to leave it on the table. As I walked out, the old lady yelled encouragingly "you can keep the key until morning if you want! The room is yours all night!"

My exhaustion catching up with me, I decided to go Velveeta that night, so I got on the freeway, got off at Sparks, and checked into a suburban Cross Country Inn which sat next to an Outback Steakhouse. Ah, home! I soon realized that some Cal-Nevada girls' high school volleyball tournament was in town, because the hotel lobby was filled with scores of tall and athletic sixteen year-old girls, most of them blond and most of them wearing bikinis as they made their way to the indoor pool. I wasn't exactly tempted by the scene, but I was a five-days-unshaven and dusty dude wearing ratty clothes with full legal rights to a no-tell motel downtown all night, so I quickly separated myself from the surrounding nubility lest someone tried to have me arrested.

It took me a while to fall asleep that night. When I finally did, I dreamed of red rock canyons and empty roads.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 4

2008-03-31T22:16:00.010-04:00

I got back on the road after my stroll through Salida. Within 15 minutes I had to floor it to simply maintain my speed as I climbed up to Monarch Pass and the Continental Divide. Monarch pass sits at 11,500 feet – the highest I’ve ever been outside of an airplane – and was covered with snow even in mid April. I was feeling pretty good by the time I reached the top, though I wasn’t sure if it was due to the stunning views or the lack of oxygen. Not having a proper traveling companion, I took a picture of my car next to a snow bank.

From Monarch it was straight down for miles, bottoming out at 5,500 feet in the town of Gunnison. I stopped for gas there and assessed my options. I had originally planned to continue along US-50 until I hit Grand Junction and I-70, but Route 92 – the West Elk Scenic Bypass – looked much more promising, both in name and shape. For one thing, it would bring me much closer to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison which, though I didn’t want to go to the national park itself, I wanted to see. More importantly, the road looked like fun. The little red line on my map promised switchbacks and steep climbs and all manner of wonderfulness. It was a pretty easy decision.

My detour didn’t disappoint. A Honda Accord is no sports car, but it handled well enough to whip around curves and provided enough power to barrel down the rare straightaways. I stopped several times to catch awe-inspiring views of the Gunnison River and throw rocks over the sides of cliffs. After an hour or so, the land started to flatten out a bit, the vertigo-inducing drop-offs giving way to ranches and farms. I had gone about 75 miles by the time the road finally connected back into US-50 at Delta. By the end of that 75 miles I was prepared to swear off main roads forever.

I caught up with I-70 again in Grand Junction. There I spotted a billboard that read “Stop Terrorism: Get the U.S. out of the U.N.,” paid for by the surprisingly still-existing John Birch Society. I wondered if they were still after the Communists or if they’d found someone else to worry about.

I crossed into Utah headed for Moab, and was presented with another decision about what route to take. MapQuest would have you take I-70 to US-191, which tracks back to the southeast and down to Moab. State route 128, on the other hand, extends southwest from the interstate several miles before the US-191 turnoff, eventually meets up with the Colorado river and leads down into the canyon country surrounding Moab and beyond. I hadn’t really done much research on the area prior to leaving home, and for a minute I wondered if there wasn’t a good reason to avoid 128. Unable to think of one, I took the smaller, more winding road.

It was a good decision, as 128 is a gem. It starts out less than promising, passing through the “town” of Cisco which is nothing but a rusting, long-since-closed Texaco station and a couple of abandoned mobile homes. Things soon improved dramatically. After ten miles of flat, open range land, the road met up with the Colorado, which has turned this country into a mini-Grand Canyon. Unlike the real McCoy, however, you can pull your car over here, walk to the river bank, and cool your feet in the water while standing in the shadows of the canyon walls. The day had grown hot – wasn’t I just in the snow a few hours before? – so I stopped and swam for a few minutes. Not the smartest thing I’d ever done – the water was freezing – but it was certainly refreshing.

As I approached Moab, I noticed several trucks pulling tricked-out Jeeps on trailers. Once in town, a sign informed me that I had arrived on the eve of a United Rockcrawling & Off-Road Challenge event, or UROC, which is all about Jeep enthusiasts taking 4x4s over rock trails with names such as Hell's Revenge and Poison Spider Mesa, all while doing their best to keep it upright. It wouldn’t begin in earnest until Friday, and when I got to town most of the drivers were cruising around, admiring each other’s Jeeps in parking lots, and drinking beer.

My thoughts immediately went to Raoul Duke arriving in Las Vegas to cover the Fabulous Mint 400 when, by cosmic coincidence, I passed by a hotel called the Gonzo Inn, complete with Ralph Steadman-inspired design flourishes and sign fonts. Well, I thought, if the Jeepers were gathering in Moab, I felt the Honda culture should be represented as well. Me and a thousand off-roaders from all over America. Why not? Move confidently into their midst.

After checking into the Gonzo Inn – a single, unfortunately; they wanted too much for the Gonzo Suite – I looked for somewhere I could eat, drink, and maybe talk to someone. The Moab Brewery (actual, inspiring motto: “Moab’s Only Microbrewery!”) looked to be as good a place as any. I sat at the bar and gulped down two pints of Scorpion Ale which, while no great shakes, was better than a kick in the balls. It made me nice and happy and chatty, though, and I was soon engaged in conversation with a woman named Susan, who was also drinking and dining alone.

Susan was in her mid 40s, though I only figured that out after talking to her for a while and picking up clues. She had that healthy and relaxed look that everyone seems to have out west, and if I didn’t know that she had been in college in the 70s, I would have guessed that she was ten years younger than she really was. I also learned that Susan was once a lawyer like me, but got out of the business five years before when she concluded that she could never be happy in a job where she couldn’t trust her clients, the lawyers across the table from her and, sometimes, even the ones down the hall. After bagging the legal career she opened a restaurant. The restaurant flopped after a year, so she moved to Moab and now she just “enjoys the sun.” Not bad work if you can get it.

When I told her I was a lawyer on the lam she pressed me: did I hate it? If not, why did I quit? If so, why was I going back to another law firm when my trip was over? Since I liked what I had seen of the west so far, why didn’t I just come out here and stay for a while? It was a pretty good cross examination coming from a woman who claimed to have given up the legal business. When she saw that I was going to play it close to the vest rather than pour my heart out about my career misgivings, she offered that I should quit the law now before it burned me out completely. Easy for somebody who makes ends meet by “enjoying the sun” to say. Not that she was wrong.

Dispensing with the shop talk, Susan and I agreed that we hated the Jeepers in town for the UROC thing. They were loud. They were dangerous. They were dirty. And that was just the guys in the restaurant. We couldn’t imagine what they’d be like once they hit the trails that weekend.

Noticing my little guidebook was open to the section on Arches National Park, she offered to take me out for a guided hike on Saturday if I was still going to be in town (she had plans the next couple of days). I told her I’d be gone by then, but thanked her for the offer. By the time we got to the subject of the painfully low alcohol content of Utah beer, we had been talking and drinking for close to two hours. If we had been in a different state we may have even been buzzed by then.

Her boyfriend (do people in their mid-40s have “boyfriends?”) showed up a few minutes later. He paused for a second, processed the scene of his, um, girlfriend chatting up a strange young man at a bar, quickly ascertained that I was no threat, and sat down. The three of us talked for a few more minutes, during which I gathered that the sun-enjoying business must pay pretty well, because boyfriend spent his days riding his mountain bike or reading books while living with girlfriend. Again, nice work if you can get it. Feeling like a third wheel after a while, I paid my check, said my goodbyes, and headed back to the car.

I decided to take a short driving tour of Moab’s main drag. While stopped at a red light, a woman dressed like a Hooters waitress gave me a UROC flag to fly from my car, and told me that if I was spotted by UROC officials the next day, I could win a prize. At least I think that’s what she told me, as it was hard to hear over the Jeep engines. I made it back to my hotel room and got to sleep before 11. It had been an enjoyable day, but I was tired from the road and the fresh air. Besides, I wanted to wake up early the next morning so I could see sunrise in Arches National Park.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 3

2008-03-30T19:05:00.001-04:00

After lunch at the Keg, I walked around Manitou Springs for a bit trying to figure out what to do. Pike's Peak wasn't an option. Because it was off-season, the cog railway was on a limited schedule and the last train of the day had already left. The highway to the top was closed due to a recent snow. Kind of early in the year to go to the top of a 14,000 mountain, I suppose. So I walked around Manitou for a bit, checking out the gift shops, historical markers, and a pretty nifty penny arcade. One of the markers noted that the springs which gave Manitou its name used to be a destination for people suffering from tuberculosis. At some point in history the health-calculus must have changed, because the only other people in the penny arcade were a couple of chain smokers in their 50s, both of whom were hacking up a storm.

I walked back outside after playing some pinball and a game that sorta-kinda-not really looked like pachinko. I didn't plan on driving into the mountains until the next morning, so I looked for something to do to kill time. Across the highway from Manitou is a park called Garden of the Gods, notable for its sandstone formations. It's pretty enough, but after an hour or so of hiking I was losing interest. With condos and houses visible from most of the trails, the place feels vaguely like a theme park or a particularly gnarly golf course as opposed to The Great Outdoors.

Storm clouds were hopping over the mountain peaks and the sky was growing dark as I returned to my car. The plan was to head west on US-50 first thing the next morning, so I got on the interstate and headed down to Pueblo to find a place to stay for the night. Feeling good from the short hike and wanting more exercise, I checked into a motel with an indoor pool and weight room. Stretching out muscles that had gone mostly unused for 1200 miles felt wonderful. As I swam, the storm outside really began to pick up, with sustained winds of about 40 miles an hour rattling the windows and sending tumble weeds across the parking lots. Feeling refreshed, I decided to check out Pueblo. I didn’t suspect that there was much to actually see there, but I was curious about the place because as my parents almost moved there about fifteen years ago.

My dad worked for the National Weather Service which, for most of his career, was comprised of hundreds of far-flung field offices located in places that, while important at the dawn of aviation, tended to be out of the way now. In Dad's day, the best way to get promotions was to transfer from office to office, filling desperately-needed slots and convincing enough people that you were management material. As a result, Mom and Dad moved around a lot over the years. By the time I was born, they had been to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, McGrath and St. Paul Island, Alaska, and Flint, Michigan. A promotion to management moved us from Flint to Parkersburg, West Virginia in 1985. In 1988 we moved down to Beckley, West Virginia which, for subjective reasons, is the place I consider my hometown.

I was out of the house for good by the time they moved again in 1994, this time to Nashville. They ended up moving a final time – back to Flint – in 1998. Each time they moved, the ultimate destination was only one of two or three jobs Dad had put in for. Parkersburg could just as easily have been Flagstaff, Arizona. Beckley could have been Spartanburg, South Carolina. Nashville was almost Pueblo.

Downtown was practically deserted due to the bad weather, but I found a cozy little bar where I had a couple of beers and talked to the bartender. He confirmed my initial assessment of Pueblo: on the rise after years of empty storefronts, but likely to never rise as high as the city fathers hoped it would. There was a nice new Marriott hotel/conference center and a couple of decent restaurants, but Pueblo will never be a commercial juggernaut. That said, Pueblo’s title of “the asshole of Colorado” – as stated in Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation anyway – is clearly unwarranted. From what I saw of it, it’s a relatively well-kempt little town with more well-maintained older buildings than I had expected. I’ve certainly lived in worse places, and I bet my parents would have liked living there more than they liked Nashville.

I woke up at 5:30 the next morning without the aid of an alarm. I looked out the window and saw that the storms had passed, revealing a cloudless sky. It was a chilly morning, but the temperature was on its way up to the mid 60s. I was itching to get into the Rockies.

My first stop was Cañon City, just west of Pueblo on US-50. Cañon City's claim to fame are the fourteen prison facilities in the area, including the infamous ADX Florence, the "supermax" prison with the nickname "Alcatraz of the Rockies." You can't exactly visit there, but you can visit the nearby Museum of Colorado Prisons. More appealing was Skyline Drive, which is a three-mile, single-lane loop high above town affording some nice views of the surrounding mountains. I drove the loop, breathed some fresh air, and took several pictures.

Next was Royal Gorge Bridge, suspended a thousand feet over the Arkansas River. Royal Gorge is surrounded by kitschy tourist traps, go kart tracks, and “authentic” wild west towns. Thankfully, most of the attractions were closed until May, and those that were in operation didn’t open until at least 10 A.M. It was 8:30 when I got to the bridge itself, and there was nobody there except me. The bridge was open to both cars and walkers. After paying my entrance fee to the ranger at the gate, I decided to ditch the car and walk across.

I was about halfway across when the planks began to bounce. I stepped to the side and looked back, seeing the ranger in his little van heading my way. He passed me, gave me a polite wave, made it to the opposite end of the bridge, turned around, and drove back. He was obviously checking on me, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he thought I was a potential suicide. I had arrived alone and left my car behind, which I suppose fits the jumper profile. Or maybe he saw my backpack and thought I was a BASE jumper. I’m neither suicidal nor an extreme athlete (assuming there’s a difference between the two), but I had to admit that Royal Gorge would be a great place to either cheat or embrace death.

After the gorge, I made the stunning 47-mile drive to Salida. Unlike roads back east which often stray miles from the rivers and trails they once followed, US-50 hangs onto the Arkansas River for dear life. I stopped several times along the way to take pictures, watch fly fisherman, and feel the cold, cold water of the Arkansas.

Salida is a cute town perched about 7,200 feet up in the mountains. Though its pool halls and saloons evoke a rough and tumble past, the newish-looking cafés and mountain bike shops give off a touristy vibe. As of 2003 the bourgeoisie hadn't totally taken over yet, but it seemed like a couple more B&Bs would officially turn the tide. I stopped in the Cornucopia Café for some lunch, and while ordering my sandwich, I was faced with a decision I had never had to make before when I was asked if I wanted fruit or yogurt on the side. Having been in the Midwest so long, it took me a few seconds to come to grips with the fact that chips or fries were not an option. Now would probably be a good time to mention that people out west tend to be in better shape than people back east.

After lunch I walked around for an hour, enjoying the peacefulness of the quiet town and admiring the mountain views. I saw a "for rent" sign in the window of an apartment above the Victoria Bar. I stopped and looked at it, imagining myself inside with nothing but a warm bed, a shelf full of books, a thick sweater, and a cozy leather chair. I stopped daydreaming after a few moments and the image faded away. I was struck by the notion, however, that Salida would be an excellent place to go if I ever wanted to simply disappear for a while.

I still think that from time to time.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 2

2008-03-29T22:34:00.016-04:00

Kansas gets a bum rap. Everyone I talked to before the trip warned me that it would go on forever and bore me to tears. Applesauce. The night before I had hit Topeka just as the sun was going down, and watched the shadows dance across rolling grassland. Central Kansas was no less enchanting, with the morning sun burning the fog off of the meandering hills, revealing a unique and surprising beauty. Kansas may not appeal to most people the way oceans or mountains do, but anyone who dismisses it out-of-hand possesses an unreasonably narrow definition of scenery.

Not that I planned on spending any time there. In fact I hauled it across Kansas, keeping the cruise control at a steady 90-95. The only hitch was a 15-minute conversation at a rest area with a fella by the name of Bob Rhodes from Roanoke, Virginia. Bob was about 70, with thinning gray hair, faded and watery blue eyes, and what seemed like a desperate need to talk to someone. He hailed me as I was leaving the restroom, using our eastern license plates as an icebreaker. Sensing that he was lonely, I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to talk for a bit.

Bob was on his way to Fort Collins, Colorado, where his granddaughter was to be married the day before Easter. Bob's wife had passed away three years ago, though judging by the way he looked as he mentioned this it may as well have been yesterday. Bob’s son wanted him to come live with him in Fort Collins, but he said he just couldn’t get his mind around the idea of leaving the home he shared with his wife for nearly half a century. According to him, he was just going to stay with his son’s family for a month or so after the wedding to see how it felt. I looked over at his van as he told me this and saw that it was loaded to the gills. As I said goodbye, I was certain that Bob Rhodes was never going back to his home in Virginia again.

Back on the road, I saw an ambulance pass by me going east, but thought nothing of it. A few miles later I passed a horrific accident scene where I-70 and US 40 diverge just east of the Colorado border. A semi had plowed violently into the median and came to rest on its side, the tractor mangled. Judging by the skid marks I guessed that the driver fell asleep and drifted off the right side of the road, woke up, jammed on the breaks, and over-corrected to the left. By the looks of the tractor, the sheer number of police cars at the scene, and the fact that that ambulance I had seen, while flashing its lights, didn't seem to be in much of a hurry, suggested to me that the accident was fatal. Between Bob Rhodes and that scene I never felt more mortal in my life.

I got off of I-70 for good in Limon, Colorado, stopped for gas, and called my legal recruiter who had left me a couple of messages when I was out of cell phone range. Mary was the disembodied voice that put me together with my new firm when I finally decided to leave back in March. She also stood to claim her five figure fee the day I started work at the new place, so she was understandably worried when she tried to call me at my old firm the day before and was told that I had already left and was, to the best of their knowledge, somewhere in the Rocky Mountains by then. I had forgotten to tell Mary that I had decided to change my planned 30-day notice to a two weeks notice. Fact was, I had been slacking off so much in recent months that I didn't even really have two weeks' worth of work to wrap up.

I chatted with Mary long enough to assure her that I hadn’t flipped out and that I had every intention of returning to start my new job in a month. I also made it clear that the legal profession was thousands of miles away for me at that moment, both literally and figuratively, and that in no way was I prepared to talk about the new job yet. The call was nothing but cordial, but even a business communication as superficial as that one unsettled me, so much so that I had to sit on the hood of my car in the gas station parking lot for a few minutes to gather my thoughts. Thoughts gathered, I eased onto US-24 towards Colorado Springs.

Eastern Colorado looks a lot like Kansas until you’re about 15 miles west of Limon. There, just after you top an innocent looking hill, you’re greeted with a sprawling valley, beyond which you can just make out the Rockies. I was behind a Cadillac -- also with Ohio plates -- when I saw those mountains for the first time. Typical Midwesterners, the Caddy and I pulled over simultaneously, cameras in hand.

I made it to Colorado Springs just less than an hour later and cut across town to Manitou Springs, the little historic/tourist district at the base of Pike’s Peak. After a brief drive down the main drag I stopped into a friendly little bar called The Keg for lunch and a couple of beers. I wrote in my journal and watched people as I ate my lunch. As the beer took hold, the people-watching started to win out over the writing.

Most of the Keg’s customers seemed like regulars, which makes sense considering it was a Tuesday afternoon before the tourist season. The star of the show was the waitress. Built like a linebacker, but as bubbly as a cheerleader, Beth efficiently served beer and burgers while telling her regulars dirty jokes she had heard the night before. She soon came over to me.

"Did you hear that one?” she asked, her tone somewhat guarded, as she tried to get a sense of whether or not I was a prude.

“No,” I and my two pints of beer said, “but it sounds like I wanna.”

“Okay, then. How do you make a woman scream twice?”

“I dunno.”

“First you fuck her, then you wipe your dick on the curtains.”

I guess that would do it.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Chapter 1

2008-03-29T21:54:00.002-04:00

The first two days of my trip were a mad dash designed to put as much of the Midwest behind me as possible. On day one I woke up at 5:45 A.M., showered, and hit the road before 6:30.

Adrenaline and a driving soundtrack made it difficult to keep the car under 85 between Columbus and Indianapolis. Each barrier crossed – city limits, county line, state line – compelled me to drive faster and get farther away from home. By the time I crossed into the Central Time Zone I felt like I was flying. Indiana and Illinois are functionally no different than Ohio, so I stopped only for gas and bathroom breaks as I crossed them. My first real stop came in St. Louis around lunchtime.

The Gateway Arch is impressive, but I took an even greater interest in the graffiti people had scratched into the steel at its base. Ricky must truly love Amber. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have defaced a national monument to tell her so. After the Arch, I parked near Busch Stadium (the old one) to look at the statues of Cardinal ballplayers which surrounded it. My favorites were Ozzie Smith, fully laid-out to catch a line drive and Bob Gibson wheeling around with intense inertia. No graffiti here. If Ricky so much as thought of scratching up Gibson’s statue old Hoot would have hunted him down and planted a fastball in his ear.

Across from the stadium sat the St. Louis Cardinals/National Bowling Hall of Fame. Yes, in the same building,* which was an odd combination to be sure. The baseball stuff was what you would expect: McGwire’s jersey, Musial’s bat, and countless assorted pieces of Cardinals memorabilia. The bowling stuff was vexing. Was it meant to be tongue-in-cheek? Could a wax dummy of Henry VIII lawn bowling with his courtiers be anything but? The actual section honoring the enshrined bowlers was tasteful enough. I suppose it would have to be seeing as though Dick Weber’s grandkids may come in to see his plaque one day.

*They're apparently no longer in the same building. A shame, really.

The rest of St. Louis was depressing. It was a decaying city which seemed vibrant only in comparison to the wastelands on the opposite bank of the Mississippi. Casinos cluttered the west end of town along the Missouri River, conveniently located near the freeway so as to more efficiently drain the good people of St. Louis of money better spent elsewhere. The gaming commission no doubt anticipated my disapproval, having erected several signs along the highway stating how many millions of gambling dollars were diverted to schools, road construction, and social services. I don’t doubt the truth of such claims, but the signs’ very existence seems evidence of a guilty conscience.

The 250 miles between St. Louis and Kansas City were dreary, hot and dirty as the result of a strong and steady southerly wind. The soda I bought to keep me from falling asleep was the highlight of I-70 across Missouri, though things brightened up considerably once I hit Kansas City.

In keeping with the day’s baseball theme, I stopped at Kaufman Stadium, where I hoped to get a picture of the big Royals sign out in centerfield, which I assumed faced a parking lot. If the Royals were in town I would have certainly stopped there for the night to take in a game, but alas, they were back in Ohio playing the Indians. When I stopped at the stadium, however, I was surprised to see the water dancing in the famous outfield fountains and the P.A. system announcing a game. Curious, I made my way to the main gate to see what was going on.

It turns out that the Royals open the joint to high school teams when they’re on the road, and a game was in progress. Admission was free and the place mostly empty, so I found a seat behind home plate and took in an exciting couple of innings. The excitement stemmed from all of the triples hit as a result of the players’ apparent unfamiliarity with the major league dimensions. Can’t guard those lines too closely, boys. The power alleys are deep. I’d like to think that some lazy scout read the game’s box score the next day and simply figured that they grew ‘em fast out in Kansas City. With any luck, one of the kids I saw became an undeserved bonus baby because of it.

After Kaufman, I drove to the old jazz district around 18^th and Vine, which is the heart of black Kansas City. Or was. I’m not really sure, because there weren’t a lot of people hanging around. The area was obviously nearing the tail-end of a careful rehabilitation, with shimmering club marquees and spotless sidewalks welcoming me into a neighborhood that, truth be told, I had hoped would be a bit grittier. I mean, it was hard enough for a white boy like me to imagine what this place looked when Charlie Parker was coming up, and I strongly suspected that Bird himself wouldn’t have recognized it, what with it being so clean and all.

If cleanliness was a problem, I solved it by popping into Arthur Bryant’s on Brooklyn Avenue for what turned out to be the best – and messiest -- pork sandwich I’d ever had. Even better, the abnormally hot weather turned Arthur Bryant’s into a cliché wonderland. There was a hot wind slamming the joint’s wooden screen door shut every time someone new came in. A chubby preacher alternating between gnawing on his ribs and dabbing the sweat off of his forehead with a handkerchief. A cook in the back actually exclaiming that it was “as hot as tar outside.” It was beautiful. I felt like a new man when I left Bryant’s.

I had originally planned on stopping in Kansas City for the night, but with a belly full of barbeque and a couple hours of sunlight left, there was no way I wasn’t going to keep going a little further. I crossed the state line, listening to the Royals put a 12-4 smackdown on the Tribe as the sun set over the rolling grasslands of eastern Kansas. I stopped 180 miles later in Salina, happy to be sleeping someplace I’d never been before.

*Inasmuch as the point of this isn't to show you my photo album, as this travelogue progresses, some of the pictures will be the ones I took myself, but many others will be better or more appropriate ones snagged off the web. If you really want to see my photo album, you can check it out here. If you're wondering whether a given picture is mine or not, simply ask in the comments and I'll tell you.

2003 Road Trip Diary: Introduction

2008-03-29T16:26:00.001-04:00

On April 11, 2003 I quit a job for the second time in less than three years. The reasons why I couldn’t seem to stay satisfied working at a law firm were several, simultaneously complex and banal, and probably not even understood by me at the time. All I knew was that I was no longer happy or productive where I was, a change was needed, and I had a month until law firm number three expected to see me. In such circumstances, a road trip is a moral imperative.

I was leaving early on Monday morning, April 14th. The plan was vaguely laid out – St. Louis; Kansas City; The Rockies; Arches National Park; Route 50 through Nevada; the back side of the Sierras and Death Valley; Las Vegas; and on to my friend Todd’s place in Los Angeles. My wife Carleen would fly out to join me when I got to L.A., and for a week and a day things would more or less resemble a proper vacation. The two of us would spend a few days in Los Angeles, drive up the Pacific Coast Highway doing the scenery and B&B thing, and then we’d spend four days in the Bay Area. She’d fly home from there, at which point I’d decide the best way to go home over the next couple of weeks.

I suppose a road trip should be more spontaneous than all of that, but I don’t apologize for such meticulous planning. Indeed, obsessing on the details of my trip may have been what saved me during those rather dreadful days of early-2003 as I was getting up my nerve to quit the job (before I was inevitably pushed). Between Carleen’s recent health scare (optic neuritis and its implied threat of Multiple Sclerosis which, thankfully, didn’t come to pass) and my ongoing crash-and- burn at the latest law firm, I felt lost that winter and early spring. The road on which I had been traveling washed away. If fate was intent on knocking me off course, I’d be damned if I didn't have a map of the detour.

So that’s how it all stacked up as I woke up before dawn and got behind the wheel of my Honda Accord (a/k/a The Silver Fox). I had a month of time, and, for the first time in my adult life, nothing to really occupy it save the conviction that if I didn’t get on the road I would lose my friggin’ mind.

About Craig

2008-03-27T16:00:00.006-04:00

Craig Calcaterra writes the HardballTalk blog at NBC Sports.com.

From March 2007 until December 2009, Craig wrote ShysterBall, a baseball blog of moderate renown.

From August 1998 until December 2009, Craig practiced law, first at some largish law firms and then at a moderately-sized Midwestern state government. He's a recovering litigator, taking it one day at a time.

Craig lives with his two children in a fortified compound on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio.

If you'd like to contact him, by all means, drop him a line.

The Shyster Chronicles: Disclaimer

2008-01-01T00:02:00.003-05:00

On occasion, I'll be offering up posts under the heading "The Shyster Chronicles." The Shyster Chronicles are fiction. Mostly, anyway. Yes, a bunch of this stuff is based on things that happened in my life -- write what you know, right? -- but the names are not the same, nor are many of the events. To the extent I bring up clients and cases, that stuff is made up and attorney-client privilege from my real life cases back in the day has not been breached. There is, of course, a core of truth to all of it. In some cases, more than a core.

If you're someone I know, and you read something that hits too close to home, shoot me an email and we'll talk about it. I'm not looking to bury anyone here or to settle any scores. This is (mostly) a fiction workshop as far as I'm concerned, and I'm just drawing from what I know. Hell, if you have some suggestions on how I could do this better, by all means, let's chat about it.

Thanks,

Craig