I was originally going to post about why I think I still might like Hugo a little better than Proust, but since that would take too much thinking, a post about basketball scandals and phone conversations I have had with baseball players…
I am still trying to come to terms with Sean Williams’ departure from the BC basketball team. I have been going to the blog section of google to see if the reason he got kicked off the team will turn up. It’s not the rumor mill I had hoped it would be. A lot of people are saying that BC should be alright. I still think they are pretty good (not as good of course), but I think it will really hurt them next year. Williams was getting better and better.
Al Skinner must be hurting right now. I feel bad for the guy. Great coach with a lot of years on him now, his teams are getting better and better, and now a major setback. I have to give him credit for doing it, even though it hurts. I really hope he stays at BC.
On a lighter note, I was thinking about great baseball players I have known, and thought my readers would be interested to learn that I have spoken to not one, but three baseball players on the telephone.
1. Mark Fidrych– My roommate Brendan and I found him in the phone book when we were in college and called him. He was in the middle of dinner. A little kid answered and handed the phone to him. He answered my questions, but I got the feeling that I was bugging him, so I relented after a question or two.
2. Steve Yeager– I answered some ad in the paper about a job selling baseball cards door to door. Yeager was involved with the company, and after I sent a resume in, I got a call from Steve telling me I was “hired” and that I would soon be getting a kit in the mail. It sounded like he thought the idea was as bad as I did. We didn’t say too much. It was weird answering my phone and having Steve Yeager on the other end of the line.
3. Rawley Eastwick– I was working for a real estate agency (In actuality, it was a front for money laundering, selling illicit percocets, racial profiling, prostitution, racketeering, and making death threats [What's funny is that you probably think I am making this all up. I'm not.].) and calling some management companies for leads. I called some place and ended up in Rawley Eastwick’s voice mail. The voice mail instructed you to call another number if you were looking for listings, but I decided not to hear that and called back ten minutes later. This time Eastwick answered the phone, and I asked if it was the Rawley Eastwick. He was. The strangest thing was that I had just seen one of the ‘75 World Series games on teevee two nights before and he was pitching. Eastwick was super friendly, I felt like he even wanted to get to know me. For instance, when I told him how I used to see him play at the Vet all the time, he said, “oh you’re from the Philly area, where abouts?” After the phone call I thought about inviting Eastwick over for dinner or to a Red Sox game or something, but not long after that I was fired from the job for not embezzling money well enough or something and that meant I no longer had his phone number.
4. Grady Sizemore– I am almost not putting him on the list. I bought Indians tickets last year because for a while it looked like I might be in Cleveland, but that didn’t pan out. Anyhow, the Indians ran this promotion in which Grady Sizemore called fans with a prerecorded message. Not a big fan of the prerecorded cold call, but since it was a baseball player, I didn’t get mad.