The Rays should retire the number 10

A few days ago, I went to a Devil Rays game with Angus. We played the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim from California within the United States but not Necessarily From the Actual City Proper of Los Angeles. At least, I think that’s what we’re calling them nowadays. They’re changing it every other day.

Anyhow, while at the Trop, I picked up and filled out an application for the Devil Rays Fan Hall of Fame. Apparently, they’re picking some select fans to enshrine for all of antiquity in plaque form at some permanent display at Tropicana Field. I must say, I am overqualified – I’m a small part of the team’s young and troubled history, after all – but the application had a word limit of 25 words. What this team has meant to me since 1998 cannot be fit into the cramped space intended for do few words; hence, this is my explanation of why I am an obvious candidate for the Rays’ Fan Hall of Fame:

Where to begin? Well, I was there since the very beginning, March 31, 1998, when we lost to the Tigers. But what’s so special about that? I mean, 45,368 other people were there. What’s so special is the fact that despite the loss that may have been a precursor of the painful decade to come, I continued to watch the Rays. I was 10 years old at the time, and to have a baseball team to call my own after not caring about the sport for the first stages of my childhood for lack of a home team was a special privilege. Wade Boggs, Fred McGriff, Larry Rothschild, I remember them all. Heck, I even remember sitting in the stands and wondering what nationality Rolando Arrojo could possibly be. I was young and quizzical, what can I say? To this day, I still have all of my inaugural season souvenirs: The three-baseball set I got exclusively with my breakfast meals at McDonald’s (signed by such crowd favorites as Vince Namoli, no doubt), the inaugural season gift calendar I picked up before 1999, and, of course, the tacky purple seat cushion given away at game number one:

And that was 1998. In 1999, we were promised a Hit Show! I can still sing you the whole promotional song, but I will spare you the pain of reading about all the promises that never panned out. Vinny Castilla, Jose Canseco, and Greg Vaughn may not have delivered that year, but it was especially memorable for yours truly. During a game, the roving cameramen in the stadium searched out the fattest and cheekiest kid in the vicinity. Of course, back then I was a portly young lad. Hence, they videotaped me. This footage, incidentally, was used in every single Rays commercial that year. I was a celebrity, so to speak, and soon people would recognize me in public. This footage was also used in a Rays music video by Sequel, though I have never seen it except for at the Trop that year and on the tape the PR department sent me. If you’re from the area and you need something to jog your memory, give this screencap a look:

Ah, those were good days. They got better, too. At another game with none other than Angus, I imagine their guest vocalist got stuck in traffic, which caused the cutest little girl from upstairs came down and asked me sing for the 7th inning stretch. Now, I had no prior vocal training, but I figured that it would be fun enough, so I agreed. I blew them away, too:

But that wasn’t it. They weren’t content with my tear jerking performance of “Take me Out to the Ballgame,” so they asked me to do a little jig to the tune of “Love Shack.” Now, as a fat little Irish boy, I’m well-accustomed to doing little jigs, but in front of 15,000 people? I was mildly nervous, but a few pelvic thrusts later, I was right at home; I was definitely a crowd favorite.

I was a Rays’ favorite, too. Because a few days later, I got a phone call from the guy who was in charge of Rays Vision at the time, asking me to star in a between-inning video segment where I would ask players pop culture questions (you know, silly things like their favorite movies, and so on and so forth). They had me do a lot of stuff: I dressed up (and impersonated!) Dick Vitale, who goes to many games and sits just to the left of the third base dugout; I impersonated a flying Superman who was curious about the players’ favorite bands; I even sported a beard that, apparently, made me look like a Rabbi. Oddly enough, only my Jewish friend Doug recalls that last one. Either way, I was big, and it was all because of me being lovable like this:

After the 1999 season, the Rays’ interests in me tapered off, probably because the players were in no mood to talk and because I was quickly growing out of my cute stages. It’s like when Beaver hit puberty and just became pathetic, asking Wally about things he should already know.

Anyway, I still followed the team. I remember Wade Boggs’ 3000th hit, a beautiful homer into right field. To this day, the seat where it hit is painted yellow, which contrasts the plastic blue of the rest of the stadium very well. I remember the crack of Tony Saunders’ arm. I remember the players that have come. More so, I remember the players that have gone.

Roberto Hernandez. Dave Martinez. Jesus Colome. These are only a few.

I remember seeing Hal McRae come in during the middle of a season, not knowing the atrocities he’d inherited. I’ve seen manager after manager. And, interestingly enough, I am content with the team’s management as it is now.

I’ve also co-founded the largest Devil Rays group on Facebook. It’s called Scotty Kaz Owns You. And he does.

With the sale of the team to new owners, the inception of Joe Maddon, the signing of Carl Crawford and Rocco Baldelli to long-term contracts, and with the new outlook on baseball that the new management brings, I’ve begun to become more entwined in this world of Tampa Bay Baseball. I’ve admired (perhaps a little too much) Travis Lee, fist baseman extraordinaire since the beginning of the season. I now sit in the beach, where I can be as loud as I want for the team at a low price. I live with a real, live Ray Team member. Baseball is as big in the Peterson household as it ever has been, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I will leave you with a picture from my latest journey to the Beach in the Trop, with my Ray Team sister Stefanie and two Russian girls to whom I tried to teach baseball (I was unsuccessful.):

Here, Fishy Fishy

Last night, I went fishing with my good buddy Angus.

We loaded up Dad’s old pickup and headed out at 9:00, not leaving the pier until 1:30 in the morning. Now, I am not afraid to admit that I am not a trophy fisherman. In fact, something the television never taught me were the harsh reality of an angler’s life: expensive shrimp, slimy fish, and the pressure of watchful and knowledgeable eyes on the dock.

First off, I didn’t know how many shrimp to get. So I went with three dozen.
“I’d like three dozen medium shrimp, please.”
“We only have jumbo.”
“Okay, I’d like three dozen jumbo shrimp, please.”
“That’ll be $18.00.”
“Ooooooooh. Okay, I guess.”
So, I overshot the amount of jumbo shrimp we would need. Who knew? If those last 15 shrimp had lived through the night in the cramped recesses of my outrageously small bait bucket, they’d be really relieved that I let them go at the end of the night. But they didn’t. So they weren’t. Oh well.

And secondly: why in God’s name did God decide to make these fish so ungodly wet and slimy and icky? I know I sound girly and all, but good golly. These things are so gross! So, I left all the fish touching to my good buddy Angus. I know, he is more of a man than I will ever be. But without the soft, sensitive type of person that I have come to represent, how would Jerry’s Kids ever make any money? You think big, burly lumberjack types would add a dollar to their purchase of maple syrup and whiskey at the local Walgreen’s? I think not.

Coincidentally, one of these big, burly lumberjack types was at the pier last night. And he was quite the fisherman. You could look down the wooden structure to see this fat dude, sitting on his cooler, watching his four fishing poles and smoking his Lucky Stripes. It’s guys like this that make me wary of repeating the fishing experience. Here I am, flinching when grabbing my overpriced jumbo shrimp and trying to catch anything, and there’s this guy eyeing me up who actually knows what he’s doing. I get embarrassed easily, what can I say? I would much rather have been on my own pier, completely devoid of big, fat, burly guys named Phil who probably live in their mothers’ basements.

So, over four hours later and after hooking a baby shark (which, by the way, was ferocious) and what appeared to be a little redfish (which, by the way, was comparably ferocious), Angus and I decided to pack up and go home.

I have a newfound respect for the good people of Long John Silver’s.

How ya gonna do me like that?

Yesterday, my good ole pal Jigar had his 18th birthday party. This is funny, because I can never picture Jigar Patel as a grown up. But here we are, brothers in maturity, just waiting to be arrested so we can go to big people jail.

Anyhow, Nathan, who is Jigar’s Indian brother in crime, asked me yesterday after school to go with him to buy lottery tickets to give to Jigar. He took me to this little Shell station on US 19, where we parked and I went inside to buy some lottery tickets.

He gave me five dollars, with which I bought five tickets. We went back out into the car and sat there, parked, when Nathan suggested we scratch a couple off, you know, so we can quadruple our money and buy Jigar more tickets. So, being the good and kindhearted people we are, we scratched off two of the tickets to find that we had won a dollar!

I marched back into the Shell station and got another ticket. Then, I came back out to the car to find Nathan sitting in the driver’s seat with four scratched losing tickets in the center console and a quarter with scratch off shavings still attached clutched tightly in his fist. He looked pitiful. So I cheered him up by letting him scratch off the last of Jigar’s birthday presents.

We may have left that gas station empty handed, but we did it all out of love for our dear Jigar. Happy birthday, buddy. Happy birthday.

Going up!

When I awoke this morning, I had no idea that this day would amount to what it turned out to be. I rose, took a shower, got my coffee, and went to school as usual, never suspecting that the day would hold anything as wonderful as the events that transpired.

Surprise.

After lunch, I was given the honor of riding in the school elevator for the first time in my academic career. I was on the ground level outside of Mr. Coffman’s room, complaining that I had to walk an unreasonable distance to the stairs so that I could get to my coaching class in Mr. Pete Just’s room – a location directly above where I was. I would have had to walk so far to get to a room that I could physically see.

That’s when Lizzie Wellings lent me her elevator key. God bless her.

The moral of the story: make friends with cripples, because they will make your day that much sweeter.

Swingtown

Yesterday, I spent a good deal of time carting my great friend Ying around town because she needed a chauffeur whilst her car was being repaired at the Honda dealership in Pinellas Park. Because we were in South County already, we decided to make a stop at her “favorite fast food restaurant”:http://www.evos.com/home.cfm and then, because we are a couple of crazy kids, we found a nifty park wherein we could play on the swings.

I swear, these swings were like rocking death seats. With every glide back and forth, these things would let out a piercing sound that, from what I could guess, resembled the mating call of a blue whale. The seats were so low and awkwardly bent just enough to make the pain in our butts noticeable without actually causing them to go numb after a few minutes of swinging.

Other than that, though, the overall swinging experience was fun. That is, of course, until it tuckered us out – an occurrence that didn’t take ten minutes to become a reality. At the end of our swing session, my biceps were strained from grabbing, by legs were dead from kicking, and my ambition was ripped at the seams. I just wanted to sit on a bench somewhere.

Seriously, how do little kids do it? They can tackle monkey bars, teeter-totters, slides, and swings like they claim the local playground as the primary residence on their 1040 form in May. They must be little balls of insane amounts of energy. Either that or they constantly snort cocaine.

Good Morning, Good Morning

Today I woke up to the cellular phone call of two of my lovely female friends in my kitchen who took it upon themselves to let themselves into my house in the wee hours of the morning. Well, I guess all of that would have to depend on your definition of “wee hours,” but my 11:00 AM wakeup call was a bit difficult to cope with. That just goes to show what summer vacation will do to a boy.

Either way, I’m grateful to have such close friends that would wake me up like so. It’s better than a silly alarm clock and more efficient than waiting for your body to wake itself.

As much as I consider awakening, I cannot bar myself from inevitably delving into the hypothetical realm of consciousness that considers awakening’s fundamental opposite: falling asleep. And that only leads me to consider death. I know: this newfound dreary and depressed funk I’m in does strange things to my thought patterns.

Anyhow, after considering the possibilities, I would like to die in a similar manner, surrounded by my closest friends. But there should be more chicks. Wearing cheerleader outfits. That brought pizza.

Announcement

I forgot to mention this, mostly because it’s not that big a deal yet.

But in case you haven’t already heard, the new Co-editors in Chief for the 2005-2006 Aftermath Yearbook Staff at PHUHS are Christina Chan, Egle Vilkelyte, and myself.

You may go back to not caring.

Ying's 15 Minutes

*carrie8820:* you should write about how we went to starbucks in your blog
*BathingInEggnog:* write it for me, im not in the mood
*carrie8820:* okay
*carrie8820:* copy and paste this:
*carrie8820:* tonight, a very special night, i joined my beautiful chinese woman friend for a lovely getogether at starbucks.
*carrie8820:* as we covered a series of topic discussions, being IB nerds, we then proceeded to talk about our teachers and their private lives. by private lives…. i mean sex lives. yes being the lonely deprived IB nerds that we were, we engaged in a lovely conversation about how gleason’s husband is whipped, mcgonagel was hairy, and dr y is a pi-yimp
*carrie8820:* i love ying more than any other girl i know, besides my mom, yes ying is cooler than all of you!
*carrie8820:* BIAAAAAA

———-

That is the last time I trust an Asian to write for me.

Bittersweet beauty

Last night I went to see The Phantom of the Opera with (in alphabetical order) Egle, Kyle, Mills, Sarah, and Vince. You wouldn’t expect any guy, much less a sans-strawin’, tree-choppin’ guy like myself, to enjoy a musical. However, upon the end of the film I was actually quite impressed at how beautiful the production was.

And trust me when I say that I know beautiful isn’t the most masculine of adjectives. Really, though, the music was eloquent, the acting was superb, and the general aura of the movie struck me as one of bittersweet magnificence.

When I say bittersweet, though, I mean it. After leaving the theater, I didn’t have much to say to anyone; I just couldn’t stop thinking about all the bad luck that all the characters had to face.

First of all, there were two new owners of this opera house. All they wanted, like any entrepreneurs, was to turn a profit. They didn’t, however, know the complexity of the situation they were buying into, and inevitably faced disaster through no real fault of their own.

Next, there’s old Christine. I don’t pity her much, primarily because she had two guys after her. But she was tricked, I guess, by that Phantom fellow, so she earns a bit of my sentiment.

But what gets me the most is the fact that in the end, the one fellow who wanted a little compassion – a little love – in an otherwise dismal world loses out and succumbs to the reality that he has made for himself. I imagine that most folks view it as his realization of contentment in happiness of that person whom he loved. But I see it as a loss for him. The one emotion for which he has striven for during his entire lifetime was denied to him. I guess his misfortune stuck with me the most, as I couldn’t stop thinking about it and how I never, ever want to end up facing either his circumstances, or the depressing culmination to a life of heartbreak.

So, I return to my main assertion: the cinematic version of The Phantom of the Opera was a beautiful interpretation of a sad, sad story. Thus ends my girliest blog entry to date.

My New Friend

Last night as I was waiting for Channing and Erin at Pioneer Park in Dunedin to see the Friday Night Film and proceed to Fritzee Freeze with some drama kids I don’t know, I showed up when Erin told me to, but was forced to wait for thirty minutes as a result of their tardiness. Toward the end of my wait, I sat on a bench and was approached by a freakily pasty white man with a backpack. Here’s how our conversation went.

FPWMWAB: What are they doing, showing a movie here tonight?
Me: Yeah, sure are.
FPWMWAB: What movie?
Me: Not sure – I think its some sort of old Martian film.
FPWMWAB: Oh. Is Dunedin a nice place?
Me: Yeah, I live in Clearwater. It’s much quieter here.
FPWMWAB: Yeah, downtown Clearwater past 8 is crazy.
Me: Yeah.

Awkward silence ensues…

FPWMWAB: Do you know when the last bus out of here is?
Me: No, sure don’t, sorry.
FPWMWAB: Waiting for someone?
Me: Yeah, you can never expect women to be on time.
FPWMWAB: Oh, well if you’re still together by Christmas, you should get her a watch.
Me: …No, it’s not just one girl.
FPWMWAB: Oh, so you’re a ladies man!
Me: That’s what they tell me…
FPWMWAB: Here, then maybe they’ll appreciate this.

FPWMWAB hands me a pamphlet consisting of his selected love poetry and passages from 1 Peter and Proverbs. I thumb through it, feigning interest.

Me: Oh, maybe they will. Thanks. The font is too small and it’s too dark – I can’t read it.
FPWMWAB: I can read it to you.
Me: No, that’s alright – I’ll save it for later.

Just then I spotted Channing and Erin across the street, and taking my chance to get out of the presence of FPWMWAB, I tried to pull out from the conversation.

Me: Oh, well… there they are. It was nice to meet yo-
FPWMWAB: Can you spare a dollar?
Me: No, sure cant; if I had any money, I wouldn’t be here.
FPWMWAB: Oh, then can I get that pamphlet back? I usually charge a dollar for it.
Me: Sure… Okay, there is my entourage, I have to go.
FPWMWAB: I can read it to them if you’d like.
Me: No.

Then I left the bench, directed the girls quite hastily away in the other direction, and attempted to avoid any and all contact with freakily pasty white man with a backpack for the rest of the evening. I last saw him backpacking across Douglas Avenue, walking into the darkness to do whatever it is that homeless people do.