Back In The Saddle
I have been away on business, and I have missed the Pipeline. But being away from writing for even a day provides ample inspiration. Let's see how much I can bang out over yet another delicious lunch from the Wendy's drive through...
Are you ready for some football?
I am READY. The NFL starts tonight. Baseball was my first love, a love that continues. The NBA is an addiction fueled by an intense devotion to the Wolves and a special player named KG. But football is special. I'll watch just about any NFL game, regardless of who is playing, regardless of any fantasy sports implications. I love the NFL. And I'm ready.
But, like every year, I have been negligent in joining a fantasy football league. I always foolishly say I won't do a league, and then I regret it after the very first game. I'm not looking to spend my life doing research, and I want an online league. Who can help me, fast?
The Story Of Ben Kerschberg
Some time ago, I published an endorsement of Ben Kerschberg's book project on the Pipeline. Ben approached me out of the blue, having never met me, and asked if I would be so kind as to publish a link to his book and website. I thought he was genuine, and so despite my standoffish nature regarding these types of things, I put out his link.
Well, that was a few months ago. Since that time, Ben and I have discovered that we share a common love of basketball, a wonderment about the arts, and a general interest in the strange path of life. And I have also now read his book, Piercing the Veil. Ben is a high achiever, a graduate of Yale Law School that, despite obvious badassness, suffered from the kind of depression that can make anyone feel their life is a failure not worth living. Ultimately, Ben attempted suicide.
But Ben's story fortunately doesn't end there. It seems his suicide attempt was one of the only things he has failed at, and he has responded by writing a memoir about what led him to that dark point in his life, and his daily struggle to recover from it. He is now a Fellow at Yale, working on a book about the way that America stigmatizes people who have mental health problems.
Ben's book wasn't the easiest to read, but it opened my eyes to a lot of things. We all know people who have been impacted by mental health and suicide, even if we have not been impacted directly. His mission is to let people know that mental health isn't to be taken for granted in ourselves, our families or our friends. That we shouldn't be afraid of asking tough questions. That we should keep our eyes and ears and minds open, and that doing so might be the lifeline that a troubled person needs. The proceeds from his book go directly to the hospital in Greenville, SC, where Ben stayed after his suicide attempt.
Keep on rolling, Ben.
The Corporation
I work for a large corporation. Fortune 100. Technically I work for one of their many subsidiaries, but we all report up the ladder. Yesterday, I went to the corporate headquarters to give a presentation to U.S. Customs regarding our C-TPAT program, which I wrote about here. It was quite an experience. Nothing huge happened, but there are just all the little things you see that make you shake your head.
It's a total Country Club attitude, meaning that you hear a lot of sexist remarks, see a lot of Old White Guys, and have at least 20 people talk to you about how secure the corporate compound is.
That was the first thing I heard as I was driven onto the campus, which sits in an inner-tier suburb of a large Midwestern City: That the Campus is an Oasis in the middle of a DMZ. Oh, really? I expected a war zone when we got there, but in reality it's just a few post WWII houses that are pretty run-down. Clearly, it is a neighborhood in decline, and yet there is a large, 300 acre campus sitting smack-dab in the middle of it. I was first assured that all of the houses around the campus were being purchased and razed, to expand the green of the compound. (It looked like a golf course, a fact that several people later made sure to mention to me.)
I was then told that there were cameras in the trees and all around, and that the glass in the building was not only bullet-proof, but could withstand small artillery fire as well. (Yeah, but what if one of those homies we drove by threw a crack pipe at it?)
All of this was later explained to Customs by the head of corporate security, a tall, thin guy straight from central casting who smoked about 12 packs a day, and kept hiking up his pants at the waist. We Were Secure.
Nearly all of the presentations were sexist in one way or another. Many talked about the "girls" who work at the facility, or some such thing. Nobody batted an eye. At one point, the only woman on the corporate team who was to present, held up a Memory Stick (removable memory for computers). She asked the group "What is this?" One VP (of HR, no less) immediately and earnestly guessed "It's lipstick!". She then had to explain the technology in very broad terms (See, the guys I was with yesterday would have thought that was a pun.)
Hilarious moment of the day: Now, you have to understand, we were meeting with U.S. Customs. There is a rule when you do that--Don't volunteer any more than you have to. Keep it focused. Raise no suspicions. I know this, and so do the attorneys at the HQ who are in charge of trade compliance. Unfortunately, they didn't brief the other members of the corporate teams that were presenting to Customs (their bad). So, this woman I spoke about before, who manages IT, listens intently to all of the presentations about our trade issues.
Rather than let Customs ask the tough questions (which for some reason they did not), this woman, an employee of the company, starts peppering the attorneys with Tough Questions. Like "Gee, when I was in Mexico, I didn't think there was much security at our facilities at all." Or my favorite "Hey, don't we also ship nuclear material around the world?"
Man, you should have seen Customs' eyes widen when she said that. From here on out, whenever anyone talks about staring daggers at someone, I will forever picture the attorneys looking at this poor woman who had no idea what she was doing (which of course was the attorneys' fault). Yeah, why not just mention all that fertilizer we shipped to that militia up in Michigan while you are at it?
Bottom line, we are on the up and up, but we had to explain that in great detail to Customs. Well, I thought it was funny, anyway.
So, I get up to give my presentation. I'm very good in front of crowds, and have a bit of an unfair advantage over most other presenters because I'm funny, I know how to work a room, and if I know the material (as I did in this case), I can also be highly informative and dynamic. Look, I'm not blowing my own horn here; it's just the facts. I have years and years of experience in competitive public speaking and cabaret performance.
So I start to give my spiel, and I begin by introducing myself, blah, blah, blah. I mention that in my life prior to being a compliance specialist, I was a college debate coach. Someone asked me where I did that, and I mentioned Kansas State and Macalester College, also mentioning that I coached the national champions at K-State in '93.
Now, let me digress for a moment here, because this is important to me. Technically speaking, I did not in any real way coach the K-State national champions in 1993. Although a team from K-State did win nationals in 1993 (Beating my old partner Jim and friend Greg in the finals), I really wasn't allowed to have contact with the team that won, Jill Baisinger and KJ Wall. Why that is the case is a long story that needn't be retold here, but suffice it to say they didn't need my help. Fact is, I was only one of many coaches on that squad who had no contact with the top teams, and instead were funneled to help the younger debaters (who did win the JV national championship). So, it was disingenuous for me to say that I coached them, but what was I really going to say? That I fraternized in socially irredeemable ways with some of the students I was coaching? That I had come close to winning a championship in my own right as a debater, but did so largely through the efforts of my partner while I fraternized in socially irredeemable ways with as many people as I could. That save for a regrettable strategic decision that involved whales (yes, the mammal whales) and an inferior team from UCLA in '91, or a poor strategic choice against an inferior team from Arizona State in '92 that I well could have said that I was the college debate national champion?
Of course not. I only had 30 minutes for my presentation. So I said what I said. Who was it gonna hurt? Everyone was impressed.
So much so, in fact, that later I had a chance to glance at the notes from the lead attorney. The only thing he wrote down from my entire presentation, which was really the only meat of the entire day, was this:
Doug H-National college debate champion, 1993
Well...I guess that's close enough.
Finally...
Unearned Glory
Twins are in a pennant race. Big time. Neck and neck with the White Sox, with the Miracle Royals lurking two games behind. Yesterday saw the Twins entering the bottom of the ninth against the Angels, and down by a run. Angels closer Troy Percival is on the mound.
Troy Percival has thrown 37 career innings against the Twins without giving up an earned run. Read that again. First two batters up, first two batters down. Understand, Troy Percival is filthy, meaning he has the kind of stuff batters just don't want to face. A sizzling, riding fastball that reaches the upper '90s with movement, and a nasty breaking pitch that freezes batters at the knees, because they think it's heat coming for their heads. By the time they figure out it's not, it's across the plate and they are walking back to the bench.
So, naturally, Ron Gardenhire sends up a rookie (albeit a good one) in Justin Morneau. Morneau works the count full, fouls off two nasty pitches, and eventually coaxes a two-out walk. Gardenhire pinch-runs for Morneau with Dustan Mohr, a guy built like a Division II linebacker who's got average speed and is known for a devil-may-care attitude on the bases that sometimes causes him to run into foolish outs. The next batter, Shannon Stewart, manages to get around on a Percival fastball and lines a double past the third baseman and into the left-field corner.
And that's when the fun started. Was Mohr going to make it around to score the tying run? He gets to third and looks to third base coach Al Newman for the sign, indicating whether he should stay at third or try to score. Now, this in itself is it's own little drama. Newman has had a lot of rough spots at third base this year. Sometimes he sends runners to the plate, only to be out by a mile, and other times he has held runners, only to be publicly called out by players afterward for not being aggressive enough. So what does Newman do? According to subsequent interviews I have heard with Newman, he factors in that it is Percival on the mound, that the Twins still would need one more hit to score the tying run, that the Angels need to make two good throws to home and that the catcher has to hold onto the ball, and he decides to wave his arm like a windmill to send Mohr home, despite the fact that he felt that Mohr was going to be out. He did this because he had begun to second-guess himself, because he had read criticism of his conservative ways from the players in the paper, and because Ron Gardenhire told him to be aggressive with two outs. So he sent a man running into an almost certain out not because he wanted to, but because he thought it would make others happy.
The throw beat Mohr home by about fifteen feet (a mile, in other words). Angels catcher Benji Molina had time to catch the ball, pass it around the dugout for a team autograph, take off all his catcher's gear to relieve himself in the clubhouse, then put the gear back on to go out and apply the tag.
As a runner, I've been in that position. You have three choices. You can go back to third, where you will be a dead duck. Or you can keep moving forward and try to either evade a tag or seperate the ball from the catcher. Dustan Mohr ain't the kind of guy to go back to third, and he ain't the kind of guy to try to evade the tag. Dustan Mohr was going to home plate, Benji Molina or no Benji Molina.
There's a right way to apply a tag, and a wrong way. The right way is to not present your body for a collision, as you would when you were blocking the plate. When you have a runner out by three Kobe lengths, you don't have to block the plate. You simply step forward, transfer the ball from your glove to your hand, and absorb the impact of the runner with your hands and arms, and let the momentum spin you away from the runner.
Molina didn't do that. He presented his body as a target, and didn't transfer the ball. Mohr used his shoulder (and probably his hands a bit, too) and dislodged the ball from Molina. As the ball dribbled up the first-base line, Mohr stepped triumphantly on the plate. And immediately behind him came Shannon Stewart, who smartly never stopped running.
Just like that, Twins win. The Twins erupted onto the field in celebration. They know what luck looks like. Al Newman must surely have said "Thank You" to someone, not that anyone could hear him above the crowd. Strangest ending I've seen in a while that didn't involve Jack Cust.
Molina? Mohr broke his wrist in two places, a shame for a tough gritty player. He's out for the rest of the year. Baseball is a lot of different things. But in a pennant race, in a game that would eventually vault them into a tie for first, with two outs and the ballgame on the line, and nothing to do but try to seperate a large armored man from a baseball in his clutches, Dustan Mohr did what he had to do. He made the play. In a tight race that will most likely go down to the wire, a play straight out of a football game might end up being one of the plays that makes the Twins' year.
And what else did Molina get for his troubles besides a broken wrist? An error! They gave him a freaking error! Insult to injury.
All of which means that Troy Percival still hasn't given up an earned run to the Twins.
12:34:56 PM 
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