Head Cold

The highs today are in the low to mid-40s. Although there is no snow to be seen, Vermont is definitely in winter mode. For the past couple of mornings, I've woken up to find frost all over the car, strings of large snowflakes forming random criss-crosses on the windshield and side windows. I tempted fate this morning by taking some pre-emptive DayQuil and leaving the parking lot with my windows only slightly defrosted.

This week is sort of like limbo. We have less than four days before we head out again to California, to visit once more our families on the other side of the country. There is work to be done, re-packing, and some cleaning. But my mind keeps looking forward to the week ahead.

Although we used to complain about the four-hour trips from Chicago, we realize now that we are really, really far away from home. Almost two hours to Boston and then another five hours on the plane. (JetBlue's 26 cable tv channels do make the flight go by faster though.)

We miss our families very much.

Life in Vermont has its busy moments, but for the most part, at least in winter, it feels like living with a perpetual head cold. Sensation is dulled a bit, and time slows down. No family requiring our attention; no friends to juggle; no city life to conquer or compete with. I don't feel rushed and I don't feel pushed.

There is a quiet that I enjoyed in warmer months but now observe with some suspect, especially after an emotional week in California. Night comes early here, at about 4:30, and without any pronouncement or sound. I can spend a whole day in my private office, overlooking the circular driveway in front of the business school and not talk to anybody. And when I catch the shuttle to retrieve my car from the distant parking lot, I don't have to say a word to the driver: it's at the end of the line.

Home is where I have real conversations, with Roger or with friends and family on the phone.

We have talked about California, whether we would go back there, or to any urban area for that matter. I think we could re-acclimate ourselves very easily, although we now can appreciation the quiet as well. And as I've learned to drive, we are opened to more options than before.

I don't know why we are drawn to Minnesota, an even snowier, more northern place. Maybe because of the articles we've read in Fortune and Travel magazines, the stories from my old bosses, and the funny segments from Prairie Home Companion. I guess we are sweater people at heart - Roger and I more comfortable in coats and hats than shorts and swimwear. Maybe because it may be more affordable: we can get the house we want in a pretty literary part of the country, still keep ourselves in-the-know, but at a comfortable speed. We'll have to convince our mothers of this option.

Still, I like Boston, too. My coming-of-age city. It still glistens in the sun, the river and the bay so beautiful when we drive over them. And Roger has a growing affection for the city, too. To visit it, to see its history, and enjoy its proximity.

Who's Your Papi?

Spying on the Evil Empire. I heard stories that Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman admitted that his phone rang more than once during the ALCS, with George Steinbrenner on the other end, complaining: "Why isn't that man (David Ortiz) a Yankee?!" I had to see the source for myself, so I hunted down a recent New York Newsday article.

Ortiz never made sense for the Yankees, who never buy low, never buy on the come. Ortiz had just been cut by the Twins, for crying out loud. You'd have to have ESP - not just ESPN - to know you should try to sign a player who'd never hit more than 20 home runs in the Homerdome and didn't have a position (his defense still isn't good enough for him to play the field for Boston).

This article also reveals, thankfully, that the Yankees are not pursuing Jason Varitek. Yankees GM Cashman said, "It's the same reason we didn't sign Miguel Tejada last year; we already had a shortstop. It's the same reason we aren't going after a rightfielder this year. We have Gary Sheffield."

Eephus

I've been seeing this word a lot in baseball articles - eephus. Curiosity got the better of me, so I Googled and found this article by Kirk Robinson on www.thebaseballpage.com:

The purest junk - the junkiest pitch in history - is the Eephus pitch, invented by Rip Sewell of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the thirties. The Eephus pitch is a pitch with absolutely nothing on it - no velocity, no fancy spin, and no break. No deception at all. And most of all, no SPEED. ...

To read more, click here.

Now Pitching

Tim Wakefield

Roger knows my favorite Red Sox pitcher is not Cy Young-winner Pedro Martinez or redeemed star Derek Lowe, but the quiet starter and knuckleballer Tim "Wake" Wakefield. (Although I also have a soft spot for closer Keith "Lights Out" Foulke.)

The New Yorker ran an article on Wake on May 17, 2004, detailing his entrance into the Majors, including his early history with the Pittsburgh Pirates (Go Bucs!), and explaining the unique nature of his favorite pitch. Here is an excerpt from that piece:

The knuckleball - also known as the knuckler, the fingernail ball, the fingertip ball, the flutterball, the floater, the dancer, the bug, the butterfly ball, the moth, the bubble, the ghostball, the horseshoe, the dry spitter, and, curiously, the spinner - has been around, in one form or another, for nearly as long as professional baseball itself, though for much of that time it has been regarded with suspicion. Spinning is precisely what it does not do. In fact, a lack of spin is about the only identifying characteristic of the pitch.

There is no right way to hold a knuckleball when throwing it (seams, no seams; two fingers, three), and no predictable flight pattern once it leaves the hand. “Butterflies aren’t bullets,” the longtime knuckleballer Charlie Hough once said. “You can’t aim ’em - you just let ’em go.” The pitch shakes, shimmies, wobbles, drops - it knuckles, as they say. ...

Here's hoping we make it to Spring Training in Fort Myers, FL in March.