John Ward threw the second perfect game in Major League Baseball history on June 17, 1880. The first came just five days before. The next National League perfect game didn't come until 80 years later when Jim Bunning dropped a perfecto on the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Maybe you remember June 17 it as the day O.J. was chased along the L.A. freeway. Or if you're tight with Dave Concepcion, you'll remember to send him birthday wishes. On that day mid-summer, Bostonians are thinking about Kevin Garnett's "anything is possible" celebration after winning the NBA Finals. If you like the Nets, Spurs, Pacers or Nuggets, your teams also deserve a "Happy Birthday" as they were brought into the league on that date in 1976.
You get the picture. A lot of crap happened in sports on June 17. I look at the calender to remember important dates like my family's birthdays, my anniversary with my girlfriend and when bills I can't pay were due. I don't think about dates in sports very often. The one that sticks out the most is July 18. I wrote down the date on a blue note card immediately after watching David Cone toss a perfect game against the Expos. But, July 18 could go by 20 years in a row without it coming to mind.
However, when June 17 comes this year, I will remember that date forever after. No, I'm not getting married. But in a sense, I'm beginning a relationship I hope to last forever. Me and baseball. Broadcaster and game. June 17 is my first game doing play-by-play for the Batavia Muckdogs, single-A affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals.
Calling any sporting event is exciting. There's a natural energy that you don't always pick up on as a fan. The 3...2...1 in your headphones. The nervousness about pronouncing a name correctly or interjecting the right anecdote or fact at the right time. The anticipation leading up to the first drop of the puck or swing of a kicker's leg. You never know what can happen. The first pitch will have a different feel, though.
Don't get me wrong, hockey and football are fine sports to announce. You practice all day how you're going to say "he scoreeeeees!" or "intercepted!" But, June 17 will be more than an exciting exercise. It will be reconnecting the with the game I've lost touch with since ending my college baseball career in 2005.
Sure, I've attended hundreds of baseball games since. I've studied thousands of statistics and written a bunch of articles for Biz of Baseball and VenuesToday magazine about America's game. What I've been missing, really, is being a part of the game.
From the booth, I'll still miss being on the mound. Every time I watch Felix Hernandez or Roy Halladay pitch, I feel the two-seemer in my finger tips. When a batter swings through, I do a little fist pump - you know, the one as a pitcher you learn to do inside your head so as not to show up any one. It won't be anything like doing that from the mound. It will - at least - be doing it as part of the team.
When I ended my college baseball career - if you can even call it that - I didn't think I'd miss my teammates. Maybe I don't miss those guys, but I've missed having teammates. Learning their stories, coming in contact with so many different personalities and simply standing in the sun talking about baseball. And, baseball players - maybe only second to golfers in all of sports - have great stories. In baseball, you don't just have 25 teammates, you have 25 teammates who have stories about their last 25 teammates.
There's another aspect to this special day: June 17 will be the day many of the players remember as their first professional at-bat. The first "plate appearance" that puts them in baseball's books forever. June 17, the day they were paid to be in a box score. The first step in a staircase that could lead to a door with a $25 million contract behind it.
Ryan Howard played for the Batavia Muckdogs. So did Chase Utley. Maybe June 17 I can be up in the box pumping the fist in my imagination to strikeouts of the next great Major League Baseball player. How could anyone forget that day?
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Greatness
If he wasn't 6-foot-7... if he didn't have a grin wider than a ruler.... and if he wasn't so damn good at basketball, Juan Paulino might have blended in at Finger Lakes Community College. Probably not though. A gigantic, Latino, Jay-Z lookalike from the Bronx, Juan stood out in the Big Apple. Imagine him at an Upstate college most known for its Woodsman's team and Natural Resource Conservation program.
Most of the white population seemed to be intrigued with Juan. Some of them would timidly say "good game," but most just stared as he walked by. Not to say he was the only minority - there were always a few black kids from the suburbs around the school, but few with similar backgrounds. Not many, though, with a tilt to their stride. The one letting you know they've been through things you don't understand.
On the basketball court, he wasn't graceful like Jordan, tough like Rodman or disciplined like Pippen. He wasn't fast like Rondo, fierce like Garnett or sharp like Pierce. He was a dash of all six. He was so audaciously better than anyone in junior college, you couldn't help but invoke the famous Billy Joel line: "Man, what are you doing here?"
The funny thing about Juan was how easily you could see his potential to be really great. The ease in which he dominated. The fundamentals that could be improved. Intangible passion for the game. But, being really great is quite different than being great. Great is local. Great is secure. Great is natural. Really great is transcending, risky and takes a hell of a lot of work.
A baseball player from the 30's Buck Rodgers may have best described greatness as "commitment to excellence and rejection of mediocrity." Not just to be, but refusing to not be. Most of us never reach really great at anything. Juan had it in his view and mid-way through his second year at FLCC, Division I schools were taking notice.
Coaches would come to a town built for tourists around a pleasant little lake to see Juan play in front of a couple hundred fans in a smelly gym with plastic bleachers. They'd watch as he brilliantly read his opponents' head fakes, pouncing at the right time to slap the ball into the half-empty stands. They'd see his balance and quickness on the dirty floor. They'd leave in awe of the powerful forward scoring 30 points and ripping down 30 rebounds while getting slapped and hacked for 30 minutes.
While the competition in junior college isn't anywhere near D-I, other teams had guys who were his height. They had guys who - unlike Juan - played years and years of organized basketball. They had size, talent and experience. They didn't have anything close to Juan. Especially by the end of his sophomore season. I'd watched him go from clumsy to smooth, from pudgy to jacked, from a great D-III player to one with D-I talent. But, I noticed that something was going on with Finger Lakes star.
One night after leading a blowout win - who knows how many points and rebounds Juan had - 25/25 is a safe bet - I pulled up behind him at a stoplight. We knew each other slightly beyond a head nod. So, when he turned a little white Honda which probably wasn't his into McDonalds, I figured I'd stop in to congratulate him. But, when he realized I was following him, Juan paused in the lot long enough for me to park then slammed on the gas and high tailed it out of there.
It didn't make sense. I thought about the way he looked talking to people he didn't know well. He looked at them like a poker player trying to make a read. He spoke with caution. Not that he wasn't friendly, even at times gregarious, but the book was always half closed. It wasn't long after the season ended and Juan had an offer to play with the best college basketball players on Earth, that I found out why he sped away.
He thought I was a cop.
Turned out Juan had failed to reject mediocrity. He was arrested for selling cocaine and eventually sentenced to one year in prison.
Go ahead and say it. Typical minority basketball player from the Bronx: good enough to play D-I but blows it by getting arrested. Sure, we could spend years debating whether a little 99-percent-white town could ever be a jury of Juan's peers. We could talk about why he felt he had to sell cocaine in the first place. We could talk about the hypocrisy of the legal system punishing petty drug dealers with much harsher penalties than those who drink and drive. But none of that matters. The fact is, Juan knew the consequences and shredded his D-I chances.
I thought he'd spent the rest of his life regretting not being really great. While I'm not the betting type, my chips were down on his story playing out as so many others' do: go in, meet up with more drug dealers, deal more drugs, get arrested again.
Isn't it great to be wrong sometimes?
After Juan was released from prison, Wells College men's basketball coach Joe Wojtylko came calling. After several hundred days living in a box, Juan wanted only to turn things around. "Something just woke me up," Paulino told AuburnPub.com in 2010. "It really helped that I went. It really helped that I went before it was too late. I learned a lot and decided to come back to school."
He wanted only to get his degree. The 6-foot-7 didn't want to be known as a baller. He wanted to be known as a good man and good father to his new daughter. But, Wojtylko's call lit the fire and passion that made Juan so great the previous one year before.
The Jay-Z lookalike with the one-foot grin spent 2009 and 2010 dominating. By the end of his second season, Juan was right back to 20/20 games.
A few camps and NBA teams sniffed around, but there were no takers. Juan ended up signing with an ABA team in Seattle and was eventually traded to New Jersey. It's clear he won't ever play with the likes of Rondo, Garnett or Pierce. He won't ever be really great on the basketball court. But, these days, Juan does reject mediocrity.
"I have a daughter now," Juan said in 2010. "I want her to see that I worked hard and I want her to do the same thing when she gets older. I want her to see that I have a diploma, that I wasn't a bum.”
Nope, he'll never be anything more than just great on the court. But don't try and convince me Juan Paulino didn't become really great.
Most of the white population seemed to be intrigued with Juan. Some of them would timidly say "good game," but most just stared as he walked by. Not to say he was the only minority - there were always a few black kids from the suburbs around the school, but few with similar backgrounds. Not many, though, with a tilt to their stride. The one letting you know they've been through things you don't understand.
On the basketball court, he wasn't graceful like Jordan, tough like Rodman or disciplined like Pippen. He wasn't fast like Rondo, fierce like Garnett or sharp like Pierce. He was a dash of all six. He was so audaciously better than anyone in junior college, you couldn't help but invoke the famous Billy Joel line: "Man, what are you doing here?"
The funny thing about Juan was how easily you could see his potential to be really great. The ease in which he dominated. The fundamentals that could be improved. Intangible passion for the game. But, being really great is quite different than being great. Great is local. Great is secure. Great is natural. Really great is transcending, risky and takes a hell of a lot of work.
A baseball player from the 30's Buck Rodgers may have best described greatness as "commitment to excellence and rejection of mediocrity." Not just to be, but refusing to not be. Most of us never reach really great at anything. Juan had it in his view and mid-way through his second year at FLCC, Division I schools were taking notice.
Coaches would come to a town built for tourists around a pleasant little lake to see Juan play in front of a couple hundred fans in a smelly gym with plastic bleachers. They'd watch as he brilliantly read his opponents' head fakes, pouncing at the right time to slap the ball into the half-empty stands. They'd see his balance and quickness on the dirty floor. They'd leave in awe of the powerful forward scoring 30 points and ripping down 30 rebounds while getting slapped and hacked for 30 minutes.
While the competition in junior college isn't anywhere near D-I, other teams had guys who were his height. They had guys who - unlike Juan - played years and years of organized basketball. They had size, talent and experience. They didn't have anything close to Juan. Especially by the end of his sophomore season. I'd watched him go from clumsy to smooth, from pudgy to jacked, from a great D-III player to one with D-I talent. But, I noticed that something was going on with Finger Lakes star.
One night after leading a blowout win - who knows how many points and rebounds Juan had - 25/25 is a safe bet - I pulled up behind him at a stoplight. We knew each other slightly beyond a head nod. So, when he turned a little white Honda which probably wasn't his into McDonalds, I figured I'd stop in to congratulate him. But, when he realized I was following him, Juan paused in the lot long enough for me to park then slammed on the gas and high tailed it out of there.
It didn't make sense. I thought about the way he looked talking to people he didn't know well. He looked at them like a poker player trying to make a read. He spoke with caution. Not that he wasn't friendly, even at times gregarious, but the book was always half closed. It wasn't long after the season ended and Juan had an offer to play with the best college basketball players on Earth, that I found out why he sped away.
He thought I was a cop.
Turned out Juan had failed to reject mediocrity. He was arrested for selling cocaine and eventually sentenced to one year in prison.
Go ahead and say it. Typical minority basketball player from the Bronx: good enough to play D-I but blows it by getting arrested. Sure, we could spend years debating whether a little 99-percent-white town could ever be a jury of Juan's peers. We could talk about why he felt he had to sell cocaine in the first place. We could talk about the hypocrisy of the legal system punishing petty drug dealers with much harsher penalties than those who drink and drive. But none of that matters. The fact is, Juan knew the consequences and shredded his D-I chances.
I thought he'd spent the rest of his life regretting not being really great. While I'm not the betting type, my chips were down on his story playing out as so many others' do: go in, meet up with more drug dealers, deal more drugs, get arrested again.
Isn't it great to be wrong sometimes?
After Juan was released from prison, Wells College men's basketball coach Joe Wojtylko came calling. After several hundred days living in a box, Juan wanted only to turn things around. "Something just woke me up," Paulino told AuburnPub.com in 2010. "It really helped that I went. It really helped that I went before it was too late. I learned a lot and decided to come back to school."
He wanted only to get his degree. The 6-foot-7 didn't want to be known as a baller. He wanted to be known as a good man and good father to his new daughter. But, Wojtylko's call lit the fire and passion that made Juan so great the previous one year before.
The Jay-Z lookalike with the one-foot grin spent 2009 and 2010 dominating. By the end of his second season, Juan was right back to 20/20 games.
A few camps and NBA teams sniffed around, but there were no takers. Juan ended up signing with an ABA team in Seattle and was eventually traded to New Jersey. It's clear he won't ever play with the likes of Rondo, Garnett or Pierce. He won't ever be really great on the basketball court. But, these days, Juan does reject mediocrity.
"I have a daughter now," Juan said in 2010. "I want her to see that I worked hard and I want her to do the same thing when she gets older. I want her to see that I have a diploma, that I wasn't a bum.”
Nope, he'll never be anything more than just great on the court. But don't try and convince me Juan Paulino didn't become really great.
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