Big Words and Other Offseason Thoughts

 

It's a bit of an offseason for me right now. Fortunately, it hits at a good time with the move coming up at the end of the month.

The offseason is an opportunity to pause and reflect. Are there things I want to do better? Things I want to change? Is the status quo OK? Do I want to upgrade the equipment?

I'd say "yes" to almost all, save for the status quo. Oh, sure, I'm generally pleased with the quality of my work as opposed to the quantity. I'll never be pleased with that. Every time I feel any pride in the number of games I do, there's always someone (not naming names) who will try to one-up.

I mean, why is everything like that? Why is it always a contest? Or why is it that when you bleed a little to a friend, you get silence before they figure out how to make it about them?

Nevertheless, I scratched and clawed to get every call I could and still I couldn't get to all of them. Some were postponed or didn't match up with my calendar. I guess that's how it goes.

People tried to give me calls and I had to turn a bunch down. I don't like doing that.

But I put my heart and soul into every call, regardless of how many I did.

So, in the offseason, I find myself in that place of not assuming. Don't assume I'll be back at this place or that. Things change. There are no contracts. No serious commitments.

I have Greenwich's football schedule (and, yes, space is still available in the WGCH radio booth) but anything can happen between now and Sept 13 at 5:50 p.m. That's when the pregame show is expected to start for the Cardinals at West Haven.

Yes, West Haven. I'm kind of a big deal there, after the state semifinal of last year. OK, not really, but they definitely took note of me.

Once again, this tenuousness highlights how I want a home base. Then, maybe, I can do other games outside of that base.

Too many carrots are being dangled with not enough reach to make it edible.

Remember, I have to pay for that new apartment somehow.

So these are the things that race through my skull during these few weeks off. My likely next group of broadcasts will be in early July for baseball in...you guessed it!... Trumbull! It's become a tradition!

The summer Cal Ripken/Babe Ruth tournaments are coming up and I'm excited to get to them.

*****

Oh, about the picture at the top of the post. That was taken on Aug 3, 2002, at Bridgeport's The Ballpark at Harbor Yard. Now, of course, the Hartford Healthcare Amphitheater concert venue is on that site.

It was sort of a mini WGCH Night. We got to take batting practice on the field before calling a doubleheader between the Nashua Pride and the Bridgeport Bluefish.

Those of us broadcasting the games were asked to throw out the first pitch before game 2 and Ian Handwerger had a digital camera with him, so credit to him for the image. It was also Sean's first baseball game. He wasn't quite six months old yet.

I look at that picture and think about the guy in it. Ah, youth. Thinner, more hair, blah blah blah.

Still, I have the wisdom and experience of nearly 22 years later.

If I knew then what I know now and so on.

It's a thing (apparently) to take pictures and add little puff pieces so, in homage to rodomontade*, so I decided to take liberty with it.

And then post it.

Repeatedly.

I'm planning to have a little fun with this concept.

*I had braggadocio as the word I was going to use but wanted something grander. So I found rodomontade, which apparently means the same thing. I suppose it's rather grandiloquent or sesquipedalian of me.

Or, simply, pompous.

Not my style.