Reality Beats Fantasy

Last baseball season was the worst baseball season of my life.

Well, my fantasy life.

I’ve been playing this fantasy game since 1985.

And 2011 will definitely go down as the year of the loser.

I could blame it on injuries.

And there were plenty.

I could blame it on my co-owner.

It’s always his fault.

Or I could blame it on our miserable players.

Too many to count.

But the bottom line is we finished in last place.

Dead last place.

The first place team had 102 points.

We had 28.

Pathetic.

With a capital P.

How pathetic?

Let’s just say if we would’ve got three points for each of our one points.

We would’ve still finished in 6th.

That’s bad.

A lot of guys deserve the blame.

1 and 1A are the two owners.

But you can’t fire the owners.

So let’s blame the players.

Ubaldo Jimenez.

Sucked.

Carl Crawford.

Sucked more.

Adam Dunn.

The suckiest.

Every baseball team needs good pitching.

And fantasy teams are no different.

We really thought we had it coming in.

But none of our guys panned out.

Including Ryan Franklin.

When we drafted him, he was the closer for the St. Louis Cardinals.

When the season ended, the Cardinals were World Champs.

And Franklin.

He was out of baseball.

Released midway through the year for being awful.

How awful?

How about an 8.46 ERA?

That would get you kicked off your little league team.

We also drafted Fausto Carmona.

He was the Indians #1 pitcher.

Was.

Past tense.

On opening day he made it through all of three innings.

Giving up 11 hits and ten runs.

10 RUNS.

In just three innings.

Those numbers are so bad, Ryan Franklin even laughed.

Things got so bad for Carmona, he tried to change his name.

Tried.

He was arrested just two months ago in the Dominican Republic for using a false identity to obtain a U.S. Visa.

Now that’s a bad pitch.

And when you consider that Carmona is scheduled to make $7 million this year.

That’s just plain dumb.

But if they were to hand out a Cy Young Award for the dumbest move made by a pitcher off the field.

That award would have to go to John Lackey.

We drafted him too.

Through his first nine seasons, Lackey was as steady as they come.

A bunch of strikeouts.

A bunch of wins.

And a good ERA.

That’s why the Boston Red Sox signed him in the winter of 2009.

To a five-year deal.

Worth $82.5 million.

Guaranteed.

For that kinda cash, he should be curing cancer.

Instead he was spitting on it.

On the night of August 30th, John Lackey pitched seven innings for the Red Sox.

A game he lost 5-2.

But it was what Lackey did earlier that day that made the real headlines.

You see Lackey had had enough of his wife Krista.

And on August 30th, he officially filed for divorce.

Not the first person to do that.

Not the last either.

But when you consider that Lackey’s wife was five months removed from a double mastectomy.

And two months removed from chemotherapy.

And the baseball season was a month from being over.

John Lackey gets an F for timing.

Hey I’ve never met John Lackey.

And I never met Krista either.

Living with either of them could be a nightmare.

But there are some things you just don’t do.

And divorcing your wife when she is full of cancer is one of them.

Even George Lopez waited five years after his wife gave him her kidney before he dumped her.

I’m happy to report, thanks to Krista’s twitter account, that as of Feb 20, she is cancer free.

A long stretch from November when the disease had reappeared in 12 of her lymph nodes.

As for John, he’s not doing as well.

You see, just three weeks after the season ended, we learned that he has an arm injury.

An injury that needed surgery.

A surgery that will keep him off the field in 2012.

Maybe more.

From where I'm sitting, this doesn't even come close to evening the score.

But maybe someday John will learn that you might be able to beat the Yankees.

But you will never beat karma.

Fight On

My mom returned to her assisted living facility this week.

This came after a couple of weeks at a nursing home.

Which came after a couple of weeks in the hospital.

Thank you Medicare.

This revolving door is nothing new to mom.

She is bipolar.

And during her bipolar episodes -- which she has more frequently than any human deserves.

She becomes another person.

Sometimes it is “running, going, doing,” Mom.

Sometimes is “crawl into a hole” Mom.

The range is like when you spread your arms.

To show that the fish was "thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis big.”

Times nine million.

When these episodes happen, she usually needs a little help from the experts.

But even as she prepares to enter year #82.

She is still just taking it all in stride.

In fact, she has become quite good at dealing with whatever is on her plate.

And trying not to think too far ahead.

Definitely better than me.

Her most recent hospital visit was brought on by a lack of sleep.

Which turned into a depression.

Which caused her to shake.

Uncontrollably.

When I got the call that she was taken to the hospital, it was a call I had received before.

Many times before.

So many, I had grown numb to it.

Which is sad.

But unfortunately this trip was like no other.

During this latest trip, she said she had a bad tummy ache.

The nurses called it abdominal pain.

They did a series of tests to find the source of this abdominal pain.

And those tests showed....

...nothing.

At least nothing for the abdominal pain.

But they kept testing.

And eventually they found something.

Something not good.

The doctors called it a mass on my mom’s kidney.

My mom called it a cancerous tumor.

Either way.

Hearing this news scared me to ....

Well, you know.

The fear in my mother’s voice was unlike any I had heard before.

From her.

Or from anyone.

I usually try to break a stressful moment with humor.

But there was nothing funny here.

This was time for me to put on my grown up pants.

And in a hurry.

I have no experience dealing with this.

Thankfully.

So I relied on my heart.

And while I might’ve gone a little too cliche on her.

It felt right at the moment.

“Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”

“It won’t do any good to create a scenario that may not exist.”

“We need to find out all the facts first.”

I probably sounded more like Bill Clinton than her son.

But I kept searching for the magical sentence.

I don’t know if if I was doing more harm.

Or more good.

But at least I felt like she knew I was there.

Tumor is one of those words that only has one meaning.

Cancer is no different.

I don’t care what they call it.

It is scary.

Whether you are nearly 44.

Or nearly 82.

It is scary.

I told my mom I would talk to the doctors.

To find out more information.

Which I did.

And the information made me feel better.

A little better.

Of course the doctors were protective of every syllable. 

Their legal department wouldn’t have it any other way.

But the message was an optimistic one.

They said the mass was small.

“The size of two grapes.”

And they said they weren’t sure how long it had been there.

Meaning -- to me -- it might’ve been there for a long time.

And they said my mother was not the typical candidate for kidney cancer.

All good signs.

I think.

I had no idea what other questions to ask.

Other than “the” question.

Which I stayed away from.

But I kept asking questions.

And they kept giving answers.

And with every answer.

I felt better.

A little better.

I don’t know if freaking out is in the makeup of a doctor.

But none of the doctors I spoke with freaked out.

Which I took as another good sign.

They answered each question like they had answered it a thousand times.

Which they probably had.

At the end of these conversations.

I went back to my mom.

And brought her some more support.

And some more cliches.

Like dealing with this one day at a time.

Which is what we are going to do.

A Friend In Need...

I spent one of my final nights in New York walking around Times Square.

Smoking a cigar.

And talking to my friend David on the phone.

No, not that David.

Another David.

We spoke for two-hours, thirty minutes and 29 seconds.

Really.  I wrote it down.

Thankfully it was after 9:01, so I didn’t get charged for the minutes.

We talked about all of the usual subjects.

Life.

The death of my career.

The Cleveland Indians.

David loves the Indians.

And my mom is from Cleveland.

So we always talk about the Indians.

David and I went to college together.

Actually, both Davids and I went to college together.

And there was another David too.

But stick with me here.

This David and I not only went to school together, but we ended up working together too.

Three different times.

And there’s a good reason.

He is great at what he does.

And I needed someone great around me to make me better.

So in the fall of 2005, when I got relocated (and promoted), I talked to David about joining me.

To make a dynamic duo.

And for the next four years, it was a dream.

On paper, I was his boss.

But in reality, we were a team.

Like Batman and Robin.

Starsky and Hutch.

Loggins and Messina.

What I really liked about it -- especially as a manager -- was I could tell David anything.

Straight to the point.

No sugar coating necessary.

Not only was he loyal to me.

He was loyal to what we both believed in.

And that made for the perfect arrangement.

Say it once and it got done.

Well, sometimes twice.

I might’ve had the office, with the door.

And the window.

But I got nothing done without him.

Nothing!

Until the day he was told his job was no longer needed.

Actually, his job and about 29 others.

The entire department was wiped out with the touch of one merger.

Our entire department.

Poof.

Gone.

With no notice.

Classy.

Neither one of us saw it coming.

The good people who organized this execution knew how close I was with David and the group.

So they told me nothing.

After that job went south, David went south.

Moving his family to the next job.

In the next city.

And for David, that meant moving his wife and five-year old twins.

And his mom.

As part of his new job, David got a bigger title.

And a smaller paycheck.

So to make things work, David’s mom moved in.

Each month she gave them a little somethin somethin.

They gave her an all-access pass to her grandchildren.

Such a deal.

Being around two young kids was nothing new to her.

She raised two boys.

On her own.

She was a single mom before it became trendy.

But life is different as a grandmother.

Or so I am told.

And she treasured every single day.

I haven’t been around David and his family since they left town, but we still talk all the time.

Of course we talk about the Indians.

But we also talk about the time we shared together here.

And there was a lot of time.

Work.

Weekends.

Carpool.

Our families lived just miles apart and we took full advantage of that.

And whenever she was available, David’s mom was always part of the plan.

In fact, my kids even called her Grandma Rhoda.

A few weeks ago I got a call from David that his mom had been diagnosed with cancer.

But thankfully they caught it early enough, he said.

He told me how the doctors were going to deal with it.

And how she was going to move on with the rest of her life. 

In fact this week, she had just started chemotherapy.

But something just wasn’t right.

And yesterday at around one in the morning, Rhoda got up.

And David was there to help her.

Like a good son.

Like David.

He told me when he helped her back to bed, he gave her a kiss.

And told her that he loved her.

As he had thousands of times before that.

With no idea this would be the last time.

When he woke up in the morning to check on her, she had passed away.

No sign.

No pain.

No way to see it coming.

Just like my dad.

And when David called me to share the heartbreaking news, that’s what we talked about.

David wanted to know how I coped.

And what I did.

And what he could expect.

And I did my best to tell him.

And offer support.

I tried.

But I really wish this call would've been all about the Indians.

Rest In Peace Grandma Rhoda.

You made us all smile.