2 Places, 1 Time

Jason Bay is a major league baseball player.

A highly paid major league baseball player.

Last year he signed a four-year deal with the New York Mets for a guaranteed $66 million.  (Could be up to $80 mil for five years.)

Jason Bay is also a dad.

Three times.

He became a dad for the third time just a few weeks ago.

I know this because it made the news.

Not so much the birth part.

But the... “Jason Bay, the New York Mets’ starting left fielder, has gone on paternity leave and will miss at least Tuesday night’s game against the San Francisco Giants” part.

It turned out that he missed two games.

Two of 162.

But this was an excused absence.

He was on “paternity leave”.

That’s a new policy where a major league dad can get up to three days of “guilt free” leave.   The team can replace the player’s roster position for those days.

So everyone wins.

Except the team.

The Mets lost both games while Bay was gone.

Mets Manager Terry Collins doesn’t sound like a big fan of the new policy.

“Twenty-five years ago nobody left,” according to Collins. “Yada yada yada, blah blah blah... I’m sure the wives are happier.”

Well he didn’t say the yada part.

Or the blah part.

But it was pretty clear to this cub journalist where Collins sits on the new school vs old school fence.

Now as someone who was at the birth of all three of my children.

And wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I can understand where Bay was coming from.

And Texas pitcher Colby Lewis.

And Washington shortstop Ian Desmond.

And any of the future players who will take advantage of this new policy.

But as someone who can’t afford for any of my fantasy baseball players to miss any more games, I can understand where Collins is coming from too.

The bottom line is, as hard as you try, you can’t be in two places at once.

It doesn’t work.

I’ve tried.

And so have my kids.

A few weeks ago my daughter had tryouts for her high school dance team.

High school dance!

Is there anything bigger than that to a 14-year old incoming freshman?

Apparently there is.

On the same day as those tryouts my daughter had qualified for the State Championships of her Science Olympiad.

That’s a competition with categories like “Disease Detectives” and “Microbe Mission” and “Ornithology”.

Words I can’t even pronounce.

Or spell without spell check.

But my daughter can.

And she qualified in three different events.

And as much as she LOVES dance, she said the decision was easy.

It was her responsibility to help her team.

And in doing so, she ended up winning a gold medal.

And in doing so she missed her second day of tryouts for dance.

And in doing so she made the freshman dance team.

Instead of the JV or maybe even Varsity.

Now sometimes you can use a little creativity to be in two places at one time.

For example, last week my son had his first middle school dance.

A big deal.

Even if he wouldn’t admit it.

On that same night, someone had given us tickets to see our local major league baseball team.

Also a big deal.

So I quickly did the math and figured out that we could get to the stadium when it opened up.

See about an hour of batting practice.

Grab a hot dog.

Or two.

Watch an inning.

Or two.

And then get down to school for the last hour of the dance.

Which is exactly what we did.

Best of both worlds.

It probably helped the cause that my son caught a ball during that batting practice.

But these two places/one time dilemmas are not unique.

In fact, we’ve got a big one coming up next week.

You see Wednesday is my daughter’s graduation from middle school.

Bring your kleenex box.

Our schedule was set up perfectly so we could all attend.

Enter Mother Nature.

You see my son’s baseball team was supposed to play eight games last week, including a major tournament.

But rain washed away five of those games.

Well the first of those rain outs has been rescheduled.

For... Wednesday. 

Of course.

The same day as my daughter’s graduation.

Take a guess where my 12-year old son wants to be ... his sister’s middle school graduation or hitting third in his baseball game?

If you said graduation.

You are wrong!

I asked my daughter how she felt about this.

And the girl who picked helping her science team over helping her dance career.

Said he should go play.

“It’s not like it’s my high school graduation.”

Fair point, I think.

So after some thinking and a couple of Bud Lights Limes.

The plan is now in place.

And it's the perfect plan.

For now.

Batter up.

Win One For The Kippur

Saturday was the holiest day of the year in the Jewish religion, Yom Kippur.

The day of atonement.

I spent the day at the Temple of the Doomed, Citi Field, the home of New York’s OTHER baseball team.

The Mets have enjoyed two World Championships since joining the league in 1962.

But when you play in the same city as the Yankees, a team with 27 World Championships, two is too few.

This was my first trip to Citi Field, which opened just last year.  

The Mets used to play right next door at Shea Stadium, but they paved Shea and put up a parking lot.

Now Citi Field stands where you used to park for Shea.

The new stadium is completely different than the old one, but there is one thing that remains the same.

The trademark jet planes that fly literally right over your head throughout the game.

LaGuardia Airport is just minutes away and the planes are so close, you can almost see what movie they are playing.

It’s a good thing the planes do scream by or there might not be any noise in the stadium.

You see, there’s very little to cheer about this year if you are a Mets fan.

Unless somebody hits a home run.

Its not the home run that gets people out of their seats, it's the ceremonial rising of the “big (red)  apple”, located in center field.

Whenever a Mets player puts one out of the park, the apple pops up and the fans go nuts.

It happened twice on Saturday.

That’s the most work that apple has had all year.

I’m not sure if the apple is Jewish, but if it is, it really was not supposed to work on Saturday.

Sandy Koufax, perhaps the greatest Jewish player of all-time, made headlines many years ago when he refused to play for the Dodgers on Yom Kippur.

Shawn Green, also with the Dodgers, also chose to do the same several years ago.

But this year several Jewish baseball players decided to work on the holiest of holy days.

In the Jewish religion, the new day begins at sundown, so even though Yom Kippur was on a Saturday this year, it technically began on Friday night.

Jason Marquis, a Jewish pitcher with the Washington Nationals, decided to tempt fate by making his scheduled start on Friday night.

Not a good choice.

He didn’t even make it out of the first inning, giving up six runs on six hits, while posting just one out before he was removed from the game.

Coincidence?   You make the call.

According to www.jewishmajorleaguers.org, yet another reminder that there is a website for EVERYTHING, there are just 14 Jewish players in the major leagues right now.

Upon further review, I actually found three more.

14?  17?  What’s the difference. 

(The line is a lot funnier if you read it with a Jewish accent.)

A pair of all-star hitters, major league all-stars, not just Jewish ones, Milwaukee’s Ryan Braun and Ian Kinsler of Texas, both chose to play on Friday and Saturday.

Braun had three hits on Friday, but went 0-4 on Saturday, while Kinsler got just one hit in his seven at bats during those two games.

Minnesota’s Danny Valencia was born to a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father, who reportedly converted, according to www.jewishbaseballnews.com.

Did I mention there is a website for everything?

Well, Danny was bar mitzvahed when he was 13, so he is officially a member of the team, but you wouldn’t know it by his performance on Friday AND Saturday.

Danny homered both days, while picking up four hits in seven at bats.

Then there is Ike Davis, the rookie first baseman with those New York Mets.

His mother Millie is Jewish, which makes him Jewish in our world, even though his father Ron, a former major league pitcher, is not.

Ike, born Isaac Benjamin Davis, oy, has enjoyed a fantastic first season in the major leagues.

He is a promising star for the Mets.

But he had a very tough decision to make when it came to playing this weekend.

You see, a large portion of his mother’s family from Lithuania was killed in the Holocaust.

And even though Ike doesn’t practice Judaism, he is certainly respectful to the people that do.

Especially his mom.

Not to mention the huge Jewish community that lives in the New York area.

So like any good Jewish boy, when you have a tough decision to make, you ask your mom to make it for you.

Even though she admitted that she “leaned” towards Ike sitting out, Millie handed the hot potato right back to her son, saying that he should do whatever he felt like.

So Ike played on Friday.

And he played on Saturday.

And he had seven at-bats.

And in those seven at-bats, he got a hit in exactly none of them.

Striking out five times.

Coincidence?

I think not.