Month: May 2023

This week’s column is about another crazy YouTube find I’ve been watching. Previous YouTube mentions in this column have included channels on construction methods and art history. This one is much weirder than that. Hardest Geezer is the name of the channel (LINK). Its protagonist is an Englishman in his mid-20s. Currently, he is attempting to run the entire length of Africa from south to north. Yes, you read that correctly.

Will he make it the whole way to the Mediterranean? I have my doubts. It’s not that he won’t be able to complete the task physically; I actually think that will be possible. No, I think that something external and beyond his control and that of his support team will throw up an insurmountable obstacle. The planned route goes through the jungles of the Congo during the rainy season, to say nothing of multiple combat zones in various places, as it snakes through southern, central, and west Africa. Logistically, a Cape to Cairo route might have been simpler.

The objectives of what he is calling “The Mission Across Africa” are at least two-fold. One is to raise money for charity. One of the charity beneficiaries is a running organization in the UK whose goal is to help bring young people back from the brink by placing them in running groups, groups that provide both a social context and a physical challenge. A second charity is a clean water charity that is more directly relevant to the chosen geography but probably less dear to the protagonist’s own heart. The second objective is to demonstrate that people are capable of doing difficult things. So much of the contemporary world is about increasing comfort and minimizing exertion, yet perhaps this is being taken too far. Maybe people need to exert themselves in order to be fulfilled. I know from experience that doing nothing for more than a couple of days starts me down a path I don’t wish to tread.

The channel’s catchphrase, at least by my reckoning, is “the game’s the game.” It’s shorthand for the idea that what will be will be and you still need to go out and accomplish what you need to accomplish. Catchphrases never distill all the nuances and there are things you can do to make most games easier, but I still appreciate this one since at some point you just have to bear down and do the work.

I’m spending this week and next in Nashville. I’ve visited many times through the years, but the purpose of this visit is different. I’m staying in a different part of the city than where some family lives and deliberately walking around and eating out (including with family) more than I normally would. This is a scouting expedition and while the first of this year it will not be the last. Last year included scouting in Europe, but that was for a place to spend a month. This is about finding a place where I could spend years. Not in the short term, as that is already accounted for, but in the medium term.

It’s a different mindset. I’ve walked through neighborhoods and tried to guess what they will look like in a few years and wondered: would I want to be here? Having contemplated some of my old friends moving as I’ve been with them during the last few weeks, being somewhere where I don’t have to start from zero again is something that has been bouncing around in my head a lot. Nashville is one of those places where I wouldn’t be starting from zero, but the traffic is only getting worse and that doesn’t look like stopping any time soon. I don’t have any answers to any of the questions about where I want to live if given an unconstrained choice, haven’t had any in quite a while. At least now I’m asking those questions with the intention of finding an answer.

For the first time in several years, I attended a youth baseball game on Saturday. It was a chance to watch two of my very favorite people swing a little pink bat and hit ground balls that resulted in infield hits and RBIs. When I was 5 and 6 years old we played tee ball and everyone went station to station in a train until everyone had an at-bat and scored every inning. This was coach pitch, complete with strikeouts and put outs in the field. In further conversation about this change, I was also told that some leagues use a hybrid model where the coach pitches a couple of pitches to each child and if the kid hasn’t hit the ball then they put it on a tee. If I were a league commissioner, I’d probably use the tee as a backup but allow the fielders to actually record outs. Well, when I say field what I actually mean is that the kid who corrals the ball runs to whatever base to try to beat the runner. The only times throws were attempted while the ball was in play were from the pitcher or second baseman to the first baseman. The outfielders also just ran the ball back into the infield. Teaching this isn’t a great lesson to young children about how baseball is played, but it did tamp down on the possibility of Bad News Bears baseball and Little League homeruns.

The worst part of youth sports is overbearing parents, and this game was no exception even if the parents were by and large well-behaved. Most commentary was positive and instructive and all of the negative yelling was from parents directed at their own children. I’m not sure if that is better or worse, but I will say that it isn’t the kid’s fault if you never taught them to run through first base or how to slide into second. Maybe when I’m actually in the position of a father watching my children play I’ll react negatively too. I do thing that the youth coaching I’ve already done should help. Yelling is counterproductive on so many levels. And that applies in more contexts than a children’s baseball game.

Last weekend, I returned to upstate South Carolina to attend the wedding of my college roommate and one of my dearest friends. The summer heat and humidity had not yet arrived, so it was a pleasant time to be there. It was also a chance to reconnect with a few people I hadn’t seen in too long and to reminisce on some hilarious incidents from the past.

The bride was lovely in her long and flowing white gown and her bridesmaids wore Carolina blue, an ode to their shared alma mater. The old gold and black of the alma mater I share with the husband was nowhere to be found, and that was probably for the better. The whole evening was at the same venue: the ceremony outside in a little amphitheater; drinks in a breezeway inside; dinner inside upstairs; and the reception inside downstairs. I find those easier than weddings that involve a lot of transportation between different elements of the evening. As for the reception, I’ve become more attuned to my limits over the years so I was sure to have earplugs in my pocket to help me deal with the volume. The ear plugs did the job as my introvert self was able to live with the slightly reduced din for the length of the event.

I’ll end with a few words about the couple. I knew there was something different about her from the first time I heard him talk about her. He was even crazy enough to have me meet her for the first time without him there due to some quirks in geography at the time. I’m so happy for them, proud of what they’ve already overcome, and can’t wait to be part of their continuing journey together.

I attended my first baseball games in the pitch clock era this weekend. The Cubs lost both of the games I watched as part of a three game sweep, but we won’t dwell on that painful reality. Miami marked the eighth team whose home venue I’ve visited, a number I expect to grow further this season. It is a sterile ballpark, not helped by it being indoors, and one where artificial noise plays too much of a role in the atmosphere. In that respect, reality met expectations. I also still pine for the days when it was possible to sit somewhere other than the outfield bleachers without having to watch the game through a net, but Stephen King did a much better job expressing those feelings in an op-ed in the Boston Globe than anyone else ever could.

The pitch clock has shaved about a half hour off of the average major league game so far this season, and it’s a noticeable difference. There is a crisper flow to the viewing experience and the ticking clock isn’t too intrusive in the line of sight. It also might be possible now to attend an evening game and not be zonked the next day, something that hasn’t been true for several years. There was only a single pitch clock violation across the two games so there was little direct impact on the result, but there were a few moments when players seemed rushed and other moments where the tension didn’t have time to build in the way it would in games I attended in the late 2010s. I hope that these are just teething pains and that players adjust before more pressure-filled games later in the summer. You also cannot make a trip to the bathroom without missing half an inning and these weren’t especially well-attended games, so there is a little negative even in the positive. Overall, I rate the pitch clock positively. I was also surprised by how large of an impact the new pickoff rules and base size had on the games (lots more stolen bases). That felt a little overpowered actually, so maybe the rules will see additional tweaks in those areas.