Great Expectations

As poet Kenneth Chesney once wrote, "Don't blink...you just might miss your babies growing like mine did." Wait. What? If you're anything like me, you are definitely not trying to impregnate/be impregnated at this stage in your life, and though growing babies may be adorable, real live offspring is not yet on my Christmas list. (Note that at this point, I am still assuming that my audience remains a handful of 20-something's who came across this blog because they had nothing better to do; if we are already reaching a broader, more national audience, and you happen to be a couple trying to conceive, ignore the previous nonsense.) But I digress. As Young William alluded to in his previous post, he and I share a scarily similar state of mind when it comes to life and growing up. 80% of our daily conversation centers on memories from a time when reaching 5'0" was a distant milestone (although that still is for Young William). I long for the time when my day consisted of cops and robbers, Discovery Zone, and a red popsicle mustache (and I can't wait for the time when my day consists of stroking my real red mustache). Chesney was right. I blinked and fifteen years flew by. Those days are over, and that, my friends, is what brings me here.

As we reach an early crossroads in the infant stages of this blog, I feel that a short autobiographical anecdote is necessary. This little diddy basically sums up the mindset of 9-year-old Danny as he put aside his Lunchables, turned off Arthur, and thought about his future for the first time. Let me begin by saying that I was a big boy back at the turn of the milennium. Now, we're not talking Chunk or the kid who wears a white T-shirt in the pool to hide his belly and little boobies, but I was a sizeable specimen when lined up against my peers. Thus, as the laws of youth sports explicitly claim, I was often better than most of my friends at sports and was always the boy who got into accidental collisions with skinny Flintstones-vitamin-eating kids and sent them home for the day. That being said, I was (am) a lefty with red hair. A pretty rare species, you're saying to yourself. Correct.

Feeling pretty good about my physical assets, I began to devise some pretty lofty dreams, which leads me to what, in hindsight, is the climax of my childhood. As I recall, it was a pristine Sunday in mid-June. John Finan (more on this American hero in a later post) packed me into the '97 Pontiac Transport minivan and took me down to beautiful Comiskey Park to catch our White Sox take on the Mariners. Fast forward a few innings; hot dogs in hand, this father-and-son combo is living the Amurrrrican dream (minus the apple pie and Chevrolet) as they sit and marvel at how insanely awesome it would be to go to work every day, put on a uniform, and be paid big money to play baseball. At that point, feeling confident about his own chances, little Danny told what, to this day, is the biggest lie of his life.

In "baseball ready" position, but not yet ready to have his improbable yet so preciously innocent dreams be crushed by the real world. On a separate note, check out the batting glove on the throwing hand.

"Dad," I said, "Someday I'm going to be playing for the White Sox out on that field." I made sure to speak slowly and look my dad in the eye so he'd remember every little detail about this life-changing statement. I was already envisioning myself driving back to beautiful suburban Woodridge for a Finan family party on a late Sunday afternoon in the summer of 2015, fresh off a victory in which I pitched a complete game shutout for the Sox. I would enter to a hero's welcome, and as I tried to make my way through the masses of little cousins grabbing at my coattails and giving me countless high-fives and compliments, my dad would confidently elbow an uncle and, through a little half-smile, tell him, "That's my boy. The kid told me he'd make it to the Big Leagues, and I'll be damned, he went out and made it happen. That's my boy..."

Flash forward to April 27, 2011, where my primary concerns are accounting, summer, and working off the 15 lbs. I put on around Christmas. Where the hell did I go wrong? There are too many answers to that question, and millions of former little boys around the nation feel my pain. Simply put, I hit my peak around age 13, and though I had some successes as a pitcher for your Benet Redwings (insert trumpets and fanfare), I faded into a land called Mediocrity. While chicks no doubt dig the way I flash the leather when I play catch on South Quad, the only things I'll be autographing in the near future are my W2 tax forms from my job shelving books at the library.

I leave you now with arguably the greatest scene in modern American cinema--true movie magic that also serves as a metaphor for the way my baseball career headed downhill once the first signs of puberty hit around 2003. Enjoy. This stuff is too real to make up.

Coming in

Dan just got the call to come in from the pen to face the big lefty, but because there's nothing better than some double barreled action I was up too, and luckily for you the cleanup man is a righty with a problem hitting the deuce, so even though Big Red rolled a two-ball with his first post, the situation still calls for me here.

In the past year, Dan and I have come to realize that we've lived pretty similar lives (at least the important parts).  We're both suburbanites of the greatest city in the world, we both understand the sad beauty that has been created since we left the Most Beautiful Game in the summer of 2009, and most importantly, we were both dominant Little Leaguers that hit our primes around age 13 and then slowly became situational relievers as we reached the all-too-early twilight of our careers.  We've shared our stories from the bullpen with each other, and now we'd like to share them with you.  Dan was a lefty long-reliever with a helluva changeup and I was a closer without much but a 58 mph curveball that dropped from the nose to the toes, so I'm fairly confident that if we ever would've had the privilege of sitting out in left field together we would've complimented each other pretty well.  Hopefully we can do the same with this little project.

There are probably a lot of things that we could be doing that would be a lot more productive than this, but sometimes you just need to sit out in the pen, throw in a cheekful of seeds, play a little toss, enjoy the summer breeze, and only half-hope that you actually get called in to pitch, because the beauty of baseball can rarely be found on a scorecard, it's found in the little moments that surround the game.  Dan mentioned that this wasn't about the walk-off hits, big strikeouts, or gutsy performances that beat the odds, and while I suspect he only said that because he never actually did any of those things, he's 100% correct.  So pass around the bag of David Original, pull your hat down low over your eyes, and enjoy.

Warming Up

Hi kids. Chances are you stumbled upon this blog because you know either Will or myself, and for that I am sorry. But you're here now, so you might as well give us a couple minutes because whether or not you've ever picked up a baseball in your life, listening to a couple of nostalgic white boys ramble about their sorry pasts can actually be funny, and will probably make you walk away feeling a lot better about yourself. Who knows how long this will last, but I recommend you set us as your home page and check back every 15 minutes because you don't want to be the out-of-the-loop clown left out of the conversation in the line for flank steak.

I'll admit that the primary focus of this blog is the glory days of playing ball. But we're not talking about walk-off hits, big strikeouts, or gutsy performances that beat the odds. No. I never did any of those things, so I wouldn't even know where to start. This bad boy of a blog is more about the intangibles--the Mondo's and fruit snacks you got after games, the 14-year-old kid who cried when he made an error, and the way you absolutely, 100% knew for years that you would be playing in the big leagues within the next decade. The posts that follow are truly a conglomeration of random conversations that take place between Will and me during the majority of any given Intermediate Microeconomic Theory class taught by Professor James X. Sullivan, which is why my test grades are like JFK, hippies, and the Viet Cong--they're all in the 60's.

This is life as viewed through the eyes of a portly little fellow who had a decent little career (if I do say so myself). If you know anything about Will or myself, though, you'll know this blog will inevitably evolve into a stream of consciousness about 90's music, manhood, stupid jokes, and random commentary on the shenanigans that is daily life as a 20-something. Right now you are saying to yourself, "Holy cow! That sounds absolutely hilarious. These guys are even funnier on the computer than they are in real life. I was already laughing really hard at that joke at the end of the previous paragraph, but this really sealed the deal. I can't wait to read more and sit with Dan next time I eat lunch at the dining hall." Correct.

I leave you now with what will hopefully become one of the biggest traditions of In From the Bullpen: a YouTube clip that is either random or completely relevant to the day's post. For our inaugural edition, young Adam Peterson embodies everything this blog stands for: little athletic skill, a happy-go-lucky attitude, and a general lack of awareness of the persons, places, or things around him. Enjoy.