Like Rain on Your Wedding Day

Three Sudanese freeze to death in 'cool-down' fridge

Aug. 26, 2010

Three residents of the Sudanese city of Port-Sudan have frozen to death in a fridge while seeking shelter from the heat, local media said on Thursday.

Enterprising local businessmen set up the banana refrigerator as a cool-down facility for the melting Sudanese. They charged 5 Sudanese pounds per hour (about $2) for people to sit inside it, local media said.

Port-Sudan medical officials said at least 13 people had suffered from heatstroke over the latest week.

August is the hottest month in northeastern part of Sudan.

Beggars can't be choosers

"Hey man, could you spare maybe just fifty cents?"

Austin is a small enough place to where you get to know the faces of these people after the amount of time I've spent here. And I know this guy. He always asks for "maybe just fifty cents." As if the word "just" has an inflationary effect on the assets with which he's asking you to part.

"Nah man."

(Say four people almost in unison.)

At least he's nice about it. But the homeless dog he's got as his companion isn't gonna make me feel any more sorry for him.

"That's cool. How about a cigarette?"

A reasonable request, even if with all the new taxes they've levied on them in Texas these days, a single cigarette is essentially the exact same in monetary value.

"Do you smoke ultra lights?" I ask, aiming more at making fun of Solomon than placating this really nice homeless guy.

"Sure man, I'll smoke those," he says enthusiastically.

Solomon reaches for his pack, obligated now. "Dick," he mutters under his breath.

The homeless guy accepts the cigarette marketed for women with the grace of a lady, and says, "Hell, beggars can't be choosers!"

"Literally!" I yelled.

He walks off, dog in tow, giving off no indication that he understands the irony that has just transpired.

Amazing.

The costliest four putt of all time.

Never disrespect the sanctity of the golf course bet

"I just don't get why he had to four putt." Russ was still fixated on Chris' short game, two full days after it put him in the predicament that was to dominate the discourse of Tom's and my weekend in Charlottesville. "I mean, just get it close, man."

Russ is one of Lizzie's three older brothers. Tom and I bonded with Russ this weekend, just like we bonded with one of Lizzie's other brothers, Bobby. Russ and Bobby come from a very Italian, very Catholic family in Kentucky that does not exactly subscribe to the notion that the meek shall inherit the earth. While their dapper suits betray an image of men who wouldn't mesh well with two assholes like me and Tom, the reality is quite the opposite. Russ is blunt. Bobby, an instigator. And they both feel strongly about the sanctity of the golf course bet.

Tom is nodding in agreement as Russ goes on about the four putt, and I am too, as we convene outside of Pavilion VII on the Lawn, the center of the UVa campus.

"Yeah," Tom said. "Don't FOUR putt, Chris!"

"Especially when I'm lying six in the rough, off the green," I said, "and he's sitting four with the putter in his hand."

"He ran away," Russ said. "The guy ran, away."

It was an ignominious ending to a golf course that should have ended in permanent brotherhood. But he made the decision that he made, and there's nothing we can do about it now.

Here is what happened.

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It all started with a decision by Wes, our boy from our first year college dorm whose wedding weekend we were attending in Charlottesville, to put the three of us together in group 1B. Like men do, we played golf the day before Wes was getting married. Gathered together at Birdwood, the same course that the Virginia golf team practices on, was a melange of people connected to the groom through various means: college friends from UVa, his original beach kid crew from Virginia Beach, the male relatives/protectors of the bride, a few of Wes' own kin, and even a random girl of whose identity I'm still unsure.

And then there was Chris, the only one that didn't really fall into any of these categories.

We'd met Chris the night before at Mellow Mushroom, and he was a nice guy. Only a year older than us, he's a lawyer, and he lives in the same town as the bride's family. The reason he was at Wes' golfing event was because his girlfriend is one of the bridesmaids.

"Awww, the boys are playing golf before the wedding tomorrow. You should go! It would be a great opportunity to bond." That was Tom's impression of Chris' girlfriend, exhorting Chris to come out and play with us.

If only she'd known.

"I put Chris in your group because y'all are all like intellectual types," Wes said to Tom and me as we stretched on the first tee. "I figured you could have some interesting conversations."

Big mistake by Wes.

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"Of all the people to lose a bet to," Martha said, "you and Tom are the worst."

Martha is Tom's girlfriend.

"Martha! What are you talking about? The man made a bet on a golf course."

Tom is nodding vociferously as I admonish his girl.

"You have to follow through on it! It's a BET, on a GOLF COURSE."

Tom has a look of complete bewilderment that Martha is putting up any resistance to the notion that Chris was legally obligated -- verbal contract -- to streak.

There is a nasty rumor going around the wedding party, you see. It appears that Chris has let it be known that he's not going to do it. Even though he gave his word.

"I'm just saying," Martha kept saying. "He probably didn't realize how serious you both were about it."

"Martha," Tom said, taking over. "It's not even a big deal. You just streak."

"Says the man who probably WANTED to lose the bet, so he could streak again." (Tom's nickname in college was "Naked Tom.") "Put yourself in his shoes," she said.

We take a moment, pretend to be pondering, and then both sarcastically reply something along the lines of, "I would streak."

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Thomas Jefferson is the architect who designed the Lawn, which was the original centerpiece of the University of Virginia. That's the school where we met Wes in 2002, the same year Wes met Lizzie and fell in love. It's where Wes was to later propose to Lizzie, who didn't fall in love with Wes until 2004, maybe 2005 -- you'd have to ask her. And everyone who knows about this school knows it's about tradition. It's not your freshman year; it's your first year. It's not campus; it's Grounds. And in the same spirit, every student, by tradition, is supposed to streak the Lawn. At least once. So in a way, Tom and I were doing Chris a favor. He wanted to bond, right? No better way to do it.

All men are created equal, as Jefferson once wrote.




But only a select few have the opportunity to become more equal than others, by taking off their clothes, and running to the statue of Homer and back, at night.

That is the truth that Tom and I -- and Lizzie's brothers, and every other guy out there -- hold to be self evident.

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It began as a wager between myself and Tom, just to keep the round more interesting. Eighteen holes, skins style competition, loser doesn't even have to come out of pocket as punishment. He just has to streak. It's easy, and it's perfect, because it's funny.

"Y'all are way too intense," our detractors whined.

"You need to chill out," they lectured.

"Why do you care that much?" they asked.

And so on.

And the only answer we can give is the truth: the man made a bet, on a golf course. Who are we to say that it's okay to just not follow through? This is not Nam There are rules in this country.

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I was absolute garbage the first eight holes. Blame the beach kids.




A sextuple bogey to lead it off, a series of divots deep enough to pour a foundation into, one shot that I'm pretty sure lost yardage when you factor in the post-hit roll. I was dropping F bombs so ferocious they could've been dropped from the Enola Gay. The result was my name, scribbled with pencil onto the scorecard, and the following numbers to the right: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0. We were using the same scoring system they use in the groups stage at the World Cup, so a win was worth three, and a tie worth one, and a loss, nothing. Tom had a commanding lead, and Chris was humming along with a six.

This, despite the fact that Chris had only been playing golf since the beginning of the summer. I was a country club kid who went to freaking golf camp a few summers.

"You need this hole," Tom said as our cart pulled up to the ninth tee. "Need to get some momentum going before the back nine."

And that's when I started to turn it on.

By the time we'd gotten to 15, Chris was trailing, and needed to win two of the last three holes to keep his clothes on.

It was the classic problem of rookie golfers: no short game. "It's his Achilles' heel," Tom said.

Just call me Paris.

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Then I choked. Chris wasn't going down so easily, and he began a furious rally with his back against the wall. Looking back, I guess I should have realized how badly the man did not want to streak by the way he responded, even if he was keeping up with appearances. Smiling, joking around, acting like it wasn't that big of a deal. Just having fun. Bonding. The problem is simply that people like Tom and I don't really realize that such an activity could be considered embarrassing for other people.

He won 16, watched Tom win 17, and all of a sudden, there we were, convened around the 18th green, with Wes, Chase, and the whole VB beach kid crew sitting there watching, waiting for me to chip on. I was lying six; Chris was lying four; my only hope was that Tom, who had only taken three shots, would either tie or beat our lawyer friend, which would secure my second place finish.

But Tom wanted to see a playoff.

"I was seriously prepared to throw it," Tom swore afterwards. "I wanted to see a playoff. Everyone wanted to see a playoff. To watch you having to struggle against Chris like that, to see who would have to streak, it would have been awesome."

"But you know I would have won it anyway." The playoff, if necessary, had been agreed upon as a three hole pitch-and-putt competition between the second and third place finishers.

"Oh, yeah. It's his Achilles' heel," Tom said. "But I still wanted to see a playoff. Then Chris four-putted."

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Chris avoided us for the rest of the weekend.

We had given him the choice after the round ended: do you want to streak tonight, or tomorrow night?

He chose tomorrow night.

"Good, that will give us more time to hype it up."

I truly believe in my heart that it was at that moment that Chris decided he no longer wanted to bond.

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Let's flash forward to Saturday night, as the wedding reception is winding down.

"We have to make him do it. How are we going to convince him?"

"I don't know."

Chase had talked a big game earlier, vowing to try and work the girlfriend angle. We'd passed the point in which we could just shame Chris into doing it; that wasn't going to work. The only prayer, in our estimation, was to convince his girlfriend that she was dating a half man. Embarrassed, she would then do the shaming for us. It was a perfect plan.

But just as I predicted, Chase was too nice to even attempt this mission, and left us with no other option than to negotiate.

(Actually, we opted for negotiations after the band refused to make a public service announcement on our behalf.)

Game plan: just make him.

Problem: he didn't want to "get arrested."

Reason: he's a lawyer.

Tom's solution: "What if we do it with you?"

Chris' answer: "Okay, fine."

Tom's condition: "You have to get the bus rowdy."

Martha's commentary when we informed her we had a deal: "I KNEW you would end up doing it with him!"

In all fairness, it was an exceedingly fair proposition. By no means were we obligated to offer to streak with Chris. It was his responsibility. Asking only one little thing of him -- get a bus stuffed with a bunch of open bar'ed 20-something's (and a few grown up relatives of the married couple) rowdy to the idea of him streaking the Lawn at 1 a.m. -- was nothing. We were just happy we had a deal. And to be honest, we were happy for Chris. He was going to look back on this experience and thank us. We were going to bond, after all.

But the bus driver -- she had other plans.

The kids who drive the UVa buses -- that's how we all got from the chapel on Grounds to the reception out by Foxfield -- are classic emo types who hate kids that get rowdy to streaking. They're "different." And they don't want to have to deal with people who are having that much fun.

This girl was a classic UVa bus driver.

"The bus is too full!" she shrieked.

No one paid any attention. The Sublime group singing continued.

"No alcohol on the bus!"

Right. That's like saying you have to fill out the census, or else.

"We're going to fine the bride's family $150!"

I think someone yelled "Who cares! That's nothing!" But I can't remember that clearly.

And then, just as Chris and Tom are about to squeeze on, the driver shuts the doors. The bus is officially full. There will be no streaking.

"Please! You gotta open the doors -- my friend has to go streaking tonight!"

Please. I'm Emo. And your breath reeks. Not gonna happen.

"Fine," I said after her silent glare of a reply. "Can I just get off the bus then?"

"Sure." First time I'd seen the girl smile all night. "Be my guest." And she opens the doors.

Just as putting is Chris' Achilles' heel, feigning defeat is my Trojan horse. The second those doors opened up, I yelled, "Quick! Get on, Tom!"

And Tom pushes Chris onto the bus, quickly following behind him.

Now she's really mad.

"THIS BUS IS NOT LEAVING UNTIL TWO PEOPLE GET OFF!"

She's pretending to not be completely arbitrary in the number she's choosing as a condition for pulling out of the driveway -- as if before these two got on, we were regulation, but now, we're suddenly in violation of some code or law -- but it's pretty transparent. Getting no response from the packed bus (now rapping in unison to 2Pac), she turns off the engine

I wonder if anyone even realized that we weren't moving. The emo girl seethes.

We are going to wait this out, I decide. Eventually, she has to go. There is no way I -- or Tom, or Chris -- am getting off of this bus.

But the driver was pretty hardcore sad emo girl. And stubborn as a mule.

Five, six, seven minutes go by? No idea how many minutes. A while. Engine is still off.

And then, a very unexpected person volunteered to get off of the bus. It was a moment I will never forget. Bobby, Lizzie's brother, and the man who maybe wanted to see Chris streak more than anyone else at the whole wedding, speaks up:

"I'll get off," he says, grabbing his wife's hand. "I'll get off the bus."

It was like the scene of a movie, one that we've all seen, but the title of which we can't quite place. The part of the movie where the loyal friend takes the fall for something everyone knows he didn't do, and willingly accepts the punishment, foregoing the event which the protagonist's crew had been striving for the entire time. I will never forget Bobby's chivalry that night. He, my friends, is the epitome of a real man.

As the doors shut behind him -- I'm sure the driver was pissed that I was still on board -- I got a little choked up. Goodbye, Bobby. This run's for you.

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All Chris had to do was get the bus rowdy.

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"Dude. I just watched him run away."

"Who?"

"Chris."

"I don't understand."

"Chris. He ran away! I watched him. He got off the bus, and I saw him darting behind one of the buildings at Boar's Head, running."

(silence)

"I cannot believe this."

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But it was true. Chris had run away when the bus stopped at his hotel, which was still 10 minutes away from where the rest of us were getting dropped off. There would be no streaking.

One runner in the direction Chris should have gone; one running away.

I was livid. What would Bobby have thought? He had sacrificed so much to make sure this came to fruition, and now, it had just unraveled.

"I cannot BELIEVE this! Who runs away? Who does that?" The open bar was still alive inside of me, and it was speaking in tongues. "I hope his reputation is ruined back home! I hope his girlfriend breaks up with him for this! I hope--"

"That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, Bayless." Inga, Chase's girlfriend, has what we call a "cooler head." I didn't see her point of view in the heat of the moment, but clearly, looking back, I know that some of my hopes were a tad over the line.

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But I wonder if Russ would agree with me.

He was one of the first people we ran into the next morning, after being up all night and sleeping until just before the breakfast outside Pavilion VII -- which is on the Lawn -- was about to end.

"I can't believe that kid f***ing RAN!" Ah, Russ. "And I was even with his girlfriend last night; she was out with us while he was at the Boar's Head."

Apparently, in running away from us, Chris had even ditched his own woman, and she was getting kind of upset with Russ' unending provocations.

"And I kept saying stuff like, 'What if, one day, you want to go eat at Qdoba, but Chris, he wants to eat somewhere else. What's he gonna do? Is he just going to run? Is he going to run away?'"

Analysis like this is exactly why it was that I had been telling Russ and Bobby the night before how much it sucked that Lizzie was their only sister. I want into this family.

"Every time I see him back home," Russ continued, "you know what I'm going to say, right?"

"What?"

"Why'd you have to four putt?"

Is your name Maya?

"Excuse me, ma'am. Is your name Maya?"

Maya is sitting at a table with her mother under the shade. She's very pretty, and is drinking a Lone Star tall boy at 3 in the afternoon, wearing cowboy boots. A true Texas beauty, with an Austin flavor -- nose ring, bangles on her wrists, and may or may not be wearing deodorant, judging by the kind of dress she's wearing.

"No," she says politely, with a smile. Texans are typically more polite than people from other states.

"You look like Maya (insert some last name here that I couldn't hear)," he says.

This, of course, is a trigger for her to tell him her actual name, which is inaudible from where I'm sitting.

"Hello (insert her name here), I'm Christopher Robin." It is the dead of summer, and Christopher Robin is wearing a hockey jersey, draped over a black polo, as well as jeans and sneakers. I'm sure he is sweating his ass off.

"Christopher Robin?" the pretty girl asks, intrigued. I vaguely recognize the name from some sort of movie or TV show, something like that. "Really?"

"Yes ma'am," he says.

Maya's mother is smiling, possibly because she approves of Christopher Robin's manners. I'm smiling, too, because I know what Christopher Robin is doing.

I find it brilliant in theory, if not awkward in delivery.

He's using the "Are you Maya?" line as an in.

It's a fail safe method to start up a conversation with a pretty girl. No one is going to be threatened by it, and no one will automatically assume you're hitting on them. What you do once you've got the initial hook is up to your abilities, of course. Christopher Robin doesn't appear to have much in that department. But he knows one thing: every pretty girl who is sitting next to him at a coffee shop in Austin looks like Maya.

For the next five minutes, as Maya drinks her beer, and her mother sips a glass of water, Christopher Robin sits in silence, sweating, as I pretend not to be observing from five feet away. There is a lull. Christopher Robin has lost the momentum.

A fresh opportunity presents itself when Maya and her mom wonder out loud who the man portrayed in the mural on the coffee shop's wall is:

"That's the artist who did the painting," Christopher Robin explains, despite not having been asked. "His name is (inaudible)."

"Oh, thanks."

There is no smile this time.

"You're welcome," he says.

The wheels have come off the train.

From now on, though, I'm putting that one in the database for safe keeping, the next time I want to use that card. Are you Maya? No. Oh, you look like my friend Maya. What's you're name?

She tells you. You introduce yourself. And you've broken the ice. It's all up to you from that point forward.

When Maya and her mom get up to leave, they do not say goodbye to Christopher Robin. And he is still sitting there, sweating, possibly wondering why he is wearing both a black polo and a hockey jersey on a blazing hot August afternoon in Austin, Texas.

The hottest team in baseball.

A pitcher's mound is not a comfortable place to be standing when you can't throw a strike to save your life. Especially when Coach David is on your staff.

Saturday's five-inning game between the South Austin Astros and the Western Hills Dodgers has permanently scarred me psychologically, despite the fact that it will actually go down as one of my all time greatest sports memories.

We play in a coach pitch league, since our kids can barely throw the ball ten feet in the air. I'm the pitcher. Saturday's game was unique in that we had a fighting chance of winning, and I was making the task of scoring runs as difficult as humanly possible for our players.

And I was well aware of the displeasure of the crowd.

I'd be lying if I told you that there weren't several moments during that game which made me feel like I was the protagonist in a Southwest Airlines commercial.

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It had been a tough start to the season for our Astros, who, like the Houston Astros, lost the first seven games of the year. We also had one rain out, which probably would have been a loss, meaning we would've been 0-8. This was the exact same record Houston had when Joe Lemire, my friend and Sports Illustrated baseball writer, wrote an article for SI.com describing the 'Stros as "historically bad."

Houston subsequently won eight of ten.

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I'm not like Lebron James; I will happily make excuses.

Most of the other teams in our league are simply older and more experienced, stacked with eight year olds who know how to play the game much better than our six year olds. But we have been improving every week, and there was something about the way I felt before Saturday's game that made me feel like it just might be our day.

"Don't have time to talk right now, but I've got a good feeling about this one," I told someone who called me right before the first pitch. Then I hung up, and jogged to the mound.

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It really was like Rick Ankiel out there.

Bouncing pitches on the plate, bouncing pitches in front of the plate, brushing kids back, throwing it over their heads -- anywhere but in the strike zone, and I was all over it on Saturday.

"Dude! What is WRONG with you??" Coach David screamed from just in front of the dugout.

"David!" I shot back from the mound, in front of everyone. "You're not helping!"

"Well neither are you! Move up to the front of the mound! Get on one knee!" He angrily waved me up closer to the plate.

Another pitch, another Astro hopelessly flailing at an unhittable offering.

"Don't swing if it's not a strike!" Kenny, one of our better hitters, yelled from the dugout. It was the first time I had ever heard one of our players say something like that.

Another pitch, and this time, an Astro has the smarts to lay off a high one.

"Good eye!" a mom yells from the bleachers behind the plate.

I grimace. Wanna Get Away? Yes.

"He's putting the ball in the glove," I could hear one of the dads saying. "He needs to take the ball out of his glove."

It's easier for the kids to hit the ball when they've got a visual on it the whole time -- the really experienced pitchers in this league know that. I knew that, too, but I'm pressing at this point. Just like you stuff your hands in your pockets when talking to a pretty girl makes you all nervous, you stuff the ball in your glove when you're in the situation that I'm in right now.

The second I hear the dads talking about it, I take the ball out of my glove, and begin to hold it high in the air for the whole delivery. And it helps ... slightly. But I'm still throwing balls in the dirt, and, as David later said, balls that make our kids "swing the bat like it's a light saber."

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Here is the most ironic thing about the whole affair: we set a team record for runs scored that day. It wasn't even close, actually. Ten runs?! How did we do that? It really continues to baffle me, over 24 hours later.

The answer, though, is actually not all that mysterious: aggressive base running. Very aggressive base running. As in, don't stop running until the umpire tells you to stop, ever.

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"You must tell me when the other games will be played," my Brazilian friend Paulo, who was in the stands watching his first Little League game that day, said afterwards, as the sun's rays shined down with a little extra brightness. "This was the best baseball game I have ever watched."

Though he's no stranger to the States, Paulo hasn't seen many baseball games in his life. He did come with us to the UT-UTSA game a few days before, and he went to a Royals-Padres game in Kansas City with a host family once, too. But in Paulo's his mind, Astros-Dodgers, South Austin style, topped them all.

"I feel that this one was much more fun than the one with the big players," he said. "It is so much more dynamic. Every pitch. It is so unpredictable."

Delivered in a thick Brazilian accent, this was a reference to the aggressive base running, which led to some exciting moments.

"I was very thirsty," Paulo said, "and I wanted to go and buy some water, but then I said, 'No, you cannot leave even for one minute because you will miss something.'"

Paulo is right.

Here is how it works at this age level:

- A kid comes up to bat.

- He stands there, in an awkward batting stance and as rigid as King Tut, staring at his coach, who is maybe three feet in front of the rubber, desperately trying to find that balance between accuracy and speed which was eluding me so much all day Saturday.

- The kid does not look particularly comfortable at the plate, almost like he's sitting on a couch in the living room while waiting for his prom date to come down, as the girl's large, intimidating father sits across from him in a favorite leather chair.

When you tell him to relax, say, if the catcher behind him is having equipment readjusted (a common occurrence when you put bulky catcher's gear on children this small), he just continues to stare intently, not moving a muscle.

- The coach asks the kid to do a practice swing. The kid obliges. It is usually an upper cut, a way to downward cut, a Ken Griffey, Jr. one hand release swing, or a hack so hard it sends the kid spinning, like he's dancing with the stars. Sometimes the swing goes so slowly it's like he's pretending to be a Buddhist monk, fearful of swatting and killing a gnat.

The coach grimaces internally at his inability to teach the kid how to do a proper baseball swing; it simply reminds him of how bad of a coach he really is, as he delivers the pitch.

(By the way, there are no called strikes in this league. It's all up to the kid to swing or not. Usually, the kid swings.)

There are two possible outcomes which occur from an at bat:

- The kid strikes out: If this happens, it is up to the coach to gently inform the kid that he has to return to the bench. Rare is the kid who is aware of this at the time of whiffing. After the third strike, almost invariably you find him back in his rigid batting stance, ready for another offering.

You say to him, "That's three." Ninety percent of the time, this message does not have the desired effect, and the kid continues to stand there, bat ready to hit.

"That's three strikes," you say (for some reason, the umpire does not feel it is his responsibility to transmit this message). Usually this, too, is not enough.

"You're out," you then say, motioning to the dugout, but since the kid is six and therefore emotionally fragile, you add in, "but good swing!"

Even if it wasn't.

- The kid hits the ball: This is when it gets fun.

All pandemonium breaks loose, as it always seems that either three infielders converge upon the ball, or none of them even make an effort to move. The batter is now the base runner, and ironically, he is doing a much better job of keeping his eyes on the ball while running to first than he does while at the plate.

There is some fascination with the ball in play; I did that, the base runner thinks to himself. The kid always wants to admire the rolling dribbler, and it always sends me into a frenzy: "DO NOT LOOK AT THE BALL! RUN!!"

This propensity to stare at the batted ball while running down the line is not particularly problematic at this age level, however, as the odds of the base runner getting thrown out at first are slim to none. Remember, these kids can barely throw the ball ten feet in the air often times. And if they somehow can, rare is the dependable first baseman who knows to a) cover the bag, b) keep his foot on the bag, and c) catch the ball.

Batting averages and on base percentages in this league are almost always identical.

Once the ball is put in play, there are essentially two possibilities:

- Somehow, the play is called dead: This happens when the ball gets back to the pitcher.

You're praying for this to happen if your team is on defense.

- It turns into a home run: Lots of throwing errors are involved in this outcome, and it's always exciting to watch.

This is where aggressive base running can get you ten runs despite Coach Bayless' pitching.

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Meanwhile, it's a tight game, and I am a mental wreck. I have lost all confidence at this point.

"You can't hit the ball if the coach doesn't throw a strike," I could hear David telling one of our players.

David is not helping matters.

"Move up to the front of the mound!" he urged me again, holding the crumpled line up in one hand and angrily waving me up with the other.

"Throw it like a shot put!" came a voice from the dads section.

"Take the ball out of the glove!"

"Come on Bayless!"

"You doin' all right buddy?" Coach Tony asked.

At this point I'm really reeling, and the honest answer to the question is, "NO." Tony is too nice to yell at me in front of everyone like David, but the very question served to rattle my confidence, like a holder of Greek debt reading about yet another revision in Athens' budget deficit ratio.

The worst is when Tony comes onto the field, in the middle of an inning, and, in front of everyone, suggests that we switch out.

This is unprecedented in coach pitch history -- being pulled in the middle of an inning.

My pride prevented me from taking him up on the offer, and I curtly refused his offer.

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Despite it all, we were still scoring runs.

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Back and forth, back and forth. The Dodgers, the home team, took the early lead, but we came roaring back, and actually found ourselves in the unfamiliar position of defending a lead heading into the final frame.

Up three in the bottom of the fifth.

"It was so funny sitting in the stands," Jen, easily the South Austin Astros' biggest non-parent fan said later. "One of the moms -- I'm not sure which one -- was like, 'Come on, Bayless. Time to lay off the Friday night beer drinking.'"

And at another time, when I was on the mound, I tried to get our kids rowdy and cheering: "Come on, Astros! I can't hear anything! Let's get a cheer!"

"LET'S GO, BAY-LESS, LET'S GO!" I hear one of the dads chant, mocking me.

And when I finally made a good pitch once, I hear, "Good JOB, Bayless! Attaboy!" as if I just took a terrible light saber swing at a pitch two feet above my head, and was being told to sit back down.

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Those last three outs were some of the most stress-filled of my life.

The kids, oh, they knew the stakes. They all knew very well that we were winning by three. The Western Hills league doesn't technically keep score -- I once had an umpire say that he didn't know how many runs had been scored one inning because he's "not supposed to keep track of runs," ya know, since he's only the umpire. But we knew what was what, and everyone showed me a little piece of their competitive spirit that day, when I yelled out, "How many outs, Astros?"

"TWOOOO!" came the unanimous reply. I was floored: not only did people yell back with enthusiasm, but everyone knew! Everyone knew how many outs there were. Like Tony trying to pull me in the middle of an inning, it was unprecedented.

Two outs. Dodgers have already scored one run in the inning, and they've got men on first and second. We are up 10-8.

In normal baseball, this wouldn't be grounds for too much concern. But in this league, a groundball to the pitcher could easily turn into a walk off home run.

My worst nightmare.

Tony, David and I can feel the tension. Please, please, please, I implore the creator, please do not let my pitching take this away from us.

The batter makes contact.

Please.

It's a slow roller to Emmett, who's playing first.

PLEASE.

I'm out in right field, since coaches are allowed to stand out there and direct their players. Usually I am very vocal - Run! Throw it! Slide! Slide! Slide! - but not now. When I'm watching sports, I actually become deathly silent when things are at their absolute most intense moment.

Please God.

Emmett fields it cleanly, turns back, takes two steps, easily beats the runner to the bag. Game over. Astros win.

Like Garnett after his first NBA title, I was finally "certified."

Hugs with David, hugs with Tony. Poor Coach Nick, he had missed the entire game, being at a wedding in Brownsville.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We've got another game Monday night. We could very well win this game, as the opponent only beat us by two on Opening Day last month, and because I told Coach Nick that he is now officially the pitcher.

If we pull it off, the South Austin Astros may have themselves what I like to call a little "winning streak" going.

Someone, quick, alert Joe Lemire. And tell him the Astros are on fire.

Historically bad.
Historically badass.

Both winless, and for some reason, one is still really fun.

"Anyway, your Astros are terrible and I've been asked to write an SI.com story about how historically bad they might be. (Ed Wade claims it's just a matter of the bats struggling.) Care to defend your club? Or maybe pile on instead?"


And that, my friends, is how the second paragraph of the email I received from my old friend Joe Lemire went, followed by a cheery, "Cheers, Joe."

My first reaction was, "How does Joe Lemire know that I'm coaching a Little League team this year named the Astros, and how does he know we're 0-4?"

And then I remembered, the Houston Astros are even worse.

This was three days ago, by the way. The South Austin Astros got mercy ruled by the dreaded Pirates that night, 15-0, in three innings, with five outs given to us in the final frame, so we're now 0-5. And the Houston Astros?

Oh-and motherfreaking-eight.

Joe, who was my first sports editor at the Cavalier Daily in 2003, is now a writer for Sports Illustrated. He wrote this this week, but I'll always remember him as the author of this column from 2005, which has inspired me to be the man that I am today:

Johnny Damon?

Wrong. The man who stretches Beard Fortnight into Beard Q2.

I think Joe Lemire should spend his time at SI more wisely, and write a feature about how the team that Nick, David and Tony are all coaching is getting stomped on every game, but only because our Astros are almost all six year olds playing in an eight year old man's world. And how we're still having fun despite the fact that we are getting worked every Monday and Saturday. In the coach pitch division at South Austin Little League, there is crying in baseball, and we've got our share of criers.

But two things:

1) We are going to dominate this league next season

2) Who cares if we're losing?

Okay, some people.

But that's just because they don't realize that they're only six.

(And also, by the way, that photo was snapped right after I asked the Astros how many of them I had accidentally beaned that night.)

Could be worse, I suppose. I could be Brad Mills.

His players are older than six.

All that matters is that Emmett knows how to slide, Nicholas is a spark plug, Andre is my ballin' cousin, Lucy loves sitting on the bench (coach's dream), and all of the other kids are giving me constant material, too.

In a little league full of history (they say it's the oldest one in Texas, but I have no independent verification of this), the South Austin Astros themselves could be historically bad.

But there is one thing we will never fail at.

Eating sunflower seeds

Climbing trees

Playing in the dirt

Almost making contact on a fist bump

Lining up our players shortest-to-tallest for team photos while standing on the side of a hill

Adding piles of grass to the dirt after we've played in it

Making awkward high five contact after missing the fist bump

Okay that was a lot of things. But we're good at some stuff, see?

For when you need a manager with intelligence.

Finally, I will be able to say, "I am the Astros manager."

That's right. I'm coaching a Little League team in Austin, and they let us choose the team name.

It wasn't like this in college, when I coached a team of 8-12 year olds three years in a row, with all of my boys at UVa. That league had this retarded policy whereby the name of the sponsor was the name of your team. So there were no little kids at Central Little League who thought it was so cool to be playing for a team like the Tigers, or the Yankees, or the A's. Instead you're suiting up in t-shirts with that especially cheesy, 80's style cursive that say things like "Dixie Pawn," or the "Window and Door Pro's."

Our last year doing it, after having established ourselves around Charlottesville following four years of college, we were able to convince the old, slightly perverted Greek man who owned a go-to, late night burger spot called The White Spot to sponsor us. Sure we were still named after our sponsor, but with a twist: with that UVa orange and blue, the word "Gusburgers." Dmitri even gave the team about 15 free ones for picture day, which froze a moment in time when I was 22, with a hemp necklace and a big smile on my face, as all of us chowed down on semi-cold, half eaten cheeseburgers with a definitely cold fried egg spilling out the top.

Austin, though, is a even cooler than a bag full hour-old Gusburgers when it comes to team names. They give you the freedom to decide. It's so Austin of them, don't you think?

Since it's not just me that's coaching this coach pitch team, but also three of my boys from Houston (high school good times rather than college good times, this time), the answer for us was obvious.

"What would y'all like to be called?"

That's like a Hooters waitress asking Wilt Chamberlain if he wants to bang, or Fidel Castro if he likes control.

"The Astros," I said, within about three milliseconds. "The South Austin Astros."

"The South Austin Astros," my pitching coach said. "Nice."

Which is why he just bought me 250 of these business cards:

That's right. Because I'm an intelligence analyst too, get it?

But mainly because he forgot my birthday two weeks ago and he felt bad. They were "free," if you don't include the $14 it costs to ship them here within seven business days. But that is a $14 joke which is kind of like a television series called "The Best Conversation Starter Ever," and Nick is going to be able to hear me recount a different episode probably every week until the season ends in May. Any girl with any knowledge of baseball and a even a smidgeon of maternal instinct will let out an, "Awwwww!" so heartfelt upon hearing that this guy is the baseball coach for a troupe of six year olds it will sound like a free puppy giveaway.

Our players are young, like I said. Really young. Ranging from six to eight years young, with more weight on the left end of that see saw. Which means that at our first practice, I had to hold in a laugh when one of our kids was putting a right handed glove on his right hand, and when I realized another really is David after Dentist:

I swear.

And how cool are we going to look in front of the cool Austin parents when we bring in my friend and neighbor, and local Austin celebrity, Kat Edmonson to sing the national anthem before one of our games? This girl is one of the biggest names in Austin music (despite being so petite that she's only slightly larger than our first baseman), and when I asked her if she would be interested in singing it, she said, "I've been asked to do that so many times, like before UT basketball games, but I've never done it, mainly because I don't know the song." And then, "But I would definitely do it for your Little League."

Emphasis on "definitely." The South Austin Astros is easily going to be the most badass team this league has ever seen, even if we go winless.

What can I say, we're just lucky, I guess.

I can bike to practice, and to games, and it's about a baseball's throw from my favorite place in Austin, Barton Springs, to which I can also bike, meaning that I'm gonna be an intelligence analyzin', Barton Springs chillin', Little League coachin' hippie Lance Armstrong this spring, without the killer bod, and the money, but including the fact that I'm okay with that. It sounds kind of trite, but it is a fact that back when I had a summer internship in Austin, when I was 21 and still a year away from coaching the Gusburgers, I used to look at this field next to Barton Springs and daydream about one day in my mid-20's having a cool job in Austin, living near the Springs, and coaching a Little League team, like I was doing every year in those days, but not next to this inner city Garden of Eden.

Now that's what I'm doing. (And I'm wishing I was back in the days when I was wishing I could do it, but it's a nice consolation prize for having to live in the present moment.)

That doesn't mean that I can't live in the past just a little bit. Since we were assigned the gold jerseys -- it was either that or maroon -- the South Austin Astros are gonna be modeled after the late 90's Astros. I have a huge head (like, vertically; it goes up really high), meaning I can only really wear those deep salad bowls known as Major League fitted caps. So go figure that Lids is making a throwback, fitted version of the ugliest, and therefore coolest, Astros hats of all time.

It's so rare that I couldn't even find it again after just looking for 30 minutes. Not even on the Lids site, not on Google. Not much love for Bill Spiers on the ole' Google Images. But I bought one already, so I'm chilling. And trust me, it is bling. Nick, the one who bought me those business cards, is pissed, because he's trying to get one, too. It's the navy blue one with the gold star, and the gold brim. The original "Sunday alternate" Astros hat, straight out of the days of Y2K.

Mr. Romance Languages

And the story of le jeu le plus brillant de tous les temps

I'm sitting at a booth at an outdoor Austin coffee shop, finishing up a week of work on my laptop, and there is a couple sitting in the booth next to me.

The girl is your typical, sexy, tatted up Austin girl, with tribal looking wooden earrings that somewhat resemble a coil of hand carved razor wire looping through both lobes, and just enough eye liner to look damn hot without going overboard into trashy town. The guy is your typical douche.

They're speaking French. Actually it's more like a tutor-and-pupil session than speaking, and the girl is very much so the tutor. His French sucks.

The first thing I hear her say is "Zjuh, zjuh," really slowly. (It is impossible to phonetically write out the sound of the French word Je, which means I, a fact about le francais that this dude probably did not know about until three or four days ago.)

"Juh," he says. "Juh."

"No, you've gotta say it like this: zzjjjjjuuuh."

Not like jjuuudge.

"Maybe she's trying to teach him Serbian," I thought for a brief moment: like zzzzelja mi je pusta da ti svrsim u usta.

"Or Swahili." Nipe kikunde kimojjjjjja ili nitasizi na Muindaji.

And then came the flashcard session on how to conjugate the verb aller.

Mon dieu, does he sound le retarded.

They're in their late 20's, meaning it's not for some college class or something that they're sitting at a coffee shop at 3 on a Friday going over French verbs like "to be" and "to have" in the present tense. The girl clearly speaks French, and the guy, he just "wants to learn it." A hobby. 

Something to do besides work all the time, perhaps -- like what my neighbors Tony and Nicholas just did, splitting the Rosetta Stone Spanish between themselves.

But this guy is so bad; sure, it's never too late to learn a language, but that doesn't apply to 

everyone. It's too late for him.

But "Hahahaha, oui!" -- I'm hearing a lot of that coming from her. Because the guy is so damn charming. So clever. He's macking on this tutor girl, and clearly not really interested in learning French. But the girl has no idea. She does not realize at all that he is using this suddenly discovered desire to learn a foreign language (subtext: "I am so worldly and curious") as a pretext for running game on her.

It's a brilliant strategy, I must concede. I hate on the guy, because he really was a douche, but at least he had my full respect, like Greivis Vasquez from Maryland.

The Latin Stereotype

Then she goes to the bathroom, and the first thing he does is pull out his cell phone. He's dialing now.

"Bueno," I hear him say, in a Spanish accent so bad it is only rivaled by his French, "que tal?" (phonetically: kay tall?)

He's smiling that sort of fox-like, mischievous grin as he listens to the response coming from the other end.

Then something cheesy like, "Well then I guess we won't be able to hang out later and socialize with one another."

No question he's talking to a girl. You would never say that to a dude. Unless you have a crush on that dude. And this guy, he has a crush on Frenchie. But he's displaying the exact same persona while talking to what has to be a girl, but he's using bad Spanish in his game-spitting session this time!

Could it be...?

The test is now, because here comes Frenchie, sauntering back to the table. We make eye contact, but there is no smile proffered, because the other guy, he's the charming one. And he's sooo eager to learn French, remember? I'm just the one who previously tried to ask if I could share her booth -- because it really was the only place with an outlet where you didn't have to hunch over to type -- but she had smiled and said, "I would totally let you normally, but I have a friend meeting up with me."

And now that friend of yours is using the exact same tactic to try and get with another chick who is probably just as unsuspecting as you are that you're being lured into a trap by Mr. Romance Languages.

But I'm not sure yet; maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there was an intelligence failure at some point during the analytical process. We'll know based on what Mr. Iberia says about the phone call that he's wrapping up as she sits down.

"That was a friend of mine." (The exact description she'd given to me of who it was that was stealing my seat in the booth across the table from her.) "He --"

Stop it right there. He. Not two sentences in and I've already caught him in a lie. Who is this guy?

I want to yell out, "That was definitely a girl he was talking to, go Elen on his right to cell phone privacy!" But I don't.

"He has game nights at his house, and we'll go over there and chill."

"Oh, cool."

"Yeah, and we'll speak like bad French together, too, as a joke."

What, the, fuck.

"Oh come on!" I really want to yell this time, before gathering up my crappy laptop and the docking station that serves a required accessory if I desire to actually turn it on for more than 45 seconds, and marching back over to the booth to reclaim my right place at the outlet.

I speak better French and Spanish than this guy, anyway.

She buys it though, just eats it up, like a gourmet snail, and their flirtatious tutorial continues. I can see the verbs she is teaching him in my head, written in its six forms, in two rows of three: je, tu, il/elle/on; nous, vous, ils/elles/sont. For someone who only took French for one year in college, I'm not bad. This dude, though, actually says vooze once, as a stand alone word.

He isn't even really that good looking, and he's got a pretty annoying voice and a general cheesy presence. But they're paying the bill now and leaving together, and I'm still stuck in my little end table, hunched over and thinking about the story I'm going to write about the hot, tatted up Austin chick and the d-bag who was able to convince her he was the man just because he took the time to prepare some French vocab flashcards.

This dude, he may be running this same scam with all the romance language chicks. He's got French and Spanish on lock down; what's to say it's not the same story with Italian, Portuguese and oft-forgotten Romanian?

May be a douche, but I have to hand it to him: Mr. Romance Languages is a brilliant man.

But he still couldn't touch me if the girl in the booth had been Serbian, though.

And if she had been from East Africa, and saw my Swahili notebooks I have back at my place, she would be like a popsicle on July afternoon in Dar es Salaam.

Europe Union Moves Toward a Bailout of Greece

By STEPHEN CASTLE and LANDON THOMAS Jr.

.......

I put the headline and the names of the reporters for the New York Times who wrote this story in case anyone wants to ridicule them for the following passage:

Greece is pressing for a much detail as possible on rescue contingencies to ensure that it will be get some relief from the attack in the markets for imposing a harsh plan on its restive public.

------------------------------------------------

I've learned a lot about the news cycle in the mainstream media over the past year. It's really fascinating to see how one initial report can germinate into a thousand confirming reports, all of which simply restate the original report -- which is never fact checked -- in a slightly differently worded account, with maybe a new detail here or there added in for posterity. The Google machine and the era of oversupply of free information via online newspapers do make it incredibly easy to find out exactly what is happening at the ends of the earth, but it does not come without some drawbacks.

The no. 1 side effect of the dawn of this era -- one of fast, available information, which is intertwined with the emergence of what I refer to as "Generation Text Me" -- is that my pet peeve is chronic.

Where have all the good editors gone?

Greece is pressing for a much detail as possible on rescue contingencies to ensure that it will be get some relief from the attack in the markets for imposing a harsh plan on its restive public.

Hmmm...

How about we write it like this?

Greece is pressing for as much detail as possible on rescue contingencies to ensure that it will be getting some relief from the attack in the markets for imposing a harsh plan on its restive public.

The best is how the NYT clearly realized they had gotten the equivalent of a D on a ninth grade English quiz, and amended the way the story appeared online (click here and you'll see):

Aaaand they still made a mistake.



(Sigh.)

The Bob 101

"Bayless, I met a cute girl the other day who knows you."

"Really? What's her name?"

"Allison -- she's friends with Nan [my cousin]."

"Allison..." I think hard... I vaguely recall an Allison who is friends with Nan. Blonde chick, with short hair. "Is she blonde?"

The Bob hesitates for a moment. "Blonde?" he asks. "Not really blonde -- she has short hair."

As if the length of the hair somehow affects the color.

"What do you mean 'but it's short'?" I ask.

"Well it's dirty blonde."

"Yeah but what does the color have to do with the length? Unless she's got a shaved head the hair is going to be the same color whether it's short or long, Dad."

"Bayless I don't know," he says, with a faint touch of irritation, like being outside without sunglasses at 4 p.m. on a summer afternoon in Texas. "It was blonde but it was a little darker."

"But short," I reminded him.

"Correct."

Sometimes my dad speaks in a language in which only those close to him have attained fluency.

"Dad my question is why did you answer the question as if somehow the length of the hair affects its color. Even if her hair was down to her ass, if it's blonde, it's going to be blonde."

At this point the focus is no longer on Allison; I'm just trying to see if The Bob understands that he is the inventor of a dialect.

"She knows you," he says, "and she's cute," tired of my pointless questions and trying to refocus my attention on the important details before moving onto other points of conversation.

We went on to discuss the McGrady trade, how the Knicks think they're going to sign Wade and Lebron this summer, the coup in Niger, a 1099 my former party boat employer sent to my childhood house, car insurance, and the fact that no, I don't really exercise.

Pretty standard Bob talk. But it was short.

Cum see what inspired me.

We were all in the middle of discussing it -- everyone was discussing it over New Year's, I'm sure -- on the drive from Charlotte to Cashiers, North Carolina when we began to see the familiar shape of Tiger grow larger and larger in the distance. It was a billboard, on the opposite side of the highway, with a giant photo of a golfer. He was admiring his shot, which would have ended up somewhere near the Virginia border if the photo had been made to scale.

It really looked like Tiger.

"There he is!"

Surely everyone has taken down their Tiger ads by now, I thought.

"No way..."

A few seconds pass, and the billboard gets bigger.

"Yeah, you're right," another person said.

"Oh man that would have been so hilarious if someone still had a huge Tiger billboard up right now."

(One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand...)

Wait for it.... wait for it..........

"HOLY SHIT!"

One person screaming but an entire car full of people coming to the collective realization.

"IT IS HIM!"

The collective realization that the man admiring his golf shot on the billboard ahead was the man himself.

And the subsequent collective realization that he is inviting us to come see what inspired him, (so long as we click on the box affirming that we are in fact 18 years of age.)

And of course my camera was buried in my bag as we flew past it on the interstate.

"Oh man, that was such a perfect opportunity for Bayless to start writing in his blog again, too!"

"Like rain on your fucking wedding day," I said.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scene: the other car, being driven by Tom, with Martha and Lizzie as passengers.

(P.S. Tom told me when I was waiting for him to pick me up in Martha's car at the airport that he would be driving a "green Toyota thing," when in fact, it was a black 4Runner.)

"Hello?"

I was on the other end of the line, and I was trying to convince Tom to turn around and pull a U-turn, so we could get out and take a picture. Tom later claimed that Martha had predicted his phone was about to ring with this exact request from me.

"If we see a place to turn around in four miles," Tom said, to an almost immediate chorus of boos and protest from the two girls in the car, "we'll turn around," before quickly amending his promise because of the boos and protest.

"Two miles," he said. "Two miles."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I got to work writing all of this down, so we would remember where to pull off on the drive back to Charlotte should we not find a place within two miles.

PETER GUICE MEMORIAL BRIDGE
"See what inspired me."
TIGER BILLBOARD
Exit 59
FUCK!

The reason I wrote the last word in my notes is because, as I was writing my notes, we passed the exact, same, billboard. The exact same billboard, within 10 miles of one another on US-64. And still, my camera, buried in my bag.

"DAMNIT!"

Exit 59 immediately became seared into my brain. We were going to turn around on the drive home.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scene: the drive home, New Year's Day.

Wes was just as excited as I was to get a photo op with the billboard.

Some would say even moreso.

The children whose father had pulled over during a road trip for the ole, side-of-the-highway-family-snowball-fight didn't seem to notice us.




But I guess they're just not as focused as we are on the important things in life.




Like making sure I have things to write about on my blog.


"ATL Airport - wish i had better camera - the top says "thinker" and bottom says "doer" - guess which one id be pointing to if we could get another clearer pic for the blog" - text message from Wes today, with attached photo