Tag Archives: spring

Let’s go Mets

It’s the start of another baseball season. I call myself a Mets fan, and every year around this time I look in the mirror and I say something like, “Rob, this year you’re actually going to watch baseball, OK? You’re going to stay on top of when the Mets are playing, and how they’re doing. You’re going to learn the names of more players than just David Wright. OK, and when you put on that Mets t-shirt, the vintage looking blue piece with the intentionally faded logo, right, when you wear it and some of your friends start saying stuff like, ‘Cool shirt, did you see the game last night?’ you won’t have to lie, nodding along, just hoping they won’t call you out on specific highlights, or ask if you knew who the opposing team was. No, this year you’re going to be a real Mets fan.”

I was almost a real Mets fan in 2007. Granted, at the time the Mets were doing awesome, and so it’s not that hard to get excited about a team that’s winning. Everyone thought they were headed to the playoffs that year. It was almost assured. They were so far ahead of every other team that they would have had to lose something like seven or eight games in a row to not qualify for the post-season. Which is what they did, of course. And they collapsed the year after that also.

But this year I wanted a fresh start, a chance to see the Mets through the season from the very start. I knew I was in for an uphill battle though when I saw a Mets game on the TV above the bar at work last week. “Shit,” I told one of the bartenders, “Did the season start already? When was opening day?” And it was like two days ago, I had somehow missed it completely. Is it really my fault? I don’t know. It’s just now starting to get nice out, so that first game must have been like a winter sport. And so can I really be blamed for not having had any spring weather to associate baseball with?

I went home and typed “Mets” into Google. They lost the first two games, and their closing pitcher messed up his arm or his elbow or something. So yeah, I guess I got a little deflated, like maybe I’m not going to get to be a huge Mets fan, not this year. And it sucked because I looked down, I was already wearing that Mets t-shirt that I was talking about earlier. Right when I got home from work that day, but before I checked out how they were doing online, I went hunting around my dresser drawers, I found it.

It’s a really cool shirt, it’s like, in addition to that distressed logo I was talking about, the one that was definitely intentionally silk-screened to make it look authentically vintage, there’s also a patch sewn onto the sleeve. I’m writing it out and it sounds super lame, but it’s a subtle touch, like maybe it’s a little over the top, but not too over the top.

But I can’t help feeling like a huge poser every time I put it on. It was the same feeling I got a few years before, I went to Modell’s and bought all of those “buy two get two” Mets tees, but they all stretched out around the neck, and honestly, I had no idea who any of the players were whose names I had printed across the backs of these really cheap pieces of cotton.

I get it though, it’s more than just dressing the part of a Mets fan. You have to also kind of pay attention to how they’re doing. If you’re not actually watching baseball games on TV, you should at least make sure you know when they’re playing, against who, maybe make an effort to understand the rules of the game, pitching order, American and National league, all of these keywords that I can rattle off without really knowing what I’m talking about.

Anyway, some good news, Ike Davis hit a grand slam last week. So that was pretty cool. I watched that clip on the Internet. But it was like three days after the fact, and when I went to talk about it to one of my friends at work, he was like, “Yeah that was a cool hit, although that was last week.” And then he walked away.

I tried watching some of the Cincinnati game on Sunday, but I couldn’t figure out what channel it was on, which is a really bad excuse, because I could have just looked it up on the Internet. Oh well. It’s still early. There’s still plenty of time to hop on the Mets bandwagon. Right?

Let’s go Mets.

Five reasons to stay inside this Spring

Everyone loves spring. “I just love spring!” That was my sister’s status update on Facebook just now. And I’m sure it was your sister’s too. Just check. See? Well, I know this might be a controversial opinion, but spring can suck it. That’s right, I hate spring. It’s the American Idol of seasons. Yes, it’s here every year, and sure, the crowds of people all look like they’re having a great time. But it’s all a big joke. Spring is a big joke. And it’s not funny. Here are five reasons to stay inside this spring.

1. Haven’t you kind of gotten used to hibernating?

Everybody likes to go on and on about how they can’t wait for the warm weather, but be honest, you’ve grown to enjoy the peace and solitude brought on by an entire season of Arctic chill. When you slept in until two in the afternoon on Saturdays, you could find some measure of solace, looking out the window, viewing the barren icescape and telling yourself, whatever, I wouldn’t have gone outside anyway. But now you’re going to start getting woken up really early in the morning to the sounds of chirping birds and all of that other springtime nonsense. “Come outside and play!” The whole world will be demanding that you get out of your comfortable bed and put on a pair of shorts.

2. You’re going to have to wear shorts

Do you like wearing shorts? That was a rhetorical question. Nobody likes wearing shorts. Maybe I shouldn’t speak for everybody, but for me, there are certain parts of the body that don’t necessarily want to be on display for everyone in the world. Which isn’t to say that I don’t have great ankles and calves. OK, you know what? Maybe I don’t need to talk specifically about me here. But shorts are annoying. They’re either too long and baggy, making you look like a little kid, or they’re way too short, making you look like a 1970s minor league basketball player. Why can’t we just all wear really loose fitting, lightweight pants? Wouldn’t those be comfortable for springtime? Or what about capris? I was promised that everybody would be wearing capris by now. Why did you lie to me, 2003 Spring J. Crew men’s catalog?

3. It’s impossible to keep up with an appropriate level of spring enthusiasm

Everybody loves spring. You have to. There’s no other alternative. It’s like, as soon as that last pile of snow melts, there’s already a group of people your age walking back from the park, and they’re all holding lacrosse sticks, just out for a nice early-spring lacrosse-toss. Where do you keep lacrosse equipment all year? Doesn’t it get really dusty? How do you all already look so impossibly tan? And you get that pit in the depths of your stomach, like holy shit, I’m doing it again, I’ve probably already done it: I’ve wasted spring. And so you make a really way-too-late effort to go to the park and post spring photos to Instagram, you hashtag stuff like #lovespring, and I don’t know what else really, I’m not too good at hashtagging. But no matter how much you try to enjoy spring, you can’t shake that feeling that you’re not really enjoying it, certainly not as much as everyone else, not the lacrosse guys, not your neighbors. Seriously, where do you guys get time to play croquet? I mean, I work a full-time job too, and I’m regularly forgetting to eat lunch.

4. We won’t get to say “Polar Vortex” anymore

Yes, this winter was a cold one. As a New Yorker, I’d never before experienced what it felt like to have a frigid wind immediately freeze to my cheeks the tears they had just a second ago forced from my eyes. I had to buy a new coat, another pair of gloves, mittens, there really didn’t exist an adequate number of layers that would have properly insulated me from temperatures that hung out around zero degrees on a daily basis. But, someone came up with the term “Polar Vortex.” And we got to say it. A lot. Surprisingly, it added a level of depth and sophistication to virtually every interaction. And there was nothing exclusive about it. Whether it was a college professor or the mentally unstable panhandler trying to stick up a subway with a banana, not a single conversation passed this season without somebody throwing a hard PV. I don’t know why it worked, but it did. It was like a very tiny packet of Mexican seasoning that turned this manager’s special ground chuck of a winter into three month long Taco Tuesday. But now it’s over. What else do I have to talk about? Nothing.

5. There is no spring

For real, spring is just a myth, a marketing strategy cooked up by advertising wizards to make you spend tons of money on spring clothing. It’s like, buy this jacket, it’s lighter than your winter coat. Or, don’t you think it would be a cool idea to wear these boat shoes? So you buy them, the jacket and the boat shoes. And it’s great for that one day after winter when the temperature outside is nice enough that you don’t need a scarf. But then a week later it’s warm. Nobody wears a jacket when it’s warm out, regardless of how lightweight the material is. It’s the same with those boat shoes, they’re made to be worn sockless, but once the temperature starts rising, your feet need socks, I’m telling you, do everybody a favor and wear some socks, OK? Because there is no spring. It’s cold, and then it’s colder, and then it’s really cold, and then it’s nice for like a day or two, and then it’s fucking hot. And you’re like, what happened to spring? There is no spring.

Originally published on Thought Catalog

I’ll give you two hundred dollars

Sometime last spring I was hanging out in the backyard with my friend Dennis. We weren’t really doing anything, just enjoying the weather, listening to music via this one giant speaker, something I’d found laying outside of some house down the block, I don’t know if it was part of like a bigger PA system or whatever, but I got this wire at RadioShack and hooked it up and, man, it was definitely louder than anything I owned before.

My iPod was on shuffle, but it was something like twelve, thirteen good songs in a row, one of those shuffles that had to have been as close to divine intervention as I’m ever going to get to experience in my life, and I’m not just talking about the quality of the songs, but the order that they were played in, the way they seemed to apply to just that moment, of us hanging outside, one of the first really warm days of the year.

I think it was halfway through “Release” by Pearl Jam, I was tossing this tennis ball up and down, leaning back in this rinky-dink IKEA wooden lawn chair, I had my head leaned to where my neck was perpendicular to the ground, staring straight up, I kept trying to throw the tennis ball as straight and as far up as I could, of course never really getting what I was going for, and so I was sort of leaning the chair this was and that way if and when my arm couldn’t reach the unintended angle at which the ball decided to fall.

The playlist, the moment, it all should have been enough for me, I could have just basked in my contentment for a little while longer, but twelve or thirteen songs is about as long as I can ever really remember being at peace for one continuous stretch of time, I blurted out to Dennis who was spinning an old football in his hands, I said, “Hey Dennis, I’ll give you two hundred dollars if you can throw that football right into that hole in the garage door.”

He was looking right in that direction, and so I didn’t have to really explain myself any further, but if it’s not just right there, you might be getting the wrong idea. It wasn’t a hole, not really. It was just the garage door, on the top there are all of these square panes, and one of them didn’t have any glass. I’m not sure how it got to be glassless, like I don’t remember any specific glass-breaking incident, and there weren’t any shards sticking out of the framing.

Who knows, that’s really not that important, besides giving you a clear visual here. There was a hole, I said something stupid not for any reason really, just to kind of hear my own voice, to break up the monotony of what had up until then been this moment of almost impossible springtime serenity.

And what does Dennis do? He doesn’t even get up, there’s no hesitation, he just cranked his arm back and let it fly. And of course, it went right through the hole, a perfect spiral, it sailed inside so effortlessly, like there wasn’t any resistance from the wood, nothing touched, I don’t think it’s possible for this ball to have fit through that hole any more perfect than it did right then.

Even Dennis was surprised. I guess he could have played it off a little cooler, acted like it was no big deal, but there was definitely a look of shock on his face. I mean, neither one of us, if we were talking really honestly, like remove all of the bravado and the bullshit jokes that we try to interlace into even the most regular of sentences and conversations, there’s no way you can predict something like that from happening.

One, and I already said this, but Dennis was still sitting down. It’s not like he took a minute to consider the challenge, not like he stood up and did any practice throwing motions or anything like that. No, he just kind of cocked his arm and threw this wildly lucky throw. And two, the garage had to have been at least thirty, thirty-five feet away. So even if he did get up and really make an effort to try to aim, there’s no way he would have made it in.

Except that he did make it in, and after what I can only guess was his thinking that I noticed his own realization that what happened was a fluke throw, he tried to capitalize on the financial side of the ball-in-the-hole, tried to skip past any, wows, or holy-shits, or did-you-see-thats. It’s like his arm went back, it threw the football into the garage, and then it effortlessly extended back toward my direction, the palm outturned and facing up, as if to say, pay up man, I’ll take that two hundred dollars right here.

So I cut him off, I told him, “Dennis, I’m not paying you two hundred dollars. That was a great throw, but I’m not giving you two hundred dollars. It’s just not going to happen.”

And in the same way Dennis kind of betrayed his own surprise with his shocked facial expression, he gave me a different look after I told him there wouldn’t be any money, like he might protest, put up some sort of a fight, like come on man, I made it in, you shouldn’t have said you’d give me two hundred bucks if you weren’t at least somewhat willing to pay up.

But I was ready for that, and I think Dennis knew that I was ready for it, I could say we didn’t shake on it, I could hear him complain and get pissed off, but I wasn’t going to give him any money. I don’t even think I had any cash on me. Maybe a twenty. Definitely not two hundred. So Dennis kind of went back to sitting in his chair, now that the football was gone, he was looking around at what else he could get his hands on without actually having to stand up.

I went back to the tennis ball just as that Pearl Jam song finished up. Next on the shuffle was “Wonderwall” by Oasis which, yeah, it’s a great song, but it didn’t really match up with the moment anymore, I quickly played through the whole song in my head and I realized that I didn’t feel like listening to the whole thing. I thought, well, thirteen songs, that was a pretty good shuffle, and I started clicking next on the iPod, next, next, next.

Now it’s too late to go skiing

Man, this was the longest winter ever and I don’t feel like I took advantage of it at all. I only went skiing once, and it was in February. Yeah, the snow was great, perfect powder, that’s how real ski people, or the real ski people I’m imagining in my head anyway, that’s how they describe really good snow, powder, some really nice powder. But I only got to go the one time. Whenever it’s summer, fall, when it starts getting really cold but it hasn’t snowed anywhere yet, I always have these visions of me driving up to the mountains every weekend, really taking advantage of that powder, hitting the slopes, getting in some serious downhill time.

But I don’t have a car. And I work every weekend. My days off, well, it’s not the same every week, but it’s Monday, it’s Tuesday. Which, now that I’m thinking about it, those should be great days to go skiing, nobody else on the mountain, all of that powder to myself. But it’s never that easy. My days off finally arrive and then the next thing I know, it’s Saturday again, which, to you, the average reader, is like Wednesday. And I’m like, man, half the week behind me, half of it in front. Where is all of my free time? How am I ever going to find a minute to sneak away to the mountains?

And so when I did finally go this winter, I was pretty conscious that it was probably going to be my only time up there. Or, I was half conscious. The talking part of my brain was just yapping really loud and fast in my head, saying nonsense like, “Wow! This is terrific! Powder! It’s only February! There’ll still be powder in March! I can still go skiing in March! I’ll definitely go skiing in March! So what if there’s no more powder, they make pretty decent snow! It’ll be great!” all while I’m handing over my credit card to pay for the seventy dollar lift ticket, the calculating reptile number part of my brain, it’s not saying anything out loud, it doesn’t have to, that’s not how that side of the brain works. But if I had to translate the thoughts going on in there to English, it would be something like, “Ha. Powder. Please. He’s lucky I allowed him this one weekend. Work. Money. That’s all I care about!”

No car, no other weekends. It’s April already. As of writing this right now, right this second, I’m told that it’s the first day of spring. That’s what they say, anyway. I haven’t left the house yet. I already got fooled once last week with some alleged promise of spring-like weather. My days off were, yup, Monday and Tuesday. And everything for that week’s forecast said fifty, fifty-five degrees. Better break out the windbreaker. I got up that Monday and did my writing, told myself I’d take the dog for an hour long, two-hour long walk, to the park, to just bask in the springtime, finally.

And I made it outside and, yeah, it was slightly warmer, but not what I would really consider warm. I thought about skiing, how in previous winters I’ve been up at the mountains and have had actual days of skiing, dressed in wool socks and down jackets, in temperatures about the same as it was this day. Then the sky got really gray. Once the dog and I got about forty-five minutes away from the house, it started raining, a cold rain. The temperature dropped. I tried to hoof it back home, but the dog had to shake himself dry every five seconds. I was like, “Hey dog! Less shaking and more walking! Shaking isn’t going to do anything because you’re still going to be wet, it’s still raining,” but that’s when you know you’re in a bad spot, when you’re just yelling at your dog, him not understanding anything, his thought process must have been like, “Man, what did I do to be dragged out of my warm house and subjected to this water torture?”

We got home. The temperature dropped even more that night. The thermostat kicked in but I already had a chill in my body. That night I went to sleep shivering, and I dreamt of being cold, of being cold but taking advantage of that cold, getting into my imaginary dream car and heading up to that imaginary mountain, abundant with imaginary powder. And I thought to myself in my dream, “See? I knew I’d take advantage of this winter, that I’d get to go skiing at least twice,” and it was one of those really real type of dreams, one where, I wasn’t necessarily thinking about it right away when I woke up the next day, but days later, when I started thinking about skiing, when I sat down to write this whole thing up about skiing, and I’m writing about how I didn’t take advantage of the winter, that idiot part of my brain chimed in, “What are you talking about? We went skiing that second time last week,” and only for a moment I was fooled, like for a quarter of a second I thought about how much fun I had upstate that imaginary second time around.