release

Unlike any year prior, a large number of my friends seem to think 2008 sucked.

Hoping that 2009 is better for all of you.

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Back At It

A Good Start and a Frustrating Stop

After a seemingly strong start, and then a bit of a setback, I’ve been pounding pavement again. July and August were a bit frustrating, but on Labor Day I was able to run the Nike+ 10K (on a treadmill, on vacation, but I did it.) Ten kilometers - just over six miles - is the longest distance I had ever run, and one that I hadn’t touched since high school. Unfortunately, after that, I found myself unable to run more than a once or twice a month.

Tempus Fugit

Around Thanksgiving, I realized that my goal of running the half-marathon in the Gasparilla Class would slip away if I didn’t start training in earnest. And so I did. I learned the importance of weather, as my runs in the cool fall and winter air felt easier, faster, and longer than those of the brutal summer. The calendar told me I had only a few short weeks to add to my long run before March 1. Adding a mile per week - ambitious, but not crazy - would put me where I needed to be.

Longest Run Ever

Last night, driving home, I felt good and the weather felt cool. Almost on the spur of the moment, I decided to skip my planned six-mile run (postponed from Sunday due to the holiday) and go straight to seven. There’s a straight shot from my house to a nearby car dealership and back that’s exactly seven miles, a route I’d measured before but never actually run, and as I drove home, rock music blasting from my iPod, I decided to give it a shot.

I made it.

The run was challenging without being too punishing. I tried to keep a slow, steady pace throughout, figuring that was my best shot at avoiding a flameout after mile four. A bit to my surprise, the third mile was the hardest - that’s when my calves and quads hurt the most, when my energy level seemed lowest, when i seriously began to wonder if I hadn’t made a colossal mistake. Then just after finishing that third mile, I rounded a curve and saw the lights of the car dealership in the distance. The pavement slid quickly under me as I reached the halfway point… and then, I was just going home.

A Personal Best

Just a year ago, if you had told me I would be running seven miles before 2008 closed, I would have laughed, or at least rolled my eyes. Not only had I never done it, I had no reason to think that I even had it in me to try.

Now? I’ve checked off that box, well on my way to my goal of 13.1 on March 1. And in the process, I’ve achieved something that I had never been able to accomplish in my entire life.

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Nine years ago today, I became one of approximately 300 people in the world who had something called a “weblog.” It was hosted on AOL. I wrote it in MS Notepad.

I’m under no delusion that it was very good, then or now.

At the time, blogging was cutting-edge. Now, it’s a punchline. A marketing cliche. But it’s also a powerful tool. A still-growing, diverse channel of information. It was started by a few score of people, and I was fortunate enough to be in their number.

I still am.

Do you have any friends you would never have known unless you met them online? Most of us do. I do. Most of them are fellow webloggers. And we “met on the net” long before it was cool.

Sometimes cool is overrated.

Blogging became very cool, very quickly. And then suddenly, it wasn’t cool - it was corporate. And common. And not worth discussing. But it’s pervasive, and powerful, and in hindsight, we’ll probably recognize it as the second step, behind only the Web itself, to the future where everyone is plugged in, all the time. (Just ask Evan Williams.)

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Ping, said the ball as it left the aluminum bat, and sailed over the head of the second baseman. I made it to first base before the outfielder could collect it, and so in three years of Little League, I can claim that one hit to my name.

I was ten, and my playing experience permanently colored my opinion of baseball. Playing outfield bored me; batting terrified me. Why would I spend any more time on a pastime that I didn’t enjoy?

The damage to my relationship with baseball endured long into my adulthood. I went to the occasional baseball game as a social event - Wrigley Field to get drunk watching the Cubs lose; Camden Yards to hobnob with my wife’s law firm in the skyboxes; even a couple of games here in Tampa because it seemed like a “cool dad” thing to do with my boys. Otherwise, baseball was not in my life and I didn’t miss it a bit.

Then, in late August, it looked like the Rays were going to make a run to win the division. I caught the beginning of one game by accident while having dinner with the boys; we went home and watched the rest. It was the first time I can remember intentionally watching baseball on TV. It wasn’t as bad as I had feared.

I started finding myself in water-cooler discussions about the Rays’ prospects, learning about magic numbers and checking team schedules. The Internet made it ever-easier to follow the game, and it seemed like the sport and the network were tailor-made for each other: a data-intensive national pastime, and a data-carrying international computer network.

When the Rays made it into the American League Championship Series, I was officially hooked. Exchanging glowers with randomly-encountered Boston fans, developing irrational dislikes for bat-waggling, kossack-bearded SOB’s like Kevin Youkilis, frantically checking scores on my phone when I couldn’t get to a TV - I became That Guy.

I’m not the only one in Tampa who’s recently acquired a taste for the Rays. After ten years of ambivalence, the whole town is wearing blue and, um, blue. And we’re the target of seething contempt from the long-suffering, hardcore fans of the Red Sox, the Cubs, the Yankees… even Blue Jay fans feel morally superior to us, and they’re Canadian.

And to be fair, they have a point. Those fans stuck by their teams through years, sometimes decades, of suck. And when success came, they had earned the right to celebrate. (Or throw rocks at police, which in Boston is the same thing.) Rays fans, they argue, don’t deserve a World Series appearance, because we weren’t around for the tough years.

But the first two games in the Dome sold out, even with the tarps off the cheap-n-sleazy seats. Rays fans may not have shown up during the lean years, but we’re definitely showing up now. As for me, I’ve jumped on the bandwagon. I’m cheering for a team I only cared about once it started winning. So I expect the contempt from Phildelphia fans, who seem to have contempt for everything. I expect loathing from Red Sox fans who patiently waited out The Curse for Rays fans who completely ignored the Devil decade.

All that, though, is past. Every fan has a first game. Whether that game comes during a winning streak or a deep slump matters less than how soon after that come the second, third, and successive games. For me, this winning season has opened my eyes about the beauty in baseball - the poetry of the numbers, the drama of defending a one-run lead with a monster hitter at the plate, the thrill of a ground-rule double driving in the go-ahead run. That means, whether the Rays win or lose the World Series, I’ll be checking out spring training next year. Headed for .600 or .400, I’ll be watching games. Ripping homers or watching as the third strike rolls in, I’ll be in the stands.

You see, it’s not so much a bandwagon as a baptism.

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Shades

Originally uploaded by MikeWas

My kid thinks he’s Joe Cool. He might be right.

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