The Mendoza Line

It's hard to believe the baseball season is already 1/4 over, but the standings don't lie.  The Cubs just survived a miserable 8-game losing streak, but they're still a game over .500, so things could be worse.

My baseball loyalties have generally followed wherever I was living; while going to school in Detroit I got to be a big Tigers fan.  My timing was good, as I was there for the wonderful 1984 championship season, including going to a World Series game at Tiger Stadium.  

I've now been here in Chicago for 20+ years, so the Cubs are my team.  (Cue the violins.)

I appreciate the baseball season's deliberate pace.  In March you get some hints about this year's team out of spring training, and the anticipation starts.  After the Opening Day fanfare I don't get too excited about April/May; you don't want to burn out early, after all, and 162 games take a while.  (Although it was thrilling when the '84 Tigers started the year with 35 wins in 40 games.)  By June it feels like summer, winter sports are done, and you can reasonably count on Wrigley Field weather being OK.  Then it's the heart of the season through August, and if the Cubs are in the playoff hunt September is exciting, and every game important.

(Let's not talk about what happens after that each year.)

Baseball really lends itself to radio.  You know where the players are in your mind's eye, and good announcers can fill the considerable non-action time with baseball instruction, stories, and humor.  If you need painting done in the summer I'm happy to help for a few hours -- just promise me a Cubs game on the radio, and a cold drink at the end.

The game has plenty of nuances in both strategy and custom, and picking these up makes me feel part of a big club.  Example: Runner on first, no outs, right-handed batter up.  If the batter hits a ground ball to the right side of the infield the runner may be able to advance to second, into scoring position; if it gets through into right field he'll wind up on third.  The pitcher knows this, so he's throwing inside, trying to get a grounder to the shortstop (and a putout at second) or a fly out.  A good hitter in this case can get his hands out in front of the swing and still hit an inside pitch on the ground to the right; it's called hitting the ball "inside out".  He'll go back to the bench having done his job, getting a couple of high fives, and many (but not all) fans will understand why he's being congratulated for making an out.

Another: There was a light-hitting shortstop named Mario Mendoza a few years ago who finished the season hitting just below .200.  Ever since then a .200 average has been called the "Mendoza Line", and is an indicator of a really bad hitter.  If you're a young player hitting below the Mendoza Line you'd better be nice to your uncle Bill who owns the warehouse, as you may need a job there soon.

There are a million other stories or examples like these, and I don't think I'll ever stop learning about the game.  As long as the Cubs are competitive I'm interested.  And who knows -- maybe This Is The Year?

Pat

Goodbye, Pongo

We always had purebred dogs growing up, and now I've owned two purebreds as an adult.  But there are great aspects to getting a mutt from the pound, at least that I've observed:

• Somehow the mix of genes seems to make them healthy, and smart -- not always, but often
• They're housebroken already
• Shelters do a good job (I think) of assessing dogs and finding the right fit for a family
• It's cheap
• It's a good deed

What other reasons would you need?

About 14 years ago Sheila (Rachel's niece) and her mom were living in a 3-flat on Brummel Street in south Evanston, not long after Sheila's graduation from Purdue.  They decided they wanted a dog, so Rachel and I took Sheila one Saturday to the "Orphans of the Storm" shelter in suburban Riverwoods.

The dogs were bouncing around in their cages as the people browsed by.  One in particular was jumping extra high, and periodically growling at the dogs on either side.  It resembled a slightly stocky coyote, with big brown eyes and a mouth that made it look like she was smiling.  I thought she also looked like quite a handful, but it's the one Sheila wanted.  After a smelly car ride back to Evanston (it wasn't me - honest!) we bathed the dog thoroughly and let her start to settle in on Brummel.

"Pongo" always seemed a little...untamed.  She had so much energy, and not too much patience.  She'd jump up on the couch to lay her head in your lap, but jump down to do something else after 5 or 10 seconds.  She was pretty aggressive toward other dogs early on, especially those smaller than she was.  I'm guessing it was the (probable) German Shepherd in her, as she just wanted those other dogs to go where they were supposed to, dammit!

We saw her a lot, as she seemed to accompany Sheila everywhere -- certainly whenever Sheila and Kathy came over to our house, which was often.  Pongo was oddly submissive towards me, crouching and pinning her ears back as she approached me.  (I don't have that effect very often...)  She grew to tolerate other dogs pretty well, and never once growled at a kid.

I was amazed at how spry she was into her teens, but she did slow down a lot in the last couple of years.  She had been deaf as a post for a while, her vision was pretty far gone, and she was starting to accumulate some other health problems, too.

I'll let Sheila tell the ending, from the email she sent out to a few folks today, titled "All Dogs Go To Heaven":

"At the ripe old age of 15 1/2 years old, I had to put Pongo to sleep yesterday. She had a great long life but it was time to let her go.

We had a quiet last day together that consisted of cuddle sessions (usually ending in tears for me), a couple short walks where she got to sniff whatever she wanted for however long she wanted & some laying in the grass time. Shortly before we went to the vet, Pongo had her favorite meal of roasted chicken followed by peanut butter for dessert.

Pongo enriched my life more than I thought possible and I'll miss her dearly. It's going to be a while before I get used to not hearing the patter of her paws in the hallway & I stop looking for her smiling greeting when I get home from work.

Thank you, Pongo, for 13 1/2 years of your unconditional love & companionship. Rach, please take care of her."

Dogs don't get to pick their owners, but Pongo could have done a lot worse, don't you think?

Pat

Throw Off the Bowlines

"I like quotes." -- Pat Harrigan

Well, I do like quotes. Not just the pop culture stuff I wrote about a while ago, but also the pearls of wisdom from various writers and thinkers over the years. Maybe it's the engineer in me: Invent something if you have to, to get the job done, but it's better to use or adapt what's already been invented. If someone's already shared a Deep Thought, well, you've got a head start on being smart.


A Deep Thought I've been considering recently is courtesy of (or at least attributed to) Mark Twain: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

I love that. It's really the same instruction as "Just Do It" or "Carpe Diem", but it tells you why, and the why rings true. Think back on your last twenty years: is the first regret you think of "I wish I hadn't...", or is it "I wish I had..."?


Let's continue with Twain's metaphor. Sometimes a harbor is a good place to be, like during a storm. And when the storm has passed you might need a little time to regroup, and your crew will, too. But you shouldn't wait too long, or grow too comfortable tied up to the dock -- you're meant to be out sailing, right? Even if there are risks, including another possible storm?


I'm trying to figure out what my bowlines are. What things am I doing now, just because I've always done them and they're comfortable? (Some are probably good to continue, of course, like "work for a living" or "wear pants".) What adventure or experience or other good thing have I been passing up as a result, or am I missing out on now? And not just me, but my crew here at home? How might I finish these: "I've always wanted to...", or "It'd be great for the kids to...", or "I could really help people by..."? And once I figure those out, I've just got to get to it.


I'll leave this entry a bit short, since I can't think of anything more useful to add to Mr. Twain's words. So how about you: what would you regret not doing, twenty years from now? Well?



Pat

Team Rachel Goes For A Walk

I thought out-of-towners and everyone who couldn't make it might like to hear about Saturday's ovarian cancer walk in Chicago...

After a miserable winter and a nonexistent spring (seemingly always 45 and overcast), Saturday was a beautiful day here: 60 and sunny.  What a welcome change!  I piled the kids, two of Fi's friends, and Sheila into the car and left Evanston, getting to Lincoln Park at 9am.  As we were headed to the restaurant rendezvous we met up with the group leaving there, so we turned around and all headed over into the park.

The walk had about 2,000 participants last year, and I'm guessing it was similar this year.  Team Rachel was about 50 people - friends, neighbors, relatives, colleagues of Rachel's, teachers from St. A's, etc.

The t-shirts were interesting.  Registering got you the typical event t-shirt: white, with an NOCC design on the front, and lots of sponsor logos on the back, just like at a 10K run.  This is what most people wore.  Ovarian cancer survivors were given special teal shirts, and led the start of the walk.  (There seemed to be so few of them, and they weren't a healthy-looking bunch.)  Our group all wore our Team Rachel shirts, and some other teams had their own custom designs ("In Memory Of...", etc.)  Some people carried signs as well.  There were a lot of personal stories represented.

Beforehand I had found the registration website at active.com a little wonky, but the event itself seemed pretty well run: Plenty of volunteers, adequate information and supplies, and a well-marked course.  Everyone seemed to know what to do and where to go, and we started off at 10am.

Team Rachel got split up pretty quickly, as it's hard to get 50 people to stick together, especially when half of them are kids.  Clusters of 5-10 of us were spread throughout the long parade, walking and chatting at a leisurely pace.  The course went south from Belmont to Fullerton, back up to Diversey and around Diversey Harbor to Fullerton again, under Lake Shore Drive to the lakefront, up to Belmont, and back over to the event site.  It was every bit of 3 miles, and took a little over an hour to do.

The kids seemed to have a lot of fun, enjoying the spring outing with their friends and cousins.  Elvis, too, as he never met an adventure he didn't like.  Along the way I got to do a second good deed for the day with a few of the guys, as we helped someone push her stalled car off of Lake Shore Drive.

About 30 of us met afterwards at the Firehouse Grill in Evanston for lunch, which was a loud, boisterous, upbeat affair, kids running every-which-way.

I was exhausted when I got home.  I'm sure some of it was from the walking, the sun, and the sunburn I picked up.  I think a fair amount was mental and emotional, though: being re-immersed in the subject of ovarian cancer for those several hours, plus the weeks leading up to the event.  A mixture of useless thoughts ("What could we have done differently 9 months ago?") with useful ones ("What can we do now?").  I'm already thinking about next year's walk.

Together Team Rachel raised over $5,000 for ovarian cancer education and awareness.  Thanks, again, to everyone who took part, and to everyone who made a donation for this very worthy cause.  It means so much.

Pat

"Be an angel to someone else whenever you can, as a way of thanking God for the help your angel has given you." -- Eileen Elias Freeman

Gooners

Following a sports team is meant to be a fun diversion.  It's just a game, after all, isn't it?  But caring how your team did last night, really caring, is not rational.

Somehow that doesn't stop me.

I enjoy Nick Hornby's writing -- a couple of his books (High Fidelity, About A Boy) were made into pretty good movies, too.  His first book, Fever Pitch, was an autobiographical look at his lifelong obsession with the English soccer team Arsenal.   He made the same point: it doesn't make sense to be in a foul mood for a few days after your favorite team has lost, or joyous after they've won.  And yet, this self-awareness doesn't change anything for him.

Reading this book about 7 or 8 years ago got me interested in European soccer, especially the English league, and Arsenal in particular.  Through the magic of the Internet I found I could follow how the team was doing, who was playing well, what the competition was up to, etc.  At that time Arsenal had developed the reputation of playing "beautiful" soccer -- sharp passing and ball movement, with lots of scoring, led by Arsenal legends Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Viera  and Thierry Henry.

You can see where this is going: a book warning me about the seductive irrationality of being an Arsenal fan...made me an Arsenal fan.  As if the Cubs, Bears, and Bulls weren't enough to follow.

I rarely get to watch a live game, but I do on occasion.  A few years ago Arsenal was duking it out with Chelsea for the league lead, so I went to one of the "soccer pubs" in Chicago to watch the crucial late-season Arsenal-Chelsea match.  There I was at Ginger's Ale House on Ashland, at 8am on a Sunday morning, and it was packed with supporters of both teams -- about 50:50, and everyone cheering like mad.  It wound up an exciting 2-2 tie, as I recall.

One oddity to European soccer, at least odd to an American sports fan, is the overlapping competitions.  Here in, say, baseball, you play the regular season, then the playoffs, then the World Series, and you have a champion.  There each country has a "regular season", but concurrently one or more tournaments with lots of overlapping teams.  It's as if the Cubs played the Cardinals on Tuesday in the Major Leagues, then played the Kane County Cougars on Wednesday in the "Illinois Cup" competition, then the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday in the "Lake Michigan Hoo-Hah".  So you might be disappointed that your team got knocked out of the FA Cup by Manchester United, but you'll get to play them again shortly in the Champions League...

Another is that they don't "trade" players -- they just buy them from another team.  I'm sure there are rules, but it seems much simpler than the convoluted "salary-cap-mid-level-exemption-luxury-tax-free-agent" stuff that happens here.  In 2003 the Spanish team Real Madrid gave the English team Manchester United $40 million, and got David Beckham.  Simple.

A final oddity (my favorite) is "relegation".  Each year the worst 3 teams in the top league are "relegated" to a lower league for the next year, while the best 3 in the lower league move up.  It's (sort of) as if the Yankees had a really bad year, and had to play the next year in triple-A, while the Toledo Mud Hens moved up to play in the majors.  Strange, huh?  And yet it's logical, and it does create some suspense at the "bottom of the table" at year-end, as teams try to avoid getting sent down.

So that's my confession for this week: I'm a fan of the Arsenal Gunners -- a "Gooner".  Looking ahead at the schedule there may be a chance for me to get to Ginger's on a Saturday or Sunday morning before the season ends; if I do I'll be wearing red and white, and cheering like mad, for no sensible reason.

Pat

Elvis the Cat

There's nothing especially feline about our dog Elvis, except that he seems to have nine lives.  These incidents are all from ages 1-1/2 to 8 -- count along with me:

1.  Shortly after finishing his show career (at not quite 2 years old) he had a seizure -- a full-blown, flopping on the ground, incontinent, eyes-rolled-up seizure, for about a minute.  It freaked us out, as you'd imagine.  The emergency vet diagnosed it as epilepsy.

He got into a pattern of having clusters of these every 4-6 weeks, for a couple of years.  The specialist vet we were referred to ultimately got him onto the right doses of a couple of meds he gets with every meal, and now he's been seizure-free for over 3 years.  But early on it could have killed him.

2.  I still haven't broken him of his habit of stealing food off of the kitchen counters.  One time he got a bag of chocolate chips and ate over a pound -- he got sick as, well, a dog.  Our vet kept him hydrated with an IV, and in a couple of days he rallied and was able to come home.

3.  While running through the woods up in Wisconsin he managed to run right into a barbed wire fence, cutting his foreleg badly.  Despite all the bleeding we were able to get him out of the woods and to a vet up there, where he was stitched up.

4.  He got into some kitchen garbage and managed to chew up and swallow some chicken bones, leading to surgery #1.  We took him in right away, which was a good thing, as the x-ray showed some menacing jagged pieces working their way through him.

5.  Surgery #2 came after he'd gotten out of the yard and into the garbage across the street at the senior citizens' home (we later learned).  It took a couple of days before we noticed he was under the weather; when it was clear he was really sick we took him in, and the x-ray showed a digestive obstruction.  He had eaten a plastic glove, the kind you see cafeteria workers wear, and it had balled up inside his intestines and blocked everything.  We talked to our vet about installing a zipper instead of sewing him back up, but it wasn't feasible.

6.  That's too bad, as surgery #3 came last summer.  He got out of the yard, and apparently into some garbage -- yes, a recurring patern.  After a couple of days he showed the telltale signs, and we took him in, and an x-ray showed an intestinal blockage, and we grudgingly agreed to surgery, which removed a corncob, and saved his life yet again.

7.  Sort of the same story this past fall, except he managed to pass whatever it was making him sick, and didn't need surgery -- just a couple of nights at the emergency vet.

So I guess he's got two lives left.  During the last couple of these incidents I really waffled on taking him in, vs. "letting things run their course".  But he's a member of the family, especially as far as the kids are concerned, so that would have seemed really harsh.  My other rationalization is how much better this is than having a sick kid; that works for me, although if I ever added up the bills  I'm not sure it would...

Pat

Writing Funny Stuff

There's a certain egotism in writing -- even when I tell a story where the joke's on me, the subtext is "I have something worthwhile to say, so listen up!"  I have a healthy ego, but it's still nice to get compliments on my writing, especially the funny stuff.  I've done my job if every now and then a reader laughs out loud and spits his or her drink all over the keyboard.  That's the goal.

How does this writing process work?  I'm not sure I can explain, but I can offer an example.

The Harrigan siblings (my two brothers, sister, and I) email humorous items to each other on occasion.  Sometimes it's a link to an article on The Onion (theonion.com), or a goofy picture of our kids with a clever caption.  Almost any straight note or request among us calls for a funny response.

I got an email from my brother a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to respond with something around the word "crazy".  A Google search for "crazy" didn't do the trick -- too much variety.  I tried "crazy sayings" -- still no good.  Then a search for "crazy as a" led me to the expression "Crazy as a monkey house shit-fight."  There it is!

Let's analyze this saying, ignoring E. B. White's warning ("Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind."):

• It's nice and short -- "monkey house shit-fight" is only four words and five syllables.
  
• It's a vivid image, to say the least, although "monkey house" is an outdated term.
• A little vulgar, which is OK on occasion.
• Lots of hard consonants, the k and the t's, and a good rythym.
• Plus: Monkeys!  Monkeys are funny!

Short, vivid, vulgar, good rythym, monkeys.  Pure gold!  So I used it in the note I sent back to Ed, knowing it would make him laugh, and it did.

In our email exchanges it was Rob who started with the haikus, I think.  Ed's recent cable service interruption at home (due to his dog's digging in the backyard) elicited these:

Original:

Bad dog eats cable

Owner contemplates dog pound

Cable safe for now

Response:

Better times ahead

Comcast guy comes out today
PetSmart sells restraints

Dog's Point of View:

Comcast must be stopped

Not enough doggie channels

Get DirectTV!

Finally, Closure:

Happy days are here

Comcast guy came yesterday

We are back on line

There's something about the stilted 5-7-5 syllable haiku form that, when used with mundane topics, makes us laugh.  Among us I think I'll be getting these (and sending) for a long time.

Well, there it is.  Re-reading this entry I'm not sure how instructional it was about writing humor, but it says something about how I think -- and what odd brothers/sister I have.  I suppose I could share this with a psychiatrist, but I'm afraid he'd just say I'm as crazy as a...well, you know.

Pat