Baseball Therapy

As promised, I skipped writing a post about the last game of Smunch's first baseball tournament. It wasn't actually that dismal of a game. It was the best of the bunch and lasted more than an hour. But the final outcome was the same, more or less. The Thunder lost 18-8, by the mercy rule, again.

But that meant we had Memorial Day free. And what better way to forget all your baseball woes than to dress up...and remind yourself that even the highly-paid pros lose.

Of course, it might've been better if this guy hadn't been on the losing end.It's been a rough several outings for Timmy lately. And this guy, Ubaldo Jimenez of the Colorado Rockies, now 12-1 and the heir apparent to Timmy's Cy Young domination,...wasn't really what he needed to get his mojo back.

But a day at the ballpark, complete with hotdogs and Dibs for both Mam and Smunch, had the Ryders back on track at least!

Bat and Ball Extravaganza

It's been a long week. And really, it's only been a few days since my last post. It was a long few days. Those days included a big baseball milestone for Smunch. That happened Thursday, but wasn't "celebrated" until early Friday morning when Daddy went to work out in the room we call "the studio" and found a sharp breeze blowing through, even after he'd closed the doors that Mam had left wide open all night.

I should have known. I'd looked outside and saw Smunch hitting baseballs in the backyard off a tee. I told him he needed to stop before he broke a window. He was unusually compliant. That's because it was already too late. When I stopped him from hitting baseballs and went back to my own business, he started decimating plants around the yard. He's 8. When is this kind of ridiculous disregard for my plants ever going to subside? I may have to break out the tears next time. Instead, I sent him to his room. He was punished heavily for the destruction in the yard, so I didn't bother giving him more for the window when I found out the next day.

I picked him up from school on Friday. On our walk home (Mam was off with SPENCER!), I started a little conversation with him.

"So, bud...when you were playing baseball in the backyard yesterday..."

"Uh-huh."

"Anything bad happen?"

"Um...I broke a window?"

It comes in very handy having a kid who is incapable of lying. Too bad I didn't get two.

Anyway, one thing I was fairly unwilling to take away from Smunch for any of the week's transgressions was his trip to AT&T Park to see the Giants play their home opening night game. Part of that was because I knew he'd be happy and have great behavior as long as we're headed to see his team or we're there or we were on our way home. Part of that was because I really wanted to go. The weather was beautiful for the Giants' home opener on Friday afternoon. Not so much on Saturday. I hung out at the field while Mam played softball in the drizzle against another team with only four players. Regardless, it was a tie. It's always a tie.

She and I headed straight from that game to Smunch's PONY Pinto 2 Giants game at another park across town. I half-heartedly scored in my paper scorebook while Daddy reveled in scoring the game on his new iPad. Admittedly, it looked cool. He's been scoring on his iPhone, so it was a big improvement. The Giants lost by their slimmest margin yet...14-16. Smunch pitched and did a good job, but his crowning acheivement of the day was making a double play...all by himself. He caught a pop fly (a miracle in and of itself on his team) and then tagged 3rd base. The runner from 3rd was at homeplate and was easily forced out. Smunch won the "bolt award" for the game, which goes to the player with the most outstanding performance. He was proud and I was proud of him too. Sometimes, when he's not destroying things, he can show so much poise.

After a couple of hours at home, it was time to catch the train to the park. This, of course, was not just any ol' home opening night either. It was the night where our pitching hero, Tim Lincecum, was officially awarded his Cy Young trophy for being named the best pitcher in the National League last year. There have been many photos of Timmy and his award already, so goodness knows it wasn't like the first time he'd touched the thing, but it was still fun to be there to see it and see him, looking so charmingly uncomfortable in front of his teammates and the sold-out crowd.He's 25 and he's reached the pinnacle of his career. What have I done with my life?I love this photo of Tim walking off the field with his dad, each of them with one Cy Young trophy in his hand. Tim won this award last year too. In between the two awards, he got himself an adorable little French bulldog and named him Cy too. They did a photo shoot of Timmy and his 3 Cys for the latest Giants Magazine. It's so darned cute that I had to have Daddy buy me one. While most girls might gush over the Cy Young award-winner, Mam couldn't stop gushing over the canine Cy.I also love this picture because he looks so casual walking back to the dugout with his award. This award is a big deal, but I like that he seems to take it all in stride. Always fun to imagine top notch athletes as being regular ol' normal people who just happen to be ridiculously good at something you barely understand. Except Smunch, of course, I'm pretty sure he believes he's the PONY version of Tim Lincecum already!

And this was really the highlight of the game. It was otherwise pretty forgettable, with the Giants losing 7-2...a larger margin than Smunch's Giants lost by earlier that day. Mam made us (under threat of crocodile-sized tears) suffer through the whole thing and stay for the post-game fireworks. They were fun, but we didn't get home 'til midnight. Hopefully I won't be paying for that for the entire spring break this week!

And the Winner is...

ME!!!So I worked really hard on this pumpkin carving...mostly just to see if I could pull it off. I could point to all kinds of things that went horribly wrong, including how the whole face fell out on Sunday afternoon (bummer, I wanted to light it up again!). Plenty of things weren't quite how I'd planned, but it still turned out pretty cool.

Because one person asked and because I think it would be cool to preserve this information for posterity, I'll go into some details about this award-winning carving. I started out by choosing an online photo of "The Freak" that I thought would work for my purposes. I chose this one:I cropped it so that only Timmy's face showed and then ran it through Photoshop's "Cutout" filter that made it look something like this:I used that as my template, but it lost some detail, so I had Daddy go back and find me an appropriately sized SF logo for the cap and I added the white of his eyes, which you could see in the original photo.

I used a pin to poke the outlines into the pumpkin, through the paper. I started carving with a Dremel, with a small router bit attached. It kinda worked. At least it gave me a specific depth to carve to. After carving the brightest bits to that depth (the deepest it could go through a 1-inch+ thick rind) and just scraping the skin off the things I wanted to get less light from...that taking a mere several hours...I determined that no light was going to get through that and used a plain ol' knife to cut out the thin parts entirely, then used the Dremel to drill the other parts deeper.

I cut a circle around the outside just so the cap would show up. Unfortunately, I didn't quite think that through all the way. Cutting too far was going to make the face fall out, so I only got part way and ended up with sort of a lightning bolt edge on one side. By then, the pizza had arrived for dinner, so I took a break.

I wanted to write "Beware of the Freak" around the outside, but trick-or-treaters were already starting to come to the door and I was worried that if I tried to cut too much, I'd end up breaking all the delicate stuff I'd already done. Still, I thought the "Freak" aspect was particularly apropos, considering "The Freak" is one of Tim Lincecum's nicknames and because it was Halloween. So, I settled for "Freak". And this is what I ended up with:It looks like it took a lot of work, but it hardly looks like it'd be impressive. i was pretty psyched when I first checked it out with a candle inside. Totally worth the effort!

As mentioned in the previous post, I submitted it to the San Francisco Giants pumpkin carving contest. For all I know, no one else bothered to enter. I mean, the Giants' season has been over for weeks now. I can't even tell you what I was doing poking around on their website, where I noticed the contest ad.

I enter the occasional contest here and there, but I never win. So imagine my surprise when I got this e-mail from the Giants' Marketing and Entertainment Manager:

Stacey,

Congratulations, you are the winner of our Pumpkin Carving contest! You have won a player autographed baseball. If you can please reply all to this e-mail and provide your address we can get this out to you as soon as possible.

Congratulations once again and awesome job, your “Freak” pumpkin is very impressive!

Joe

Huh. Imagine that! We'll have to see how that whole "autographed baseball" thing turns out!

Bobblehead

I'm acutely aware of just how long has passed since my last post. It's distressing, mostly because there is so much post material piling up and I know the humor in much of it will be gone by the time I get to it. But, let's go back a couple of weeks, because here's a story that actually gets somewhat funnier, if less urgent, over time.

A while back, I heard that the San Francisco Giants would be having a bobblehead giveaway on May 17th in honor of their ace pitcher, and Smunch's baseball hero, Tim Lincecum. Naturally, I thought this would be the perfect game to take him to. When I checked the tickets, it looked like there were very few left and those were in the bleachers. I haven't sat in the bleachers in a while. I figured that'd be O.K. Of course, it was just some computer glitch. There were plenty of good seats to be had. But we sat in the bleachers anyway.Of course, that's not the story. The story is about this guy:Handsome devil, isn't he? Well, O.K., so he's got a great big ol' head and it doesn't seem attached altogether well. And he's got this puny little body. This, my friends, is the Tim Lincecum bobblehead. And if you're like me...I mean, the me that came to her senses while sitting in the bleachers...you wonder what in the world anyone would want with one of these things. Seriously, people! Who needs this kind of stuff in their house?

Well, we do, apparently. Suspecting some chaos in obtaining one of these rare creatures, we sent Daddy to the ballpark three hours before the game to get in line. And he did. And he had a perfectly good place in line. A line very much like this one:Smunch and I joined him about an hour later. Still seemed like a pretty good place in line, but as soon as the gates opened, there was absolute pandemonium, bringing out the ugliest and stupidest of human behavior. For this... Observing mob mentality is really an educational experience.

I got separated from Smunch and Daddy. I couldn't even see them anymore by the time I turned the corner to the gate. To his credit, Daddy was doing his best to make sure Smunch actually got the trinket he'd been standing in line 3 hours for. Before I made it to the turnstyles, I saw another fan give the axe sign to one of his friends in line. The bobbleheads...all 20,000 of them...were gone. I didn't get one. I didn't really care, except that I figured with three of them, Smunch would have one and we'd have a spare to put away until he could really appreciate it...long after he'd trashed his. Then, I'd planned to find a sad little kid who didn't get one and give the third away. Seemed like a cool thing to do. But there was no third. I held my breath when I saw Smunch and Daddy on the other side of the gate. Daddy held up two boxes. Turns out, they were the last two boxes at the gate. No one behind them got one.

And that's the end of the saga part of the story. The rest was about baseball. It was Smunch's favorite kind of baseball of course. He got to watch the Giants play the Mets on a lovely, if somewhat chilly, Sunday evening.They'd lost several games in a row prior to that night, but that night, they won.If I've learned anything about my son, it's that he'll live and die by the home team. And the Giants are his team. We edged towards the exits as Brian Wilson made the last three outs of the game. Smunch sat on Daddy's shoulders so he could see the action over the heads of the crowd.And after we braved the crush to exit the ballpark? One very happy Smunch skipped all the way back to the train station.

A Lovely View

This is a lovely view that I did not see. Instead, Daddy, Grandpa and Smunch were there while Mam and I got haircuts and I got ready to host a truffle-making class in my kitchen on Sunday afternoon. I wasn't sorry to spend the time at home and I needed to get the house in shape, especially since it was a group of relative strangers coming over. And our team lost...again...although Tim "The Franchise" Lincecum pitched beautifully and made his biggest fan (Smunch) proud.

Still, I can't say I wasn't jealous. How did this weird baseball affliction bite me anyway? Just a few weeks until our second set of tickets is good for admission. I'll be there.

So close, and yet...

Continuing our theme of falling short of our goals, Daddy took Smunch to the San Francisco Giants FanFest yesterday. We did NOT play this up at all...because I sent them off with my fingers crossed that it wouldn't be too much of a disappointment. Because, Smunch's idol, Tim Lincecum was going to be there. And I already knew that the chances of meeting Timmy were going to be slim. But I was hopeful...'cause who doesn't want their little boy to meet his baseball idol in real life?

I didn't go, even though I would have liked to. But I had a birthday lunch and massage scheduled. I might've put it off if I didn't know that my birthday partier in crime was desperate for some pampering. And I wasn't feeling great, so I figured some pampering wouldn't hurt me either. So...I'm writing a blog post about stuff I didn't even see. Descriptions and photographs provided by Daddy.

The photo at the top was the scene at 9:40am or so from where Daddy and Smunch waited in line to get into the park. Everybody there no doubt wanted to see Tim Lincecum. They all wanted his autograph. They all wanted his photo. Daddy estimated there were 15-20,000 people there. Sounds about right.

Fortunately, there were other cool things to do, like walk around out on the field, that totally capture an almost-7-year-old's imagination.Then Smunch and Daddy went over to the kids' area where only kids could get autographs. This was a calculated play on Daddy's part, knowing that Lincecum really likes kids and might start off in the kid area. Once they were in the autograph line, they couldn't see who they'd be able to meet at the end. There was a sign with a list, but they couldn't see it until they were almost in. Turns out, Tim Lincecum was right there on the bottom of the sign. He was right there...until about 5 minutes before Smunch's turn at the autograph table.

This just kills me because I've actively fostered Smunch's love of this guy and because I knew it would be something he'd always remember if he got to meet his baseball idol. But in the end, I wonder if it's not better that he didn't.

Smunch ended up having the guys at the table autograph his Giants jersey...which is cool, but when I think how much we spent on that jersey, I'm not sure it's that cool. I mean, a Tim Lincecum autograph would have been worthy of never wearing the jersey again, but instead, he got autographs from the first base coach and a hitting coach (neither or whom ever played for the Giants, although the hitting coach was Carney Lansford, who I used to watch playing 3rd base for the As), he has one from Pat Misch, a relief pitcher I'd never heard of...sorry, Pat!
and the highlight was an autograph from Fred Lewis, one of the Giants' starting outfielders, who looks pretty mean in his official team photo, but turns out to be a super nice guy.


Still, it kind of would have been a bummer to have Tim Lincecum's autograph on a jersey with a bunch of random people who may or may not play for the Giants. It really needs to have an item all of its own. Next year, we'll buy a baseball and hope for better luck.

Smunch didn't whine or cry when Timmy's name came off the autograph list while they were standing in line...unlike some of the other kids there. I think somehow he was prepared for that disappointment (unlike the Pinewood Derby loss).

And after he was finished with the autograph line, it turned out that inside the "Kids Zone", up on the stage there was the man. The Franchise. The Freak. Timmy in all his 24-year-old, skater-esque glory, live in the flesh taking questions from his fans up on stage. At least he got to see Tim Lincecum from about five feet away. There's something to be said for that.

When I got back, all nice and relaxed from my massage and a nice lunch with my friend, Smunch didn't really have a whole lot to say about FanFest. I think I was more disappointed for him than he was for himself. He says he's going again next year. When I asked if he was so excited about it that he couldn't wait, he said, "Yeah." Hmm. Guess we'll see how he feels about his favorite players next year!