Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Don't Look Down (One Sixty-Two: Day 138)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred Thirty-Eight: Daisuke Matsuzaka, Boston Red Sox

She was really nice about it, actually. This sophomore sitting in the front row of my classroom smiled and asked me, “Did you wear different shoes today for a reason?”

I looked down. My jaw dropped. Thankfully, both were brown and somewhat similar in style. But it was easy to see that these were from two different pairs of shoes. How many students and colleagues had seen this and chosen not to say anything today? The sympathetic sophomore asked this during my final class of the day. I walked quickly through the halls for the rest of the afternoon. Don’t let ‘em see you step.

It is September, all right. As the alarm rings for me at six, and I stumble out of bed and reach for my clothes, interesting things can happen. My shirt and pants matched just fine today, but tomorrow’s no sure thing.

Some days, you just don’t have it all together. When he woke up this morning, I’m sure Daisuke Matsuzaka fully expected to pitch well against the Tampa Bay Rays tonight. But after eight hits, four walks and eight earned runs, it was clear that Matsuzaka was not carrying his A game with him this evening. For the slumping Red Sox, this was not a good thing.

Perhaps the Boston pitcher would have done better had he mixed up his shoe selection a bit. You know, wear one red cleat and one blue. After all, I did teach well today. I just looked a little funny. As for tonight, though, I’m going to put the shoes out ahead of time. Like Matsuzaka, I want to stand out for the right reasons.

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