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 Twelve: Shin-Soo Choo, Cleveland Indians
When you’re spending a few days at the lake house of some dear friends, you wonder how you can possibly repay them for the generosity of their invite. These friends are opening their doors to you and your children, while also offering you unlimited access to swimming, fishing, sailing and kayaking. You bring along some gifts and some food, and you plan to do as much cooking and cleaning as they’ll allow. But still, you wonder if there’s any way you can properly repay this kindness.
So when you walk in the door and a 5-year-old is trying to figure out the details of The Empire Strikes Back, you know you might be able to be of some help. And before you know it, you’re trying to explain to this boy how the agendas of Jabba the Hutt, Darth Vader and Boba Fett all fit together on Lando Calrissian’s Cloud City. After several dozen more questions, you have explained the process of freezing Han Solo, putting C-3PO back together and replacing Luke Skywalker’s right hand.
I’ve had some serious questions to answer here, as young 5-year-old Ben is not one to let anything pass if it perplexes him. But I was up for his questions, as I’d been raised on the original Star Wars trilogy, and I can talk about the characters in these three movies with anyone. So we discussed Luke and Leia, Han and Chewie, 3PO and R2D2, Yoda and Obi- Wan. I did my best Yoda voice, and we all tried our best Chewbacca growls. By the end of the three days, we all felt a little bit of the force in this beautiful house.
Ben is inquisitive and introspective far beyond his years, so it did not surprise me that he was talking about Boba Fett more than any child I’ve ever met. In the original trilogy, Boba Fett has very limited screen time, although his role as the bounty hunter who brings Han Solo’s frozen body to Jabba the Hutt is critical. And anyone who’s taken a close look at the character knows that the angular green, grey and maroon armor that covers Boba Fett makes him about the coolest looking character in the Star Wars galaxy. He is, arguably, the most overlooked character in the films.
While I offered to answer any questions he had about baseball, Ben wasn’t up for that this week. If he was looking for any kind of Boba Fett-to-baseball connection, I might have told him about Shin-Soo Choo. Kind of sounds like a Star Wars name, in a way. But Choo is no bounty hunter – he’s an outfielder for the Cleveland Indians. And while the average baseball fan may know very little about Choo, the Cleveland faithful are well aware of his hidden value. Choo hits home runs, he drives in runs, he steals bases, and he takes walks. Unfortunately, he plays for a team that has been dismal in recent years, and he doesn’t get nearly enough time in the spotlight.
But he will; the great players always get their moments. If the Indians choose to include Choo in their current rebuilding process, he’ll find himself playing during October sometime in the next half-decade. And when he does, there will be no more Boba Fett metaphors to make about the man. His all-around game will be known by the masses.
As for Ben, he’s still asking questions. He wants to know the back stories behind Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. That means there are three other movies to watch, and more conversations to have. We have cleaned and cooked and – most importantly – shared great moments with friends during our time here. But I don’t think Ben will remember our swims in the lake quite as much as he’ll recall our talks about Boba Fett. After all, first things first.
Showing posts with label The Empire Strikes Back. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Empire Strikes Back. Show all posts
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
The Snapshots (One Sixty-Two: Day 81)
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 Eighty-One: Scott Hairston & Jerry Hairston Jr., San Diego Padres
When the family gets together for a few days, as my family did this weekend, it’s often the case that a photo album makes its way into someone’s hands. In between trips to the beach, sittings for breakfast and dinner, and walks to the ice-cream shop, someone pulled out some albums from the late 1970s and early ‘80s.
My brother quickly found some photos of me that he couldn’t resist passing around. One, an early-80s shot, shows an 11-year-old boy wearing glasses that are roughly the circumference of a side-view mirror. As the awkward boy smiles behind the Coke-bottle glasses and beneath his wavy brown hair, he holds aloft a blue-and-white Pinewood Derby car and the trophy he (and his dad – actually, mostly his dad) earned for finishing second in the Cub Scout race.
When it was my turn, I made note of a late-‘70s photo of my brother. In it, Eric is tossing a Frisbee on the beach while wearing the smallest Speedo bathing suit mankind has ever created. He countered with a shot of me in some sort of red velour sweater, sitting on a chair with the aforementioned glasses dominating all aspects of the frame. I pointed out his KISS T-shirt in one photo. He made note of my – ahem – Shaun Cassidy silkscreen in another photo. I can’t offer any excuses or explanations to that.
But the photo that drew perhaps the most laughs was one in which I am standing outside a well-respected Jersey Shore restaurant wearing a Philadelphia Phillies T-shirt, tucked into a pair of red running shorts. The shirt is tucked in somewhere around my navel, calling to mind the old Martin Short “Ed Grimley” character from Saturday Night Live. As if that weren’t enough, this photo also shows me wearing a yellow and brown San Diego Padres helmet on my head. I can recall winning a plastic baseball helmet at a boardwalk roulette game of some sort, but I don’t remember wearing it out to restaurants. And yet, there is proof that I did so, and that my mother and father allowed me to dress in this manner. I don’t think there were other kids in the restaurant dressed like this. In fact, I don’t think there was anyone else in New Jersey sporting this look. There is good reason for that.
As 10 family members gathered under one roof, and as a summer rain brought us indoors for a while, we looked at this 10-year-old boy and laughed, together. More photos were taken of us all this weekend, and we talked and ate and played in the sand. The old photos were hilarious, sure, but they also served as a reminder of the path we’ve been walking together, and how far we’ve all come. The photos also helped inspire us to share old stories with my girls, to broaden their understanding of that path, and to help them figure out their place in it.
The San Diego Padres were never a team I rooted for much. But back in the early ‘80s I liked to wear hats and, yes, helmets of teams that were more exotic than my New York-area ken. My brother preferred his Houston Astros cap to go with the KISS and Empire Strikes Back T-shirts he wore. This weekend, as we dressed in much more boring adult clothing, two brothers in their 30s laughed for a while at the photos. Meanwhile, Sunday’s baseball action found this year’s Padres continuing their surprising first-place run. In a 9-7 win against the Colorado Rockies, the Padres smacked 16 hits. Seven of those hits came from a set of brothers, Scott Hairston and Jerry Hairston Jr. Scott is 30 years old, while Jerry is 34. The two Padre hermanos played well together on Sunday, giving their family more pieces for the scrapbooks and photo albums.
My brother is 36 now, and I’m 39. We don’t play ball anymore, aside from the occasional Wiffle Ball classics. There are other shared experiences now. They build upon themselves, and the photos serve as testament to the power of family. Hynes or Hairston, it doesn’t matter. We keep tucking in those shirts, donning the occasional helmet, and smiling for the photos. We walk through life, side by side, and the snapshots remind us of just how many miles we’ve traveled.
Day Eighty-One: Scott Hairston & Jerry Hairston Jr., San Diego Padres
When the family gets together for a few days, as my family did this weekend, it’s often the case that a photo album makes its way into someone’s hands. In between trips to the beach, sittings for breakfast and dinner, and walks to the ice-cream shop, someone pulled out some albums from the late 1970s and early ‘80s.
My brother quickly found some photos of me that he couldn’t resist passing around. One, an early-80s shot, shows an 11-year-old boy wearing glasses that are roughly the circumference of a side-view mirror. As the awkward boy smiles behind the Coke-bottle glasses and beneath his wavy brown hair, he holds aloft a blue-and-white Pinewood Derby car and the trophy he (and his dad – actually, mostly his dad) earned for finishing second in the Cub Scout race.
When it was my turn, I made note of a late-‘70s photo of my brother. In it, Eric is tossing a Frisbee on the beach while wearing the smallest Speedo bathing suit mankind has ever created. He countered with a shot of me in some sort of red velour sweater, sitting on a chair with the aforementioned glasses dominating all aspects of the frame. I pointed out his KISS T-shirt in one photo. He made note of my – ahem – Shaun Cassidy silkscreen in another photo. I can’t offer any excuses or explanations to that.
But the photo that drew perhaps the most laughs was one in which I am standing outside a well-respected Jersey Shore restaurant wearing a Philadelphia Phillies T-shirt, tucked into a pair of red running shorts. The shirt is tucked in somewhere around my navel, calling to mind the old Martin Short “Ed Grimley” character from Saturday Night Live. As if that weren’t enough, this photo also shows me wearing a yellow and brown San Diego Padres helmet on my head. I can recall winning a plastic baseball helmet at a boardwalk roulette game of some sort, but I don’t remember wearing it out to restaurants. And yet, there is proof that I did so, and that my mother and father allowed me to dress in this manner. I don’t think there were other kids in the restaurant dressed like this. In fact, I don’t think there was anyone else in New Jersey sporting this look. There is good reason for that.
As 10 family members gathered under one roof, and as a summer rain brought us indoors for a while, we looked at this 10-year-old boy and laughed, together. More photos were taken of us all this weekend, and we talked and ate and played in the sand. The old photos were hilarious, sure, but they also served as a reminder of the path we’ve been walking together, and how far we’ve all come. The photos also helped inspire us to share old stories with my girls, to broaden their understanding of that path, and to help them figure out their place in it.
The San Diego Padres were never a team I rooted for much. But back in the early ‘80s I liked to wear hats and, yes, helmets of teams that were more exotic than my New York-area ken. My brother preferred his Houston Astros cap to go with the KISS and Empire Strikes Back T-shirts he wore. This weekend, as we dressed in much more boring adult clothing, two brothers in their 30s laughed for a while at the photos. Meanwhile, Sunday’s baseball action found this year’s Padres continuing their surprising first-place run. In a 9-7 win against the Colorado Rockies, the Padres smacked 16 hits. Seven of those hits came from a set of brothers, Scott Hairston and Jerry Hairston Jr. Scott is 30 years old, while Jerry is 34. The two Padre hermanos played well together on Sunday, giving their family more pieces for the scrapbooks and photo albums.
My brother is 36 now, and I’m 39. We don’t play ball anymore, aside from the occasional Wiffle Ball classics. There are other shared experiences now. They build upon themselves, and the photos serve as testament to the power of family. Hynes or Hairston, it doesn’t matter. We keep tucking in those shirts, donning the occasional helmet, and smiling for the photos. We walk through life, side by side, and the snapshots remind us of just how many miles we’ve traveled.
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