Last night it was me and M. for an evening of baseball. I tried to get her to sleep downstairs so I could watch on the big screen and study, but I think she was too distracted and needed to be held the entire time rendering it impossible to hold a book. When she was due for her next bottle, we moved upstairs. After eating, burping, and getting changed, she chilled out in my arms for awhile. I was watching one game or another and working to keep her pacifier in her mouth, barely paying attention to her. Suddenly she got really quiet and I looked down. She was laying there, eyes wide open, Binky perched on her lips, but her mouth was spread in a soft smile. I took the Binky out and started talking to her. Her smile grew. She stuck out her tongue slightly and made light noises at me; our first conversation! This continued for about five minutes. After she was done exercising her conversational skills, she still wanted to stare at me, smile, and mimic my expressions. It was at least another 15 minutes before she grew tired of this game.
I’m telling you, there’s no better feeling in the world than when your child is old enough to interact with you and is totally entranced by the interaction alone. Someone could have exploded a bomb outside our house, and she would have been content to just lie there and look up at me. Next week she’ll probably do something else that amazes me, but it’s hard to believe any 20 minutes we share will ever be more magical and rewarding as that time together last night. I think you can judge the job you’re doing as a parent if every few days you have a moment that makes you think, “Nothing in life has ever been better than this moment.” As long as they keep coming, you’re doing ok.
Day: October 7, 2004
You know, I’m getting sick of hearing about Yankee mystique. There’s nothing magical going on when you have $210 million at your disposal. It was maddening watching last night’s game knowing that each time the Twins worked their asses off to push a run across, the Yankees would immediately respond. Making things worse was Joe Morgan jumping all over the Yankees bandwagon in order to push his anti-Moneyball rant. Was I the only one who noticed how he all but said it was impossible for the Twins to win both games in Minnesota? “Tonight’s game is more important for the Twins than the Yankees because then when you go home and split, you have to come back to New York for game five.” What total horseshit. The Yankees have little idea of how their rotation is going to look and what quality of pitching they’ll get out of it, yet he’s convinced they can go into Minneapolis and be certain to win a game.
Joe’s act was tired years ago, and now that he lives in fear of the Moneyball aligned forces, he’s gotten even worse. I bet he still hasn’t read the book, still thinks that Billy Beane rather than Michael Lewis wrote it, and still thinks it’s a way of replacing the traditional structure of baseball rather than a framework for small market teams to attempt to compete in a sport that has gone fiscally insane. Scared old men are never easy to watch.