In the afterglow of a wonderful Thanksgiving trip to New England, I am more able to appreciate what I have in this world. Is it a cliche to be thankful for family? Is it banal to enjoy the company of one's wife and sons and extended relatives? If so, I accept that.
Yet, after all I've been through this year, it would have been easy to roll up in a ball on the floor and let despair take over. Too many people have done just that. And hey, without my family, maybe that would be me, too. Probably not, considering my stubborn streak of deep-seated optimism; but who knows when that streak might break? Sudden unemployment, followed hard by a heart attack, would seem to be a deadly combination, after all.
Here I am, though. Still looking forward. Still refusing to allow despair to seep into my life. And I have to believe that without all the good people in my life -- especially my beautiful wife, Beth -- I just might be one of those for whom the holidays serve only to exacerbate the desperate solitude we all feel at one time or another.
So, thank you everyone. For everything.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Reliving A Football Miracle
I just saw a retrospective on the 30th anniversary of the Miracle at the Meadowlands on ESPN, and it reminded me that I did a story on the 20th anniversary, back when Herman Edwards was coaching defensive backs for the Bucs. Here's the famous play, and here's my story as it ran in the Tampa Tribune 10 years ago:
The Miracle
The images may be fuzzy, but for those who lived it 20 years ago, the memory is as vivid as yesterday.
CARTER GADDIS
of The Tampa Tribune
TAMPA — Lo, comes the time to ruminate upon the Miracle at the Meadowlands. Twenty years ago today, defensive back Herman Edwards was touched by the hands of the football gods and victory was bestowed on wings of Eagles.
Know this: We live not in an age of such miracles. Today, when a football team leads by five and time is expiring in the fourth quarter, the quarterback humbly kneels down amid the sheltering safety of his teammates. Game over. Amen.
In that simpler age, long before Edwards undertook his current task of coaching the Bucs' defensive backs, a miracle of stupefying proportions blossomed in the New York Giants' huddle two decades ago.
New York led Edwards' Eagles, 17-12.
The clock ticked down with less than 30 seconds to play.
The Giants Stadium crowd of 70,318 sensed no miracle, only victory for their men in blue.
New York's offense huddled around quarterback Joe Pisarcik, who gazed toward the sideline and sought guidance from Coach John McVay.
And Pisarcik did say, "Pro, up 65."
And the other Giants did say, "What, are you nuts? Just fall on the darn ball."
But Pisarcik would not disobey the all-seeing, all-knowing offensive coordinator in the sky box, Bob Gibson.
The Giants broke their huddle, but not of a single mind. Only Pisarcik knew he planned to run the fatal play, "pro, up 65," a clock-killing handoff to fullback Larry Csonka.
Of such flaws are miracles made.
"In this situation, I'm standing right by [Giants slot back] Doug Kotar, and Doug Kotar and myself are talking," Edwards said. "He's saying, "We're going to kill it.' I'm saying "Good game' and all that. We're talking. It's over.
"The ball's being hiked, and he doesn't even know it's being hiked. The ball's being bobbled already. I kind of step at Kotar, and he's probably thinking I'm just stepping up. And then I see Joe trying to get the ball, and he's kind of fumbling the ball now. Csonka goes through and it's too late, the timing's off. It goes off his hip. The next thing I do, I just arm over Kotar and he's saying, "What are you doing?' It hits the ground on a bounce, and it was just like a layup."
A 26-yard layup for a game-winning touchdown. A 19-17 victory for the Philadelphia Eagles, who went on to make the playoffs for the first time in 18 seasons. A springboard to future success that would lead all the way to Super Bowl XV three years later.
A miraculous finish that forever changed the face of the game. Or, more precisely, the end of the game. A week later, late in a 14-10 victory against the St. Louis Cardinals, Eagles coach Dick Vermeil became the first to institute the "Herman Edwards" formation — a running back lined up well behind the line of scrimmage to guard against mishaps between the quarterback and the center.
The end of the age of miracles.
Fortunately, the final Miracle was captured on film, cinematic proof that such a thing once was possible. Non-believers are easily refuted today because NFL Films veteran shooter Phil Tuckett had the presence of mind to move to the end zone behind the Giants on the off-chance something crazy — something miraculous — might happen.
That's how we know that Edwards, wearing No. 46, swept past Kotar to snatch the ball from the grasp of the flailing Pisarcik. It's how we know the ball actually bounced once and hit Pisarcik in the face mask before finding its way into the hands of the Miracle Man.
It's how we know Eagles rookie linebacker Reggie Wilkes nearly tripped Edwards on the way to the end zone. It's how we know Eagles safety John Sanders was the first to raise his arms in a triumphant signal of touchdown, just before Edwards spiked the ball into the red-painted "A" in GIANTS.
"In all my 25 years of coaching, I've never seen so horrifying a finish to a game," McVay said at the time.
From his less subjective point of view from behind the lens, Tuckett felt the power of the Miracle even then.
"When it was unfolding it was like some kind of dreamscape thing," said Tuckett, now an NFL Films vice president of special projects. "I distinctly remember while he was running there wasn't a sound, wasn't a gasp. ... Sometimes on an incomplete pass you hear that deflation. That day, it was like everybody held their breath."
Edwards, too, was dazed by the significance of the moment.
"It happened so fast. Once the ball hit the ground, I caught it on a good bounce. The next thing I know, I'm in the end zone," Edwards said. "And Giants Stadium, now, is packed. But it's quiet. I mean, it's dead quiet. Everybody's kind of looking around, and I'm kind of looking around going, "Did this really happen?' ... The feeling of that didn't really hit me until the next day."
On that next day, Gibson lost his job. The Giants won only once more that year, and McVay also was fired. Pisarcik lost his starting job, stayed with the Giants for one more season, and played his last four seasons with — of all teams — Philadelphia .
Edwards, a non-drafted free agent signed out of San Diego State in 1977, was with the Eagles for nine years. He started all 135 games he played at defensive back, and still holds the team record for interceptions with 38, including five in the postseason.
He also holds the NFL record for miracles.
"I think the thing that appealed to me most about it was people can get jaded, because miracles don't happen in real life," Tuckett said. "In an athletic event, that's still a possibility, where there's a complete reversal of fortune in an instant like that. This is the one element of life that still has the potential for chance, and a miracle happening right in front of you."
The Miracle
The images may be fuzzy, but for those who lived it 20 years ago, the memory is as vivid as yesterday.
CARTER GADDIS
of The Tampa Tribune
TAMPA — Lo, comes the time to ruminate upon the Miracle at the Meadowlands. Twenty years ago today, defensive back Herman Edwards was touched by the hands of the football gods and victory was bestowed on wings of Eagles.
Know this: We live not in an age of such miracles. Today, when a football team leads by five and time is expiring in the fourth quarter, the quarterback humbly kneels down amid the sheltering safety of his teammates. Game over. Amen.
In that simpler age, long before Edwards undertook his current task of coaching the Bucs' defensive backs, a miracle of stupefying proportions blossomed in the New York Giants' huddle two decades ago.
New York led Edwards' Eagles, 17-12.
The clock ticked down with less than 30 seconds to play.
The Giants Stadium crowd of 70,318 sensed no miracle, only victory for their men in blue.
New York's offense huddled around quarterback Joe Pisarcik, who gazed toward the sideline and sought guidance from Coach John McVay.
And Pisarcik did say, "Pro, up 65."
And the other Giants did say, "What, are you nuts? Just fall on the darn ball."
But Pisarcik would not disobey the all-seeing, all-knowing offensive coordinator in the sky box, Bob Gibson.
The Giants broke their huddle, but not of a single mind. Only Pisarcik knew he planned to run the fatal play, "pro, up 65," a clock-killing handoff to fullback Larry Csonka.
Of such flaws are miracles made.
"In this situation, I'm standing right by [Giants slot back] Doug Kotar, and Doug Kotar and myself are talking," Edwards said. "He's saying, "We're going to kill it.' I'm saying "Good game' and all that. We're talking. It's over.
"The ball's being hiked, and he doesn't even know it's being hiked. The ball's being bobbled already. I kind of step at Kotar, and he's probably thinking I'm just stepping up. And then I see Joe trying to get the ball, and he's kind of fumbling the ball now. Csonka goes through and it's too late, the timing's off. It goes off his hip. The next thing I do, I just arm over Kotar and he's saying, "What are you doing?' It hits the ground on a bounce, and it was just like a layup."
A 26-yard layup for a game-winning touchdown. A 19-17 victory for the Philadelphia Eagles, who went on to make the playoffs for the first time in 18 seasons. A springboard to future success that would lead all the way to Super Bowl XV three years later.
A miraculous finish that forever changed the face of the game. Or, more precisely, the end of the game. A week later, late in a 14-10 victory against the St. Louis Cardinals, Eagles coach Dick Vermeil became the first to institute the "Herman Edwards" formation — a running back lined up well behind the line of scrimmage to guard against mishaps between the quarterback and the center.
The end of the age of miracles.
Fortunately, the final Miracle was captured on film, cinematic proof that such a thing once was possible. Non-believers are easily refuted today because NFL Films veteran shooter Phil Tuckett had the presence of mind to move to the end zone behind the Giants on the off-chance something crazy — something miraculous — might happen.
That's how we know that Edwards, wearing No. 46, swept past Kotar to snatch the ball from the grasp of the flailing Pisarcik. It's how we know the ball actually bounced once and hit Pisarcik in the face mask before finding its way into the hands of the Miracle Man.
It's how we know Eagles rookie linebacker Reggie Wilkes nearly tripped Edwards on the way to the end zone. It's how we know Eagles safety John Sanders was the first to raise his arms in a triumphant signal of touchdown, just before Edwards spiked the ball into the red-painted "A" in GIANTS.
"In all my 25 years of coaching, I've never seen so horrifying a finish to a game," McVay said at the time.
From his less subjective point of view from behind the lens, Tuckett felt the power of the Miracle even then.
"When it was unfolding it was like some kind of dreamscape thing," said Tuckett, now an NFL Films vice president of special projects. "I distinctly remember while he was running there wasn't a sound, wasn't a gasp. ... Sometimes on an incomplete pass you hear that deflation. That day, it was like everybody held their breath."
Edwards, too, was dazed by the significance of the moment.
"It happened so fast. Once the ball hit the ground, I caught it on a good bounce. The next thing I know, I'm in the end zone," Edwards said. "And Giants Stadium, now, is packed. But it's quiet. I mean, it's dead quiet. Everybody's kind of looking around, and I'm kind of looking around going, "Did this really happen?' ... The feeling of that didn't really hit me until the next day."
On that next day, Gibson lost his job. The Giants won only once more that year, and McVay also was fired. Pisarcik lost his starting job, stayed with the Giants for one more season, and played his last four seasons with — of all teams — Philadelphia .
Edwards, a non-drafted free agent signed out of San Diego State in 1977, was with the Eagles for nine years. He started all 135 games he played at defensive back, and still holds the team record for interceptions with 38, including five in the postseason.
He also holds the NFL record for miracles.
"I think the thing that appealed to me most about it was people can get jaded, because miracles don't happen in real life," Tuckett said. "In an athletic event, that's still a possibility, where there's a complete reversal of fortune in an instant like that. This is the one element of life that still has the potential for chance, and a miracle happening right in front of you."
Friday, November 14, 2008
The Heart Attack
My heart attack wasn’t like the heart attacks you see on TV or in movies. You know the scene: The over-worked, over-stressed, hard-smoking, hard-drinking dad or grandfather suddenly grabs his left arm and doubles over in pain as if he were struck in the chest by a knight’s lance. That’s the Hollywood heart attack.
Mine wasn’t like that.
Mine might have started quietly, months before I knew it was happening. There were signs, but the omnipresent fatigue I felt all summer and into the fall could easily be explained by the presence of a newborn baby and a 2-year-old toddler in the house. Or maybe I was so tired all the time because of a mild case of depression brought on by losing my newspaper job of 16 years in a July staff reduction. Perhaps the fatigue was just a natural byproduct of completely ignoring my own physical fitness as I approached age 40. I ate poorly. I didn’t exercise at all. My sleeping habits were atrocious. Maybe the constant, oppressive fatigue I felt was caused by all of the above.
Or, maybe, it was the growing glob of plaque building up in my right coronary artery. A portion of my heart wasn’t receiving the clear, clean flow of blood it needed to function properly. Robbed of the necessary oxygen, my heart sent me signals. Usually it told me to find someplace quiet and comfortable to lie down and sleep for two or three hours after taking care of the boys all day. Sometimes it told me to walk a little slower at Busch Gardens or up the aisle at the grocery store. Sometimes it told me the chores can wait, because it’s much more important to put my feet up on the couch and rest. I did what my heart told me to do, because that’s how I’ve always lived my life.
Beth didn’t like it, and I don’t blame her. For all she knew – for all I knew – I was just being lazy and unwilling to hold up my end of the bargain when it came to household responsibilities. So much was left undone at the end of each day. Dirty dishes piled in the sink. Toys strewn across the family room floor. The lawn uncut and untrimmed for weeks. It wore on Beth’s patience. Who could blame her? She certainly held up her end, working a 5 a.m.-2 p.m. shift and pretty much handling all the household cleaning and laundry in what spare time she had while taking care of the kids after she came home. It wasn’t fair. I knew it. Yet, I had to listen to my heart.
I even decided to go to the doctor for a physical. This is not something I did lightly. I do not like to attend appointments at offices or shops. The dentist, the barber, the primary care physician … it’s all the same. I’ve always felt weird about the process: sign in, find a seat in the waiting room, try not to make eye contact with the other patients or customers (none of whom want to be sitting there WAITING, either), look up hopefully every time the door opens to the mysterious “back rooms” where the magic elixir is distilled, turn back despondently to the five-month-old Sports Illustrated when someone else is (inevitably) called back.
Eventually, I was ushered into the inner sanctum and, long story short, I was healthy. Blood work was assigned (another appointment, another office, another waiting room, another old magazine) and it showed my cholesterol levels within “normal” ranges. A little on the high end of the scale, perhaps, but certainly nothing to trigger an alarm that a 39-year-old, underweight, seemingly healthy man might be on the verge of a heart attack.
So it went. Then, about two weeks before my heart attack, I came down with one of the nastiest colds I’ve had in years. Fever, sore throat, coughing, body chills, the works. It knocked me flat for three days. Heavy doses of Dayquil and Nyquil kept me going until nothing was left but the cough and, of course, fatigue. I was even more useless around the house than usual. I could barely bring myself to leave the house, I was so tired.
Finally, on Oct. 26, a Sunday, we decided it was time for me to get some fresh air and a little exercise. We piled the family into the CRV and took off for Busch Gardens. It was a lovely day and it felt good to be out again. We walked around for two hours, rode the train around the Serengeti Plain and looked at the tigers before grabbing a barbecue lunch at the Stanleyville Smokehouse. Jay ate grapes and watched a roller coaster splash past. I look back now at the photos I took of that little outing and it is chilling to think that, had things gone really bad later that night, those might have been the last photos I ever took of Beth, Jay and Chris.
We came home and for about two hours, I felt fine after the excursion. We had dinner plans that night with some neighbors, and I figured if I just took it easy the rest of the afternoon, I’d be able to last through the evening.
Then I coughed. It was a wracking, deep cough. A different cough from the lingering, nagging cough I developed with the cold. This cough wouldn’t stop. I knew right away that something was wrong, and my first instinct was to get Beth to cancel our dinner plans.
As she made that phone call, the cough deepened. My ears began to ring. My head began to spin. The cough kept coming. I collapsed on the bed and tried to call out to Beth. She was on the phone and didn’t hear me at first. My head was spinning and my ears were ringing and I curled up in a fetal position on the bed as I coughed and coughed. I called for Beth again and she came. At some point I realized that both of my arms had gone numb. There was a tingling sensation from my shoulders to the tips of my fingers in both arms. Then I noticed tightness in my upper chest. No pain, but uncomfortable tightness. I thought I was having a bronchial attack, that maybe that bad cold had developed into pneumonia and I was “drowning” in my own fluids.
I remember Beth asking me if I had pain in my left arm. I remember telling her no. But I somehow couldn’t relay to her that I couldn’t feel anything in my left arm, even though the numbness and tingling in my right arm had begun to subside. I think now that I was delirious, perhaps going into shock. It was when I realized that my left arm was still numb and that the tightness in my chest wasn’t going away that I might be having a heart attack. It seemed absurd, and I dismissed the notion, and even now I can’t quite grasp the fact. Yet, there I was on my bed, about to die if nothing was done to prevent it.
Delirious, panicked, I yelled for Beth to get me to the emergency room NOW. She quickly called for a neighbor to come over and watch the kids and we took off for University Community Hospital. The drive to the ER was excruciating, but not because I was in pain. I was delirious and terribly frightened and poor Beth was dragged into my delirium as she drove. The traffic was slow for a Sunday afternoon, and I remember yelling at poor Beth to JUST DRIVE and GET AROUND THIS SLOW BASTARD and I THINK I MIGHT BE DYING and DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND HOW SERIOUS THIS IS??? Eventually, I succeeded in sending Beth into an equally numb and quivering state of shock through my delirious ranting. She said then that if I did die, these were the greatest four-plus years of her life and she wouldn’t have changed a thing. Right about that time, I pulled both my legs up under me in the front passenger seat and just tried not to cough or yell at Beth. I vaguely remember us driving around the hospital complex looking for the ER entrance. We found it, and Beth pulled up to the door to let me out while she found a parking spot.
Inside, I approached the reception desk. Two young women were talking to the receptionist. I remember waiting in line for about five seconds before I said, “Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think I’m having a heart attack and I need attention now.” I was, in retrospect, far calmer at that moment than I should have been. But then, that was probably the shock talking. In fact, I was so calm that the receptionist didn’t seem to take me seriously. Her first response was to point out that she was busy with these ladies and would I please take a seat in the waiting room.
So … I turned toward the waiting room. As I walked away in a daze, I heard the receptionist ask from a thousand miles away, “Sir, have you been here before?” I didn’t know if she was talking to me and I didn’t care, so I just sat there with my head in my hands and waited for Beth. The receptionist asked me again, “Sir, have you been here before?” At that point, I think, she came over to where I was sitting and Beth arrived at the same moment. They got me into triage, where the blood pressure monitor read 168 over 99 and an initial EKG showed some sort of irregularity.
I don’t remember being checked in or processed; maybe I never really was. I vaguely remember leaving the triage room and sitting for a few minutes in the waiting room before being called back to the chest pain area of the ER. There, in my own curtained-off cubicle, I was made to strip and changed into the standard backless hospital gown. They hooked me up to monitors for BP, heart rate and oxygen intake and ran another EKG while pumping saline fluid through an IV in my left arm. Beth was with me the whole time. In the next cubicle, another chest pain patient made awful noises that sounded horribly like a horse being strangled.
After a while, my symptoms stabilized. I was taken for a chest x-ray, which showed nothing irregular with my lungs. A doctor came and tried to explain what might have happened. He seemed to have come to the initial conclusion that I might have some sort of heart virus. The blood work was inconclusive at that point. He was inclined to send me home.
Something made him order another EKG, though. While the tech set me up for the test, I had another bad coughing spell: the same deep, wracking cough that hit me at home. I couldn’t see the monitors, but Beth later told me my face went white, my blood pressure immediately dropped to something like 60 over 30 and my heart rate fell to about 40. The tech got this panicked look on his face and called for nurses and the doctor. They attached defibrillator pads to my torso and inserted another IV into my right arm, just in case they had to try to revive me with electric shock or some sort of steroid they apparently pump directly to the heart in case it stops beating. They also put me on oxygen. I barely remember much of this moment.
What I do remember is the sudden realization at some point that I might die. And I remember that the only thing that moved me to tears at that point was the thought of my little boy, Jay, growing up without his Daddy. It moves me still. I sent Beth home after a while, and I begged her to read Horton Hears a Who to Jay as a bedtime story. I broke down in tears as I begged her to squeeze him and tell him how much I love him.
Later, the doctor came in and explained that my blood work had revealed a concerning level of troponin, or cardiac enzyme. The measurement was low, he said, around 0.025. That was an indication that I might have myocarditis, which apparently is where he got the idea that I might have a virus in the heart muscle. The way he explained it was that a troponin reading of 1.0 or higher was a clear indication of a heart attack. They’d keep me overnight, take blood at regular intervals and monitor the level of cardiac enzyme to see what was going on. Shortly after that, I was moved to a double room in the hospital’s regular wing (as opposed to the Pepin Heart Hospital there on the grounds). While I was being moved, the nurse pushed my gurney head-first into the elevator. It looked to me like there was barely room for my feet. The nurse actually said, “Don’t worry, we’re not going to amputate your feet.” Which was a pretty bad joke, considering some poor guy a few years ago had the wrong foot amputated at that very hospital. In my new room, I was assigned an overnight nurse named Anthony, whose regular job was working in the heart wing and happened to be assigned to my wing that night. All this happened while Beth was taking care of arrangements for the kids.
Beth returned after a while and helped me get as comfortable as possible. I was strapped onto several monitors and taking constant saline fluid as well as oxygen. Beth went back home to be with the kids after a short visit, and I tried to get some sleep. The uncomfortable tightness in my chest came and went. The cough was pretty persistent, although it never was quite as deep and wracking as it had been earlier. I drifted in and out of consciousness for several hours. Sometimes the discomfort in my chest woke me up. Sometimes it was Anthony checking in on me or taking more blood.
Sometime after midnight, I grew extraordinarily nauseous. At this point, I still didn’t know for sure that I had suffered a heart attack. Irrationally, I began to hope that the whole problem was food poisoning, that the barbecue I had eaten that day at Busch Gardens was trying to take revenge. This theory gained credence when, around 2 a.m., I vomited over the side of my bed. Between gasps and hurls, I remember I cried out, “What the hell is wrong with me?!?” The old guy sharing my room didn’t say a word. In fact, he never even acknowledged my presence. I got the impression he was a little bitter at having to share the room with a raving lunatic who clearly might die at any moment. After Anthony cleaned me up and mopped the floor next to my bed, I presented the food poisoning theory, hoping against hope for some confirmation. He was tactful enough and kind enough not to shatter my hope that Busch Gardens was to blame for my predicament.
After the regurgitation, I settled back in for a fitful attempt at sleep. At 4 a.m., Anthony came back for more blood. I later found out that the midnight and 4 a.m. blood work showed a dramatic increase in troponin levels: around 5.33 at midnight and 7.5 at 4 a.m. The cardiologist, who had scheduled me for a 10:30 a.m. angiogram the next day, was called in early and my procedure was moved up to 7:30 a.m.
Sometime around 6 a.m., the cardiologist, Dr. Vasco Marques, came into my room to explain the angiogram and answer any questions I might have.
Me: “I know the general term for what I had was a heart attack, but what’s the scientific term?”
Cardiologist: “A heart attack.”
Then it was time to sign waivers and read about angioplasty and have my groin area shaved to clear the way for the insertion of the tube that would snake its way through my body and into my heart. Anthony came in and insisted on prepping me, even though his shift had technically ended an hour earlier. He was kind and very good at his job. I thanked him for watching over me through the night.
Among the papers I had to sign was something that gave the surgical team clearance to open me up in case emergency bypass surgery was necessary. The angiogram would reveal what was wrong, and they hoped to be able to solve the problem with angioplasty: suctioning out the clotted blood and accumulated plaque and inserting a mesh stent to keep the area open in the future. They were prepared for the worst-case scenario.
I called Beth and my mom and dad to let them know what was going on. Beth was busy trying to get the kids settled and wouldn’t be able to make it to the hospital before I went into surgery. I called my friend Chris Anderson and left a message. Then it was time to be rolled into the operating room.
I remember feeling a little giddy as the surgical team prepared around me. They introduced themselves by name, one at a time, casually, as if we all were about to sit down to a nice breakfast at Cracker Barrel. I asked only one question: “When will you apply the anesthesia?” And I think I meant to the groin area, where they would be inserting the tube. But there was another level of anesthesia, some kind of IV Benadryl, and once they pumped that into my system I was out of it entirely. I don’t know if I ever completely lost consciousness, but I do have a vivid memory of closing my eyes and thinking, “Will I ever open them again?” I tried to think of my family as my faculties began to drift away.
Less than two hours later, I came to on the table and asked if we were done. Someone told me yes. I asked what it was they found. Someone said it was a 100 percent blockage of the right coronary artery, and that it was completely fixed and everything was fine. Someone also said I had tried to lift my head several times during the procedure and they were a little concerned that a hematoma had formed around the insertion point in my groin but that there was no real cause for concern.
They wheeled me back to my new room in the Pepin Heart Hospital wing (a private room) and I waited a while for Beth to get there. I called Chris and my parents. When Beth got there, I was awake. I felt good, considering I’d had a heart attack less than 24 hours earlier. Beth stayed with me as much as she could during the day. A neighbor, Cam Caudle, came by to visit. Chris came by in the morning, and he came back that night to watch Game 5 of the Rays-Phillies World Series. He stayed until the game was postponed by rain. I called Beth to say goodnight and slept very, very soundly.
They let me go the next afternoon. I was prescribed a battalion of new medicine to take every day for the rest of my life, including aspirin. I was warned not to pick up anything heavier than 10 pounds or drive for the next two days. In fact, I did neither until my follow-up appointment with Dr. Marques two weeks later.
Beth’s mom and dad came down from Massachusetts to help us during the first week. My mom and dad came down from North Carolina the second week. Drew Carnahan, who is married to my brother’s wife’s sister, swooped in and was our guardian angel for the week after my mom and dad went home.
I felt better, physically, than I had in months. Yet, Beth and I settled into a terrible pattern of bickering, usually at night. The strain of so much mental and emotional pain this year had finally gotten to us both. I really believe that I remained in shock for at least two weeks after I had my heart attack, and Beth was so overwhelmed emotionally that she could barely function. How we held it together for that horrible time after the heart attack, I don’t really know. What I do know is that we stuck together through the most difficult time in either of our lives.
The follow-up appointment with Dr. Marques brought only good news. “No restrictions. No worries.” He spent a lot of time answering our questions and setting our minds at ease. He told us that the normal person has 60 percent functionality of the heart, and that after my procedure, I had 62 percent functionality. He cautioned that I must always take my medicine, eat well and exercise, but that I should otherwise be 100 percent fine.
Can it be that I actually had a heart attack? It must have been inevitable, because they attributed it to genetics; my maternal grandfather had his first heart attack at age 41. But come on … a HEART ATTACK? Me? I still can’t believe it. I still can’t believe that I nearly died on Oct. 26, 2008. I still can’t grasp the enormity of it, even though I went through it with a (fairly) clear mind. Maybe if it ever happens again, I’ll be convinced. Or not.
Mine wasn’t like that.
Mine might have started quietly, months before I knew it was happening. There were signs, but the omnipresent fatigue I felt all summer and into the fall could easily be explained by the presence of a newborn baby and a 2-year-old toddler in the house. Or maybe I was so tired all the time because of a mild case of depression brought on by losing my newspaper job of 16 years in a July staff reduction. Perhaps the fatigue was just a natural byproduct of completely ignoring my own physical fitness as I approached age 40. I ate poorly. I didn’t exercise at all. My sleeping habits were atrocious. Maybe the constant, oppressive fatigue I felt was caused by all of the above.
Or, maybe, it was the growing glob of plaque building up in my right coronary artery. A portion of my heart wasn’t receiving the clear, clean flow of blood it needed to function properly. Robbed of the necessary oxygen, my heart sent me signals. Usually it told me to find someplace quiet and comfortable to lie down and sleep for two or three hours after taking care of the boys all day. Sometimes it told me to walk a little slower at Busch Gardens or up the aisle at the grocery store. Sometimes it told me the chores can wait, because it’s much more important to put my feet up on the couch and rest. I did what my heart told me to do, because that’s how I’ve always lived my life.
Beth didn’t like it, and I don’t blame her. For all she knew – for all I knew – I was just being lazy and unwilling to hold up my end of the bargain when it came to household responsibilities. So much was left undone at the end of each day. Dirty dishes piled in the sink. Toys strewn across the family room floor. The lawn uncut and untrimmed for weeks. It wore on Beth’s patience. Who could blame her? She certainly held up her end, working a 5 a.m.-2 p.m. shift and pretty much handling all the household cleaning and laundry in what spare time she had while taking care of the kids after she came home. It wasn’t fair. I knew it. Yet, I had to listen to my heart.
I even decided to go to the doctor for a physical. This is not something I did lightly. I do not like to attend appointments at offices or shops. The dentist, the barber, the primary care physician … it’s all the same. I’ve always felt weird about the process: sign in, find a seat in the waiting room, try not to make eye contact with the other patients or customers (none of whom want to be sitting there WAITING, either), look up hopefully every time the door opens to the mysterious “back rooms” where the magic elixir is distilled, turn back despondently to the five-month-old Sports Illustrated when someone else is (inevitably) called back.
Eventually, I was ushered into the inner sanctum and, long story short, I was healthy. Blood work was assigned (another appointment, another office, another waiting room, another old magazine) and it showed my cholesterol levels within “normal” ranges. A little on the high end of the scale, perhaps, but certainly nothing to trigger an alarm that a 39-year-old, underweight, seemingly healthy man might be on the verge of a heart attack.
So it went. Then, about two weeks before my heart attack, I came down with one of the nastiest colds I’ve had in years. Fever, sore throat, coughing, body chills, the works. It knocked me flat for three days. Heavy doses of Dayquil and Nyquil kept me going until nothing was left but the cough and, of course, fatigue. I was even more useless around the house than usual. I could barely bring myself to leave the house, I was so tired.
Finally, on Oct. 26, a Sunday, we decided it was time for me to get some fresh air and a little exercise. We piled the family into the CRV and took off for Busch Gardens. It was a lovely day and it felt good to be out again. We walked around for two hours, rode the train around the Serengeti Plain and looked at the tigers before grabbing a barbecue lunch at the Stanleyville Smokehouse. Jay ate grapes and watched a roller coaster splash past. I look back now at the photos I took of that little outing and it is chilling to think that, had things gone really bad later that night, those might have been the last photos I ever took of Beth, Jay and Chris.
We came home and for about two hours, I felt fine after the excursion. We had dinner plans that night with some neighbors, and I figured if I just took it easy the rest of the afternoon, I’d be able to last through the evening.
Then I coughed. It was a wracking, deep cough. A different cough from the lingering, nagging cough I developed with the cold. This cough wouldn’t stop. I knew right away that something was wrong, and my first instinct was to get Beth to cancel our dinner plans.
As she made that phone call, the cough deepened. My ears began to ring. My head began to spin. The cough kept coming. I collapsed on the bed and tried to call out to Beth. She was on the phone and didn’t hear me at first. My head was spinning and my ears were ringing and I curled up in a fetal position on the bed as I coughed and coughed. I called for Beth again and she came. At some point I realized that both of my arms had gone numb. There was a tingling sensation from my shoulders to the tips of my fingers in both arms. Then I noticed tightness in my upper chest. No pain, but uncomfortable tightness. I thought I was having a bronchial attack, that maybe that bad cold had developed into pneumonia and I was “drowning” in my own fluids.
I remember Beth asking me if I had pain in my left arm. I remember telling her no. But I somehow couldn’t relay to her that I couldn’t feel anything in my left arm, even though the numbness and tingling in my right arm had begun to subside. I think now that I was delirious, perhaps going into shock. It was when I realized that my left arm was still numb and that the tightness in my chest wasn’t going away that I might be having a heart attack. It seemed absurd, and I dismissed the notion, and even now I can’t quite grasp the fact. Yet, there I was on my bed, about to die if nothing was done to prevent it.
Delirious, panicked, I yelled for Beth to get me to the emergency room NOW. She quickly called for a neighbor to come over and watch the kids and we took off for University Community Hospital. The drive to the ER was excruciating, but not because I was in pain. I was delirious and terribly frightened and poor Beth was dragged into my delirium as she drove. The traffic was slow for a Sunday afternoon, and I remember yelling at poor Beth to JUST DRIVE and GET AROUND THIS SLOW BASTARD and I THINK I MIGHT BE DYING and DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND HOW SERIOUS THIS IS??? Eventually, I succeeded in sending Beth into an equally numb and quivering state of shock through my delirious ranting. She said then that if I did die, these were the greatest four-plus years of her life and she wouldn’t have changed a thing. Right about that time, I pulled both my legs up under me in the front passenger seat and just tried not to cough or yell at Beth. I vaguely remember us driving around the hospital complex looking for the ER entrance. We found it, and Beth pulled up to the door to let me out while she found a parking spot.
Inside, I approached the reception desk. Two young women were talking to the receptionist. I remember waiting in line for about five seconds before I said, “Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I think I’m having a heart attack and I need attention now.” I was, in retrospect, far calmer at that moment than I should have been. But then, that was probably the shock talking. In fact, I was so calm that the receptionist didn’t seem to take me seriously. Her first response was to point out that she was busy with these ladies and would I please take a seat in the waiting room.
So … I turned toward the waiting room. As I walked away in a daze, I heard the receptionist ask from a thousand miles away, “Sir, have you been here before?” I didn’t know if she was talking to me and I didn’t care, so I just sat there with my head in my hands and waited for Beth. The receptionist asked me again, “Sir, have you been here before?” At that point, I think, she came over to where I was sitting and Beth arrived at the same moment. They got me into triage, where the blood pressure monitor read 168 over 99 and an initial EKG showed some sort of irregularity.
I don’t remember being checked in or processed; maybe I never really was. I vaguely remember leaving the triage room and sitting for a few minutes in the waiting room before being called back to the chest pain area of the ER. There, in my own curtained-off cubicle, I was made to strip and changed into the standard backless hospital gown. They hooked me up to monitors for BP, heart rate and oxygen intake and ran another EKG while pumping saline fluid through an IV in my left arm. Beth was with me the whole time. In the next cubicle, another chest pain patient made awful noises that sounded horribly like a horse being strangled.
After a while, my symptoms stabilized. I was taken for a chest x-ray, which showed nothing irregular with my lungs. A doctor came and tried to explain what might have happened. He seemed to have come to the initial conclusion that I might have some sort of heart virus. The blood work was inconclusive at that point. He was inclined to send me home.
Something made him order another EKG, though. While the tech set me up for the test, I had another bad coughing spell: the same deep, wracking cough that hit me at home. I couldn’t see the monitors, but Beth later told me my face went white, my blood pressure immediately dropped to something like 60 over 30 and my heart rate fell to about 40. The tech got this panicked look on his face and called for nurses and the doctor. They attached defibrillator pads to my torso and inserted another IV into my right arm, just in case they had to try to revive me with electric shock or some sort of steroid they apparently pump directly to the heart in case it stops beating. They also put me on oxygen. I barely remember much of this moment.
What I do remember is the sudden realization at some point that I might die. And I remember that the only thing that moved me to tears at that point was the thought of my little boy, Jay, growing up without his Daddy. It moves me still. I sent Beth home after a while, and I begged her to read Horton Hears a Who to Jay as a bedtime story. I broke down in tears as I begged her to squeeze him and tell him how much I love him.
Later, the doctor came in and explained that my blood work had revealed a concerning level of troponin, or cardiac enzyme. The measurement was low, he said, around 0.025. That was an indication that I might have myocarditis, which apparently is where he got the idea that I might have a virus in the heart muscle. The way he explained it was that a troponin reading of 1.0 or higher was a clear indication of a heart attack. They’d keep me overnight, take blood at regular intervals and monitor the level of cardiac enzyme to see what was going on. Shortly after that, I was moved to a double room in the hospital’s regular wing (as opposed to the Pepin Heart Hospital there on the grounds). While I was being moved, the nurse pushed my gurney head-first into the elevator. It looked to me like there was barely room for my feet. The nurse actually said, “Don’t worry, we’re not going to amputate your feet.” Which was a pretty bad joke, considering some poor guy a few years ago had the wrong foot amputated at that very hospital. In my new room, I was assigned an overnight nurse named Anthony, whose regular job was working in the heart wing and happened to be assigned to my wing that night. All this happened while Beth was taking care of arrangements for the kids.
Beth returned after a while and helped me get as comfortable as possible. I was strapped onto several monitors and taking constant saline fluid as well as oxygen. Beth went back home to be with the kids after a short visit, and I tried to get some sleep. The uncomfortable tightness in my chest came and went. The cough was pretty persistent, although it never was quite as deep and wracking as it had been earlier. I drifted in and out of consciousness for several hours. Sometimes the discomfort in my chest woke me up. Sometimes it was Anthony checking in on me or taking more blood.
Sometime after midnight, I grew extraordinarily nauseous. At this point, I still didn’t know for sure that I had suffered a heart attack. Irrationally, I began to hope that the whole problem was food poisoning, that the barbecue I had eaten that day at Busch Gardens was trying to take revenge. This theory gained credence when, around 2 a.m., I vomited over the side of my bed. Between gasps and hurls, I remember I cried out, “What the hell is wrong with me?!?” The old guy sharing my room didn’t say a word. In fact, he never even acknowledged my presence. I got the impression he was a little bitter at having to share the room with a raving lunatic who clearly might die at any moment. After Anthony cleaned me up and mopped the floor next to my bed, I presented the food poisoning theory, hoping against hope for some confirmation. He was tactful enough and kind enough not to shatter my hope that Busch Gardens was to blame for my predicament.
After the regurgitation, I settled back in for a fitful attempt at sleep. At 4 a.m., Anthony came back for more blood. I later found out that the midnight and 4 a.m. blood work showed a dramatic increase in troponin levels: around 5.33 at midnight and 7.5 at 4 a.m. The cardiologist, who had scheduled me for a 10:30 a.m. angiogram the next day, was called in early and my procedure was moved up to 7:30 a.m.
Sometime around 6 a.m., the cardiologist, Dr. Vasco Marques, came into my room to explain the angiogram and answer any questions I might have.
Me: “I know the general term for what I had was a heart attack, but what’s the scientific term?”
Cardiologist: “A heart attack.”
Then it was time to sign waivers and read about angioplasty and have my groin area shaved to clear the way for the insertion of the tube that would snake its way through my body and into my heart. Anthony came in and insisted on prepping me, even though his shift had technically ended an hour earlier. He was kind and very good at his job. I thanked him for watching over me through the night.
Among the papers I had to sign was something that gave the surgical team clearance to open me up in case emergency bypass surgery was necessary. The angiogram would reveal what was wrong, and they hoped to be able to solve the problem with angioplasty: suctioning out the clotted blood and accumulated plaque and inserting a mesh stent to keep the area open in the future. They were prepared for the worst-case scenario.
I called Beth and my mom and dad to let them know what was going on. Beth was busy trying to get the kids settled and wouldn’t be able to make it to the hospital before I went into surgery. I called my friend Chris Anderson and left a message. Then it was time to be rolled into the operating room.
I remember feeling a little giddy as the surgical team prepared around me. They introduced themselves by name, one at a time, casually, as if we all were about to sit down to a nice breakfast at Cracker Barrel. I asked only one question: “When will you apply the anesthesia?” And I think I meant to the groin area, where they would be inserting the tube. But there was another level of anesthesia, some kind of IV Benadryl, and once they pumped that into my system I was out of it entirely. I don’t know if I ever completely lost consciousness, but I do have a vivid memory of closing my eyes and thinking, “Will I ever open them again?” I tried to think of my family as my faculties began to drift away.
Less than two hours later, I came to on the table and asked if we were done. Someone told me yes. I asked what it was they found. Someone said it was a 100 percent blockage of the right coronary artery, and that it was completely fixed and everything was fine. Someone also said I had tried to lift my head several times during the procedure and they were a little concerned that a hematoma had formed around the insertion point in my groin but that there was no real cause for concern.
They wheeled me back to my new room in the Pepin Heart Hospital wing (a private room) and I waited a while for Beth to get there. I called Chris and my parents. When Beth got there, I was awake. I felt good, considering I’d had a heart attack less than 24 hours earlier. Beth stayed with me as much as she could during the day. A neighbor, Cam Caudle, came by to visit. Chris came by in the morning, and he came back that night to watch Game 5 of the Rays-Phillies World Series. He stayed until the game was postponed by rain. I called Beth to say goodnight and slept very, very soundly.
They let me go the next afternoon. I was prescribed a battalion of new medicine to take every day for the rest of my life, including aspirin. I was warned not to pick up anything heavier than 10 pounds or drive for the next two days. In fact, I did neither until my follow-up appointment with Dr. Marques two weeks later.
Beth’s mom and dad came down from Massachusetts to help us during the first week. My mom and dad came down from North Carolina the second week. Drew Carnahan, who is married to my brother’s wife’s sister, swooped in and was our guardian angel for the week after my mom and dad went home.
I felt better, physically, than I had in months. Yet, Beth and I settled into a terrible pattern of bickering, usually at night. The strain of so much mental and emotional pain this year had finally gotten to us both. I really believe that I remained in shock for at least two weeks after I had my heart attack, and Beth was so overwhelmed emotionally that she could barely function. How we held it together for that horrible time after the heart attack, I don’t really know. What I do know is that we stuck together through the most difficult time in either of our lives.
The follow-up appointment with Dr. Marques brought only good news. “No restrictions. No worries.” He spent a lot of time answering our questions and setting our minds at ease. He told us that the normal person has 60 percent functionality of the heart, and that after my procedure, I had 62 percent functionality. He cautioned that I must always take my medicine, eat well and exercise, but that I should otherwise be 100 percent fine.
Can it be that I actually had a heart attack? It must have been inevitable, because they attributed it to genetics; my maternal grandfather had his first heart attack at age 41. But come on … a HEART ATTACK? Me? I still can’t believe it. I still can’t believe that I nearly died on Oct. 26, 2008. I still can’t grasp the enormity of it, even though I went through it with a (fairly) clear mind. Maybe if it ever happens again, I’ll be convinced. Or not.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Uncle
Uncle, OK? This year has defeated us. I, for one, will be dragged from under my comforter by appointment or divine intervention only until 2009 at the earliest.
How does one react to a year like this?
A year in which our newborn son spent eight days in the neo-natal intensive care unit and had his little life jeopardized when he was inadvertently given another mother's breast milk by a nurse.
A year in which I was laid off from my job of 16 years three weeks after that new son was born.
A year in which I suffered, at age 39, an actual, full-blown heart attack. Five days later, I still can't get my mind around that, by the way. I wonder if I ever will.
Who am I, Job all of a sudden? I'm not going to pull a Job, though. I'm not going to try to find some theocratic reason for all of this apparent misfortune. I'm not going to NOT blame God, or the Fates, or the Furies, or Media General. Even to grant a sanctimonious reprieve to those entities (or non-entities, as the case may be) would give them more credit than they deserve.
After all, what was the lesson of Job (which I re-read today just for the literary fulfillment of it)? As far as I could tell, the long and the short of the Book of Job was that good things happen even to bad people, bad things happen even to good people and no people, bad or good, are smart enough to know why. It just is what it is.
Yet, how does one respond? I'm not entirely sure, actually. I do know what I won't do, and what I won't accept from anyone who knows me or cares to know me. There will be no pity, self- or otherwise. Concern? Sure. I had a 100 percent blockage of my right coronary artery, after all, and I have no idea how I'm going to draw a paycheck in the future. Kind of worrisome, no?
But Chris is 100 percent healthy and the smilingest little 4-month-old you'll ever see. Jay, his big brother, is almost 3 and smarter and more beautiful than anyone I've ever known. Beth and I still have our home. We have our families in Massachusetts, North Carolina and points beyond.
We also carry within us a shared sense of optimism that will not be shattered by even the most daunting challenges life can throw at us.
I guess that's how we respond. We're still alive, OK? What else you got? Bring it on.
Only, please, please, please wait until 2009. After a year like this, we could really use a break.
How does one react to a year like this?
A year in which our newborn son spent eight days in the neo-natal intensive care unit and had his little life jeopardized when he was inadvertently given another mother's breast milk by a nurse.
A year in which I was laid off from my job of 16 years three weeks after that new son was born.
A year in which I suffered, at age 39, an actual, full-blown heart attack. Five days later, I still can't get my mind around that, by the way. I wonder if I ever will.
Who am I, Job all of a sudden? I'm not going to pull a Job, though. I'm not going to try to find some theocratic reason for all of this apparent misfortune. I'm not going to NOT blame God, or the Fates, or the Furies, or Media General. Even to grant a sanctimonious reprieve to those entities (or non-entities, as the case may be) would give them more credit than they deserve.
After all, what was the lesson of Job (which I re-read today just for the literary fulfillment of it)? As far as I could tell, the long and the short of the Book of Job was that good things happen even to bad people, bad things happen even to good people and no people, bad or good, are smart enough to know why. It just is what it is.
Yet, how does one respond? I'm not entirely sure, actually. I do know what I won't do, and what I won't accept from anyone who knows me or cares to know me. There will be no pity, self- or otherwise. Concern? Sure. I had a 100 percent blockage of my right coronary artery, after all, and I have no idea how I'm going to draw a paycheck in the future. Kind of worrisome, no?
But Chris is 100 percent healthy and the smilingest little 4-month-old you'll ever see. Jay, his big brother, is almost 3 and smarter and more beautiful than anyone I've ever known. Beth and I still have our home. We have our families in Massachusetts, North Carolina and points beyond.
We also carry within us a shared sense of optimism that will not be shattered by even the most daunting challenges life can throw at us.
I guess that's how we respond. We're still alive, OK? What else you got? Bring it on.
Only, please, please, please wait until 2009. After a year like this, we could really use a break.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The Rays' Secret: Fungi-ball
I'm not a "fan" of the Tampa Bay Rays. I spent too many years as a beat writer covering the team to set aside my carefully cultivated sense of objectivity when it comes to wins and losses and that baseball team.
That doesn't mean I'm not excited about the World Series. Nor does it mean I wish them ill against the Phillies. My guess is that the beat writers who cover a team in the Series figure they got this far, so why not win it? That's pretty much how I feel. I can see it as a good story, though, even if they lose.
But on the day of Game One at Tropicana Field, I find myself thinking less about whether they'll win or lose and more about my experiences with some of the folks with a real stake in the outcome. Folks like Andrew Friedman, Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli, Trever Miller, B.J. Upton, Scott Kazmir. Folks I got to know pretty well in a professional capacity, and folks I would like to see perform well on this largest of stages.
Andrew has already performed well, of course. I think about Friedman as I knew him when he was Stu Sternberg's man in the front office, back in the waning months of the Chuck LaMar Era in 2005. It was pretty obvious from the start that Andrew would be in charge once Sternberg took over from Vince Naimoli. At first, I thought of Andrew as a hyper-Moneyball disciple; someone who had read Michael Lewis' book and believed Billy Beane walked on water. I used to have a pretty long drive home from the Trop after games, and I always knew I could reach Andrew on his Blackberry, just to kill time. The guy never slept. And he always wanted to talk baseball. His conversation was littered with words like "fungible," something I attributed to his background in finance with Bear Stearns. It, "fungible," usually was used to refer to guys like Aubrey Huff and Toby Hall. It meant easy to replace at a better price.
He was right. Andrew was right about a lot of things. He was right to hire an experienced hand in Gerry Hunsicker, a free-thinking manager in Joe Maddon and all those young "numbers" guys he used to populate his inner sanctum: Chaim Bloom, James Click, Dan Feinstein, etc. He was right about Dioner Navarro and, yes, even Edwin Jackson. But he was right not because of a strict adherence to Moneyball principles. He was right because he was flexible enough to use those principles to form his own style. Call it "Fungi-ball." His strategy? Find the under-valued skills (in this case, defense, middle relief pitching and a strong bench) and emphasize them on the roster. Then, lock down the young, talented players they acquired through the draft to reasonable long-term contracts. Finally, he knew enough not to be afraid to take what appeared to be big chances, such as the Delmon Young trade for Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett.
I think what Andrew did will be copied for years in MLB. Thing is, if I know Andrew, he's already thinking ahead to the next under-valued quality and how that might be exploited in order to sustain this incredible success. It's been fun and educational to watch.
So, a prediction. Rays win the Series in six. Simply amazing.
That doesn't mean I'm not excited about the World Series. Nor does it mean I wish them ill against the Phillies. My guess is that the beat writers who cover a team in the Series figure they got this far, so why not win it? That's pretty much how I feel. I can see it as a good story, though, even if they lose.
But on the day of Game One at Tropicana Field, I find myself thinking less about whether they'll win or lose and more about my experiences with some of the folks with a real stake in the outcome. Folks like Andrew Friedman, Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli, Trever Miller, B.J. Upton, Scott Kazmir. Folks I got to know pretty well in a professional capacity, and folks I would like to see perform well on this largest of stages.
Andrew has already performed well, of course. I think about Friedman as I knew him when he was Stu Sternberg's man in the front office, back in the waning months of the Chuck LaMar Era in 2005. It was pretty obvious from the start that Andrew would be in charge once Sternberg took over from Vince Naimoli. At first, I thought of Andrew as a hyper-Moneyball disciple; someone who had read Michael Lewis' book and believed Billy Beane walked on water. I used to have a pretty long drive home from the Trop after games, and I always knew I could reach Andrew on his Blackberry, just to kill time. The guy never slept. And he always wanted to talk baseball. His conversation was littered with words like "fungible," something I attributed to his background in finance with Bear Stearns. It, "fungible," usually was used to refer to guys like Aubrey Huff and Toby Hall. It meant easy to replace at a better price.
He was right. Andrew was right about a lot of things. He was right to hire an experienced hand in Gerry Hunsicker, a free-thinking manager in Joe Maddon and all those young "numbers" guys he used to populate his inner sanctum: Chaim Bloom, James Click, Dan Feinstein, etc. He was right about Dioner Navarro and, yes, even Edwin Jackson. But he was right not because of a strict adherence to Moneyball principles. He was right because he was flexible enough to use those principles to form his own style. Call it "Fungi-ball." His strategy? Find the under-valued skills (in this case, defense, middle relief pitching and a strong bench) and emphasize them on the roster. Then, lock down the young, talented players they acquired through the draft to reasonable long-term contracts. Finally, he knew enough not to be afraid to take what appeared to be big chances, such as the Delmon Young trade for Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett.
I think what Andrew did will be copied for years in MLB. Thing is, if I know Andrew, he's already thinking ahead to the next under-valued quality and how that might be exploited in order to sustain this incredible success. It's been fun and educational to watch.
So, a prediction. Rays win the Series in six. Simply amazing.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Face. Book.
I went ahead and joined Facebook, even though the idea kind of creeped me out at first. There's something impersonal (and a little desperate-seeming) about all these on-line networking sites. But hey, it's happening, right? Might as well be there when it does.
Speaking of which . . .
I still can't get my mind around the Rays. That they are in the World Series and I am not able to cover it is so galling I can barely breathe.
(Edited to conceal the true depth of my angst.)
Speaking of which . . .
I still can't get my mind around the Rays. That they are in the World Series and I am not able to cover it is so galling I can barely breathe.
(Edited to conceal the true depth of my angst.)
Monday, September 15, 2008
How Did This Happen?
The question I kept coming back to this past Wednesday as I waited in the lobby of a Florida Job Services office was, "How did I come to this point?"
I was there for an orientation session, part of employment counseling that's required for people who collect unemployment insurance. It was a sobering experience. Every time I start to get numb to the fact that all the work I put in during the past 22 years to build my sports writing career was (apparently) for nothing, something like that orientation session smacks me down again.
But ... we got through it. Just like we'll get through all of it. This is a good spot to drop this year's most popular sports cliche: It is what it is.
Now, I look at the morning news shows and the headlines on the news Web sites and I wonder, "How did the nation come to this point?" I wish I'd paid more attention in ECO 1001 class at the University of Florida in 1989, although I'm not sure this kind of utter economic bewilderment was covered.
What happened to the world? Does anyone know how all of this came to be? Lehman Brothers and the rest ... were all those too-smart-to-fart Wall Street geniuses too short-sighted to see this coming? The dot.com bubble, the housing bubble, 9-11, Iraq, increased gas prices, the rise of China, dwindling oil supply ... it all seems to be connected, somehow, but how?
And was all this macro-economic stuff the reason I lost my job with the newspaper? Was there anything I could have done, in that context, to better prepare our family for our own personal economic downturn? Anything I could have done to prevent myself from becoming unceremoniously unemployed?
Was there anything our country's leaders could have done, can do, about what's happening in the world at large? Anything they can do to keep this country from collapsing?
I wish I knew. I wish anyone knew.
Ah, well. At least the Rays and the Red Sox start a three-game series today that could decide the American League East. Should be quite a hoot.
I was there for an orientation session, part of employment counseling that's required for people who collect unemployment insurance. It was a sobering experience. Every time I start to get numb to the fact that all the work I put in during the past 22 years to build my sports writing career was (apparently) for nothing, something like that orientation session smacks me down again.
But ... we got through it. Just like we'll get through all of it. This is a good spot to drop this year's most popular sports cliche: It is what it is.
Now, I look at the morning news shows and the headlines on the news Web sites and I wonder, "How did the nation come to this point?" I wish I'd paid more attention in ECO 1001 class at the University of Florida in 1989, although I'm not sure this kind of utter economic bewilderment was covered.
What happened to the world? Does anyone know how all of this came to be? Lehman Brothers and the rest ... were all those too-smart-to-fart Wall Street geniuses too short-sighted to see this coming? The dot.com bubble, the housing bubble, 9-11, Iraq, increased gas prices, the rise of China, dwindling oil supply ... it all seems to be connected, somehow, but how?
And was all this macro-economic stuff the reason I lost my job with the newspaper? Was there anything I could have done, in that context, to better prepare our family for our own personal economic downturn? Anything I could have done to prevent myself from becoming unceremoniously unemployed?
Was there anything our country's leaders could have done, can do, about what's happening in the world at large? Anything they can do to keep this country from collapsing?
I wish I knew. I wish anyone knew.
Ah, well. At least the Rays and the Red Sox start a three-game series today that could decide the American League East. Should be quite a hoot.
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