I had an epiphany at 75 miles per hour this afternoon. 

I was hurtling back home to San Francisco after a couple travel baseball tournament games in Manteca.  About a 90-minute drive, depending upon how willing you are to risk a speeding ticket.  My eldest son, Max, has been playing on this particular baseball team for about a year.  The spring season was all-in, culminating in a family trip to a very cool tournament last summer in Cooperstown.  For this fall season, we decided (Max included) that he would focus principally on soccer.  Fall is generally and rightly regarded as THE time of year for soccer.  That meant Max had to sort of demote himself to a “practice player” on his baseball team.  The team stocked up on several new players, many of which I know nothing about.  Except that they all elected to put baseball first this fall season. 

Max chose to put it second. 

He worked so hard to make the baseball team in the first place — think hitting balls off the tee for weeks, at night, in the backyard after dinner, with a headlamp on, until his calloused hands bled.  That experience alone, make the team or no, was worth the price of admission.  I never worked hard for anything until I was probably already in my 20s.  If then.  So to see Max out back last fall in the pitch black, ping ping ping the sound of his bat in the throw of his headlamp’s light?  Pretty cool. 

But there are consequences to choosing one thing or another.  As a practice player, Max would not be playing in tournaments.  He would regularly miss practices.  And the practices he could attend, he typically showed up 30-60 minutes late, arriving on the heels of a soccer practice down the 101.  Other players would make every practice.  And they would be there early.  And they would show up at every game, hungry to play every single inning. 

Max’s voice would be conspicuously absent from the dugout, as he basically left vacant the spot he worked for — harder than anything he’d ever worked for before.

Interesting choice.

Today marked the first time Max was available to play in one of his baseball team’s fall tournaments and his coach invited him to come.  Hence the drive to Manteca this morning.  The morning after Halloween.  After cutting himself off at a fistful of Halloween candy and getting to bed earlier than he otherwise would.  Max was fired up, warpaint on his cheekbones, ready to go.

Only it didn’t happen.  As much as I had tried to manage our expectations — Max is the only practice player; everybody else has put in their time and worked hard — neither of us was prepared for the consequences today.  Max never played so little as he did in his team’s two games today.  The times when he would generally be popping out of the dugout racing to his spot on the infield?  Those times never happened.  The times when he would step up to the plate, ready to get on base anyway he could?  None of those times happened either. 

He was crushed.  I was crushed.  I tried desperately not to let my bubbling anger show on my face.  I refused to catch his eyes when he looked for me, peeking out of the dugout.  I didn’t trust myself enough; I was afraid he would see my strong emotions and adopt them as his own, uncertain as he was as to how he should deal with this unfamiliar dynamic. 

In the aftermath of the second game, I found myself melodramatically hurling my large cup of Coke into the trash can.  I muttered (probably louder than just “muttered”) a number of F-Bombs I couldn’t help but sprinkle into my neck vein-bulging rants.  Directed at no one in particular, just expressing my frustration.  I don’t know that any of the other parents heard me.  I hope not.  But at the time, I didn’t care.  I was angry, disappointed, embarrassed, confused.  My adrenals were squeezing and it took everything I could muster not to say something stupid to someone who would not forget what I said and which I could not take back later.

There are times when a 90-minute drive is the best medicine. 

After Max vented in an age-appropriate way (fewer F-Bombs), he suddenly fell asleep.  Warpainted cheek pressed against the window.  And was snoring out loud within only a couple minutes.  He had never played less than he played today, but he was exhausted.  Drained.  From his little jelly head trying to figure out what to do with this.

Then it dawned on me. 

His coach had given Max a gift.  The Gift of Adversity.  I don’t know whether he intended to bequeath this gift or not.  But that doesn’t matter.  The best thing about sports, about travel baseball and soccer, about the daily existence both of our kids are currently navigating, is the innumerable opportunities to handle and manage adversity.  Everyone gets knocked on their ass, over and over again.  Everyone gets knocked onto the canvas.  And with your saliva-dripping cheek on the threadbare canvas, you have just two choices.  It’s simple, really–

(1) Stay down. 

(2) Get back up.  Now.

I think Number Two is probably one of those key things in life. 

Max got punched in the gut today, effectively.  And I’m actually thankful for that now.  I get to stand over his prone body, put my hand on his back, and ask him:  “You have two choices, my boy.  You can stay down.  Or you can get back up.  Now I’m going to walk back over to our corner, step through the ropes, and watch.  I’m here for you either way.  But it is your choice.  Not mine.”

Here’s hoping he chooses well.

Thanks for reading.

Three World Series Championships in the last five years.  A dynasty, they say.  My kids have no idea how lucky they are to be living in this Land of Giants.  Their maternal grandfather — a lifelong, long-suffering Red Sox fan (still) — waited nearly 70 years to witness his hometown team win a World Series.  My kids have experienced three, count ’em three!  

And it’s not just the being a fan part.  Forty-thousand fans turn the turnstiles at AT&T Park for every home game.  We go to our fair share of games.  The four of us happened to be on-hand at the ballpark when Cain threw his perfect game.  And we watch or listen to just about all of them that we don’t attend.  Hanging on Kruk & Kuip’s every word while crammed into our Prius or piled on the floor at the foot of the television scratching our family dog’s belly.  We have shelled out our fair share of shekels, too, for the merch:  Orange panda hat, Giants flannel pajamas, “Always October” hoodies.  The whole sh-bang.  Our fandom bona fides are for real.

But the best part is the “hometown team” part.  We and our kids regularly bump into Giants players.  A couple years ago, I passed Brian Wilson walking on Sansome Street.  At the time, he lived around the corner from us, so I lamely offered up a quick, “Hey, you’re a long way from your neighborhood.”  Weezy dryly responded, “Everyplace is my neighborhood” without breaking stride.  Later that same year, he gamely signed autographs for my son Max’s San Francisco Little League All-Star team.  We had spotted him having dinner next to our team’s dinner one night, and after some cajoling, he came outside and made the kids’ day.  He even laughed aloud with Max when Max explained to Weezy that his broken wrist in a cast was caused by falling on the treadmill in our garage.  

A few years back, Everett was invited to say hello to Pat Burrell seated in the rear of the now-defunct Grove on Chestnut.  A quick conversation, but it left an impression:  Everett’s family drawing around Christmas-time that year included Pat the Bat.  And I’m OK with that.  We would regularly see Aubrey Huff at Max’s swim lessons in the Presidio.  I’d leave him alone, giving him his space.  But I couldn’t help myself on the morning after a particularly hard-fought post season win.  Striding out to the pool deck, Aubrey caught my eyes, and we both raised our arms and shook our fists at each other triumphantly.  It was genuine; I felt as if I had played a role in the win.  

A couple months ago, I was working at home and fully-engaged in a conference call.  Max stuck a piece of paper in my face with something about Jeremy Affeldt and coffee written on it.  I waved my hand, annoyed with the distraction.  Max disappeared, texting me this photo a few minutes later —

So net net, we’re pretty thrilled with the Giants’ success of-late, for sure.  But it’s the unexpected moments when our kids stumble into the players here and there that we appreciate the most.  We feel like we’re a part of something, rather than just witnessing something.  And we know we’re damned lucky to be living here in the Land of Giants.

Thanks for reading.

Yes, Crisco. 

My 8 year-old was up to his usual tricks with his line of questioning during the walk to the bus stop this morning.  First, he asked, “Dad, what is Crisco?”  Trust me, this question was out of the blue.  I can’t even imagine how that question would ever not be out of the blue.  I don’t cook with it.  I don’t know anyone else who does.  I don’t put it in my hair.  If someone else chooses to, that is their business.  And I don’t believe Everett has developed a taste for I Love Lucy, the Honeymooners or other TV shows of that era in which the word “Crisco” might be included in the script.  In fact, I wasn’t even sure how to answer the Crisco Question.  I caught myself wiggling my lips a bit to try to form a word, having a tough time pushing air up from my lungs to my mouth.  My brisk pace cut in half as I struggled for something sensible to say.  Fortunately, my wife Hilary jumped headlong into the breach.  As my head swirled in my moment of vulnerability, I vaguely heard her say the word “shortening,” and I knew that we would survive this.  Nevermind that my inner Rainman was now wrestling with the different meanings of “shortening,” and how they don’t seem to have anything to do with each other.  Or do they?

Regardless, I picked my pace back up, relieved that Hilary knew how to trot out the word “shortening” without skipping a beat, such that Everett did not likely see me staggering from his Crisco body blow.  Equilibrium now restored.

Once we arrived at the bus stop proper, however, the second shoe dropped.  Everett asked, “Dad, what is a finder’s fee?”  Now, I know what a “finder’s fee” is.  That wasn’t the issue here.  The issue was the close proximity in time between the Crisco Question and the Finder’s Fee Question.  Under a minute.  Maybe less.  So that meant that Everett somehow was connecting the two words.  This was not out of the blue.  Nothing out of the blue about this. 

But what was the connection?  Where in the hell did he hear this? Read this?  Get offered this?  Was he tipping his hand to some God-awful school playground prank to which he was privy?  I don’t recall seeing any substance on any of his clothes or in his hair that, upon reflection, could have been Crisco-esque in origin.  Then again, I don’t take a hard look.  And most stains are good news — suggesting that he actually did brush his teeth, did wash his hands this week, or did eat what he was supposed to eat from the school lunch.   So I have to concede that he could have walked into our house with a Crisco mohawk, and I may not have noticed. 

And I’m not sure, but isn’t this type of “shortening” frowned upon in cooking nowadays due to some mouse studies?  Our kids’ school is all about organic gardens, composting, and sourcing food locally.  So I can’t fathom that Everett would pay or be paid a finder’s fee for delivering up a barrel of Crisco to the school kitchen.  That would be scandalous.  Not the finder’s fee part, but the idea that someone at school was cooking with Crisco.  There would need to be a school-wide email from the head of school with a heartfelt apology and firm reassurance that our kids are safe.  That someone was fired.  And that a thorough search of the area found that NO CRISCO ever made it onto school grounds. 

As all this ran through my head, the school bus rolled up silently.  The kids were all sucked on board as if by some sort of powerful vacuum, scrambling up the stairs.  I managed a weak — and basically rhetorical under the circumstances — “Ev, um, are those two questions somehow connected??”  But by then he had been sucked up into the bus, halfway to his seat, and I could not decipher his facial expression through the tinted windows.  Why are the windows tinted?  As far as I knew, as the bus squeaked away from the curb, Ev was now passing a huge vat of the shortening around to his fellow students, who slathered themselves up with it, crazed.  And slapped dollar bills into my 8 year-old’s outstretched palm.

I expect a call from school any minute now.  Is that the phone ringing??

Thanks for reading.

San Francisco turns orange about this time of year, every year, it seems. I don’t mean the Fall leaves. Fall doesn’t turn the leaves orange in these parts, for the most part. I satisfy that east coast craving by cruising foliage photos on Facebook. Apologies for the alliteration. Absolutely awful.

I associate all this annual orange with two things: The San Francisco Giants’ postseason success, and Halloween.

The former whips this town into a frenzy. I marvel as some of our more iconic pieces of architecture turn orange — City Hall, Coit Tower, the Embarcadero Buildings, the Ferry Building. The entire city loses its collective mind.

Case in point: My wife Hilary and I were drawing straws late last night over who would go investigate a loud banging in our garage. This morning’s Chronicle told me the clamor was due to fireworks set off on the waterfront at the end of a gala held last night for 2,000 Giants VIPs. Could’ve used a heads up, Mr. Baer. That way, I could’ve strode chest-puffed into my dark garage ready to take on the “intruder” with my bare hands and a half-chewed number 2 pencil, as my wife sat admiring her protector. “My hero.” Sigh.

Instead, I practically stuck my cold foot in Hilary’s low-back pushing her out of bed to go investigate. Think I also glowered at Wailea: “What the hell kind of watchdog are you? Don’t you hear that banging? Someone is out there! Sic ’em! Sic ’em!”

Alas, not a burglar. Nope. Just a couple thousand muckety-mucks getting their orange on. Tonight is game 3 of the 2014 World Series, after all. If the Giants win, I suppose I will gladly accept the ignominy of last night’s emasculation brought on by the fireworks masquerading as a neighborhood madman rummaging through our garage. Fair trade. No apology or reparations will be necessary, Mr. Baer.

The other thing I associate with all this orange is the season of Halloween. Man, I love it. I got it bad. After our family’s 3rd or 4th trip to one or another store, we finally had all the gear I needed to transform our postage-stamp sized front “lawn” into a terrifying graveyard: Three bags of spider webs stretched thinly. A dozen spiders scattered in threatening poses. Three spotlights (2 green). Three strobe lights, including one that blasts a looped sound recording imploring someone to “help me help me” every ten seconds or so. Three styrofoam headstones, one chiseled with a small skull, another with “RIP” and another in the shape of a medieval cross. A couple life-sized skulls, the deep-set eyes and broad foreheads a perfect surface on which to bounce the strobes’ blinking lights. And then the coup de grâce: Three black-hooded, hanging ghouls with blinking red eyes and upturned skeleton hands.

Used to be four ghouls, but one was stolen last Halloween. Cost of doing business; city living. And frankly, given that I deliberately affix and ensnare the ghouls deep into our prickly rose bushes, using a step ladder, no less, I have to tip my cap to the high-jumping bloody-handed thief who somehow managed to pilfer my ghoul. He must’ve wanted that red-eyed heebie jeebie pretty badly.

Just as I wanted that fog machine pretty badly. The one I stood before at the local Halloween City store yesterday afternoon, covetous. Practically drooling. Ignoring my 8 year-old’s plaintive half-whispers: “Dad, can we puuuleeeeazze get outta here? That clown is creeping me out.” I heard Everett, faintly, in the recesses of my mind. But I heard the word “clown” and figured Ev was overreacting. Or at least figured that he would not be permanently scarred by an encounter with a grinning clown. Not by the couple extra minutes I would need to do the math, weighing exactly how pissed Hilary would be by my introduction of an over-the-top fog machine against how ecstatic I would be to fire that bad boy up.

Everett’s increasingly-urgent tugs on my wrist snapped me back to reality. Reluctantly, I gave in to the sad fact that I would end up on the wrong side of the “greater than” sign as far as the fog machine calculus would go. So I satisfied myself by impulse-purchasing a couple black light spotlight bulbs. (The same ones that would later burn off my fingerprints in my ill-advised attempt to install the bulbs in our backyard.)

On the way out the front door, I followed Everett’s bugged out eyes and snuck a look at the creepy clown. I was wrong. Ev will definitely be scarred.

Thanks for reading.

The Wasco Clown is right in my wheelhouse. I rush to Instagram every morning hoping against hope that he or she has or they have posted something creepy from his or her or their overnight exploits. This spooky clown is in my head; it’s as if the clown is looking directly and only at me in these quietly disturbing photos.

I have long been a huge fan of Halloween and all that it entails. In grade school, my dad and I used to rig up a pumpkin-headed dummy on our front porch, raising the dummy’s skeleton hand via a fishing line pulley system when an unsuspecting trick-or-treater approached. Great results.

As I got a bit older, I would dress as a dummy myself, oversized shirt and pants stuffed with pillow innards, a nondescript mask covering my face. I would position myself limbs akimbo on the stairs leading to the skeleton-handed pumpkin. They would assess me on the way up the stairs, deciding I was indeed not real as they moved along up to the main attraction. They breathed a sigh of relief, maybe a small chuckle at the pedestrian skeleton hand with fishing line act on the porch. Their guard officially down, I would jump out at them on their way back down the stairs. Scared the bejesus out of them, without fail.

I made the annual pilgrimage to Syracuse’s JCC Haunted House with my wide-eyed school chums. The haunted house antics were only slightly more effective than my own, popping out at my buddies in one pitch black hallway or another.

I would never go to a haunted house with me. To this day, I don’t know why my friends agreed to go every year. And I’m surprised no one’s heart exploded along the way. Also surprised these friends of mine are still friends of mine, unfairly and repeatedly terrorized as they were.

As an “adult,” I’ve passed the Halloween Bug on to my boys, I think. They strategize about their costumes year-round. With a sense of pride, I rebuff their first choices — invariably one movie sequel horror killer guy or another. I don’t even know how they know who Freddy Kruger is.

We set up a green spotlit graveyard on our front walk. Three hanging ghouls have blinking red lights for eyeballs. Yesterday I bought some upside down hanging bat lanterns for our little inside patio. They look good surrounded by the dark purple string lights. That patio comes alive when the sun goes down.

Over the years, the boys have assembled piece-by-piece a little, automated Halloween Town on a table in our dining room. An overhead witch chasing a WW II-era girl around and around a circular graveyard. The Witches Brew Pub with its faux-neon sign and red-eyed monster waiting under the porch. A merry go ’round carnival swing chocked full of seated skeletons clutching the swing’s chains in their bony fingers.

It’s all very mesmerizing. At least to me.

Which is why I am agog at the Wasco Clown phenomenon. The clown apparently wanders around a Bakersfield-area town in the middle of the night, taking vaguely menacing photos of himself in familiar locales, posting them on Instagram later. He doesn’t bother with dramatic or threatening poses, he is just…there. Dead-eyed. Flat.

Allowing you, me, to project our own innermost fears onto him. He’s even added the brilliant stroke of clutching a gaggle of balloons in his right hand. So many things in these photos that appeal to a Halloween-ophile such as I. I stare at the photos as if I were examining a painterly van Gogh. Admiring this element or that one — the choice of mask or face paint, the odd contrapposto standing in the dewey grass of a children’s playground. The Michael Myers tilt of the head.

Masterful.

So touché, Wasco Clown. My Halloween karma has come home to roost. You have officially scared the bejesus out of me. Keep up the good work!

Thanks for reading.

If you are up well before the sun at 4:50am to get to Modesto for your 13 year-old’s 8:00am travel soccer game, you might be a helicopter parent.

If you passed an all-too-familiar travel baseball complex 30 minutes ago in Manteca, you might be a helicopter parent.

(If you have heard of neither Modesto nor Manteca, breathe a sigh of relief, because you are likely not a helicopter parent, at least not of the Northern California variety.)

Am I a helicopter parent? I just might be.

I don’t complain, not a peep. I’m perfectly happy to set the alarm for 4:50am. I actually open my eyes at 4:40am, momentarily panicked by the lighter-than-expected backyard mostly obscured by the window shade a couple feet from my side of the bed. I navigate the dog toy-strewn carpet to the bathroom in the pitch black. Widening my eyes like a crazy person, thinking somehow this will help me see better. Help me avoid placing my bare foot down on Wailea’s marrow bone.

I have a well-oiled routine, because I’ve done this dozens of times now over the course of the last few years. A tight schedule is committed to memory, and silently running in the background.

Max rousted shortly before 5am. His bag already packed and waiting to be lifted into the Prius with minimal effort. The pajama-clad teenager slides into the backseat, his night’s slumber only interrupted for a couple minutes. Go back to sleep.

The chopper lifts off at 5am, Modesto-bound.

I know where I need to gas up. Right across the street from a Starbucks I know to be open at 5am. A handful of homeless and jet-lagged tourists wait in line with me, briefly, staring blankly at the refrigerated juices. Coffee and breakfast sandwiches — key elements of the early am road trip routine — in-hand, I pop back into the car within 2 minutes.

By 5:06am, I’m gassed up, caffeine-ready, and en route. And ahead of schedule. Waze rewards my military-like precision with a projected 10-minute arrival time cushion before the obligatory 7am show up.

The boy sleeps, snoring loudly enough that I glance back at him, thinking he’s joking. Not joking, just in deep sleep. Sweet dreams.

We pull in to the soccer “complex” — vaguely reminiscent of the maximum security prisons and military grade trucking depots nearby — with plenty of time to spare. And of course that time is already accounted for. Ten minutes is about what it takes for me to jumpstart my teenager, prodding him to finish his cold breakfast sandwich and $4 orange juice (best enjoyed by October 1, 2014). And even allotting him 30 seconds for an anxious search for his missing shinguard, his panic ultimately proving unfounded (as always).

His cleat bottoms touch down on the parking lot pavement at 6:55am. Four-dollar orange juice dangling from his fingers, shuffling towards the complex’s front gate, decked out in his team’s red uniform kit.

Mission Accomplished.

If any of this sounds familiar, you just might be a helicopter parent too.

Thanks for reading.

Everett’s first-ever travel baseball tournament game starts in 30 minutes. He’s been to this particular complex in Sunnyvale a couple dozen times. All as a spectator. Watching his big brother, who lives to be watched.

Everett does not live to be watched. He’s happiest when the spotlight is on someone else.

On the car ride down here this morning, he offered up an out-of-the blue observation about the merits of low expectations. If this were my older son, Max, I may have launched into a tirade, possibly laced with expletives, and likely including ample references to data points like the 5:50am wakeup call, the $50 “baseball bag” with neoprene bat sleeves purchased just yesterday, and the fact that I got along just fine with cut-off long underwear when I played and didn’t need high end “sliding shorts.”

But Ev isn’t Max, as I’m learning still, so I had to follow a different approach altogether. And it’s not one that comes naturally. Not to me, at least.

I paused for a beat or two, checked again the distance until our exit off 101 according to Waze, and rolled the dice, keenly aware that if I blew this, Ev would refuse to get out of the car when we pulled into the parking lot.

“Well, if we all settled for low expectations, think of all the things that would never have been accomplished. No one would have invented cars. There would be no Internet. No Olympic Games. No man on the moon. So it’s actually good to have high expectations, to challenge yourself, because that’s how you grow, how you learn what you’re made of, how you find the best in yourself, and maybe you’ll find that you can do things you didn’t think you could do.”

Pretty good, right? And I think this is basically verbatim. As if I pulled the “Low Expectations Talk” index card out of the Fatherly Advice packet and read from it after clearing my throat (and of course without lowering the quality of my freeway driving).

And from the backseat? Crickets. Nothing. I half-expected a gasp, maybe a gasp plus applause and a “Bravo!” shouted by my red-faced and profoundly inspired 8 year-old.

Um, yeah. No.

I soldiered on, kept my legs moving, shucked and jived. Instead of high-minded inspiration about the evolution of mankind, I went for something more visceral.

I suspected (correctly) that Ev was perseverating about getting plunked on the back at last night’s practice by an errant throw from catcher to first base while Ev was running to 1st base himself. No doubt the bruise on his right shoulder blade still smarted, pressed as he was into the backseat. I needed a strong visual to capture Everett’s attention, snap him out of this pre-game funk, pull him back from dangling over the precipice by his fingertips.

Enter Tony C.

I pulled up the famously grotesque Tony Conigliaro Sports Illustrated cover. Then I handed my iPhone and Tony’s bulging, purple eye socket over my shoulder to Everett.

“Woah, look at that black eye! Wow!”

Mission Accomplished.

Everett was now recalibrated and ready to go. His memory banks wiped clean. Not a care in the world. All it took was a little blood and gore. Whatever works.

Thanks for reading.