Interesting thing about :
Interesting thing about :
If you have a song like The Reason, itll be sorted to R section instead of T but another song like Sweet Child of Mine, it stays in S section.
Not sure how alphabets work at Apple Park :/
JP4.1.194.1.20
11/1/2020 Postscript: If youre 18 in 2024 you probably cant conceive of whats actually happening now in the US and globally. Its a good time to get nerdy about history.
And so ends another season of baseball. 162 games scheduled and 162 games played. Collectively, 2,430 games were played this season. I that baseball was the game of my youth. I collected cards, memorized stats, went to games, and even played some myself. But in 1994, I fell out of love with the whole enterprise with the Strike and the cancellation of the World Series that year. My return to the game has been in fits and starts, but 2024 was the season when I really began to feel some of that old yearning for the game rekindling in my old heart. The excitement to see records made and broken, and following the rhythms of the season, from streaks and slumps, to blowouts and blowups.
I didnt plan it or set out to say, This is the year I get back into baseball.
It just happened.
I went to my first ballgame when I was 7 years old. I watched the Cubs play the Braves at Wrigley Field. This was before the lights. The Braves won 7-5. I still have the program for the game where my Dad kept score. Its not the fancy multi-page programs with full color photos on glossy stock that you may see these days. Its just a simple bi-fold on heavy stock with the rosters of each team on one side and a scoring table on the other. The only color is on the cover, which is a stylized rendering of a man sliding into second base.
After that game, I decided my favorite player was Bill Buckner, a first baseman who got a hit that day. Dont ask me for any reasoning behind that decision. The workings of my 7 year old brain are a mystery, even to me. Maybe I liked the direct, alliterative name. Ive always been partial to those, so maybe it was that. Whatever the case, Bill Buckner was it. My baseball card from my T-Ball days bears witness to this fact.
Then 1986 happened. By this time, wed moved again to the expansive confines of Norfolk, Virginia within Hampton Roads metroplex of Southeastern Virginia. They had a AAA team affiliated with the New York Mets at the time called the Tidewater Tides. They played at Met Park, whose dimensions were the same as those at Shea Stadium where the Mets played. This is where I became a Mets fan and my allegiance shifted to Dwight Gooden.
It was in the 1986 World Series where Mookie Wilson hit a ball right-up the first base line to the awaiting glove of Bill Buckner, who through the vagary of chance failed to put his glove down completely on the ground, allowing the ball to roll past him to give Mookie the hit. This started a chain reaction of events that ultimately led to the Mets winning the game and the World Series itself.
With my minor league team linked to these Mets, they had my allegiance for the rest of the 1980s. But then the Atlanta Braves came along in the 90s to steal my attention.
Id seen most of the Braves pitching staff and many of their players come up through the Richmond Braves, who were the cross-state rivals of the Tides that came through town all the time. I saw the most dominant pitchers of that age just humble the hometown team, but became a fan of them at the same time and rooted for the Braves up until 94 and the Strike.
One of the effects of traveling around so much as a kid (and later as an adult), is a kind of rootlessness and the feeling that you dont really belong anywhere. I was from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, leading to an eclectic mishmash of accents, idioms, and sports team affiliations. I consider myself from Norfolk, mostly because its where I lived the longest as a kid, and its where most of the important milestones of childhood and my teen years happened. But we didnt have a major league team of any kind around us, and it was a Navy town, so everyone from around the country (and the world to an extent) all lived in the same place, denying it any real depth of cultural identity or team loyalties.
So most of the sports teams I followed were based more on key personal events than anything else. I liked the Cubs because that was my first baseball game. I liked the Mets because my hometown team was affiliated with them and they came through every year to play an exhibition game. I liked the Braves because Id seen many of their players and I was impressed by their ability.
But I never had any strong feelings towards them. I was happy when they did well, but I had no real emotional investment in any of them. I held a much more ecumenical view of things, as my true heart belonged to the sport itself more than any individual team. I tended to be a fan of players, rather than the livery they were wearing at the time.
Now in the warm September of my years, I felt the old pull of my youth tugging at me again. Nostalgia for me is painful a bittersweet longing for places I can never revisit and people I can never see again. I do my best to resist the siren song of sentimentality beckoning me to come and wallow in its inviting, shallow waters that feel like a warm embrace, but provide no comfort or relief, only a deepened sense of emptiness and loss.
But Ive hit the time of my life where the long years of striving is ended. I did what I set out to do and Ive accomplished everything I wanted. Ive traveled and lived around the world, met Presidents and Kings, and participated in history. The family is grown and while my labors have far from ended, their only purpose is to provide for the necessities of life. Any sense of personal investment is gone and many of the things that I set aside have risen again in my mind, beckoning a return to the simple pleasures of my youth. Not out of any sense of nostalgia or vain attempts at recapturing moments that can never return, but to just do the things that made me happy.
Among these is baseball. Of all the loves of my youth, this is the one that caused the deepest hurt in my heart, but time, experience, and plenty of therapy have granted me a measure of equanimity and the ability to just let things go. I live in Southern California now, which interestingly is the first place I actually chose to live. Every other place Ive lived in was a decision made by the government or through forced circumstance.
The great thing about the region is it has an embarrassment of sports teams. While I dont think Ill ever feel like Ill really belong, Ive definitely insinuated myself here and its dovetailed with my renewed interest in baseball. Weve got the Angels and Dodgers here, and while Ive been to a few Angels games and I dont have anything bad to say about them, I threw my lot in with the Dodgers.
I take that back, theres one thing that really bugs me about the Angels theyre in Anaheim. In Orange County. Yet they call themselves the Los Angeles Angels (of Anaheim). I cant abide such blatant falsehoods and I wonder just who on earth this bit of chicanery is meant for. Everyone who lives here knows theyre not in LA or LA County, so the name can only be for people who dont live here and why would they care either way They ought to just go back to being the California Angels. Everyone was happy with that back then. They made movies about them and everything. Now theyre just kinda there and known more for wasting a generational talent and getting me free medium fries from McDonalds when they win a game.
But the Dodgers To a kid growing up on the East Coast, they were synonymous with LA and California. Fernando. Tommy Lasorda. Vin Scully. There was always a romantic notion of California born of TV and movies, and the Dodgers got wrapped up in all of that as well. And while the real world is obviously far from that concocted illusion, it had completely captured my imagination as a kid and its hold is so strong that I can never shake it.
I dont think its just me, either. I think a lot of people here live in two Californias the one we deal with every day and the romantic ideal of our imagination. Every time you get beat down by the traffic or the receipt at the grocery store, all it really takes is that one perfect sunset and the California of the mind re-asserts itself again for a while longer. There is magic here fleeting, near insubstantial, and elusive. But every once in awhile you have it in your grasp for just a moment and gifted a glimpse of Paradise before it flits away.
At any rate, when I moved out here, everyone was a Dodger fan unless they lived in Orange County (which I dont), so I figured why not. Theyre a team with a storied history with an equally historic ballpark, and if I was to be a true southern Californian, I was gonna be a Dodger fan.
I didnt jump in whole hog, but mostly in fits and starts. I thought it was odd the Houston Astros seemed to have the Dodger batters dialed in and then it came out that they were cheating, which not only offended whatever sense of justice was left in me, it revealed something else to me I was mad on behalf of a baseball team. I was in it.
I still didnt really get into the weeds until the pandemic season of 2020, when I was stuck at home and didnt have much to do except hang out with my family and listen to baseball games on the radio. Most of the games were being played during the day, so I ended up listening to almost every game that season while assembling puzzles, cooking, or re-arranging the house. With the shortened season and day games, I was able to really dial into the rhythms of the players and begin to understand the game management philosophy of Dave Roberts, the Dodgers manager.
By the time the post-season came around, I knew these players. I had a feel for how their at-bats would go in various situations (the types of pitches they bit on, what they tended to do when down in the count, etc) and also a good picture for when Roberts would yank a pitcher and why. It was the first time Id watched a World Series in maybe 25 years where I was completely dialed in and invested in at least one of the teams.
And then they won. And I was finally, completely, a Dodger fan. I bought a hat and got a T-shirt.
Over the following years, I attended games, bought merch and got excited when they signed Ohtani in the off season. After that, I followed this team more closely than previous years, and after attending probably the , I knew this team was something special.
They even had a Mookie.
And so the season ended and the Dodgers once again won their Division, heading into the post-season amidst a mix of hope and hesitation theyve been one of the best teams in baseball for the last ten years, but they were never quite able to get over that hump and win the whole fucking thing outside the pandemic season, which a lot of people dismiss.
After getting into a 0-2 hole against the Padres, there was a feeling of here we go again. The Padres have been the Nemesis these last few years, bouncing the Dodgers out in the first series of the post-season, but then something new happened.
The Dodgers bats woke up. Freddie Freeman, playing on a bum ankle and gutting his way through the post-season, became Mr. October and delivered clutch hits again and again, including the sweetest grand slam Ive ever seen in Game 1 of the World Series. The Dodgers rolled the Yankees 4 games to 1 and finally won in a full season, fulfilling all the expectations of the last decade and cementing Dave Roberts as one of the most exceptional managers of our times.
Amid the exultation and celebration, the season is now ended and we are bereft until Opening Day next Spring. The days will be shorter, football will assume its preeminence in the calendar, and the world will continue to turn about its axis.
Im extremely happy I returned to baseball and fortunate to follow one of the best teams in recent memory, who delivered real magic this year and enriched my life in many ways this season, providing a soundtrack to my summer and delivering fantastic experiences for me and my family. I wouldve been poorer for having missed it.
#Baseball #Diary #Dodgers #PersonalHistory #Tides
Do you write a diary / journal Do you do it for work or personal notes Do you create the notes digitally on an app or in a notebook, or similar
Answer the multiple-choice poll, leave some comments below.
Now brainstorming: a career as an actor. Didn't think I'd move to LA and try to make it in Hollywood, but at this point I've got little to lose and nothing to do...so why not
Going to get myself another round of PRF for my under-eyes (those dark circles are coming back...ugh), and a chemical peel for my face. My lymphatic drainage facial the other day has already worked wonders, so I think before long I might be in good shape from head to toe.
Burner phones and erotic art go under the hammer in Banksy sale
Erection of phallic sculpture in Naples turns heads
Some random silly stuff from my diaries and journals
It'll be a huge thread!
I have started practising a lot. I hate practising.
Okay...just watched "Kiki's Delivery Service" for the first time since I was a child (yay Studio Ghibli Fest), and all I can say is it must have made a much stronger impression on young me than I thought.
10/26/2002, Saturday. Went to peace rally in Federal Plaza at noon. Took lots of pics. Could be historical.
Recent discovery: Celia Fiennes, who between 1684-1703 rode side-saddle through every county in England.
Quit my real estate training: I hate the occupational licensing process to begin with, I can't even bring myself to study the material on my own, the other students are dumb, and the teacher literally mocks and insults me. I don't need that in my life.
When I look at myself in the mirror or in my selfies, I don't even look like someone who'd have a normal job I look more like an expensive escort.
10100
The two things I did in 2024 that feel worthwhile looking back on it were seeing Dune in the theater eight times and seeing that Dutch escort twice. Nothing else compares, really. All the rest feels so...superfluous.
Watched "Dune: Part Two" for the first time since the last showing of it I caught in theaters. Even on a small screen at home it feels so nostalgic already, like what I imagine reconnecting with a close friend must be like.
AISNS
SNS
ThreadsTwitter
BlueskyTwitter
MisskeyTwitter
MastodonTwitter
Pixelfed
Today we visited both of my parents and my father-in-law. Having spent most of our lives, to some degree, being looked after by our parents, we are now at the stage where we are the ones who worry about them.
The mind is so powerful that it can make you a prisoner in your own home, cutting yourself off from family and friends. There are people I know of (friends of family/friends) who are currently going through this, and there are no easy solutions...
(1/4)
Support Independent Type, 2020
An entire book of type specimens.
2025
For the past few years I've had a BTS diary/ planner. Firstly we had a Dynamite calendar, then a Butter, then Proof diary. I'd expected 2025 to be fluffy sweaters, but it's a choice between two sets of very old photos: Dark & Wild or Love Yourself Answer.
I feel maybe it's a year for an Oxfam charity diary.
I have just bought a stack of red bubble BTS stuff for Christmas though. Like that doesn't count as Christmas shopping.
Friends! Why not dabble in a podcast on detailing my unusual life
Something to tickle the funny bone for a
Give it a try! & prod on the old button while you're at it!
Just finished by . Inspiring stuff but also heartbreaking. Made me angry! (even made me laugh at one point when an entry in his summed up the madness of by reporting in one sentence the happy news he had recieved some peppermint creams, then in the next sentence reporting the death of a comrade)
I have decided that keeping a will help me to declutter my mind. The fact that I've started this on an ordinary Wednesday in October rather than the 1st of January will be good for me I've always been obsessed with things fitting into neat little boxes, with ideal start and end dates, and with the goal of completing perfect collections. This is, of course, unhealthy behaviour that often results in fixating on the collection rather than enjoying the individual events or components.
(1/6)
Went to the mall, got some nice white shirts from Banana Republic, and I've got a whole bunch of supplies being delivered. Objective: DIY new wardrobe of striking metallics, the colors I'll be wearing from now on (if they suit me as much as the AI renditions make it appear...).
Stockholm, October 14, 2024, 19:44. Dear diary, I'm tired and freezing on the hill, at night. Where is my damn comet
Still on the ramp-up phase of my steroid cycle. As of today I'm up to 40 mg of dianabol, and experiencing no adverse side effects at all: I'm just toner, trimmer, and, yes, hornier. A better person, TBH I think I might regret having to cycle off of it, but it is a necessity.
Farmworkers come from all over to demand their rights, oftentimes losing sleep and sacrificing their limited time off of work.
face : , horrifically , conditions. But they are , and you can with them!