Baseball Season Sunday

I'm usually at my happiest during baseball season, even more so when the Giants are playing well. The Giants are playing very well, in first place in their division, with 20 wins and 12 losses, a .625 winning percentage. That would translate into 101 wins for the season, which rarely happens in major league baseball.

The team swept Atlanta this weekend with three straight wins by the scores of 2-1, 3-1 and 4-1.

But as all baseball fans know, it's early, there are 130 games left. And last year the Giants lost more games than they won and fell far behind their arch-rival LA Dodgers, who won the division easily.

Besides baseball, I love numbers and at least some parts of math. My fantasy baseball team, the Mud Lake Mafia, is off to a rocky start, in 8th place in a league of fourteen teams. I keep the stats for my team and study them every day.

I project forward how the team ought to perform, and frequently drop and add players in order to maximize the team's chances. This is a game -- fantasy baseball -- that makes your brain work. You need math, pattern recognition, intuition and risk-taking.

I believe my team should finish higher in the standings, probably fourth. In order to be better than that, they need to accumulate 5,000 points over the 162 game schedule. (Fantasy baseball tracks actual MLB games, so your "team" is a list of actual players in the league and your results are whatever they do day to day.)

They've not been doing that well. As of yesterday I projected them to only accumulate 4,470 points, which would probably achieve 7th place.

You have more players on your roster than can play each day, so you also have to figure out who to put into the lineup that particular day, depending on the pitcher-hitter matchups and other factors.

Athletes have good streaks and bad streaks, like all of the rest of us. Immersing myself in baseball, fantasy baseball, and math is one of the few ways I have found to find peace in a stressful world.

But I don't like the sound of 7th place. I like the sound of first place.

I also like my garden (above).

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Raising a Champ

Who knows how many more Saturdays like this one are left -- days when I get up early and drive one of my young athletes to a game. I only have one young athlete competing at the moment, so today she and I navigated our way down to San Carlos (a rich suburb in Silicon Valley) for her contest.

Her team played fairly well but lost 2-4.

A rematch in San Francisco is set for next Sunday afternoon.

As the boys get closer and closer to moving away for college, I realize how much of my youngest three kids' lives have occurred right here in this modest apartment in the Mission.

I also realize that nothing at all irritates me about my kids.

Not the habit of one to leave his dirty socks on the rug or his tooth-brushing residue in the same red plastic cup every night he sleeps here. Not his brother's propensity to stay out so late I have to leave a fresh $20 bill at the front door for his frequent taxi rides home, after the buses have stopped running. Not my daughter's habit of speaking beneath her breath so I cannot hear what she is saying.

Maybe the last habit doesn't bother me any longer because it has stopped.

Over the past few weeks, Julia seems to have found herself as a high school freshman. She has some friends now, and she has a report card of all A+s. She is headed into the honors track in numerous subjects, has placed out of Spanish2 to get into 3, and is doubling down on math to be able to take Calculus before heading to college three years from this August.

Today she played pretty well on the pitch, but at school she is even more competitive academically.

I like that. I like raising champions.

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Goodbye to a Gray Sock

Monday mornings are challenging around here because my teenaged sons like to sleep over and watch their favorite shows late on Sunday nights. Meanwhile, I have to get up early and get to work, never an easy challenge at my age and stage of life.

In any event, today my alarm rang at 6:30 a.m., and as I showered, shaved and dressed, I started thinking about socks. Old socks. Every piece of clothing I own is old because I've barely spent a cent in years.

That is going to have to change soon, for professional reasons.

But when it comes to socks, I have certain favorites. They are the few gray socks I own. I have black, blue and gray socks only. But the gray ones are the ones I feel most comfortable with.

Today as I was pulling on one of my chosen old gray socks onto my left foot, it tore open a small hole in the heel.

Now I used to sew up such holes, but I no longer have the dexterity to sew, so I knew today would be the very last day for this fine old sock. His final day has come; tomorrow, when I take him off he will have to go into the trash.

The sadness of that has stayed with me throughout the day.

But many other much bigger happiness and deeper sadness have occurred since, rendering all of this silly. Still, I miss that old sock!

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Playing Hard in a Loss

Julia's team had at least ten great scoring chances but simply couldn't convert in today's game, on a windy, chilly morning in Pacifica. So they lost 0-2.

Afterwards, she seemed down, so tonight I got one of her favorite dinners -- Chinese food from a small cafe near here. That definitely seemed to improve her mood, and she soon was laughing while watching TV with Dylan.

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On His Way to the Prom

My dear son, Dylan. What a cutie!

Evolution

I suppose the best any of us can hope for is that during our very brief time here on earth we somehow, personally and/or collectively, help advance our species', or at least our families' prospects.

As I dropped off my youngest son at his mom's today, I thought about the ways he and I are similar, and different. Dylan can probably be described as shy; I certainly was at his age. But he is nowhere near as shy as I was, and still am.

He can also be described as a party person. No one ever labeled me that way.

Proof: He is going with a date to his high school prom tonight -- something I never had the guts to do.

We've been talking the past few days about his college options. He has them, but seems to self-depreciate his ability to make a decision. Something as important as where to go to college is such a significant decision that any 18-year-old should be cut a huge break if he feels complex and ambiguous feelings trying to make it.

Maybe I can help him here.

Dylan reads Faulkner. He's fallen in love with one of the greatest American authors a year before I did. For me, it happened as a freshman at the University of Michigan. I was assigned those readings. For Dylan it is happening in high school, and voluntarily.

This is a simply anecdotal post. There is no science here. But in my eyes, my beautiful youngest son has already surpassed anything I could have accomplished at his age.

Prom Season

My youngest son is going to his prom a week from now. He is taking his friend, Izzy (Isabel). Until recently, he maintained that he would never go to this event, so I am pleasantly surprised to learn that he has changed his mind.

That means all three of my sons will have done what I didn't have the guts to do, as a shy, raw teenager.

I think it is a measure of social maturity to participate in these kinds of events, especially if you are naturally shy.

My youngest son qualifies as shy but also social. Tomorrow morning he flies to the University of Montana to find out whether he wants to go to college there.

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