Daily Loaf

Submission#4: Chris Dvorscak | My Eckerd: “Party Time, Excellent”

Chris Dvorscak
Eckerd College
Senior, Anthropology (major), Management (minor)
21, Crystal River
My Eckerd is: “A tropical vacation spot.”

Chris is a baseball player, an anthropology major and an underwater archaeologist, so his tour of Eckerd naturally takes us to the ballfield, the dorms (where we learn something about the anthropology of party animals) and the swimming pool.

Video:

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Welcome to On the Radar, where we preview up-and-coming arts events to mark your calendar for. This weekend marks the return of American Stage’s August Wilson series, the third in a ten-year commitment to producing each of the acclaimed African-American playwright’s major works. (Check out what CL theater critic Mark Leib thought of the first two shows in the series, King Hedley II and Gem of the Ocean.)

August Wilson’s best play, Fences, is about Troy Maxson, an African-American rubbish collector whose bitterness and sense of lost opportunities make him a problematic husband and father. Set in Pittsburgh in 1957, it’s also about a time when new opportunities for black citizens were slowly becoming real, but the indignities of the past were too raw to be forgotten. As in all Wilson’s plays, the language is poetic, the characters are indelible, and the metaphors — including, in this case, the trumpet carried by Troy’s brain-damaged brother Gabriel — are brilliant. What happens to a dream deferred? Wilson’s answer is riveting. (Pictured: Evander Duck, Jr., Travus Leroux and Jayne Trinette in Fences) Sept. 25-Oct. 11, 7:30 p.m. Tues.-Thurs., 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 3 p.m. matinee Sat.-Sun; Previews Sept. 19-20 and 23-24, 3 and 8 p.m. Sat., 3 p.m. Sun., 7:30 p.m. Weds.-Thurs., American Stage, 163 Third St. N., St. Petersburg, $26-$45, $10 student rush tickets 30 minutes prior to curtain; Sun., Sept. 20 and Tues., Sept. 29 are “pay what you can” admission, americanstage.org. – Mark Leib

In my attempt to join the athletic world, I attended a Rays’ game during the recent Red Sox series. I was joined by about six of my friends from college. We all collectively agreed to get the cheapest seats possible which was, of course, in outfield. During the fifth inning, I think, I decided to visit the concessions to buy a few beers for myself and friends.

Twenty-four dollars later, I found myself carefully shuffling along my row of strangers to get to my seat when suddenly I felt an energy in the crowd that I can’t describe. My inexperience with spectator sports is quite embarrassing, and what happens in the next moment is even more embarrassing. I looked up at my friends, who were now standing, facing me, with their arms in the air, shouting something I couldn’t understand. Read the rest of this entry »

And now for something a little different. File this under “library, treasures of the.”

Whenever I’m blue, I get a book down from the shelf, turn to page 78 and begin to laugh.

It’s The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), edited by Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris.

It’s one of those books available by special order. You can also find a used copy online for $85 or so. It’s worth every penny. You can also find it at the library, which is a pretty cool place. It’s like the Internet, only with stuff printed out.

On page 78, the authors simply list their favorite nicknames of ballplayers. I’ve never needed more than five bites of the first column before I begin to feel better.

I present this selection of names as a public service to all humanity. If only the United Nations General Assembly would join me in my mission to bring peace to the world . . . .

If this was read aloud before that body, in all the languages of earth, we could achieve a just and lasting peace.

It’s hard to fight when you’re laughing.

(I use the Rocky Bridges card as an illustration. The nickname ‘Rocky’ isn’t nearly as funny as his real name — Everett. But Boyd and Harris write an essay on every baseball card in their book and the essay on Bridges is probably the funniest.)

Unfortunately, the tradition of baseball nicknames seems to have been lost. Since Boyd and Harris compiled this list three decades ago, there haven’t been too many colorful additions. Chris Berman does his part on ESPN. There was a player on the University of Florida baseball team some years back named Dave Majeski. I tried to get one of my sportswriter friends to work Purple Mountains Majeski into his story one day. He did, but it didn’t catch on.

The baseball nickname is the entymological equivalent of the dodo. So appreciate these names while you can.

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Sure, it happens at the movies all the time. Somebody jumps out of the darkness with a knife and we all shudder. A whole film genre has been based on such scares. But when was the last time that happened to you while reading a book?

For me, that happened just last week, at the halfway point of The Scarecrow (Little, Brown, $27.99) by Michael Connelly. Even though you know something is up, the moment that makes you jump and do your Good-God! James Brown impression hits you with the same shock and fear that grips the novel’s hero, Jack McEvoy.

Moments like that make you appreciate what a great novelist Connelly has become. His books will still be read 75 years from now in the same way that college students are required to read Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. Connelly leaves most of his contemporaries in the dust.

The Scarecrow doesn’t feature Connelly’s main attraction, L.A. Detective Harry Bosch, but instead focuses on newspaper reporter McEvoy, the central character in Connelly’s The Poet and a supporting character in a couple of other Connelly books.

This story grows from the freak show that is the modern newspaper business. McEvoy is a dedicated and talented veteran journalist, so he is laid off from the Los Angeles Times and forced to train his young-sprout replacement, a naïve and ambitious rookie from the University of Florida. Connelly vents a lot about what’s happened to the newspaper business — he was an LA Times star for several years before becoming a novelist — but uses that heartbreak to open the door to yet another thrilling narrative. It’s a great tale about a cast-aside reporter on the trail of a bad-ass computer-whiz serial killer. That the book also shows evidence of the immorality of big-time journalism is an added bonus.

It’s a thrilling, masterful book and it reminds us of why we love to read: we love to get caught in the web by a brilliant storyteller. Connelly lives in the area and he has a few shoutouts to Florida homies that make the book even more fun.

It seems that it was just 20 minutes ago that Connelly published his last novel, The Brass Verdict, and he’s got another one — Nine Dragons, the latest Harry Bosch novel — coming out in October. Janet Maslin of the New York Times is always a tough review, but she praised The Scarecrow, then said at the end of her review that Connelly was too prolific, that he needed to slow down. But Dude — as long as the books are this good, please … please keep them coming.

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Some time in the middle innings of last night’s Rays home opener against the Yankees, communications director Chris Costello ambled by my spot in the press box and told me that owner Stuart Sternberg was doing an impromptu media session across the room.

I hustled over and joined the throng; Stu answered questions but kept peering past heads to keep and eye on the field. At one point, he quickly diverted his attention in time to see B.J. Upton’s remarkable back-toward-the-field grab, which is destined to go down in Rays highlight lore, probably as “the Willie Mays catch.”

I was there with my handy Flip video camera and caught Stu’s reaction and that of the press people surrounding him. It’s a quick portrait of an owner who understands his obligation to the media, but is first and foremost a fan of his team.

Here’s the video of the catch from the pressbox:

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I realize that there is definitely a difference between the first week in April and the last week in September (or even October). The Royals were in first place in the AL Central until April 14th a year ago before remembering they were the Royals. A poll on ESPN this weekend asked how much stock you put in a team’s record after the first week. Rightly, the vast majority of America said none at all.  That’s not to say the first week is completely useless, though.  Storylines develop. Questions are not answered in the first week, but questions can be raised.

After this 2008 game Morpheus contacted Coco Crisp offering to liberate him from the Matrix.

In the first series of the season Tampa Bay took 2 of 3 at Fenway Park.  That’s not the whole story, though.  Peter Gammons of ESPN said that while the Rays won the opening series in Fenway last week, they didn’t NEED to. Gammons’s point was that you can’t “fake it” for 162 games (i.e., that the Rays really do have the talent to compete). He’s right that the Rays have the talent, but assessing whether or not the Rays possess the talent to compete isn’t why that series was important. Read the rest of this entry »

He said he had been “young and stupid.” He said he didn’t really know what he was putting into his body. He told the throng of reporters, with a straight face, “I’m here to take my medicine.”

Irony aside, Alex Rodriguez faced the full media at the Yankees Spring Training Complex in Tampa today, holding a tightly choreographed news conference to discuss his steroid use.

The New York Times reported:

2:00 p.m.
The first dramatic moment of the afternoon: After talking about how his cousin and he obtained the drugs and did them from 2001-03 and saying he “thought he knew everything” when he reached the big leagues at 18 – even though this was 7 years before his admitted use of PED’s took place – Rodriguez mentioned his Yankees teammates.

With Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte looking on, Rodriguez stopped, speechless, for 37 seconds. He drank water once, tipped back in his seat, and looked over to his right as they sat on chairs like so many members of the press. He eventually said just two words under his breath: “Thank you.” He appeared to choke up, or at least try to.

This is just coming down the pipe: New York Yankees‘ third baseman Alex Rodriguez sat down for an interview with Peter Gammons of ESPN this afternoon when he admitted to using steroids between 2001-2003. The interview will air on Sportscenter at 6 p.m. tonight.

Here’s an exerpt:

His voice shaking at times, Alex Rodriguez met head-on allegations that he tested positive for steroids six years ago, telling ESPN on Monday that he did take performance-enhancing drugs while playing for the Texas Rangers during a three-year period beginning in 2001.

“When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day,” Rodriguez told ESPN’s Peter Gammons in an interview in Miami Beach, Fla. “Back then, [baseball] was a different culture…

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I will never be the same person again. Sundance marked a transition in my life, and there is no turning back. I cannot escape the vortex into which I have fallen. I have always liked movies (I rarely ever saw one I did not like) but never realized that they would be my life’s ambition. And that is how Sundance changed my life: It opened my eyes.

I did not try to go star gazing. I did not try to make it into any fashionable parties. I threw away all the bull that goes along with Sundance and got to its essence. I completely immersed myself into each film I saw. So much so that I do not know if I could remember all the films I saw. Some stuck in my mind: a gay zombie movie [Otto, or up with Dead People], a great baseball flick [Sugar], and a documentary outlining the country’s economic collapse [IOUSA] (”hate to say I told you so” comes to mind), but the entire experience changed me. I thought, “wow, not only is this the greatest thing that has come into my life, but I can do it too.” And so it began, my rocky but enthused trip into trying to make films. How will it all turn out? We will see.

Algenis Perez Soto plays a Dominican pitcher in Iowa in "Sugar"

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Yep, that Jason Bartlett.

At least according to the Tampa Bay chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America; heads up to my Favorite Sports Blog Ever, firejoemorgan.com, for their hilarious commentary.

I can’t say I disagree with FJM’s assessment that the selection of Barlett for this honor is, at best, horribly misguided conjecture.

Longoria, anyone?

Earlier today, Eric Snider, Joran Oppelt and I trekked to Tropicana Field, home of the first-place Tampa Bay Rays, to pay a special visit to their manager, Joe Maddon, baseball genius and fine-wine connoisseur. We can’t reveal yet the purpose for our visit, but I did capture some images.

As I suspected, the fake grass does look just like the Brady Bunch grass up close.

Joe was extremely gracious and very cool to let us bother him during the middle of a pennant race.

Maybe we were good luck. The Rays bitchslapped the Yankees shortly thereafter.

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