Back On The Juice

As many of you probably know, I haven't been feeling particularly well of late. This is part of that “Crohn’s” package I bought 6 years ago. Boy was that a rip-off. Anyways, I signed a no-backsies agreement so I guess I’m stuck with it for now. A bureaucratic mess-up left me Remicade-less so my doctor and I thought it might be a good opportunity to see if the Crohn’s would stay in remission. While I have no advanced degree in medicine, my doctor has no such excuse. In honor of his mistake, I received another infusion of Remicade last Thursday. Now I can feel better.

Success!

Yes that’s right. My tryout for the Israel baseball league was extremely successful. I successfully navigated my way to Tel Aviv. I successfully paid my entrance fee. And I successfully filled out my injury waiver. I also successfully met league founder Larry Baras and former GM of the Red Sox Dan Duquette. Unfortunately, that’s where the success ended. It is my sad duty to inform all of my loyal readers that I did not make the initial cut.

It was a good experience though. Meeting people who are running the league definitely gave me a leg up in terms of trying to volunteer administratively for the league. It was also interesting to see what a tryout is like, and to see what they are looking for in terms of talent. I also had a bunch of fun. I can’t even remember the last time I took a ground ball.

Two particularly interesting notes that I discovered about myself:

1) I am out of shape. I knew that being sick and not working out for the past two months wouldn’t help, but can it really have hurt that much? I don’t know if it was my Crohn’s acting up or what (it hasn’t been playing nice lately) but after doing remarkably little physical activity at the tryout I was INCREDIBLY sore afterwards, and the day afterwards, and two days afterwards. We’re talking full body pain. Standing up and sitting down could take upwards of two minutes (unless my muscles gave out and I simply fell over). Personally, I think my brain was so hyped up for the tryout that it psychosomatically made my muscles sore.

2) I don’t have a strong arm. I used to have one, but apparently I left it behind in my youth. It’s weird when something is ingrained in your psyche and then you find out that it isn’t really true. I don’t know if my muscles simply degenerated but I swear my arm used to be above average. I guess that was when I was above average height and weight and not 5’5”. That’s also around the time that I stopped receiving coaching so I’m sure my technique remains that of a 12 year old. You know what they say. Old dreams and identity defining traits die hard.

Tryouts Tomorrow

Bright and early tomorrow morning I am heading out with Michelle to Tel Aviv. Why so early? It’s not to avoid the traffic from the gay pride parade if that’s what you are thinking. Tomorrow morning at 8:30 is the Israeli tryout for the inaugural season of the Israel baseball league. The league is being funded by a Boston entrepreneur and Dan Duquette (former general manager of the Boston Red Sox) is in charge of player development. I know that I don’t have a chance of actually making the league because they are filling it with players that can actually, well, play. But the tryout should be a fun time. How many people do you know who get to try out for a professional baseball league?

What I am really looking to do is make some connections with the people working on the administrative side of the league. I would love to volunteer to help the league and get some experience working in baseball. How cool would that be? I’ll tell you. It would be very cool. So cool that I would need a new cool cell phone so I could talk to my new cool friends all of the time. It’s ok though. We can still be friends. If you’re cool.