Three (Grossly Self-Important) Degrees of Separation; or, My "Role" in Glavine's 300th Win

(Note lest I seem vain: the talent of your teammates in no way reflects upon your own.)

If the Mets' bullpen had only blown the game last Tuesday, dayenu.*

If Alfonso Soriano had only pulled up lame last night, dayenu.

If Lou Pinella had only inserted Mike Fontenot to replace him, dayenu.

If Mike Fontenot had only gotten an at bat against Tom Glavine, dayenu.

That Mike Fontenot was the final out in Tom Glavine's 300th win, well, that's definitive proof of His plan. 

I mean, anyone could've been that final out, but in His infinite wisdom, He decided to let a guy I turned double plays with for a year in Legion be the final out in the 300th victory of the nominal ace of my beloved Mets. 

Dayenu, certainly, dayenu ... but big ups to Him upon High for making this night all the sweeter for me.  I suppose I owe him one.  Maybe I won't take his name in vain for the next twenty-four hours.

Maybe.

*For all you goyim, "dayenu" means "it would have been enough."

Comments

[Tim Lacy]

So, did you also almost go to LSU? Could you have also been Ryan Theriot, the other half of the "Cajun Connection"? Wow. This post now fully explains, to me at least, your fascination with baseball. - TL

[SEK]

I did go to LSU, but not to play baseball. My last year in Legion was my last year in organized ball. Mike was also three years younger than me -- if I'm remembering right, he played Varsity for Kentwood from his freshmen year forward.

Also, I should add a note: playing with someone who's great says absolutely nothing about one's own skills. I was an all-field, hit-behind-the-pitcher-type player. Once my knees started barking and my range dropped, I moved from short to third, and there's no such thing as an all-field third baseman, so that was it for my playing days.

[CR]

This post totally screwed my day, as it provoked me to spend several hours, in my damned office, googling all the guys that I played with back in the day to see what became of them, when I should have been working. I really already knew, of course, what became of them as players...

So strange to find the guy who was probably one of the best LLers in the US back when we were 12 (would have f'd Drury up right good - seriously) is now a Dental Insurance Analyst. A few inches taller and everything would have been different. Or the guy who made it to AAA with the Yankees is now a cop back in his home town. Or maybe it's only strange to me. It's a perfectly normal chain of events, I suppose.

I found a photo collection of a bunch of the best of my LL / legion (but not HS) teammates - the ones who went Div I - playing wiffle ball this summer in someone's backyard. It was a memorial wiffle-ball game, in memory of one of my other teammates who drunkenly fell off of a roof and died during college. They have gotten, in some cases, very very fat. But when they bat, you can recognize the stance from when they were 12 - 15 - 18 years old.

The guy they were commemorating charged the mound on me when I was 15 and he was 14. But when he got out to me, and I dropped my glove, he didn't really know what to do next, and so that was that. My dad had cut him from the 15 yr old all-star team the day before...

They are townies, then. They went home after college. And back then, they had what we thought of as "hot girlfriends" who'd sit in the stands, game after game, and it seems that some of them have married them... The girlfriends, now wives, look tired and old. They look tired and old. Academia shaves the years off, somehow. My wife and I look ten years younger than the lot of them.

(Anyway, this has been a slight, momentary, midlife crisis. Thanks for hosting, Scott...)

[Chuck]

Hey, that's cool. I once sold Tom Glavine building supplies when I was working at a Home Depot, so there's my connection. Many of the Braves, Falcons, and CNN types lived just down the road from "my" Home Depot, so I have a nice collection of brief encounters with semi-famous athletes.

[Chuck]

By the way, those Braves will now crush the Mets in the NL East.

[SEK]

Academia shaves the years off, somehow.

It's all the sitting inside. Sunlight, you know.

For the record, I didn't search for Fontenot, I've kept track of his career from the time he was at LSU.

By the way, those Braves will now crush the Mets in the NL East.

Not with that staff, they won't. Last night was a fluke. Wait until Jose stops flinching at phantoms.

[Jack]

Braves/Mets- It doesn't matter they all suck. Dayeinu. ;)