Called up to the Majors

The days ahead were filled with craigslist.

I have been reading a great deal lately about the dangerous of craigslist.org, and have even seen some tips on how to use the website safely. Let me say for the record that I am a fan of craigslist. I have found each of my apartments and roommates since college on craigslist. And I have had a string of uncommonly fantastic roommates. I have bought no less than three beds on craigslist, none of which had bugs. I have bought a room divider, a futon, and two bicycles. Craigslist even helped me find a local band to transport a new-to-me bed to my house with their van. They were nice guys. They gave me their demo cd and only smacked one of the door frames.

I have sold two of the three beds, and I’m still sleeping on the third. I have sold a microwave, television, and scores of desks and bookshelves. And the room divider, and the futon. The only issue I had with any of these experiences was getting the futon up two flights of stairs; it was difficult because I couldn’t figure out how to get it apart. When I sold it, the gentlemen who bought it had no problem prying apart and toting it back down without so much as a grunt. While I feel that I got the raw end of this deal, there’s no arguing that I haven't had a lot of luck on craigslist.

I’m sure you’re all dying to know my secrets to safely using craigslist. Well here they are: I don’t offer up any sexual favors on craigslist and meet the men who say they want to pay, and I refuse to meet anyone who responds to my emails with less than adequate skill in both composition and punctuation. So far, I have not regretted it.

And I even, once up on a time, found a job on craigslist that was nothing short of a dream come true.

One day in September of 2008, I found a post on craigslist that advertised an opportunity to hawk concessions at Dodger Stadium.

There were two reasons that I flipped completely out. One, the ad said that the job could pay as much as $150 in one night. Two, it was peripherally related to baseball. I love baseball. It’s a simple statement, but my reasons are complex, and probably a little odd.

A lot of people like to say that baseball is a game of inches: out by an inch, out by a mile. I don’t know that this statement is any less true for football, though, in which the entire objective is to move the ball a number of inches down the field. I like to say that baseball is a game of moments; the game breaks down into segments which are measured by achievement, and not by time. Games are divided by innings, which are divided by outs, also called plays or at-bats, which can often divide further into strikes.

All of these moments happen in threes. The home team gets three times three chances to beat the visiting team in the bottom of each inning. The batter gets three swings before he has wasted his chance to run the bases; the pitcher can send the batter three bad throws before he owes the batter something he can hit. The defending team must stop three men before they can return to offense, and each man scoring a run has already touched three bags, three gauntlets on the field.

To a storyteller’s mind, this means that each at-bat, each half-inning, and each game, has a beginning, middle, and end.

This is why extra innings make me very upset; they destroy the Aristotelian structure of the game. But at least there isn’t a clock ticking somewhere, and the game continues to play, moment by moment, achievement by achievement.

Even more storylike, each moment, however small in itself, can have a huge impact on the rest of the game.

Consider a game in June of 2007 in which Kurt Schilling was an out away from pitching his only no-hitter and allowed the first hit. Perhaps baseball is a game of inches, because pitching an inch away from a no-hitter results in just another game. But look back in the scorecard and see that Schilling also had a perfect game until Julio Lugo committed an error in the fifth, allowing a man on base. An error removed the possibility of a perfect game, but the possibility of throwing a no-hitter was still there. But when Lugo made the error, he made it possible for another player came up to bat. If there had been no error, Schilling would have pitched to only 27 men. Instead, he pitched to 28, and allowed the only hit to the 28th.

There are no unnecessary moments in baseball, and nothing is too small to be insignificant. This is why statistics play such an important role in baseball. People even more obsessive than I am record each of these tiny moments, and nothing is ever forgotten or lost. This is so that every moment of every game can be measured against those that came before, and we can all understand its significance in the greater story.

All I really mean to say is, I love baseball. And when I got a chance to work at Dodger Stadium, I jumped all over it. I replied to the email, and received a quick reply. I was told to grab my gear and head over to Dodger Stadium. They’d have a uniform for me when I got there.