Courage and Dignity

The story of Jason Collins' recent first-person column in Sports Illustrated hit the popular airwaves and the internet yesterday in a major way. For non-sports fans, Jason is a professional basketball player with a twelve year career, who came out as a gay man in this column. His choice to make an announcement of this information made him the first male player in American major professional sports to do so, despite the apparent evidence that every team in every sport has one or more gay athletes.

Before Jason, no other professional male athlete in a major sport came out during their career. Welsh Rugby superstar, Gareth Thomas came out toward the end of his career, but then left the game to advocate for gay rights. Another brit, John Amaechi, came out after completing a relatively successful professional basketball career, and has contributed an articulate dignity to the evolving public discussion on homosexuality in this country.

But why should I care enough to blog the issue? I have adored girls since I can first remember meeting one in nursery school. I still remember her name. As I do the girl I kissed in 2nd grade, after which I was sent to the principal's office and paddled. I was lucky to gain my first real girlfriend in 3rd grade (a whole year!), and then a parade of great crushes every year thereafter. By law school, my buddies in San Diego kidded that I was the "fall-in-love-guy" in their broad circle of friends, because I went for every rollergirl and punker chick that cruised by us while we sat on the boardwalk checking the Mission Beach surf. That is, of course, until Angela moved in next door and stole my heart from the world, forever.

Yet despite all the evidence of my orientation, despite the obvious google-eyes I had for nearly every girl at Hall High School, I spent a three-year period of my life, 9th to 11th grade, the subject of nearly daily, merciless bullying by a small group of kids who persisted in calling me a "fag" or "gay" or "homo." I never understood the genesis of this experience and it caused me unending pain and anxiety at a period of my life when I wanted nothing more than to date girls. I still suffer occasional nightmares from that bullying experience.

Which leads me to wonder how brutally difficult life must be for a teenager who actually is gay, but is terrified of the possibility of being called out for it. The data regarding teen gay suicide does not lie. And that's a cultural shame of tremendous magnitude. In this small way, I want to congratulate Jason Collins for his courage and dignity. The conversation might make some people uncomfortable, and it's not for me to criticize the basis for their discomfort. But the shift is on. And conversation starters like Jason Collins' will benefit us as a society in the long run.

Willie Hutch -- I Choose You

 Beautiful old groove...sampler's delight.

Fun and Agony at the Ball Park

Last night tres_arbolitos and I attended the Seattle Mariners vs Houston Astros professional baseball game at Safeco Field courtesy of the Houston Astros.  My son's strength, conditioning, and arm-care coach is in the process of developing a process for the Astros' minor league pitching development (or at least a little part of that).  He met with front office brass before the game and then treated him and several of his young pitching proteges to take in the game from just above home plate.

The game was a mess for M's fans as the team performed poorly against one of the worst teams (presently) in Major League Baseball.  But the company was great and son's coach was in rare form revealing some of the breadth of his baseball knowledge, a great sense of humor, and a penchant for profanity to which I could only supplicate in utter respect.

As a result of the company, coach, his colleague and friend, three young pitchers who have worked exceedingly hard together all winter, and the dads, the night was a hilarious success.  Perhaps the single best moment, leaving aside when coach screamed out "That ball was FUCKED" following a towering homer hit by one of the Astros, was when a fan caught a foul ball in his beer cup and proceeded to chug the beer before removing said ball.  The beauty of personal and social media being what it has become, someone caught the event on tape and it's now up on the internet.

 

Fan catches foul ball in beer cup, chugs beer!

 

On the road to 10000 hours: a video tribute

First, allow me to apologize for lagging another couple of months before posting to the blog.  I actually have way too much to blog, and as with many things, some times having too much of a good thing is not good.  For instance, I keep finding new sources of independently-produced music that, well, is far more listenable than anything the RIAA ever lorded over.  And folks seem really eager to give it away for free.  That doesn't stop me from donating a few bucks to the young guys making this music so that they can buy better laptops, drum machines, and keyboards, so they can cut more beats.

On the sporting front, baseball season is underway.  Readers familiar plain old dad's family know very well that our lifestyle revolves around tres_arbolito's baseball seasons.  He's passionate about playing, practicing, training, learning, and playing even more.  He has big aspirations and works unbelieveably hard to build the foundation on which to begin his climb to meet them.  At nearly 15, he's begun seeing some of his old teammates and friends leave the game, or lose the passion that once fired their play.  In the face of such loss, he put his head down and blasted through an incredibly dense off-season beginning in September 2012 and culminating in his first high school baseball tryouts the last week of February 2013.

Thinking I might one day want to relive this passage of effort, I recorded a lot of it.  Then I started to play around with the simple movie-making software on our most recent PC.  I discovered that with the correct permissions, I could add a layer of sound incorporating some of the music I found so inspiring this winter. 

And so, with extreme thanks to Seattle's producer duo, Odesza, for their wonderful track "How Did I Get Here?", the result of my first foray in video-making. Please enjoy.