Existentialism in the desert, some epic sowing and reaping, idiocy from a classic rocker, a quick trip to D.C., and a moving guest post from a longtime reader.
These guest posts have set an exceptionally high standard. I think any stupid thing I might come up with to say in a guest post would be petty and inconsequential in comparison. Well done.
It wasn't aimed at Lennon. Or anyone in particular. Just the intoxicating psychological trick of imagining their individual greatness would continue unabated had they lived as opposed to observing their decline in reality.
Some people reinvent themselves, or else get the chance to put out work that doesn't mesh with their first record deal (thinking primarily of Aimee Mann there, who's amazingly gifted, even if you discount everything Til Tuesday put out).
I guess the big example is Rick Rubin resurrecting Johnny Cash, but Bowie's last album was fantastic, Nas and Jay-Z were both able to right their ships after a falling-off, and Tom Waits' later stuff is a not-unpleasant beast.
After thinking out loud, I'd say your statement is true in the general, but never rule out someone who starts with an exceptional amount of talent.
Consequently, I agree that we would have seen more great stuff from Hendrix, probably more great stuff from Joplin, maybe something decent from Morrison (Jim, not Van), and could honestly go either way with Lennon.
Funny but True. Aimee Mann was the first one to pop in my head when I read this. To some extent we could probably add Joni Mitchell and Depeche Mode if 6 to 10 years before apex is considered not the beginning
With Lennon, nah. His career is like that of Albert Pujols. Absolute greatness the first half, then a second half decline where he sacrifices quality of at bat for the occasional home run. Even up until his death, old Lennon could still lay into one. Average song quality however drops significantly. He's Pujols.
Maybe! He's the only Cardinal-specific comp. I suppose Waino could be George - they only let him bat (put songs on the album) sometimes. Who's Ringo? How about the infernal revolving cast of heroes that your Cardinals keep inflicting upon the rest of us - the Freeses, the Craigs, and alternately the how-the-hell-did-the-Cardinals-get-that-dudes like Holliday and Arenado? I don't know. Searching for Ringo.
I mean, I know it's cliche to say he's overrated, but Jeter really was the third- or fourth-greatest offensive shortstop of all time, and he really did have some incredible postseason performances. Now, he may be the worst defensive shortstop of all time, because no one else as bad as him got to stick at the position for twenty years, and he really was the second-best shortstop on the left side of his own infield, but the bat really was that good.
I’ve got two seniors I’m having to deal with college visits. My son is looking at places like MIT, Yale and other schools like that. He’s also looking at University of Virginia and William and Mary (which is practically in my backyard, and UVA is only a few hours away). Interestingly, Yale may end being cheapest, at least according to their online calculator. I put in my information and it says (not sure I believe this) it will cost about $11k per year out of pocket, for a $70k/year retail price school that seems like a pretty good deal.
Be careful. I live in NoVA and have always been comfortable, but wish I were as wealthy as Yale's financial aid office thought I was. My daughter graduated in 2017 and we're still feeling the after-effects.
Craig's already tired of hearing this, but if your senior hasn't looked at the Jefferson Scholarship at UVA he should ... four-year full ride and amazing travel and study opportunities. Indeed, I'm pretty sure we couldn't have afforded Yale if my oldest hadn't gotten the Jeff.
[NOTE This is not bragging - my kids did it all themselves.] Good luck!
Yeah, I don’t really believe it. Good friends daughter was valedictorian at Hampton High here in HR, she got interviewed by Yale and checked all the boxes, he’s in my financial demo and it was much more than they thought. My son’s in the Virginia Governor’s School of Science and Technology program they sent info on the Jefferson scholarship home this spring, hadn’t looked at it closely but I will now.
The "asses" vs "butts" terminology question leads one to wonder why some words are considered offensive while a synonym is considered acceptable? If both words mean the same thing, why is one of them more offensive?
My father always pointed out that somehow "arse" was considered acceptable because anything in an English accent was considered sophisticated. Decades later, I noted that after the lovely woman's English accent in selling us Jaguars, Lexus moved to an English accent to move Japanese cars.
My guess is that since English has accumulated so many words from other languages, in some cases one word would be used by the lower classes and one by upper classes, so the more upper class term was considered ok and the lower class term was...well, low class and "beneath" educated people.
I remember reading something about that in terms of words for animals and the meat that came from them - we raise cows but eat beef, raise sheep but eat mutton, raise lambs but eat veal. The words for the animals came originally from a different linguistic origin as the words for the same animals once they were on a plate. Don't remember where I read it now argh.
- While the Mets were walloping the Reds, I was at Citi Field donating blood. The blood drive was in a space called Club Piazza, which is very nice and looks like an upscale hotel lounge and has windows that face entirely out of the stadium, overlooking the parking lot and the 7 train and whatever skyline is visible (weather and wildfires permitting). I wonder why you would want to go to a ballpark for any function, a game or a party or a conference, and overlook the parking lot. Anyway, blood was donated, and I got a LGM t-shirt clearly left from an earlier promotion since it has a Goya logo. There wasn't any other Mets connection going on, and the woman oddly dressed in a lifesize costume as a cartoony drop of blood was disappointed she couldn't have her photo taken with Mister Met.
- I can't speak as a parent, but when I was Anna's age, the idea of going to college anywhere but near home freaked me out. I can never understand how 17 year olds are ready to live far from home, or how parents are ready to permit that. I remember what we were like at the age. Living in a dorm in a religious Jew college an hour's subway ride from home was both daunting enough and fraught enough. (I still don't know how two of my roommates didn't drink themselves into a coma.) Never mind that I can't really see it being worth the extra money to let your kids go out of state. Wouldn't going to The Ohio State University be a lot cheaper for a resident? Why even think about super-expensive private colleges when most public colleges are pretty good? (And please tell me Anna isn't going to have to take a loan. I am of the mind that parents and not students should foot the bill for college, and should be the ones to take a loan so that the poor kids aren't burdened with debt from day one.)
- I am very glad you are still with us, Aaron. Thank you for having the courage to write about your experiences.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I went away to Ohio State (which was four hours from home then) primarily because I was hungry to live as independently as I could as quickly as I could. This is no slight on my parents. We're very close and always have been, but there has always been a pattern in our family of people taking off and hacking out on their own at a young age. My dad joined the Navy at 17. My parents got married when my mom was 18 and went from Detroit to Alaska for crying out loud. The fact that I live close to my parents now is an aberration, really.
I have no issues with Ohio State, but when you go there as a local, there is a strong tendency to go home constantly, have mom or dad do laundry, and all of that. If a lot of your friends go there it can, for a time anyway, be an extension of high school. Anna doesn't want that. And, having lived her whole life in Ohio, wants to be someplace else. I can certainly appreciate that impulse.
Everyone's mileage varies, but the part of college that involved going away, being in a new place, meeting new people, and learning how to live on my own was just as valuable as the education itself. I want that for my kids and, as far as I can tell, they want that too.
Funny that I never once felt any pressure from my mother to follow any given path. i think she was disappointed that I dropped being a bio major in favor of English, but I was allowed to be myself. Or maybe I just had a very pronounced sense of self even at that age and managed to be me at close quarters.
My mom would have shot me if I brought my clothes home. But then, we lived in a co-op with a laundry room and I was "doing the laundry" that way for years anyway, so college was the same. (Never understood why people hate putting their clothes in a machine, and then moving them to another machine, and then folding them. It's not like we have to do things like they were a century ago.)
My parents were always happy to have me home for a meal 3 or 4 times a month, the just-under-one hour drive each way was easy for pizza on Sundays. (And yes, there was usually a bag of laundry in the washing machine while we ate and watched The Simpsons - Sunday night pizza and Simpsons was a tradition for us by the mid-90s, and it persisted into my first couple years not living with my folks. It probably tailed off not so much because I got older, but because the Simpsons got worse...)
The so close that it's easy to come home on a whim isn't good, but there's something to be said for being within a few hours driving distance. If she's at, say, Stanford, and you have 5 days off for Thanksgiving break, are you going to fly home when everyone else is trying to fly too and flights are expensive? But if she was at, say, the University of Kentucky in Lexington, then it's a reasonable ride, by car or even bus, and she can come home for the holiday.
(Not that such a minor consideration should be the driving factor in your selection of a college)
I went from Chicago to Washington state for grad school, and I sure wasn’t going home for Thanksgiving that first year. Young lady I was starting to date invited me home for the weekend, where her Mom outdid herself, adding one of my family faves to their normal fare. That young lady and I just celebrated our 44th. So three cheers for townies!
My advice, having done some version of this: go live somewhere new, somewhere completely different, see and do all the things, travel, all of it! Barring force majeure, one's hometown will always be there if one wishes to return.
Too bad Club Piazza's windows didn't face the field. You could have seen the cutting up of the old tarp live, while the rest of us only watched the highlights of the tarp cutting on SNY.
When I was 18, wanted to get out--if just to learn how to appreciate home more. From Corvallis, Oregon to Wheaton, Illinois. From green rolling PNW hills on a river in a small town to...Chicago suburb. I went because it was so different and far away. New culture, new friends, new experiences. While I don't think I ended up your typical Wheaton student, I wouldn't trade it for anything.
By contrast, my brother left for Texas A&M (aero engineering program) a year before and came back to Oregon State after the first semester. He hated it. But, c'mon, that was Texas. Also: the school was bigger (2x) than our hometown. I took that lesson as: "look for a smaller school for quicker adjustment."
When my mom went to college, she was thinking about living at home and going to one of the many good schools around Chicago to save money. Her parents actually told her to leave home because they wanted her to experience something different and not to worry about the money, they'd manage. So she went to a small all-womens college in Iowa (all women was important because she was tired to her bones of being the only girl in practically every math class she took!) so she was far enough away to not come home every weekend, but close enough that she was a train ride away from home for every holiday break and if there was any kind of emergency she could get home quickly.
I wasn't more than a few hours drive away, but at the small college I went to freshman weren't permitted to live off campus and it was incredibly hard to get parking for a car, so if I wanted to come home I needed a ride. And my parents made very clear that they did not expect me home every weekend because I'd have other things to do so it wasn't an obligation. I came home for holiday breaks when the dorms were mostly closed, sometimes with a friend whose family was farther away, but other than that I was on my own as much as if I'd gone out of state. And I did look at out of state schools but got too good of a scholarship at the one I chose to pass it up.
It's a great opportunity to develop as a person separate from all the things and people you grew up with, just need to have a good sense of if the environment is going to be supportive or not.
Aaron -- thank you. That was a powerful message and I'm sure it's not one that's easy to share. Depression doesn't always present itself with what are considered "classic" symptoms, and none of us knows what anyone else may be going through. I'm glad you're here to remind us of that.
Crowdsourcing - what is your favorite baseball podcast? I'm looking for a good one.
Back in the day, I enjoyed ESPN's Baseball Today podcast. Young Eric Karabell and older Peter Pascarelli made a great team. The banter was good but no one was doing an act. Most importantly they talked straight-up baseball. Not fantasy; not gambling (would have been verbotten at the time!). Just a few recaps, a round-the-league bit, and maybe an interview.
I have been searching for years. And the ones with substance tend to be very dry, and the ones with anything resembling personality tend to be shallow. I have, I think, six NBA podcasts on my feed, and zero baseball. That isn't right. Oh, for a Howard Beck for MLB.
Effectively Wild is consistently excellent. Hosts Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley are articulate and interesting and nerdy and (important to me) humane.
Steven Goldman's The Infinite Inning is brilliant stuff, especially for those interested in a historical and philosophical perspective. Our host here is an occasional guest.
This Week in Baseball History is what it says. Hosts Mike Bates and Bill Parker are not, um, natural media personalities or public speakers, but the stories they relate of players, teams, events, etc. are always interesting and very thoughtfully composed. And, again, humane.
Say It Ain't Contagious is pretty new, an experiment in connecting baseball to contemporary political and social issues from a left perspective. Six hosts, including, again, the proprietor of this here substack.
I'm going to speak up for SABRCast yet again. Each week, there's an interview, sometimes with an author, sometimes not. (In my upcoming list, I have Hannah Keyser with a review of the first half of the season and Steve Rushin). And then there's some more discussion of the past week, not just in baseball.
I'm also enjoying two out of the four podcasts in The Athletic Baseball Show group: Jayson Stark & Doug Glanville (yes, Stark is polarizing, but I like him in this format) and Grant Brisbee & Hunter Pence (no shortage of personality there!).
And, if you can deal with the SBN Empire, one of the Amazing Avenue Mets podcasts, A Pod of Their Own, is fantastic. Obviously, it's Mets-centric (these woment *love* their Mets), but there's a lot in there about social issues affecting baseball.
That said, I have way more hockey podcasts on my list. I would give anything for a baseball equivalent of Eliotte Friedman & Jeff Marek's "31 thoughts" (soon to be 32) on hockey.
As a Northwestern grad, let me just say this: visiting in the late summer may be gorgeous, but visiting in January is essential. I made the mistake of thinking that just because I handled New Jersey winters fine I'd be good with them in Chicago. Nope!
This is something I always share with families doing their own college visit gauntlet. That first post-holiday semester can be rough for a new student for lots of reasons; at least having a preview of the weather is crucial.
Haha indeed! My mom grew up in the northern suburbs (went to college in Dubuque Iowa) and one holiday she came home on the train during that epic late 60s snowstorm. She said it wasn't bad at the train station when her dad picked her up, but as they drove closer to home the drafts got deeper and deeper and it was quite impressive.
Also I had a sister who went to Notre Dame and the Midwesterners took a great deal of glee in educating non-locals about "wind chill" and "lake effect snow."
My son will be attending Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, starting exactly a month from today. We live in the far western suburbs of Chicago, so it's about a 2.5-hour drive, which fits the "close enough but far enough" vibe lots of others have described here. He hates the cold, but at least he's used to it...although getting a ride everywhere here vs walking to class in that cold should be a great life experience, as it was for me in Iowa City many years ago.
Haha that was where my dad went to college! My mom went to Clarke which at the time was women only, so there were social events that brought colleges together. They met at a party when one of my dad's friends introduced them with "here's someone even crazier than you are, she's MAJORING in math!" (My dad had a math minor.)
Worked out well enough, they're still married 50+ years later. If not for college no way two people from Chicago and the middle of Iowa would meet each other.
Fantastic post, Aaron. Last night was a bad physical pain night for me and I texted a friend and she reminded me of the things I still want to do. This could not have been posted at a better time. Especially as the disability community mourns Erin Gilmer.
“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am part of mankind…“
I’m glad you’re still here, Aaron. Thanks for sharing.
Fantastic post Aaron. I'm glad you were able to make the decision you did. Thank you so much for sharing with us.
These guest posts have set an exceptionally high standard. I think any stupid thing I might come up with to say in a guest post would be petty and inconsequential in comparison. Well done.
Ridiculously so. They're genuinely a joy to read. A real show of humanity, every one of them
[crumples draft guest post] Yeah, it's back to the drawing board for me, too.
*quietly pushes stack of paper labeled "Why the Yankees aren't so bad and everyone should be nicer to their fans" out of frame*
We could always go for funny. Humor is always accepted.
Of course, there's the obstacle that you actually have to manage to be funny.
"Has anyone as mediocre as he is at literally everything he has ever done been even half as celebrated?"
Jim Morrison on Line 1, John Lennon on Line 2, Craig
Dying prematurely so your fans have to imagine all future greatness is how you become a legend.
It wasn't aimed at Lennon. Or anyone in particular. Just the intoxicating psychological trick of imagining their individual greatness would continue unabated had they lived as opposed to observing their decline in reality.
Some people reinvent themselves, or else get the chance to put out work that doesn't mesh with their first record deal (thinking primarily of Aimee Mann there, who's amazingly gifted, even if you discount everything Til Tuesday put out).
I guess the big example is Rick Rubin resurrecting Johnny Cash, but Bowie's last album was fantastic, Nas and Jay-Z were both able to right their ships after a falling-off, and Tom Waits' later stuff is a not-unpleasant beast.
After thinking out loud, I'd say your statement is true in the general, but never rule out someone who starts with an exceptional amount of talent.
Consequently, I agree that we would have seen more great stuff from Hendrix, probably more great stuff from Joplin, maybe something decent from Morrison (Jim, not Van), and could honestly go either way with Lennon.
Funny but True. Aimee Mann was the first one to pop in my head when I read this. To some extent we could probably add Joni Mitchell and Depeche Mode if 6 to 10 years before apex is considered not the beginning
There's a difference between sucking and being overrated.
You misspelled "with" as "and"
With Lennon, nah. His career is like that of Albert Pujols. Absolute greatness the first half, then a second half decline where he sacrifices quality of at bat for the occasional home run. Even up until his death, old Lennon could still lay into one. Average song quality however drops significantly. He's Pujols.
Maybe! He's the only Cardinal-specific comp. I suppose Waino could be George - they only let him bat (put songs on the album) sometimes. Who's Ringo? How about the infernal revolving cast of heroes that your Cardinals keep inflicting upon the rest of us - the Freeses, the Craigs, and alternately the how-the-hell-did-the-Cardinals-get-that-dudes like Holliday and Arenado? I don't know. Searching for Ringo.
Put differently, you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Derek Jeter on line 3
I mean, I know it's cliche to say he's overrated, but Jeter really was the third- or fourth-greatest offensive shortstop of all time, and he really did have some incredible postseason performances. Now, he may be the worst defensive shortstop of all time, because no one else as bad as him got to stick at the position for twenty years, and he really was the second-best shortstop on the left side of his own infield, but the bat really was that good.
I think Jeter should have been moved off of SS for maybe CF, but with his size, A-Rod was likely destined for 3rd by his early 30's.
Maybe, but aren’t defensive metrics comparing to average? I guess it depends on whether analytics are minimizing the spread between players.
Agreed. I do annoying needling the Jeter stans, even as I defend him from the haters.
Aaron, I don't know you and will likely never meet you. But I'm glad you're still here. Thank you for sharing your story.
I’ve got two seniors I’m having to deal with college visits. My son is looking at places like MIT, Yale and other schools like that. He’s also looking at University of Virginia and William and Mary (which is practically in my backyard, and UVA is only a few hours away). Interestingly, Yale may end being cheapest, at least according to their online calculator. I put in my information and it says (not sure I believe this) it will cost about $11k per year out of pocket, for a $70k/year retail price school that seems like a pretty good deal.
Be careful. I live in NoVA and have always been comfortable, but wish I were as wealthy as Yale's financial aid office thought I was. My daughter graduated in 2017 and we're still feeling the after-effects.
Craig's already tired of hearing this, but if your senior hasn't looked at the Jefferson Scholarship at UVA he should ... four-year full ride and amazing travel and study opportunities. Indeed, I'm pretty sure we couldn't have afforded Yale if my oldest hadn't gotten the Jeff.
[NOTE This is not bragging - my kids did it all themselves.] Good luck!
Yeah, I don’t really believe it. Good friends daughter was valedictorian at Hampton High here in HR, she got interviewed by Yale and checked all the boxes, he’s in my financial demo and it was much more than they thought. My son’s in the Virginia Governor’s School of Science and Technology program they sent info on the Jefferson scholarship home this spring, hadn’t looked at it closely but I will now.
And my friend’s daughter ended up at UVA, 100% tuition/fees/books scholarship, they are just covering room and board
That might be the 200-year installment plan they offer to help keep costs manageable
The Pittsburgh Pirates may suck really, really bad at baseball, but how do you think the Mets feel, having just lost 4 of 7 to them?
The "asses" vs "butts" terminology question leads one to wonder why some words are considered offensive while a synonym is considered acceptable? If both words mean the same thing, why is one of them more offensive?
My father always pointed out that somehow "arse" was considered acceptable because anything in an English accent was considered sophisticated. Decades later, I noted that after the lovely woman's English accent in selling us Jaguars, Lexus moved to an English accent to move Japanese cars.
My guess is that since English has accumulated so many words from other languages, in some cases one word would be used by the lower classes and one by upper classes, so the more upper class term was considered ok and the lower class term was...well, low class and "beneath" educated people.
I remember reading something about that in terms of words for animals and the meat that came from them - we raise cows but eat beef, raise sheep but eat mutton, raise lambs but eat veal. The words for the animals came originally from a different linguistic origin as the words for the same animals once they were on a plate. Don't remember where I read it now argh.
Great post, Aaron. Now I'm crying.
Came here to say this ^^
I do not recall signing up for regular cries when I subscribed to a baseball et al newsletter.
Defending corrupt Ohio state politicians? Now THAT'S a romcom waiting to be written.
Is it just me or does the Padres recap say Fernando Tatis Jr. hit a home run every day? I think Craig is recycling these things.
Aaron: We do sorta know you a little bit, and very glad to have you around. Thanks for the very moving post.
- While the Mets were walloping the Reds, I was at Citi Field donating blood. The blood drive was in a space called Club Piazza, which is very nice and looks like an upscale hotel lounge and has windows that face entirely out of the stadium, overlooking the parking lot and the 7 train and whatever skyline is visible (weather and wildfires permitting). I wonder why you would want to go to a ballpark for any function, a game or a party or a conference, and overlook the parking lot. Anyway, blood was donated, and I got a LGM t-shirt clearly left from an earlier promotion since it has a Goya logo. There wasn't any other Mets connection going on, and the woman oddly dressed in a lifesize costume as a cartoony drop of blood was disappointed she couldn't have her photo taken with Mister Met.
- I can't speak as a parent, but when I was Anna's age, the idea of going to college anywhere but near home freaked me out. I can never understand how 17 year olds are ready to live far from home, or how parents are ready to permit that. I remember what we were like at the age. Living in a dorm in a religious Jew college an hour's subway ride from home was both daunting enough and fraught enough. (I still don't know how two of my roommates didn't drink themselves into a coma.) Never mind that I can't really see it being worth the extra money to let your kids go out of state. Wouldn't going to The Ohio State University be a lot cheaper for a resident? Why even think about super-expensive private colleges when most public colleges are pretty good? (And please tell me Anna isn't going to have to take a loan. I am of the mind that parents and not students should foot the bill for college, and should be the ones to take a loan so that the poor kids aren't burdened with debt from day one.)
- I am very glad you are still with us, Aaron. Thank you for having the courage to write about your experiences.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I went away to Ohio State (which was four hours from home then) primarily because I was hungry to live as independently as I could as quickly as I could. This is no slight on my parents. We're very close and always have been, but there has always been a pattern in our family of people taking off and hacking out on their own at a young age. My dad joined the Navy at 17. My parents got married when my mom was 18 and went from Detroit to Alaska for crying out loud. The fact that I live close to my parents now is an aberration, really.
I have no issues with Ohio State, but when you go there as a local, there is a strong tendency to go home constantly, have mom or dad do laundry, and all of that. If a lot of your friends go there it can, for a time anyway, be an extension of high school. Anna doesn't want that. And, having lived her whole life in Ohio, wants to be someplace else. I can certainly appreciate that impulse.
Everyone's mileage varies, but the part of college that involved going away, being in a new place, meeting new people, and learning how to live on my own was just as valuable as the education itself. I want that for my kids and, as far as I can tell, they want that too.
Funny that I never once felt any pressure from my mother to follow any given path. i think she was disappointed that I dropped being a bio major in favor of English, but I was allowed to be myself. Or maybe I just had a very pronounced sense of self even at that age and managed to be me at close quarters.
My mom would have shot me if I brought my clothes home. But then, we lived in a co-op with a laundry room and I was "doing the laundry" that way for years anyway, so college was the same. (Never understood why people hate putting their clothes in a machine, and then moving them to another machine, and then folding them. It's not like we have to do things like they were a century ago.)
My parents were always happy to have me home for a meal 3 or 4 times a month, the just-under-one hour drive each way was easy for pizza on Sundays. (And yes, there was usually a bag of laundry in the washing machine while we ate and watched The Simpsons - Sunday night pizza and Simpsons was a tradition for us by the mid-90s, and it persisted into my first couple years not living with my folks. It probably tailed off not so much because I got older, but because the Simpsons got worse...)
The so close that it's easy to come home on a whim isn't good, but there's something to be said for being within a few hours driving distance. If she's at, say, Stanford, and you have 5 days off for Thanksgiving break, are you going to fly home when everyone else is trying to fly too and flights are expensive? But if she was at, say, the University of Kentucky in Lexington, then it's a reasonable ride, by car or even bus, and she can come home for the holiday.
(Not that such a minor consideration should be the driving factor in your selection of a college)
I went from Chicago to Washington state for grad school, and I sure wasn’t going home for Thanksgiving that first year. Young lady I was starting to date invited me home for the weekend, where her Mom outdid herself, adding one of my family faves to their normal fare. That young lady and I just celebrated our 44th. So three cheers for townies!
"Close enough for you and Mom to drive to come see me ... but far enough away that surprise visits are basically impossible." - my oldest
HS ended late June. I was 700 miles away from home in an apt. across from campus (as far as I could get at the time) by mid July.
My advice, having done some version of this: go live somewhere new, somewhere completely different, see and do all the things, travel, all of it! Barring force majeure, one's hometown will always be there if one wishes to return.
Too bad Club Piazza's windows didn't face the field. You could have seen the cutting up of the old tarp live, while the rest of us only watched the highlights of the tarp cutting on SNY.
In the end, my view was mainly a ceiling since they had me on my back to draw the blood.
When I was 18, wanted to get out--if just to learn how to appreciate home more. From Corvallis, Oregon to Wheaton, Illinois. From green rolling PNW hills on a river in a small town to...Chicago suburb. I went because it was so different and far away. New culture, new friends, new experiences. While I don't think I ended up your typical Wheaton student, I wouldn't trade it for anything.
By contrast, my brother left for Texas A&M (aero engineering program) a year before and came back to Oregon State after the first semester. He hated it. But, c'mon, that was Texas. Also: the school was bigger (2x) than our hometown. I took that lesson as: "look for a smaller school for quicker adjustment."
A&M is a tough adjustment for anyone not already steeped in that institution's peculiar ways.
When my mom went to college, she was thinking about living at home and going to one of the many good schools around Chicago to save money. Her parents actually told her to leave home because they wanted her to experience something different and not to worry about the money, they'd manage. So she went to a small all-womens college in Iowa (all women was important because she was tired to her bones of being the only girl in practically every math class she took!) so she was far enough away to not come home every weekend, but close enough that she was a train ride away from home for every holiday break and if there was any kind of emergency she could get home quickly.
I wasn't more than a few hours drive away, but at the small college I went to freshman weren't permitted to live off campus and it was incredibly hard to get parking for a car, so if I wanted to come home I needed a ride. And my parents made very clear that they did not expect me home every weekend because I'd have other things to do so it wasn't an obligation. I came home for holiday breaks when the dorms were mostly closed, sometimes with a friend whose family was farther away, but other than that I was on my own as much as if I'd gone out of state. And I did look at out of state schools but got too good of a scholarship at the one I chose to pass it up.
It's a great opportunity to develop as a person separate from all the things and people you grew up with, just need to have a good sense of if the environment is going to be supportive or not.
Aaron -- thank you. That was a powerful message and I'm sure it's not one that's easy to share. Depression doesn't always present itself with what are considered "classic" symptoms, and none of us knows what anyone else may be going through. I'm glad you're here to remind us of that.
Crowdsourcing - what is your favorite baseball podcast? I'm looking for a good one.
Back in the day, I enjoyed ESPN's Baseball Today podcast. Young Eric Karabell and older Peter Pascarelli made a great team. The banter was good but no one was doing an act. Most importantly they talked straight-up baseball. Not fantasy; not gambling (would have been verbotten at the time!). Just a few recaps, a round-the-league bit, and maybe an interview.
Any podcasts in a similar style out there?
I have been searching for years. And the ones with substance tend to be very dry, and the ones with anything resembling personality tend to be shallow. I have, I think, six NBA podcasts on my feed, and zero baseball. That isn't right. Oh, for a Howard Beck for MLB.
It's not really a traditional baseball podcast and veers off into a lot of places, but the Poscast is a good listen.
Not necessarily similar in style, but:
Effectively Wild is consistently excellent. Hosts Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley are articulate and interesting and nerdy and (important to me) humane.
Steven Goldman's The Infinite Inning is brilliant stuff, especially for those interested in a historical and philosophical perspective. Our host here is an occasional guest.
This Week in Baseball History is what it says. Hosts Mike Bates and Bill Parker are not, um, natural media personalities or public speakers, but the stories they relate of players, teams, events, etc. are always interesting and very thoughtfully composed. And, again, humane.
Say It Ain't Contagious is pretty new, an experiment in connecting baseball to contemporary political and social issues from a left perspective. Six hosts, including, again, the proprietor of this here substack.
I'll second Effectively Wild. Really great listening. Nerdy and charming and hilarious at times - and smart!
I'm going to speak up for SABRCast yet again. Each week, there's an interview, sometimes with an author, sometimes not. (In my upcoming list, I have Hannah Keyser with a review of the first half of the season and Steve Rushin). And then there's some more discussion of the past week, not just in baseball.
I'm also enjoying two out of the four podcasts in The Athletic Baseball Show group: Jayson Stark & Doug Glanville (yes, Stark is polarizing, but I like him in this format) and Grant Brisbee & Hunter Pence (no shortage of personality there!).
And, if you can deal with the SBN Empire, one of the Amazing Avenue Mets podcasts, A Pod of Their Own, is fantastic. Obviously, it's Mets-centric (these woment *love* their Mets), but there's a lot in there about social issues affecting baseball.
That said, I have way more hockey podcasts on my list. I would give anything for a baseball equivalent of Eliotte Friedman & Jeff Marek's "31 thoughts" (soon to be 32) on hockey.
R2C2 -Ryan Ruocco and CC Sabathia is great stuff. CC swears like a longshoreman
Thank you everyone. I appreciate all the suggestions.
As a Northwestern grad, let me just say this: visiting in the late summer may be gorgeous, but visiting in January is essential. I made the mistake of thinking that just because I handled New Jersey winters fine I'd be good with them in Chicago. Nope!
This is something I always share with families doing their own college visit gauntlet. That first post-holiday semester can be rough for a new student for lots of reasons; at least having a preview of the weather is crucial.
Haha indeed! My mom grew up in the northern suburbs (went to college in Dubuque Iowa) and one holiday she came home on the train during that epic late 60s snowstorm. She said it wasn't bad at the train station when her dad picked her up, but as they drove closer to home the drafts got deeper and deeper and it was quite impressive.
Also I had a sister who went to Notre Dame and the Midwesterners took a great deal of glee in educating non-locals about "wind chill" and "lake effect snow."
My son will be attending Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, starting exactly a month from today. We live in the far western suburbs of Chicago, so it's about a 2.5-hour drive, which fits the "close enough but far enough" vibe lots of others have described here. He hates the cold, but at least he's used to it...although getting a ride everywhere here vs walking to class in that cold should be a great life experience, as it was for me in Iowa City many years ago.
Haha that was where my dad went to college! My mom went to Clarke which at the time was women only, so there were social events that brought colleges together. They met at a party when one of my dad's friends introduced them with "here's someone even crazier than you are, she's MAJORING in math!" (My dad had a math minor.)
Worked out well enough, they're still married 50+ years later. If not for college no way two people from Chicago and the middle of Iowa would meet each other.
Hah. I taught in central Maine and yeah, students don't always appreciate the special kind of cold that can exist in some Northern states
Where in central Maine? That's where we are.
Lewiston. Central by population mass at least
Ah, we live in China but I went to Bates.
When did you graduate i taught there 95-2000. Biology
Way before your time!! 1982. Math and Economics.
Fantastic post, Aaron. Last night was a bad physical pain night for me and I texted a friend and she reminded me of the things I still want to do. This could not have been posted at a better time. Especially as the disability community mourns Erin Gilmer.
Aaron, thank you for that post, and great shirt man.