Spring Training

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Spring Training, 2008

April 23, 2008 in Random, Sports | No comments

Giovanni and I; Phoenix Memorial Stadium

Keeping with this line of thought, I repeated the Spring Training trip last month, this time bringing Giovanni along on the road portion with Miller joining us mid-week in Phoenix. This year’s takeaways: I will never, ever make this drive again - all subsequent trips to the desert southwest will be made in the air; game tickets will be purchased no later than the end of January; and more sights will be seen around the town and state on scheduled days off, gained from the lack of four travel days. Among the sights yet to be seen – The Grand Canyon, Barringer Meteorite Crater, Sedona, Saguaro National Park, and the ghost town where the Brady Bunch was wrongly jailed on their way to the canyon (I know, this was filmed on a set… but how cool would that be?).

Jack Cust's 2007 Portland Beavers Jersey

But enough of that – the last month has seen a few other items worthy of note. The most significant has been a change to my role at work. I am no longer traveling in my claims adjusting duties, rather, I will be controlling my files and conducting coverage investigations from the comfort of my northwest Portland apartment, which means less work travel, more freedom to make plans outside of work, and hopefully, the ability to advance myself a little further in my career in the not so distant future… hopefully.

If the insurance thing doesn’t work out… (I’ve only been doing it for five years now) I’ve always got minor league basketball to fall back on. That’s right, I served as an official scorer a few weeks ago for the Portland Chinooks of the International Basketball League. Sadly, this was even more stressful than my day job, as it was the first game I have scored since at least high school, and the final score ended up being 125-112. That’s a lot of points, by the way. I didn’t screw up too badly… at least not in the end. After the first half I failed to calibrate my mind to the fact that the teams do in fact switch hoops, something that resulted in my scoring the teams exactly opposite what they should have been for the first half of the third quarter. After a brief panic attack, I figured it out and corrected my error… good thing no one reads this website…

Speaking of this website, I am currently sketching out some ideas for the first major overhaul since adopting the Saturatedpratt name nearly six years ago. Hopefully the coming months will bring a better overall design, working comments, a dedicated sports page, and possibly even a pod cast covering news, commentary, an attempt at humor, and of course, music. This is pretty ambitious, and I make no promises, but I do hope to have all of this (or at least the pieces I decide to keep) online in the coming months. Stay tuned for more details.

Daylight Savings

March 9, 2008 in Random | 1 comment

I have previously stated on several occasions that my favorite day of the year is the day in mid February when pitchers and catchers officially report to camp for Spring Training.  Yes, I am a baseball nut, however this also signals the beginning of the end of my least favorite season – winter.  Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that I dislike the cold, the rain, or the occasional snow.  I actually quite enjoy all of the three, as well as the annual appearance of “Storm Team 12” or 6…  or 4.

It doesn’t matter what channels in your local media market are occupied by local news teams – they’re the same everywhere – the only thing up for debate is exactly how much time will be spent on remote at a dry, albeit cold freeway overpass.

No, what I dislike is the unending darkness – the fact that one begins work under the slowly retracting cover of night, only to find that the covers have already been pulled back over the world by the end of the workday.  It reminds me of the nights I spent working the graveyard shift while in college – not a very pleasant time.  Additionally, with the winter comes my busiest time of the year at work.  It seems that people have more house fires in the winter due to all the makeshift portable heaters, fireplaces and Christmas-related items, meaning more time on the road, and tighter timeframes under which to work – all in the dark. 

So, two paragraphs in, and I can already hear you – “yeah Chris, so what’s the point?”

Well, the point is I also dislike daylight savings time.  Or, more importantly, the fact that it’s 11:23 right now, I am not at all tired, but yet I have to get up in four hours in order to make the 8:30 appointment I have four hours away.  You see, this combines some of my least favorite activities – beginning work while it’s still dark, followed by working (yes, working in general – while I do like my job, it is in fact still work), and finally, getting home from work after dark. 

 “Yes, Chris, but daylight savings time ensures that it will in fact be lighter later – its good for the economy – you want the US to prosper, right?  You’re not un-American, are you?”

Shut up.

This is my time to complain, and I’m going to get my money’s worth.  Normally I don’t care either way - I would prefer we do nothing but move the clocks back, but I realize that by year four of doing this my plan would have seriously backfired – and for what, an extra hour of sleep?  No, that’s no good.

My major qualm is that the first work day into DST will be spent being unnecessarily tired inside a house that isn’t mine, working, and by the time I make it back to my place it will already be dark.  It just seems like it got personal this year.  While the winter is ending, and with it, hopefully my busiest season, one of the harbingers of that change is showing up just in time to twist the knife a little.

Father time, you are one hell of a bastard.

Assorted Travels, Spring-Summer 2007

July 26, 2007 in Sports, Travel | No comments

Oh, the places I have been! Since I last graced this site with an update, I have experienced Spring Training, visited Denver twice, driven through Wyoming and into South Dakota, seen Albuquerque, flown into Las Vegas for the NBA Summer League and ventured into Montana, then Wyoming for a second time. (Technically, the Spring Training and Dakota trips occurred prior to the last post, but since I wrote the post before I took the trips, I’m counting it… sue me.)

In short, a lot has happened. So in lieu of making an in-depth post about each of the individual trips, I will burn through them at a rapid-fire pace so I can get on with making a real update… look at this as a sort of “here’s what happened last season on…” portion of a television show, except instead of some actor named Chris Pratt, you get me. Speaking of lawsuits, I’ve got to go after that guy.

Our journey begins on Wednesday, March 8, 2007 when I set off in my Honda Civic Hybrid for the sunny southwest and the six-week orgy of baseball that signals the actually new year – Spring Training. On the way I went through Idaho (Saw the Blue Turf), Utah (saw the Mormon Temple… impressive, and a little scary), Las Vegas (got frustrated by traffic, then gave up and went to Hoover Dam), and finally all nine Cactus League ballparks. Miller joined me on the 15th and stayed through the weekend. I caught a foul ball off the bat of Chicago Cub Ronnie Cedeno, while sitting in the first row of Tuscon Electric Park, and was horribly sun burnt. In addition, I saw the best scoreboard announcement ever – skeptics may say I only caught a small segment of scrolling text, but that’s why they are skeptics. Personally, I can’t agree more with the scoreboard operator.

Upon returning to Oregon, I was immediately sent off to South Dakota for work, after first flying into Denver and driving through Wyoming to reach my destination. While there, I visited Mount Rushmore, and the Crazy Horse Memorial, which has been under construction for a ridiculous 59 years I would have contributed to the construction effort with a donation had the visitor’s center been open when I arrived… instead, I simply stole a look at the sculpture… I’m sure that’s a theme the Lakota are used to. On my way back to Denver, I found myself stuck in the heaviest snowstorm I have ever experienced, complete with freeway driving in complete whiteout conditions. I have a feeling Crazy Horse intended on getting his revenge.

April was relatively quiet, consisting mainly of attempting to recover from the month of constant travel that March brought.

With May came yet another trip to Denver, this time for a meeting after which I took a few personal days, saw the Denver Mint and the Rockies beat the Giants, and ventured into New Mexico to catch an Albuquerque Isotopes game. While I did not enjoy a hot dog brimming with southwestern flavors, I did enjoy the victory the Portland Beavers achieved over the ‘Topes. Oddly though, I ended up being seated next to a Portlander who is currently living in Albuquerque, which meant that the two people wearing Portland Beavers garb in a crowd of several thousand were sitting right next to each other, and had never before met. It was a little strange, but it seemed to make sense. Isotopes Stadium was by far the best minor league facility I have seen yet in my travels, easily eclipsing the next night’s stop, Colorado Springs’ Security Service Field. My takeaways from this trip: Jesus is HUGE in Colorado Springs, as are many of the women; and the omnipresent hold the military has on this region is simply unbearable. I could never live there.

Early July saw a quick three-day jaunt to Las Vegas to witness the beginning of Greg Oden’s career as a Portland Trailblazer, facing off against the once-great Boston Celtics. In fact, I sat courtside for Oden’s first game, which would have been nice on its own. However, my attempt to slum-up the normal haunts of the beautiful people brought with it the somewhat surreal experience of sitting right next to the Celtics’ brain trust of GM Danny Ainge and head coach Doc Rivers, who were joined by onetime wunderkind Sebastian Telfair. In all, it was a little awkward when Telfair sat down… I mean, aside from maybe Pacman Jones, there really isn’t anyone with whom I have less in common. On top of that, he was absolutely swimming in some sort of cologne.

When he arrived, I simply gave him a welcoming “hey”, to which he responded with a nod. It was a good enough response for me. The Celtics ended up blowing out Greg Oden and the Blazers, but not before I exchanged comments with Telfair over a few horrible calls, and had a conversation with Rivers about Portland and how great the fans are, and how Rivers would kill to have two bigs like those gracing the Blazers’ roster. The guy sitting next to me caught the scene on my camera, but I think he had a case of the shakes, judging by the blurriness of the photo. Giovanni came down that evening and we spent the rest of the weekend taking in games, people watching, and losing a small amount of money in penny slots while stocking up on complimentary drinks.

As was the case in March, immediately upon my return I was sent to the Mountain Time Zone on business, this time to Billings, Montana. While there, I took in my first Pioneer League games, first in Billings where the Mustangs beat the Orem Owlz (they should have had to spot the Stangs 10 runs for the Z in their name alone), then in Casper, Wyoming, where I saw the hometown Rockies get trounced by the Missoula Osprey. More importantly, I ended up with two Pioneer League baseballs as souvenirs that night – the first a homerun ball off the bat of Osprey second baseman Taylor Harbin that came sailing toward me while I was parking my trusty rental car beyond the left field fence prior to entering the ballpark, and the second a foul ball that apparently only I noticed land while standing in line for a bratwurst. While in Casper, I struck up a conversation with the guy who was sitting behind me after he had recognized the Isotopes hat I was wearing. It turns out he also went to Spring Training, and tries to see as many ballparks as he can while traveling, including the California League and the Pacific Coast League. It was a little comforting, and at the same time a little troubling, seeing as he was praising my dedication in driving from Billings to Casper, only to turn around an return to Billings after two and a half hours of Rookie League ball. Also, he was probably in his 60s, which made me feel a bit like an RV-ing snowbird, and less like a guy who just turned 27… failing that, I should at least bring a girl along next time, so long as I don’t find her in Colorado Springs.