Whoa.

Yes, I woke up at 6am and watched the Red Sox beat the A’s. And yes, I’m still planning to share some pics from the Bonds 762 press conference I attended a couple weeks ago. But I have to say…baseball is one of the last things I’m thinking about. Just today, I had Time Warner come and pick up my old cable box. Then a window repair man came over and gave an estimate for some work I need to have done. (Ouch.) Later this afternoon, UPS is coming to pick up the wall-mount that Best Buy mistakenly shipped last week for my new TV. (At least they sent the right TV.) And later this evening, I’ll be running a writing group meeting in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Tomorrow, I have to go to Crate & Barrel and buy a dining table and an L-shaped couch…maybe even some chairs, a coffee table, and a couple end tables for my bedroom. And then, the day after, I’ll be flying to Louisiana for my half-brother’s wedding. So the press conference pics will have to wait…and I’ll quickly leave you with a few images from my move. The first issue was my Arkanoid machine, and if you click here, you can see a pic of it taken last year in my old apartment with “King of Kong” star Billy Mitchell on one side and me on the other. The machine weighs a little over 300 pounds (the monitor alone weighs 45), and it’s very fragile so the movers packed it up with extra care.

In the pic below, one of the movers is putting a plastic sheet over it (top left), followed by tape and a blanket (top right). The fully-protected machine then sat outside my front door (bottom left) and waited patiently downstairs in the lobby (bottom right).

I was nervous as the movers wheeled the machine out into the street and loaded it into the truck…

…but it survived the short trip to my new place:

That was Wednesday, March 19th. My old apartment was finally empty except for the magazine pages and my rubber band ball. I went back for a final look…

…then had a few friends over…

…to help me save a few of the pages…

…and tear down the rest:

At one point, I was frolicking in a gigantic pile of crumpled pages with at least three or four lovely ladies, but alas, no one has sent me any pics yet, so you’ll have to settle for this one…

…which I took just before diving in. I know what you’re thinking, but you have to believe me; certain baseball collectors have been known to get just as much lovin’, if not more, than other members of the general population.

As for the rubber band ball…
The movers offered to take it for me, but my friends suggested that I roll it to my new place, which was just ten blocks away, so I did. But first I had to protect it–with Saran Wrap and clear packing tape–from the grime and roughness of the NYC sidewalks:

The ball weighs 209 pounds (23-inch diameter) so I got a nice little workout.

In the pic below, I’m carefully letting gravity take it down my front steps (top left), trying to flatten my friend Dania (white coat, top right) a la Indiana Jones, walking slowly behind it as it rolls across 70th Street & Broadway (bottom left), and watching my girlfriend Jona struggle with it (bottom right).

And yes, I’ll be waking up tomorrow at 6am again, even though baseball is one of the last things I’m thinking about.

I’m moving. Today. Finally. After five and a half years. Old apartment: 270 square feet. New apartment: much bigger. Sorry I haven’t blogged much lately. Things have truly been nuts. And now I probably won’t have an internet connection for a few days, so I’ll leave you with two quick stories…

1) Last week, I sold a few pieces of furniture on craigslist. One woman responded to my ad with her phone number, so rather than emailing her back, I called. She showed up later that evening to get the item (a white, five-drawer dresser if you really wanna know) and as soon as I opened the door, she said, “Wow, you really ARE the baseball collector!” Turns out my name popped up on her caller ID and she Googled me.

2) Last night, at around 1:30am, I was listening to 1050 ESPN Radio when host Brandon Tierney started talking about breaking his thumb a few years back while trying to catch a Tino Martinez homer during batting practice–and then he described the few other balls he’d snagged. I jumped out of bed, called the station, got through on the first try, told the call-screener about myself, and then, after a commercial break and a sports update at 1:40am, I was live on the air. The screener hadn’t mentioned anything about me, so when I started talking about my “thirty-two hundred baseballs,” Tierney cut me off and was completely skeptical–but one of his assistants quickly looked me up, and Tierney acknowledged on the air that I was legit. Anyway, most people who call in get cut off within the first 30 seconds, but Tierney left me on for the entire segment, which I think was about 10 to 15 minutes. And then, after the commercial break, he kept talking about me. Fun stuff.

Alright, gotta go to bed. The movers are coming in less than seven hours…

Okay, I can finally stop being coy and reveal the big secret:

The fan who snagged Barry Bonds’ final home run ball has been discovered. I’ve been working on this story for months, and you can read it here.

To those of you who are finding this blog for the first time…welcome aboard. Scroll down and check out some of my older entries, and come back once the regular season gets underway. I’ll be attending lots of games and describing every detail.

Meanwhile, I’m now in Denver. The press conference is taking place later today at the ESPN Zone at 10:00 am MDT. (That’s noon for all you people on the east coast.) Not sure if ESPN will be broadcasting it live. There’s still a lot I don’t know, but I’ll have answers and stories and photos soon, and I’ll post a big entry about it when I get back to NYC.

For months, there’s been an all-out manhunt for the fan who snagged Barry Bonds’ final home run ball. (If you need proof, click here and here and here; even the LA Times ran a story about it last week). The news is that my own story should be running later today and I’m being flown to Denver for tomorrow’s press conference. Not sure if I’m allowed at this point to give any details, so just be on the lookout…

In my last entry, I mentioned that I’d been asked to write the foreword to a baseball book that’s coming out this spring. Well, as soon as I agreed to do it, I was told that my name would be added to the book on Amazon (among other places).
It’s finally there.

Now, if you search for me on Amazon, you’ll see Watching Baseball Smarter as well as this other book called Major League Baseball: An Interactive Guide to the World of Sports. And if you click the title of the other book, this is what you’ll see (minus the red arrow which I added for effect):

I hope everyone’s enjoying Spring Training. I’m still overwhelmed with a few other things at the moment, but I’ll get back into baseball(s) mode soon.

Haven’t been blogging much lately, but I’ve been busier than ever. Last week I answered a bunch of questions (via email) for a feature coming out next month in Diamondbacks Magazine. Now I’m trying to find time to write the foreword to this book in the “Sports by the Numbers” series. It’s due on March 26—the day before I leave for a weekend wedding in Louisiana and THE day I have to move out of my apartment. (Got a bigger/better place 10 blocks north.) I’m also running my weekly writing group, trying to get my Arkanoid machine fixed, feeling guilty about not working on my book proposal, heading out of town this weekend for a reading of one of my dad’s plays, and dealing with yesterday’s death of my girlfriend’s mother. So yeah, busy in every possible way. And there’s more. Stay tuned…