Sometimes its the little things...

This won't be news for the attentive regular reader (Haha regular reader of this, how absurd. Plus how can you be regular if I've only gone on one binge of posts? Lets get back on track here).  Well, maybe it will be news for you because I probably wouldn't have noticed this on your blog.  Or maybe I just don't respect the people who read this enough and it will cause you to roll your eyes and say "I know Ed, its right there under your information." Drumroll please...

Just kidding, there's a little more back story coming your way.  As a self-admitted and self-diagnosed baseball nerd I have spent my fair share of time looking up the stats of baseball players throughout the history of the game.  Whether to prove a point, to argue who was better, to make a case if a guy does (or does not) deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, or just out of curiosity, baseball-reference.com has been a constant in my attempts to seem better equipped with baseball information than anyone else I know.

(Random aside, did you know Ted Williams had a career OBP of .482?? That's ridiculous!!)

Well, guess what folks, THIS GUY HAS A PAGE ON BASEBALL-REFERENCE.COM.  I could argue that I've never been more excited than when I found this out (almost definitely not true, but if you know me, you know I'd probably argue it for the sake of arguing).  I'd like to pretend it was an accident or that I stumbled upon it, but I was stat-trolling the Pecos League on Google, and I found that the league had stats on the Baseball-Reference website.  Of course I rushed with bated breath to the search bar to see if I had a page, and indeed I do. (I looked it up and its not baited. Weird. And 'bated breath' is yet another Bill Shakespeare saying apparently, guy's a genius. I'll go out on a limb and say it.)  It may not be fancy, it may not have a picture, but I'm on the most trusted website in professional baseball, and it feels great.  I'll re-link you in case somehow this transparent plea hasn't already gotten you to the page.


http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=bernst000ed-

As a certain Canadian teammate might say: Pretty cool, eh?

Humble Brag

I have a backlog of stories to tell now that I've broken through the wall of laziness and created the blog, but I do not think 3 posts in a day is going to be the norm.  So don't get used to it.  By the way, no that's not my humble brag, the story below is.

As a (semi-)professional baseball player of about 5 weeks, I have already signed a lot of t-shirts, baseballs and bats.  A lot of them.  Seriously, may the rush from being asked for an autograph never go away, its a straight booster shot to the ego.  But it is always either some little kid collecting signatures from the whole team, or its something put on the table in the clubhouse (that thing is another post for another day) to be raffled off to try to earn some extra money that supposedly goes into our paychecks.  But the other day, after I had earned my first professional save (a brag inside a humble brag Inception style), a kid walked up to a group of us post-game when they let the kids come on the field and get our autographs. He came up to me and asked me to sign his glove, which I happily did, picking a spot that wouldn't interfere with the other 25 signatures to come.  Except this kid on this fateful day, he instead turns around and walks off the field, excited that I signed his glove.  So thank you, random kid in the blue Puma hat, I will always remember you as the first time I was actually asked for my autograph.

What My First Post Should Have Said...

I suppose that some background information on what I'm doing this summer wouldn't have been a bad choice to start off this endeavor, so here goes:

I am playing for the White Sands Pupfish of the Pecos League, a 6 team league with 4 teams in New Mexico (Santa Fe Fuego, Roswell Invaders, Las Cruces Vaqueros, Pupfish) 1 in Texas (Alpine Cowboys) and 1 in Colorado (Trinidad Triggers).  Now I know you bilingual folks are saying, but isn't Vaquero just Cowboy in Spanish?? and the answer is yes, but I'm not here to criticize the creativity of our league...not in the introduction at least.

White Sands is most famously only known for being the place where they tested the atomic bomb prior to dropping them during World War II.  We play in Alamogordo, New Mexico, which you have rightfully never heard of because boy is there nothing here.  The apparent hangouts are as follows: Chili's, Applebee's, Sonic (the good one).  Sonic (the bad one) is closer to my host family's house, but nobody goes there.  At first I was just excited that the Sonic commercials had a payoff (they do exist!), and now I'm stuck in the middle of a turf war.  New Mexico is also dealing with some crazy ass fires, as near as the next town over (which by the way is like an hour from here, New Mexico is ridiculously uninhabited), so we'll see how that plays out.

I saved this for the end, because I know anyone who is reading this has been asking themselves one question only.  What in the wide, wide world of sports is a pupfish?  Well, rest easy I'm not going to leave you hanging.  A pupfish is an endangered, terrifying, man-eating 4 inch long fish that dwells in the shallow pools of the white sands and can survive out of water by burrowing into the sand until the next time it rains.

Real cool undetermined namer of the team, way to make us badass.

Settling an Argument from the Bullpen...

The other day, sitting in our bullpen, us pitchers (and a catcher or two) got into a semantic argument over whether we should be considered professional athletes, or merely semi-professional.  The argument basically stemmed over the definition of professional, and whether or not we qualified.  (Full disclosure: I argued we were semi-pro because there's no way in hell you can support yourself off our paychecks).  Lets turn to dictionary.com, and see what it has to say.
professional  (prəˈfɛʃən ə l) — adj 1. of, relating to, suitable for, or engaged in as a profession 2. engaging in an activity for gain or as a means of livelihood 3. a. extremely competent in a job, etc b. (of a piece of work or anything performed) produced with competence or skill 4. undertaken or performed for gain or by people who are paid
	sem·i·pro·fes·sion·al    [sem-ee-pruh-fesh-uh-nl, sem-ahy-] Show IPA adjective 1. actively engaged in some field or sport for pay but on a part-time basis: semiprofessional baseball players. 2. engaged in by paid, part-time people: semiprofessional football. 3. having some features of professional  work but requiring less knowledge, skill, and judgment: a semiprofessional job.
	(I chose to use only the adjective definitions because its pro or semi-pro athlete, therefore adjective. I'm an english degree holder, I told you this blog was for me in post 1. Deal with it.)
	Sure, you can argue that some of the definitions of professional are met (3.a. and 4), but semi-professional is much more spot on.  We are definitely #1, #2, and arguably #3 since if we had the skill of an MLB guy... we would not be here toiling at our craft in New Mexico.
	As I will now conclude, semi-professional is the clearly superior fit.  But don't think at the bar I'm going to stop calling myself a professional athlete.

My First Post

I won't lie to you few readers, this blog is mostly for me.  Its a place to rant, to convince myself that I'm funny, and to convey what I'm feeling on any given day I decide to blog.  In the meantime, hopefully I can share some of what life is like playing pro baseball at (literally, at least for now) the lowest level.