My Favorite Moments from 2023

Scattered memories from a scattered summer

I thought about skipping this particular post this year. Thought hard about it. It was a weird summer.

On July 4, I landed at PDX, excited to head out for my annual Eugene Emeralds visitation, a few new player interviews, and some gorgeous baseball weather. That was to be followed by a trip up to Seattle, where I had an invitation to tour the original Driveline facility, and plans to take in the Futures Game.

None of that happened. Instead, about a five miles down I-5, I found out that a family member was in Urgent Care. After a half hour or so spent on a rest stop park bench canceling various reservations (we should have a discussion about the importance of refundable travel expenses at some point!), I was back headed northbound on I-5 and headed for a return to PDX and a red-eye home. A solid, and exhausting, 24 hours of traveling. The rental car folks didn’t even know how to process me back into their system — I’d been out less than an hour total.

In Eugene that night, young right-hander Hayden Birdsong had his finest outing of the year, striking out 11 over five near-perfect innings, and the Emeralds completed a historic no hitter while I was spending ten hours or so impatiently flopped at a boarding gate, and barely even noticed it. I didn’t see a single out of the game. The next five or six weeks involved increasing concerns, far too many days spent in hospitals, and lots of meditations on the blessings of good health — of waking up in the morning and simply not feeling miserable. I kept up my posts, and did my best to keep all of you well-informed. But I was, to be completely honest with you now, emotionally disconnected.