Dear Friends,
Happy Sunday. Headed to Burlington, VT today to see the Circle Jerks, Negative Approach, and 7 Seconds. I have never been to Burlington, so I’m excited about that, and have never seen 7 Seconds. I loved them in the mid-80s, so it should be fun.
I’m also very excited to be going on a little adventure like this with Rhondi. We haven’t had one for a while and I love that we do these things when we can to connect in a different way than our typical day. We are heading to Vermont with our friends, Jamie and Eric, which will be fun, too. I will write about our adventure when we get back and share.
Part four of “The Baseball” story is ready (maybe? Haha…I don’t know if any of this is ready for anything).
*****
Technically, Max and Kate got to sleep in on Tuesdays. They both had the day off, but the traffic noise made it nearly impossible to sleep much past 7:30 a.m. for Max. Their apartment complex was on a busy street and their bedroom window looked out over the street, so when things got going, Max got up.
It could have been worse, of course, but having Tuesday off was kind of nice. To Max, it seemed like the rest of the world was really getting into the groove of the new week and he got to slow down. Except that he never really slowed down. There was always something to do. Kate was much better at taking it easy on Tuesdays.
With Kate still fast asleep, Max walked down to the 7-11 at the corner to buy a paper. The Arizona Republic was like an old friend, and he read it every day. He would have subscribed, but Kate talked him out of it. She argued that he could read it at work five days a week for free as Friendly’s got a huge stack each day so there would always be enough to go around in the showroom.
After grabbing the paper, Max crossed the street to Einstein’s to grab coffee and a bagel. Kate wouldn’t be up for another couple of hours at the earliest. He had time to have a bagel, read the paper, and drank a few cups of coffee while watching the cars zip by.
Max liked looking at a particular car and imagining where the driver was going and what they would be doing that day. If the light was red and he could see the face of the driver, it was even better. Max never thought of it this way, but it was just another game he played to pass the time. Sometimes he played this game when he was working on an alarm.
Very rarely did he get to meet the person who bought the car, but while he was working on it, he would think about where this car would ‘live’ and where it would go. Max would sometimes share his thoughts on this with Lee and the two of them would have a good laugh. Lee didn’t realize this was something Max did a lot and Max was okay with that.
The big news of the day was about the expansion draft that was going to happen that afternoon. The Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays would be joining the league in the upcoming season and Max was excited to see how the new rosters were going to shape up.
When it was announced that Phoenix would be home to a new expansion team, Max was excited. He and Lee had many discussions about whether they would become Diamondbacks fans. As lifelong fans of their respective favorite teams, it was hard to imagine rooting for someone else, but as the new team’s inaugural season got closer, it was hard not to be excited about major league baseball games being played in town.
The two co-workers had decided they would get tickets to see their favorite teams when they came to town when tickets went on sale.
As Max ate his bagel and read the paper, his mind drifted back to Kate. He could see her sleeping on her side, one arm tucked up under the pillow and her other arm laying across the top. He loved her but he wasn’t sure about the future. At moments like this, sitting alone in Einstein’s reading the paper, he didn’t know if he really needed anything else.
They had lived together for almost two years. He found himself wondering a lot lately about the future. He knew he needed to make a move but what would it be? He liked his job, but mostly because of Lee and a few other people he worked with that made it easy.
Kate made life easy, too, and he did love her. He liked that she was a hard worker and took care of business. They met in 1992 when Max went to Amy’s birthday party. Amy and Max had been on the Hawks Talk staff at Apollo High School together and had been friends ever since.
Amy Gold and Kate Clemmer had gotten to know each other during their senior year at Arizona State University in a fluff music appreciation course they both took to fulfill a last elective credit. Amy had continued the journalism path and was writing for the State Press at ASU and Kate was finishing up her marketing degree. They joked about how Amy was learning to spread the truth and Kate was learning to spread bullshit and would sometimes introduce themselves in Tempe bars as “Yin” and “Yang.” This got some strange looks, but they loved it.
After graduating, they both had gotten entry level jobs with the Phoenix New Times and their friendship continued to grow. With Amy working as a copy editor and Kate working in sales, the two would often have lunch together. One day, Amy told Kate about an old friend of hers, Max, and said she thought Kate might like him. If Kate was interested, Amy said she would invite him to her birthday party the next weekend.
Kate said, “Why not?” and asked Amy about Max.
That night, Amy called Max to invite him to her birthday party.
“She wanted to know what you were like.”
“What did you tell her?”
Max was very curious what Amy would say next.
“I said you were super cute and funny. A little bit quirky and mysterious, too. Basically that you were a mix of Brandon and Dylan from 90210 and good with your hands.”
“Geez, Ames. I don’t look like either of those guys.”
“Yes, you do. In high school, when your hair was longer, you would have fit right in on that show. You should grow your hair out again.”
Max liked to keep his hair super short. When you were crawling around in a car looking for wires, longer hair was not your friend.
*****
See you tomorrow.
Buck Showalter was the first manager in Arizona Diamondbacks history. This picture is funny. He is not.
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