faulker009

It’s not every day that you get a phone call from the bleachers at Wrigley Field. But that’s what happened to me today. The call came from my son’s baseball coach who was in the middle of an 11-day baseball tour with his 11-year old. About a month ago the coach told me about his plans and with each detail I became more and more envious. The nine games they were going to see. The trip to the real Field of Dreams. Eleven consecutive days with just father and son. Every detail was more perfect than the previous one. Their trip began nearly a week ago when they hopped in the car and headed east. One of the first stops was a minor league game in Cedar Rapids, at Perfect Game Field. Unfortunately Mother Nature didn’t cooperate, but everything else was… perfect. Well nearly perfect. Cedar Rapids pitcher Stephen Locke, the 681 st player selected in the 2009 draft, walked one hitter, but didn’t allow any hits to treat the coach and his son to history. There’s an old baseball saying that eve...

My dad always said that a bases-loaded triple was the most exciting play in baseball. As someone who worked for several Major League teams and saw literally thousands of games, he knew what he was talking about. I remember him telling me that on that play, unlike any other, everybody on the field was moving. It’s really a shame that my dad didn’t live long enough to see my son play because I have a feeling 11-year old baseball would’ve replaced the majors as his favorite game. Through the four months of March through June, it pretty much consumes every weekend for us. Yesterday marked the end of our season, but it wasn’t by choice. We were playing in the State Tournament, with one game on Friday night and two on Saturday. If we won two of the three, we would advance to the next round.   Anything less and we would go home. For eight months. The odds were definitely against us. This year our team played in the 11-year old triple-A division, but our first two games in the tournament w...

Disclaimer : If you are a parent, you will probably do a lot of nodding during this blog.   If you don’t have any kids, you will probably do a lot of nodding off. Either way, I hope you enjoy it.  It is Sunday night and we just completed a marathon. Not a real marathon, that’s too much work, but... It all began Friday night with game one of my son’s weekend baseball tournament. Following a satisfying win and an even more satisfying meal with the family, we got back home at around 9:30. It was a quick lights out as the alarm clock was scheduled to go off at 5:50am to get us ready for game two. A quick lights out for everybody but me. I’ve always been a night owl and no matter what is scheduled for the next day, I always have a hard time getting to bed early. I have this little unwritten rule in my head though, as long as I sleep five hours or more, I am fine.   Four hours and 59 minutes or less and it is guaranteed to be a two coffee day. For this night, my goal was Midnig...

It’s amazing what you can learn at the batting cage. You can learn how to keep your hands back. You can learn how to keep your head in. You can also learn all about psychology. More on that in a moment. A few days ago, my eleven year old son and I went to the batting cage to work on his swing. It took him about one pitch to get frustrated. Ok, maybe three. That’s how I knew he was my son. When I was his age, I had the maturity of... an eleven-year old.    So watching his temper kick in feels like I’m watching an old black and white movie get re-made into color. But this time I’m a supporting actor instead of the star. God rest the souls of the wooden tennis rackets that lost their innocent lives about 32 years ago by being slammed into the concrete by an immature child. Come to think of it, I was A LOT worse than he is. After ten rounds in the cage -- which included me walking away, him yelling at me, me trying hard (and somehow succeeding) to not yell at him, me walking back,...

It’s time to play the game that’s sweeping the nation: So What Would You Do? A couple of days ago, I was playing a game of video baseball in the basement with my son.  He won 5-2 on an opposite field three-run homer in the bottom of the eighth. Cheater.  But I digress. As I’m headed upstairs, I notice that the area where my autographed baseballs are displayed looks a little empty.   As I go to check it out, I notice there are three balls out of their cases, sitting in the open air on the counter. One of the balls was signed by Joe Dimaggio & Mickey Mantle, one was signed by Pete Rose and one was signed by a bunch of people I couldn’t read. As I headed that way, I could hear my son gasp. These balls, handed down from my dad, hold some serious sentimental value, in addition to some serious financial value as well. So seeing them on the counter with no protection really freaked me out. So What Would You Do? Before you answer, here’s what I did. I used my outdoor voice, ...

I’ve played a lot of ball in my day and one thing I learned at a very young age was not to be cocky. I kinda learned it the hard way. I was at a baseball camp when I was about 11 years old, the same age as my son, when we were doing a drill catching fly balls. To this day, I can remember shooting my mouth off about how boring that drill was.  Somewhere in the infield, a coach was loading the machine, launching balls our way. When it got to my turn, I heard the sound, but I never saw the ball.   The next thing I knew, it was a Batman episode. Pow!!!... Bam!!!... Zonk!!! The ball smashed directly into that soft spot between my eyes, right above my nose. For whatever reason, it didn’t hurt me at all, but it sure destroyed my pride. And definitely woke me up. From that point forward, I have always made it a priority to shut my mouth.  I certainly have it in me to jab at people, but I always remind myself that what comes around goes around. At last check, I am still human...

I’ve never claimed to be a journalist. Yes, I’ve worked in the “media” for the last quarter century, but the more you learn about the media, the more you learn that there are very few journalists left. The new goal of the new media is plain and simple, promote and make money. If you happen to break some significant story along the way, good for you, as long as you get ratings or sell papers. My training, to not-be-a-journalist, began all the way back in high school, when I worked for the school newspaper... ... at the same time I played on the school baseball team... ... while writing the articles for the school newspaper... ... on the school baseball team. If that’s not journalism, then I don’t know what is. I was the guy who wrote the article when the third baseman made seven errors in one game. Of course that third baseman was me. Shockingly, there was no mention of any of those errors in the article. Not journalism.  Check. The reason I bring this up, is that I’m about to not b...