That was some kind of summer, wasn't it? Whew...
I am going to put down a few thoughts about the trip here. I will post a few more things that nobody will look at, like a complete map, and baseball statistics and the like, but I feel that it is important to capture a few things.
What I missed
So, I was away from home for 11 weeks. What did I miss? Well, I missed trivial stuff, like the finale of Star Trek Next Generation, which aired the night before I left. At work, I finished the FileMaker Developer Kit on the Friday before I left, so I did not get to see it roll out and experience and feedback real time.
But it was home where I missed the most. My ex and I decided to buy a house in 1994, and she had a real push to find one before I left. And we did. She did all of the heavy lifting, using my power-of-attorney to sign things. This was probably not the wisest thing I ever did. I had been planning this trip for 2-3 years, so I would not have cancelled it. But did we have to make an offer as I was on the way out the door? There would have been other houses in August instead of May...
Changes in the world
There were several changes in the my world that happened. Here are a few:
- Radio Stations - 26 years ago, there were no podcasts. There was not really widespread internet. So, for me, radio was an essential part of my driving experience. I had an extensive cassette library I also listened to, but I listened to a lot of radio. When I left, the Bay Area had two jazz stations (KJAZ and KCSM) and two classical stations (KDFC and KKHI). They each had their strengths and weakness. While I was gone, they were both sold. KJAZ had been hard to pick up on the Penisula and in the South Bay, which is where I mostly hung out, but I would suffer the static when KCSM was busy doing NPR (so much NPR in the Bay Area). However, I listened to KKHI a lot; the average year that all of their music was written in was closer to 1850, whereas KDFC's average year was around 1750. I really missed them when I got back.
- Internet - NCSA Mosaic's first beta was released in alpha in June of 1993, and Mac and Windows versions were released later that year. And Netscape Navigator was released in 1994 (and in 1995, Netscape had one of the first mega-successful tech IPOs). When I got back to work, we were already talking about what we were going to do with FileMaker on the Internet.
- Magic the Gathering - When I left, my friends were playing various board games and role playing games. My Houston friends were still playing Star Fleet Battles. By the time I got back, everybody was playing Magic. It's a great game that I am not terribly good at.
On a personal basis, buying the house did not save my marriage. It may have hastened its demise. Since my ex got to do most of the moving, I had very little personal space in the new house. And she resented doing most of the work. We had been married about 18 months when I left, and things were already a little chilly. Plus, she had the bad combination of been extremely introverted, and an almost phobia about being alone. I should have been more sensitive to that problem, probably, but she really did not enjoy baseball, or driving trips, so she had no interest in going, and I had been planning it since before I got married.
So I was selfish. And she had her own issues.
We separated in late 1996 and finally divorced in late 1997.
Changes in baseball
I got back on August 5th. On August 12th, the players went on strike. The strike ended up cancelling the rest of season, the play-offs, and the World Series, and went on long enough where the owners were hiring replacement players. They did get an agreement in spring of 1995, but the 1995 season was shortened as well. I won't go into an essay on all of the ins-and-outs of baseball labor relations. However, I am still sad about a few things:
- The resurgent Yankees had to wait a year for their playoff spot. Now, I am not in any way a Yankees fan, but baseball is healthier when the Yankees are good. And they had not been to the playoffs in 13 years in 1994.
- Cleveland was already good in 1994, and had a real shot at their first World Series appearance since 1954. They did go to the World Series in 1995 and 1997, so all was not lost.
- My favorite team, the Astros were good again after their rebuilding. Although I doubt they would have overcome the Reds for the division title, it would have been interesting. Bagwell's MVP was great, but a lot of people put an asterisk on it because it was not a full season. And, he got hit on the hand the last week, and would have been out 4-6 weeks.
- Matt Williams had a legitimate shot at breaking Babe Ruth's single season home run record (since passed by McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds).
But the biggest baseball tragedy was what happened to the 1994 Montréal Expos. They were playing on a 105-win pace for a 162-game season. They had an amazing offense. Solid pitching. Likeable players. And the fans were coming out; the game I went to drew 47000+ fans.
When the strike hit, and dragged on, it robbed those fans of their chance to see their team win a World Series. They were certainly the best team in baseball at the time.
In 1995, the ownership group decided that they did not make any money by being good, so they started selling off the pieces, and then the owner bought the Marlins. Major League Baseball ran the team for a while, but the team played terribly at that point. They finally sold the team to an ownership group that took them to Washington in 2005. 14 years later, they finally won that World Series, but I doubt anybody in Quebec cared by that point.
(BTW, I wrote that last paragraph from memory. There are many excellent sources out there talking about this. The one that is most factual was a book, but the author of that book turned out to be a major scumbag, a serial domestic abuser, so I won't recommend you buy it)
The strike killed the Expos. And the world is a worse place without them.
My relationship with baseball
I grew up in Houston, an Astros fan. It was harder (particularly before the Internet) in 1988 to root for an out of town team, but I had trouble rooting for a division rival with a truly awful ballpark (Giants), and I positively despised Jose Canseco (As), so until the late 90s, I went to Giants and As games here and there, especially when the Astros came to town.
In the late 90s, however, the As changed. Even before Billy Bean brought Moneyball, Sandy Alderson had embraced on-base percentage when drafting and developing minor-league players. I remember an interview with visiting Yankee Cecil Fielder on the radio where he talked about envying the hitting instruction the minor league A's player were receiving, and how he would have like to work on plate discipline when he was young.
In 1999, they finished 2nd in the wild card. They weren't close to catching Boston, but there were pretty good.
In 2000, I had started dating my now wife, and towards August, I mentioned the surging As, and how I thought that they were built the right way, and how they were going to be good for several more years. She said, bless her heart, "You should get season tickets!" So we did. We got the playoff strip for 2000, and we had season tickets from 2001-2006, when we moved to Austin. In 2002, I got to witness another game where an 11-run lead was blown! The A's won anyway. You might know about this game; it was the A's 20th win in a row, and was the centerpiece of the book and movie called "Moneyball".
After we moved to Austin, a town without a major league team, I have had a more nuanced fanship. Made it a game in Houston or Arlington every once in a while. When I was working remotely for Silicon Valley companies, I tried to go to games when I went out to California.
I also spent 11 years in a fantasy baseball league with sharks. Those guys knew their stuff, and the founder went to work for the Cleveland Indians. I learned a lot during that time, and established methodologies for analytics and player projections.
However, the big thing was trying to get a job in baseball. Since Moneyball came in, analytics took over the game, and I had been doing that for 30 years. Over the years, I talked to a couple of teams (Royals and Dodgers). But in 2019, a job came up with the Astros.
I applied, and did their assessment, and they called me to talk about next steps. But, they could not pay me what I make currently.
I don't apply to baseball positions anymore, because apparently they don't want to pay industry wages for what I do. I'm not terribly surprised.
And, frankly, I am glad for other reasons. While I admire a lot of how the Astros used data to win, the sexist attacks, the sign-stealing, the apparent sociopathy of the owner and the GM... well, I did not need to be part of that kind of company. I've mostly avoided those kinds of companies, and they paid a lot better, anyway.
And with the pandemic, a lot of those jobs disappeared.
So, I will stay over here, in my little corner, and watch baseball on TV, and be fans of individual players, and of bad teams coming out of the wilderness and surprising everybody.
Would I do it again?
I would like to. My current wife has wanderlust, and we talked about buying an RV when we retire, and just letting it drive and seeing where it goes. I would probably break it up into smaller trips in consecutive summers. Maybe the American League one summer, and National League the next? Or by division? Or pairing the Eastern divisions, Central divisions, and Western divisions? We'll have to see. Raising a family has been our primary concern, and we are not done with that.
Thank you for reading along my journey. It wasn't "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by any means, but I did grow, and it was great to see so many people I knew, both friends and family.
I hope you and yours stay healthy, and that at some point, trips like this can happen again. I also hope you find your piece.
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