My dad turned 64 this weekend, and so far things are looking good. I still need him, and he\u2019s been well-plied with an assortment of Thai food, homemade brioche and apple cobbler. He taught me about rhythm and keeping time one afternoon while we sat on the floor in his office, my clumsy five-year-old hands working hard to hit the one, TWO, three, FOUR of \u201cLove Me Do\u201d before giving up in the chaos of \u201cYesterday,\u201d so there were lots of these jokes leading up to Saturday.<\/p>\n
Baseball isn\u2019t really his thing. He\u2019s more driven by nitrate-rich hot dogs than discourse around the hot corner, but we turned the radio on yesterday and midway through the seventh inning, as he sliced salami and cheese (are you sending a theme?), he looked up and asked, \u201cIs this Shannon Drayer?\u201d I was flabbergasted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWow. Um, yeah, it is.\u201d And then, because meat isn\u2019t the only thing this man thrives on, \u201cGreat job, Dad! I\u2019m shocked – and so impressed!\u201d<\/p>\n
He smiled, pleased to still be surprising me. \u201cOf course I know her. She was so nice to my girl, I\u2019ll always remember that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Almost a decade ago, I was granted Mariners media credentials for a freelance piece I\u2019d pitched without considering the consequences of my actions. Namely, that in order to write said piece, I\u2019d have to actually conduct interviews with the players. I was so petrified of appearing as young, foolish and inexperienced as I was, I did something absurd. I asked for help. Specifically, I sent a message to Shannon Drayer on Twitter (rip), asking for any tips about how to navigate the clubhouse. Rather than send me some vague info, or leave me on read, or any of the other things she would have been well within her rights to do, she replied and said I could meet her in the press box and shadow her as needed that day. Sure enough, I arrived hours before first pitch, heart pounding, and there she was. I followed her everywhere, as she introduced me to folks, kindly explained the unwritten rules of the clubhouse, helped me navigate the elevators and did her best to get me in front of the players I needed to talk to. I\u2019d never felt like a more grateful duckling, and it solidified me as a Shannon fan for life.<\/p>\n
This is a long-winded series of anecdotes to get to the real question, but it\u2019s an off-day during Spring Training and we are a community, not (just) a soulless pit of letters and numbers. Sometimes it\u2019s nice to channel the beloved old-school blogger vibes. Anyway, what\u2019s one of your favorite baseball celeb memories? Did you almost step on Mike Leake while he was lying on the floor? Did you lose by a country mile to Jonatan Clase in a foot race? Did you have to chase after a perhaps-not-sober Wade Boggs on a golf course? Did you flag a random guy over during BP to ask for an autograph without knowing who he was, only to show the accompanying picture to your family and learn it was mid-Cy Young Award-winning season Blake Snell? Did you have a near-death experience after choking on your coffee when F\u00e9lix Hern\u00e1ndez walked into Chace\u2019s Pancake Corral while you were enjoying your Tuesday morning ritual? Lay it all on me (or try to guess which of these examples is made up)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My dad turned 64 this weekend, and so far things are looking good. I still need him, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2392],"tags":[5,78343,620,4,619,65,77143,3235],"class_list":{"0":"post-602207","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-mariners","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-lookout-landing-community-chat","10":"tag-mariners","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-seattle","13":"tag-seattle-mariners","14":"tag-seattle-mariners-discussion","15":"tag-seattlemariners"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116161448783339545","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}