Eight Years of Master-Batting

In the summer of 2003,  I got the idea in my head to form a co-ed softball team. I still don't remember why. This past week, we finally won the league championship. Here is our story...

The original team consisted of my five best friends and I, along with as many former baseball and softball players we could get our hands on. We chose an adult co-ed 14" league that played on Monday nights. Being as how it was an adult league, half of our players were under 18 (myself included) and playing illegally. I paid the $400 owed to the Bartlett Park District by handing over a sweaty roll of cash bound by a rubber band. The park district secretary looked bewildered. Nevertheless, our American currency was good and our rag-tag outfit took the field ten times that season.

We were young, athletic and energetic- there was no way we wouldn't crush our opponents. Going in with this mentality, we decided it a good idea to loosen up with a few beer bongs in the garage before our first game. When efficiently lubricated, we piled into cars belonging to the sober girls we always kept handy back then and prepared to capture our first victory as the Sam's Garage Master Batters (I also don't know how I came up with the second part of the name, but I'm sure I'm not the first to use it as the name of a softball team). Our starting shortstop at the time, Andy Soukal, asked if he could use the bathroom. I assumed he meant peeing on a bush on the side of my house (which was the style at the time). Unfortunately for Andy, he meant going inside my house to use the indoor plumbing, which also meant he would come face-to-face with my dog, Jazz. From outside I heard barking and screaming, and saw Andy finally pour out of the garage door in a fit of hysteria. Jazz, ya see, didn't (and still doesn't) like unannounced visitors. As it turns out, he takes particular offense to young male strangers that smell of beer and cigarettes with red mustaches painted on their faces.

Jazz basically mauled Andy. His leg was bleeding profusely from a few dents in his calf where flesh had once been. Regardless, we took the field that night. Andy still hasn't forgiven Jazz for the incident, and still brings it up to this day. I guess no one can blame him.

Our first game we were drunk, underage, dressed and painted in red, smoking and chewing tobacco on the field, and about to get our young pale asses handed to us by "old" people. The comedy of errors that ensued while we were on the field included Andy Soukal fielding a ball at shortstop, hurling toward home plate to catch a runner, missing the entire backstop and hitting the umpire's car. Lucky for us nothing was damaged, including Andy's pride, as he was blind drunk and bleeding out.

The rest of the season would follow in-suite, with the team winning only our tenth and final game. We rushed the field as if we had won game seven, happy to finish with at least one win. Over the eight seasons that followed, players came and went including but not limited to- Andy Soukal, Mike Coscino, Chris Echternach, Jason Foster, Ryan Monaghan, Frank Lovecchio, Derek Self, Joe Legions, Paige Blair, Cait Considine, Collen Conway, Kristin Oberg, Jamie Miller, Samantha Williams, Jenna Mallory and others... There was however a core group of players that always remained including- Myself, Jonathan Angarola, Mike LaGrasse, Brandon Monaghan and Robyn Lovecchio. The core values always remained as well- having fun being the most important.

We would later switch to a Friday night league, so as to better party and celebrate as a team in the garage afterwords (which we did adamantly) and developed a fan following of friends that would attend the games and haze opposing players while drinking Old Style and smoking Camels. As we got older, the game itself became more important, and our skills progressed. We switched back to a Monday night league, as Friday was already a great day without softball, and now in our twenties we needed something to look forward to after a Monday's work schedule. Returning to this time slot we began to excel. We consistently had winning records, and made the playoffs twice, advancing farther each time until finally winning it all this year.

Moving to Chicago, this was my last season with the team I helped create and I couldn't be more happy that I can retire a champion. Here is to everyone who ever swung a bat as a Master Batter. We might all be older, heavier and slower, but we still Master Bat.



Cait, Joe, Jonathan, Jenna, Brandon, Mike, Jessica, Robyn, Samantha, Jamie, Sam. (Circa 2006)



Mike, Cait, Robyn, Christin. (Circa 2006)

Brandon, Mike and others (First game 2003)

Sam "The Exception" (We all had ridiculous nick-names- Circa 2006)

Sam and Frank (Circa 2007)

Samantha and Jessica Born (Crica 2006)

Sam and Frank and others (Circa 2008)

Sam, Jessica, Jared, Jenna, Jonathan, Samantha, Robyn, Brandon, Mike, Kaelen, Rosas (After our first playoff  "win" by forfeit- 2010)

Jessica Bersani, Jessica Born, Kaelen, Mike
Dan O, Sam, Robyn, Alex, Brandon, Jared
Tiana, Jeri Ann, Rosas, Jonathan- 2011 Champions!

The Chicago Me

Being as how I'm moving into the city with my fiancé in August, I have begun to think about the necessary changes that I will need to undergo to fit into the Chicago twenty-something crowd. The following describes some of those changes...

I will need to buy an Apple mac book, and regularly take it to my "local" coffee shop to sit and use their Wi-Fi (even though my apartment has perfectly good internet access) where I pay $5 for a bag of Tazo tea, and cup of hot water.

I will need to start wearing the following: Scarves, tight pants, short colorful shorts, artistic tee shirts, Ray Ban wayfarers, a canvas messenger bag, dirty unkempt hair, a five-o'clock shadow, Birkenstock sandals.

I will need to sit on the El and labor through a very thick piece of literature, while periodically glancing around to be certain that the passengers have taken note of my choice in prose. Something like Ulysses, Remembrance of Things Past or Leaves of Grass will do nicely.

I will need to eat primarily organic food, and very little meat. The more obscure the fruit or vegetable, the better. Mangosteen and Goji berries are a must. Very ethnic food is also a must. Again, the more obscure the dish, the better. I will travel incredible distances to my "spot"-some hole-in-the-wall Indian or Thai food joint where the food is no better than anywhere else near where I live, but that isn't what I will tell people. It will go more like this: "Oh man, this place on fifth has the best Phu soup in the Western Hemisphere. No one knows about it though because it is so far off the beaten path. It is only like a 35 minutes El ride, with two transfers for me, but it is totally worth it."

I will need a closet-sized high rise apartment that I will decorate with rugs, a guitar that I will not learn how to play, ewually useless tennis rackets and balls, unread books scattered everywhere,horrible "artwork" and vinyl record cover art. The bathroom and kitchen will also need to be in a constant state of disaster, as I spend too much time editing my screenplay to keep them tidy. The entire dwelling with smell always of sandalwood.

I will need to live in a building that is at least fifteen floors, and serves as a nest of other twenty-somethings with similarly furnished apartments and lifestyles. I will borrow cups of jasmine rice and whole grains from these hive-mates. We will converse about whose Indian or Thai food "spot" is superior, always arguing in circles and never visiting the other's "spot" to prove or disprove one's opinion.

I will begin to listen to awful, awful music. The music must be so underground that the musicians haven't even learned to play their instruments or form an actual band yet. If someone recognizes the lyrics to some of these shit songs that I post on my facebook status to describe my feelings on the day, I will immediately recognize them as a poser, and stop listening to the shit music as, "They were good before they went all mainstream and lost their real identity as musicians."

I will only exercise in public. Anything done to better myself that cannot be witnessed publicly will not interest me anymore. All exercise will consist of beach volleyball, rowing, jogging, etc. all of which done wearing puma cross-trainers, an ipod armband and brilliantly-colored shorts.

My bar choices will be similar to my restaurant choices, in that they will be small and unfrequented by most people. I will occasionally get "roped into" going to a wildly expensive and equally loud club where I will sip a $16 dollar Old-Fashioned and ask people if they want to read my poetry, or do drugs.

Most importantly, I will disown my former self. Entirely. I may even change my name.

Male Enhancement and You.

I see all of these pills, creams and torture-device looking things that people sell to poor bastards who dream of having a bigger wiener. I think to myself that of course they don't work, and deep down everyone knows this. If any of this actually worked, and someone really had solved the riddle of how to eat something  and make your dick permanently and safely bigger, it would change the world.

For one thing, it would be bigger (hehe) than Viagra. Probably about 108% of men would consider buying it, or get a prescription for it if that is necessary. If this was sold as a prescription, what would be the required symptoms, and who would decide? I'd love to see that conversation at the doctor's office:

Doctor

What seems to be the problem?

 

Poor Bastard

Well Doc, I have a tiny dick.

 

Doctor

Ok, let's take a look.

 

(Poor bastard drops drawers)
 

Doctor

Oh my, that IS a problem. I'm writing you a prescription for self-confidence. Take only two of these a day, or the side-effects will be considerable.

Three days later the guy walks back into the doctor's office carrying his colossal dick like a newborn baby.

If one did show self-restraint when it came time to take your "prescription" your new big dick would probably still be small by comparison. It is all relative really. If everyone has a big dick, then the guys who had the original big dicks would have to start taking trips to Mexico to buy the magic pill as well. I mean, having a big dick was probably all that they had going for them to begin with, because most guys with giant schlongs don't feel the need to compensate in other areas.

So, the original big dicks would become the big dicks once more. But, they would never get laid again because now their penises are of such enormous proportion that women would risk post-coital surgery by putting it anywhere near them. In fact, very few guys would be able to show enough restraint to stop when their dick reached an enjoyable size, because then they would have a small dick again. And lets face it, it is more important to have the status of having a big dick than to give females pleasure with it. At least that is the way it was explained to me in 5th grade sex education.

World-production would be down since, as I have mentioned, everyone with a big dick (everyone) wouldn't feel the need to make a lot of money or better themselves in any other way. Unless you worked tourism in Mexico, or making underwear for enormous packages, you're probably going to lose your job you big-dick bastard.



The industry that would especially suffer is anything known to help men compensate for their minuscule members- i.e. sports cars, jet-skis, motorcycles, Rottweilers, etc.

If any of these mediums to big-dickery actually worked, the guy that invented it would be the richest man in a world with a declining world market, a steep decline in sports car sales, men stalking women like animals (more so than now even), and horribly sore vaginas all around the world.

Despite the fact that we don't live in a world like the one described, men still look at pills and creams called something like "Thor's Hammer Cock" with ambiguous "proprietary blends" and think to themselves, "But, maybe this is the one that will finally work. Just, maybe." And for only $4.95 a pill, who can blame them?

I certainly hope cancer gets cured before we see 3 Billion giant wangs being dragged across creation, because that would be disgusting (the wangs, not the cancer). 

Student Teaching: Part III (Fin)

This will be the last blog about student-teaching, and then I'm going to start blogging strictly about exotic cheeses.

 

My experience at SHS could be summed up in the following facts and figures...

I parked everyday in the small, ten space lot directly in front of the school. It is reserved for visitors only. Even the principal walks her ass from the large lot in the back, all the way to her office in the front. I was certainly not supposed to be parking there, but it was just so damned convenient. I decided I would park there until someone noticed, and then told me to park where I was supposed to. I feigned ignorance like this for 6 weeks. It took SHS administration that long to notice my truck parked twenty feet from the entrance, every day. This should give you an idea of how well the institution has its act together. It finally got back to me when one of my co-operating teachers asked if that was where I was parking. I probably could have denied it, and gotten away with parking there for another week. At least.

 

The SHS vending machines had space for about 60 different junk food options. About 12 of these were reserved for Flaming Hot Cheetos, and the rest for either candy or other salty snacks that contained the words/phrases "Jalepeno" "Extra Hot" and "Buffalo" in their descriptions. These vendors know that they're doing, because a lot of students would eat four or five bags of the above sodium-bombs for breakfast and lunch, everyday. I have even witnessed Flamin' Hot Cheetos used in courtship, with a student garnering attention from a desirable young lady by giving her his "extra bag" every day. May they have a long and fruitful relationship. This epidemic is not an SHS exclusive phenomenon though, especially in other working-class schools. A friend of mine working in Peoria Public Schools has even graded papers that were covered in the signature bright red residue of Flamin' Hot Cheetos. I guess the snack sometimes makes it into the dinner meal rotation as well. 

 

On a very important day of class, I stood and faced the flag while the school mumbled through the pledge of allegiance to start the day. I mouthed the words to the pledge, but was actually saying: "Hail Mary, full of grace..."

 

On a culminating research paper that I admit I could have taught better, one student wrote an opus entitled: "ILLEGAL IMIGANTION". You can imagine the masterful writing that followed.

Throughout the course of my student-teaching, I witnessed four or five fights (one of which included a deaf boy surprise-jumping on the back of a good-sized Hispanic tough and attacking his face; another included four Hispanic girls in a free-for-all that made it difficult for a spectator to figure out who, if anyone, was on who's side). There were also two fire-alarms pulled. Now, most schools have fire-alarms pulled as a prank. These were pulled due to fires being started in bathroom garbage cans; part of a rash of these incidents stretching back to the beginning of the school year.

Part of me feels like a sell-out who wants to chalk-up Illinois public education as a waste of time, and no fun at all. Part of me feels like I would be giving up on the all of the students that clearly need help. Yet, a bigger part of me feels that If I were to do anything I wasn't 100% sure of, would be a mistake. An even bigger still part of me wants a glass of wine, and then tell you all about it...

Student Teaching: Part II

Teenagers are animals. I am so sick of teenagers that I will need to see serious maturity levels from my own children to keep from sending them to boarding school at age 13. I am more and more disgusted by their behavior, language, motivations and priorities. I am so sick of seeing them lick each other's faces, and hearing their mindless, disrespectful conversations, that by the end of my time at SHS, I wanted to walk the halls with a cattle prod.

It makes sense to me; I know why they are the way that they are, but I still can't stand the vast majority of them. Individually each student can be great to know, and converse with. But, when as a pack in general, they are intolerable.

I know I too was once a teenager, but I could not have been nearly as bad as these teens. Yes, I drank. Yes, I smoked a cig here and there. Yes, I broke rules. But the main difference between myself and teens today lies in one word: Respect. Not to say that there were not disrespectful shithead teens that I grew up with, indeed there were. The rampant level of disrespect today is absurd though. Teens have respect for nothing: Rules, authority, property, relationships, friendships, or even themselves. When I was a teenager, I might have had angst, but I still had respect. There were teachers that I did not like, but I did not curse in their faces, and charge out of rooms. When adults working in a high school are afraid to tell students what kind of car that they drive, for fear of it being vandalized, there is a problem with the student populous. The students file into school in the morning, with their empty heads hung low. They are not 3,000 eager and willing minds, but inmates.

Part of me wants to kick every student with the cancerous attitude described out of school. Let them take their disrespectful attitudes and see where it will get them in life. I would like to see some of these students fail miserably. However, as an adult and and educator you have to act on the, "forgive them, for they know not what they do" mentality. Though some days I want to simply scream, "You're an ignorant f#%&*ng loser with no future!" into their faces, I don't. Being an educator doesn't just mean teaching young students facts and theories, but how to be a useful member of society. That starts with Respect. 

Student Teaching: The Final Product (Part 1)

Wow, I haven't blogged in ages. That is because I was impossibly busy with student teaching at Streamwood High School. Don't worry, I didn't get to enjoy the following things as well: Exercising, watching TV, sleeping, being outside, anything. The following is my first of a series of blogs that will be relating to my student teaching experience. Some will be funny, others reflective, and still others just no bullshit ranting. Enjoy.

It's funny; most people get into teaching because they hate or fail at what they thought their dream was. I on the other hand have only further realized my dream after hating/failing at teaching.

Before we go any further however, I should explain that I did not fail at student teaching. I did fail to enjoy it as much as I thought I would though, which is all that really matters. It came to the point where I would seriously feel ill walking the steps of Streamwood high school at 7am every morning. It got to the point where I, Sam Wrobel, would lose my appetite for entire days. Most importantly, it got to the point where I would be writing lesson plans and think, "I have to fill another 10 minutes with some activity," whereas a teacher should say, "I only have 50 minutes with these kids today." It wasn't that I didn't like the kids- well that isn't entirely true, there were a few that I wasn't too fond of- I just enjoyed teaching them what I wanted to teach them, and not what the state of Illinois and the backwards U-46 school district wanted me to.

During my ten weeks of student teaching (and many more weeks of observing prior to) and working at Lynfred Winery (Woot!) I began to realize that finding a fulfilling career in educating does not have to mean forcing 16 year old students reading at a third grade level to sit somewhere they don't want to be, and hate you for making them. I found much more fulfillment sharing and educating on the joys of the fermented grape to adults than I did in for former scenario. 35 students packed into a small classroom with only a blackboard and a VCR (yes, a VCR) because the district can't afford to pay teachers is fucked up. The horse shit, bullshit and dog shit that teachers have to put up with from administrators and the district bureaucracy is fucked up. The fact that no child is left behind, and they are continually passed up along the food chain to become someone else's problem is fucked up. The fact that we have a young generation of "functioning illiterates" is fucked up.

So, fuck it. I'm gonna have a glass bottle of wine and salute those that are content to be teachers. If you'd like to join me, I can be found relaxing in a sedentary position at a small number of locations. One way or another, stay tuned...

Blizz-og

I have been meaning to write this since the blizzard, but i'm confident the memory won't fade any time soon.

Holy shoes what a blizzard. Without speaking on how unforgiving the storm itself was, I'd just like to reflect on it some.

For one thing, I had never seen so few cars on the roads than the night of February 1st. In the twenty minutes it took me to make the normally five minute drive to Jessica's house, I saw only one other vehicle that was not plowing snow. I was terrified while making the trip to "rescue" her, as my truck has been stuck in more favorable conditions than I was attempting to drive through. Visibility was zero, and I imagined that I would be stuck somewhere, and have to return home on foot absent two of the most important things in my life (Jessica being first, of course ;) Miraculously, I managed to make it to her, and even get us both back to my house.

The next immediate thing one thinks of when snowed-in for who-knows-how long, is this: How much booze do I have? Will I have enough alcohol to stay drunk for days, even weeks? (yes)... Who knows how long such conditions outside could last.

The blizzard raged outside, while we drank in front of a fire, and enjoyed the perfect storm that had us both free of responsibility for at least a day.

The next day, I woke up at the crack of noon to begin shoveling the driveway. Yikes. I exited my house through the garage, and stood for a moment, dejected, as I starred down a four foot wall of snow left when the door opened. The ensuing three hours of lifting with my back had my mind wandering. Where the F#$% were those brat kids that always beg to shovel your driveway for a dollar whenever we get a light dusting? I imagined they were somewhere warm, sitting in front of some electronic entertainment. Next, I wish I really did have some of the warm, spiced christmas wine I use the line "this is my driveway shoveling wine" to sell. Truthfully, I've never shoveled under the influence. Next, what happens when mail-carriers call in sick? Today, I would be one of those mail-carriers, but I'll still complain if my Playboy comes late.

Eventually my dad came out to help, and I began to get sentimental. Though few words were exchanged during the all-business style session of shoveling, It did dawn on me that this could very likely be the last time the two of us ever shovel any driveway together again. Moving out this summer, I would never get to suffer through this type of thing with my father again. It is always the odd little things that get me nostalgic. I began to think about the earliest memories I've had during winters at my parent's Bartlett home. There is something to be said for having a driveway of your own and a son to shovel it. I only wish to be so lucky.