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Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Back in the Saddle... sort of

I'm trying to get back in the blogging habit, after abandoning it for my first two months here. It's not that I haven't had things to talk about... because I've had plenty. Covering the Twins and the Red Sox has kept me busy, and I have a ton of spring training stories I could share.

The problem is America Online. We needed to switch to dial-up internet access once we moved here to save some money. Unfortunately, installing AOL on our computer also meant that the AOL installation disk overloaded our computer with tons of crappy software we didn't want. Our computer was running so slowly that to do anything online took about ten times longer than it should.

I got sick of it the other night and asked Cory to cancel AOL (90 days "risk free," so at least we'll get our money back). We switched over to PeoplePC, which hasn't been perfect, but it's been much, much better. Plus, it's substantially cheaper than AOL.

So, at least in theory, I should be able to blog more.

In the meantime, I'll share with you one little story about Spring Training. Any of you who follow baseball know that Manny Ramirez showed up for camp two weeks late. Everyone just writes it off as "Manny being Manny," a phrase I've heard so many times in the last week that I could scream.

Manny's (late) arrival was so highly anticipated that around camp, we stopped referring to the day that he was scheduled to arrive as "Wednesday," and started calling it "Manny Day."

He was required to report by 9:00 am. I rolled in around 9:02. The parking lot attendant smiled at me and said "Manny's here."
I parked my car, and the guard at the player's parking lot told me "Hey, Manny just got here."
I carried my equipment to the training complex, and the two security guards said "We just saw Manny a couple minutes ago."
I walked around to the back of the complex, and there were approximately 12 television cameras (including ESPN), and 20 radio and print reporters hovering outside the clubhouse door. I resisted the urge to say "Hey, is something important going on today?"
Surprisingly, Manny actually talked to the media. Afterward, every single person I talked to for the rest of the day asked me, "Did you see Manny?"
So, how big was the story? I overheard the NBC affiliate from Boston actually cutting into "The Today Show" for a live report on Manny's arrival. Seriously.

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