Fear and Awe in Phoenix

I went to the USA-Mexico WBC game last week, and while it was a rough day for the boys in the red, white and blue, it was decidedly fun for the overwhelmingly pro-Mexico crowd that was packed into Chase Field. The din as the final out grew closer pitch-by-pitch was ear-splitting from my vantage point five rows from the very top of the stadium, and that was with maybe 25,000 people left (almost all of whom were rooting for the baseball incarnation of El Tri). You'd have thought Mexico had just won a gold medal when Jimmy Rollins bounced out to first to end it. But that's all beside the point.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing - Giancarlo Stanton. The man is 6'5", 245 pounds. Absolute freak of a human specimen. I foolishly and a bit absentmindedly showed up to the stadium about an hour before the first pitch, and so was disappointed to have missed Team USA's batting practice - more specifically, Stanton's batting practice. This is because what The Player Formerly Known as Mike Stanton can do to a baseball is absolutely terrifying.

19 Years, 7 Months, and 20 Days

When I was 19 years, 7 months, and 20 days old, it was two years before I graduated from Boston College. I probably spent that day like most days the summer after my sophomore year - either at home or our trailer in York Beach hanging out with my brothers and reading Atlas Shrugged for an essay contest. Unfortunately, my "prize-winning essay" - as I was given to calling it - didn't win. But I considered reading a nearly-1200 page book in the span of about two and a half months a noteworthy accomplishment nonetheless.