49 Years Of Ambition

Some cocksucker decided to make a right turn from the far left lane and smashed into me on November 19th. I was driving to work, but my mind was on my task upcoming the next day: my first time as clock operator for the NBA G-League Memphis Hustle. I was so nervous. I had been trained to operate the clock one time, and I was told that due to staff shortages, I would be the man in charge of the clock by myself the next time I came to Southaven, MS, where the Hustle play. It was thrilling but a little stressful that I would have such a responsibility so early in my newest sports occupation on the stat crew of the NBA Memphis Grizzlies. That worry and stress got slammed out of me by the Mexican kid who sideswiped me. I mean, he didn't even slow down when I hit my horn, just kept turning as if no one was there and hit me so hard that I had a bump on my head. I let out a loud "Fuck!", pulled over to the side of the intersection that the moron presumably was trying to turn down. He had to U-turn and come back, and when he did, he and some young girl, maybe his sister, got out of the car. The girl was in tears, probably scared shitless because she was in the passenger seat and got the brunt of the crash. I asked them for insurance information, and the girl showed me her cell phone and a man's name texted out, which is not what I asked for. Finally, their parents or whoever arrived and showed me insurance information, which had three names listed under insured drivers, none of which were the name that the girl showed me on her phone. So I kind of knew I was fucked. The father had the nerve to try to laugh it off, saying to me, "Ay man, I'm sorry about what happened. But hey, stuff happens, right?" I had been doing well holding my tongue, but at that comment, I had to say to him, "Tell him to watch out." He's lucky I'm a different cat, because someone else may have had a different reaction.

The accident situation is still in limbo. I filed a claim through their insurance, but it's been almost a month and they don't want to continue the investigation until they communicate with the guy who hit me, and it appears that family isn't interested in talking. So I went ahead and got my car into a repair shop, which I didn't want to do because I have to pay a $500 deductible to get the repairs done through my insurance. I wanted that guy's insurance to pay for everything because I wasn't at fault, but if they're going to drag forever, then I had to go forward getting my ride fixed because my wife and I spent a week using only her car, and it was very, very, very difficult on both of us. I'm going to wind up paying for that deductible and also for the difference between the actual repairs and what my insurance company quoted, and while that completely sucks, it wasn't realistic that I thought I would come away not paying anything. This was my first accident, so I didn't know the other company would screw me around so much. Lesson learned.

Now that I got that nightmare out of the way, I can proudly report that, yes, I am now an employee of the NBA in addition to Major League Baseball. The Grizzlies put a lot of job listings out there before this season began, but none of them pertained to my specialty, which is statkeeping. So I went on the Grizzlies official website to look under their job listings, and lo and behold, there was an opening for stat crew that they had not made public on Indeed.com, but there it was, right there with all the other jobs they had listed such as maintenance and security and usher and food court. I can't believe this is my life, but the day they called to set up an interview, it was my first day in Montego Bay, Jamaica, on vacation with my wife, so I had to set it up for a week later. But we finally talked, and they explained to me that the stat crew job wasn't something they publicized because they had a lot of people come in who thought they could work on stat crew but were mostly just fans who wanted a job with the Grizzlies and weren't really qualified to do what it takes. That explanation made perfect sense. It's why I take such pride in my scorekeeping duties with baseball and with the company that hires me to work college football. I know how difficult it is to be still and pay attention and do those jobs efficiently, and my experience (along with having someone already on the Grizzlies stat crew vouch for me because they also work in the Redbirds press box with me) made the right impression, and I was hired. Look at me, kinda sorta networking!

This being my rookie season, I have not worked any actual Grizzlies games yet. I was told that I would work G-League Hustle games almost exclusively in my first year until I proved that I knew what I was doing. I had no problem working my way up. I was only supposed to be clock operator for one game after being trained, and afterwards, I would start training to be a stat inputter, which can be hectic and difficult but presents a challenge I want to conquer. But someone on the scorer's desk got sick, and in all of the scrambling and moving people around to replace her, they gave me three more games to work the clock, which I took as a good thing because if I wasn't doing it right, they wouldn't give me more games. I actually love working the clock because there's a sense of controlling the game that appeals to me, and once you know the timekeeping rules to which you have to adhere, it's a pretty easy gig. It's a lot less stressful than stat inputting. The morning that I worked my first game, they kept asking me if I was nervous, and I kept telling them, hey, some doofus just hit me yesterday morning, so whatever happens today won't be anymore horrifying than that. The accident really did knock the stress out of my first day as timekeeper. It was a morning game, so there were lots of schoolkids in attendance on class field trips. My favorite part of the day was sounding the horn indicating the end of halftime and the start of the second half, which the kids clearly were anticipating because the shrieks they let out were piercing. I was like, wow, I've never had this much power in my entire life.

I feel like I am finding ambition now that I have worked my way into positions in all three of my favorite sports. I recently saw a clip of President Obama discussing how unimpressive some people are who have very high status in society. He got to meet all of the heads of state, very powerful people, very rich people, highly educated people, and some of them made the impression that they're not all that intelligent or talented, but got placed in positions of prestige due to connections. And I felt that. It reminded me of my days in junior high school on the Gold Coast of Chicago, rubbing elbows with kids whose parents were very rich and powerful. Some of those kids were really bright, some of them were not the sharpest bulbs. But when you have a leg up socially, you feel like you're entitled to anything. I have felt very not entitled to anything in my life, and I was feeling especially low a couple years ago when I tried to find other work and got scammed. But then the college football gig came along, then the baseball, and now the basketball, and it doesn't stop there: there's a new data company hiring for college basketball, and their compensation is about as high as one could imagine, and they desperately want someone for Memphis Tigers games. You damn right I applied for that as well. I don't know where my limit is as far as how much side work is too much, but I feel like I might shortchange myself if I don't go for every opportunity that I can. And I have passed on some potential gigs because the timing didn't feel right or the pay. But I don't think it would be too much to work some pro basketball games and mix in some college games, and then when those seasons end in April, it will be time for baseball again. Some people who work these gigs do way more games than that, because they also do college and youth sports. I really don't feel like I'm biting off more than I can chew. If anything, I'm making up for the previous 49 years in which I didn't feel good enough to try for any of these hustles. I am motivated, I am determined, and most of all, I am grateful as hell to have these chances in sports. My uncle texted me: "So proud of you. You're living your dream!" And he's right. That fat black boy from the West side of Chicago could never have seen these opportunities in his future because he didn't have the connections of the rich and powerful or any other connections. Took a minute, but I'm finally making it happen.

Respect

On Tuesday April 9 I am going to work my first game as data operator, or scorekeeper on a laptop instead of a scorecard, at the Memphis Redbirds game. This is different from the Baseball Info Solutions gig I worked for eight years before the company stopped sending people out to live games. This is for Major League Baseball, although it's still minor league games at the AAA level. I've been running hard collecting data for BIS in their new iteration as Sports Info Solutions, getting stats at ten college football games this past autumn and the six March Madness college basketball games here in Memphis a couple weeks ago. I decided to have some job opportunities e-mailed to me automatically by Indeed.com even though I got scammed by some fuckers last year, and out of nowhere this gig with MLB came up, watching baseball and putting in every pitch and every play, and I decided that I had to apply for this even though it almost felt like a scam, felt too good to be true, and they sent me a test of baseball rules which I aced, and they set up a Zoom interview the next day and I aced that so well that they offered me the job on the spot. I've ran the gamut of emotions about it in the past month since it happened: pride, awe, shock, worry, fear that it's a scam which won't go away until the moment they let me into the press box to do the job Tuesday night. And I didn't know when I would post here about it, but I knew I had to because it's such a major moment in my life--the fat broke loser Negro from the West Side of Chicago is an employee of Major League Baseball. Still a wow just to type that.

Then today another major moment happened, a moment I had been waiting for and a moment that I knew was probably coming soon but still came as a total stunner. I checked my phone after work and saw a missed call and voice mail from the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund, and I knew exactly what that meant. Finally, at long last, my father is dead.

There has, predictably, been no reaction from me because that's just how I handle everything. Yes, lots of thoughts and memories (mostly bad) and racing emotions, but nothing to make me physically exert any kind of feeling outwardly. There was something I thought to do out of respect for him, I don't even remember what, but I stopped stone cold when that word popped in my head. Respect. That's what my enmity towards him is all about. I have co-workers who don't understand how I could go years not speaking to him. No matter what he did to me, he's still my father, they'd say. I won't offer this explanation to them because I don't want to get that deep into it. But it's a matter of respect. He did not have respect for me as a person. He's my father, so obviously there's a level of authority that says he didn't have to show me respect, he just had to raise me. He didn't do a good job of raising me, but way more important than that, he didn't treat me like I was a Goddamn human being. It's more than the beatings, the airplane spinning me and threatening to slam my body to the concrete, the choking my mother in front of me, the cheating on her in our apartment while I was there and she was not...etc. I took all of that and continued to talk grudgingly to him as an adult, but he never treated me as more than his son, and he never apologized for his behavior, and he reminded me of Donald Trump in that he never even understood that the things he did hurt other people badly. He couldn't see anything other than what affected him. He didn't respect me other than when what I was doing may aggrandize him. When I won the spelling bee in 1990, he said to me in front of other people, "I want you to win nationals so I can go on Arsenio!" Not we, he. Always.

So fuck him. Burn in hell. Eternal apologies to my mother, and I'm forever grateful that she birthed me, but I will never understand why with him.