Peer Piece: Hanging up the Cleats

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I never anticipated posting anyone else’s work on this site. I mean, the url name is jamesdgiordano.com so I figured all the content should come straight from the horse’s mouth. If you’ve been following along for a minute, you might have once stumbled upon the post Under the Influence (4 Substances) which tells of my inspiration and creative muses. At the very bottom of the list and probably the most present and important to me is friends. I learn a ton from all my friends, as you never are the best at everything and probably know someone who does something better than you. So when one of my close friends approached me about wanting to write a piece for the site, it tickled my interest. It is always interesting reading someone else’s writing, and I was eager to see what my friend had cooked up. Within the same day he hit me up and me responding with the green light, boom. The email comes in and attached is a word file. I opened it and saw how long it was and was even more intrigued. We were watching a football game so I closed my laptop and would dive in after the fourth quarter.

When I got to the last period, I went to go back to some of the parts I really liked the writing style of. My friend wrote a very descriptive piece with a lot to take away from if you are around my age. It’s an age that is still young but still old, and you learn so much about life and about yourself (check out this 23-year wrapup of my last year). It wasn’t a very hard decision. I knew I would post this and really liked the idea of having some different perspectives other than my own. We bounced some ideas and a couple drafts back and fourth and ended up with this. So here it is: dive into this work titled Hanging up the Cleats.

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The phone rings. The bullpen coach picks it up. “34, go get hot.” I check my cleats one last time and head over to the bullpen mound. Tonight, wasn’t like every other night at the yard. There was a different kind of electricity at Safeco on this cold October night. The kind of electricity that you can feel on the back of your neck. The Mariners had finally made the post season and were hosting game 7 of the ALDS. It was the top of the 8th and we were nursing a one run lead. For me, it was business as usual. I was uncomfortably warm at this point after a couple of minutes of play catch. The kind of hot you get right before you start to sweat. Pull over off. On the rubber now. 10 Fastballs. 4 from the wind-up, the rest from the stretch. Top half of the inning retired. To the bottom of 8 we go. Working in the off-speed now. Dialing in the curveball and change-up. Working location, in and out getting a feel for my body. Breathing energy into the spots that are tight. Feeling what pitches are working tonight. First guy up in the bottom of the 8th grounds out. 1 out. I’m working figurative batters now. I know that I am facing 3,4,5. Going through in my head how I wanted to attack each hitter. Pop up to left. 2 outs. Slowing down now. Catching my breath and drinking some water in between pitches. Inning retired. To the ninth we go. I let one last 2-seam fastball fly. All of the lights in the stadium dim. A video starts playing on the jumbo-tron. Kernkraft 400 begins to blast throughout the stadium. I give a couple fists bumps to my guys in the pen as I start walking out. Bullpen gate swings open. Crowd erupts. Game time.

Every time I stepped on a mound growing-up, I visualized that scene in my head. That was my dream to bring the playoff atmosphere back to my hometown of Seattle. From the age of 2, I had one purpose in my life, to play professional baseball. Countless hours after school were spent dedicating myself to my craft. I quit all other sports. I stopped taking piano lessons. My life was wholly consumed by baseball.

Fast forward to my senior season at Chapman University. 3-2 count. 2 outs. Lefty at the plate. I get the call for an inside fastball. Runner on first so I’m out of the stretch. I let it fly, it’s a bit high but we get the swing and a miss. Inning over. Tears immediately start falling down my face. My teammates knew what was going on and they all met me outside the dugout. Each one gave me a hug as I walked off the field. It was the end of my baseball career. After full labrum surgery at 15 years old, followed up by Tommy John at age 20, my arm didn’t have any bullets left. At this inter-squad fall practice, I had thrown my last inning. After I made it through my teammates, I walked outside the dugout to greet our only spectator, my dad. I gave him a hug and we both let it all out. This was the second time ever that I had seen my dad cry (the first one being when Peyton Manning retired..). He said he was so proud of me and then that was it. 20 years of hard work, blood, sweat, two torn ligaments, and tears all over in a matter of seconds. And to this day I don’t I truly understood what that meant and how much that was going to affect the rest of my life.

Needless to say, the couple of months after I left baseball were some of the worst in my life. They say it takes you half as long as you are with someone, to get over them. To this day I am still not over baseball. By that metric still have 8 years to go… I quickly forced myself into situations to be busy to replace baseball. I jumped into a sales job during my last semester senior year while still taking a full load of courses. I spent all of my remaining time with friends or watching hours of Ted Talks until it was time to go to bed. I knew that if I left any time open to think, I would get into my head about what could have been if I had changed certain aspects about my baseball career. Graduation came and passed my senior year and I was officially in the working world. My lifestyle didn’t change. I replaced the time I spent in the classroom with work. 40 hours went to 60 in a heartbeat. Any time I had off I again spent out with friends and often drinking on weekends. Sure enough, a hard sales job paired with unhealthy living led to a burn out.

Fast forward a year and two sales jobs later, I sat there with the same dilemma that I had with each of my other jobs. The passion wasn’t there. I would work my tail off to get going and maintain my book of business only to burn out shortly after. It was harder to get out of bed in the morning. My life lacked a purpose or a direction. I thought that I had to do in life was to go to “Corporate America”, get a job, and eventually I will be making a bunch of money. Then, I could start a family and live happily ever after. Turns out that’s not really the case. As this trend continued, I started to become less and less like myself. I was struggling to have fun. I didn’t laugh as much. I could no longer love like I once did. I was becoming a shell of who I was.

Finally, I woke up one morning and I thought to myself, “this has to stop.” I knew I needed to find my passion in life. I needed to replace baseball. But how does one really find their passion? I thought that I actively needed to go and search out my passion like it was some type of hidden treasure. So that’s what I did, I spent every waking second actively searching for this new passion. After months of “searching” and getting frustrated with this notion that I needed to have everything figured out, I was no closer to replacing baseball than I was when I started. But not only was I no closer, I had drove a wedge between myself and the people around me. Daily and weekly calls and texts with my best friends quickly became monthly check-ins and then every couple of months. My relationship started to fall apart. I had become someone completely different. I was no longer the person my girlfriend fell in love with. I was so obsessed with the notion of having to figure out what my life’s path would be that I completely shielded myself off from living in the present. Recently, that relationship ended. Truthfully, the only real reason that it ended was because I couldn’t give her the love that she deserved. I couldn’t find it within me to release myself from my own anxiety about the future to see what was right in front of me. I thought that they only way for me to find my passion in life is to be 100% by myself and alone. I am going to have to live with that decision for the rest of my life.

If you read this far, you are trying to figure out what the point of the story is. To be honest with you all, I am looking for that silver lining as well. Up until the past few weeks, I never knew how much baseball meant to me. I didn’t know how much it drove me to be better every day. And what I really didn’t know, was how much soul searching I was going to do after I hung up the cleats. So, I will leave you all with this…

For all of the athletes out there in the world that had to end their careers before they got to their dream, you are not alone. We all reach our retirement date eventually. Everyone handles it different but do know there are people out there that feel the same. A lot of people will tell you it’s just a game. But to you, it was your entire life. You practiced every day after school. You played games on weekends. Time spent with friends, family, and significant others were sacrificed for your sport. It was our childhood. I think it’s important to know that we don’t have to have it all figured out after we stop playing. If I could do it all over again, I would take in every moment. I would be present. I would try to find the good in every day and be grateful that I even had the opportunity to play baseball as long as I did. The last two years of pain and frantic soul search could have been avoided. If I was present and open to opportunities, life would have shown me the path I was meant to be on. It took two years of burning out at jobs and losing someone I loved to land me square on my ass.

Today I will be present. Today I will be grateful. Today I will take a step in the right direction. I know from my experiences on the ball field that some of my worst mistakes spawned my greatest triumphs. Sometimes you need to hit rock bottom before you can rise to the top.

Game time.

 

Coffee Climates in Chronological order

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I love coffee. Every morning, I wake up and start prepping the brew. French press or moka pot? I make a decision and then grind some beans in accordance. During the workweek, I always make the cup at home. It’s too early and there is too little time to stop somewhere and come back home for breakfast. When the weekend hits, i try to take advantage of treating myself to a cup on the road. Cheap or expensive. Potent or flavorful. Hot or iced. For me, there is a time for every type of coffee, and even a place sometimes. Here is the method to my madness for ordering some joe outside of your home.

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Drip coffee

This is definitely the go to upon awakening. I still typically I tend to brew at home to save some money and slow the morning down a little if I am drinking drip, but every now and then I hop in the car and drive for a cup. The time I am drinking a drip coffee is always in the morning, the earlier the better. The drip coffee tastes best extra hot, slowly helping wake you up while making you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Drip coffee for me pairs well with a drive: whether it is an early AM road trip or a morning surf check that requires multiple stops. You can slam it pre-session, or save half for the post session. Drip coffee also taste great nuzzled under your covers on your laptop. You can even make it last all morning (unfortunately for me, it never seems too) and can even turn iced if you make it back home with any leftover. A win win win situation.

Almond Cappuccino

The cappuccino is a kick-starter. Packaged in a nice small container and typically not aggressively hot, for me the capp is a grab and go coffee ready for maximum caffeine in a minimum amount of time. I really love the taste of espresso: the dark and smoky taste is delicious, and the aromas it gives off tickles the nose. A good cappuccino is hard to drink slowly. I typically drink mine way too fast because I love them on the warmer side. This is a great drink to grab, park, and paddle out. Or grab and get after it. Also, if you are feeling a little on the slower side, this is a better fix than drip coffee. Less fluids jumping and twisting in your stomach. And you also can drink some water after rather than hoping right out. I’ve had all sorts of capps: whole milk, half and half, almond and oat. I prefer almond at this point. Oat is nice too though. The almond capp is perfect for when that morning cup just didn’t cut it for you.

Iced Americano

Unless I wake up incredibly dehydrated, I can’t really drink iced coffee early in the morning. Even pre-Coachella in 90-degree desert weather, I tend to still like to sip a warm beverage while waking up. It helps you ease into your day. The iced coffee comes in the afternoon. For a while I was keen on just an iced coffee or a cold brew. But as of late, an iced Americano has been my play for a nice afternoon buzz. The typically are a little cheaper than cold brew, and give you the bitter and deep taste of espresso over ice. Dare to get a double and you really can start bouncing off the walls. Drink it black to soak up the entire flavor or add a splash of dairy to lighten the color and taste. A little sugar never hurt in this caffeine cocktail either. I am happy I started getting this classic drink, or else I’d be stuck in the cold brew rut. This is perfect for an afternoon that is jammed packed or is going to require activity late in the day.

Iced Flavored Coffee

This is the mid day pick-me-up, when you have little responsibility or the vibe for the day is lounging. I find these drinks perfect for a beach day or a relaxing day at home, when time goes by slowly. They usually aren’t as caffeinated, which sometimes is what you are looking for. The iced flavored coffee is vague, but refers to any flavored drink which has just as much sweet to it as coffee. The really delicious, less potent potions that differ from place to place. Whether it is lavender cold brew, iced maple latte, a dirty chai latte, or anything under the sun, these drinks are meant to spoil you. Nothing is sweeter than sipping on a delicious coffee that doesn’t make you go nuts or start tweaking. Like I said, these are the drinks you sip while tanning. For taking a stroll or bike rides around town. Just the perfect drink for a do nothing day. Treat yourself. I also tend to drink this drinks more sparingly as they usually come with a larger price tag. If I were to pick this as my go to afternoon drink, my productivity would take a hit and so would my bank account. But every now and then, it just feels right.

 

 

I AM THANKFUL…(Everyone should be)

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^ (it starts @:45)

I am thankful I am thankful for delicious food, prepared by myself, my friends, or a stranger depending on the mood.

I am thankful for holidays, as we reminisce on these days.

I am thankful for good rest, even though my full bed is far from a nest.

I am thankful for the West coast, even when I miss the East most.

I am thankful for Mother Nature, as I am enamored by her grandeur.

I am thankful for surfing, without it my life would constantly swerving.

I am thankful for my (short) BMX and Skate careers, these would teach me to get back up after being beaten almost to tears.

I am thankful for technology, so I can see where my friends all be.

I am thankful for social media, as it can work like an encyclopedia.

I am thankful for money, while it is not everything it is sweet like honey.

I am thankful for silence and quiet, sometimes I need to go on a noise diet.

I am thankful for pen and paper, sometimes it is needed when I’ve met my maker.

I am thankful for music, and all the activities I can do to it.

I am thankful for music by ASAP Rocky, for he always can get me feeling cocky.

I am thankful for an ego, sometimes negative but it gets my priorities in a row.

I am thankful for great friends, even though sometimes friendships must come to an end.

I am thankful for family, for those that took care of me.

I am thankful for my upbringing, the lessons and the teachings.

I am thankful for my heart, even when it can be cold and dark.

I am thankful for imperfections, as they often turn to helpful reflections.

I am thankful for being me, being young wild and free (that was kind of corny). But it’s true, everyday feels like something brand new.

Beating (The) Writers Block

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It’s the Monday after a long weekend and I am definitely tired. It was a fun weekend, capped off with surf in good conditions and some delicious Indian food before I laid my mind to slumber at 10 o’clock. I would have a rude awakening to my 6:20AM alarm, and continued to snooze it to 6:40AM. Not a big deal, but I do like when I get up at 6:20AM and am alert and ready. Today at 6:40AM I was neither alert nor ready for the impending Monday. I robotically walked to the kettle, put on the hot water, went to the bathroom, and began to make breakfast. Literally every morning I walk to the electronic kettle and turn it on before anything, ensuring the coffee will be ready in a timely fashion.

By the time I was out of the house, I was awake. I never try to surf before work on Mondays, as I know how tired I tend to be and like to start the week off with energy. Unless the waves are pumping, I sleep in. Good morning surfs will energize me more than any amount of sleep or coffee. Fast forward to the end of the day and I am staring at my computer trying to muster up an idea to write about. I have all the ingredients: newfound energy in the form of a late afternoon coffee, good music in the background, and the time on my hands to carve out a nice little piece of work. I just can’t find anything good to write about. I have a couple ideas, but this is the not the week they would fit into. I quickly would dawn on the easy solution: The Writers Block. I pop it open randomly 3 times, hate all 3 prompts, and then scour the pages for the one I would want to write about.

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Indulgence. Something that usually goes down on the weekends when minimal responsibility is present. When you think about it, is it a positive or negative word? Do you immediately go to good or bad indulgences? For me, indulgence often has a negative connotation. For some reason, I always think of vices involved with “indulging” in something. One can indulge in many things in many ways, which makes an already gray term even grayer. One way to indulge in something could be doing it daily. Pretty much in the form of a habit, but doing it every day without skipping a beat. Another way one can indulge in something is for maybe only one day but for multiple hours of the day. Again, we don’t know if indulgence is positive, negative or neutral. It definitely depends on what the indulgence is, but it ultimately comes back to everything needing moderation for a healthy and happy life.

Indulgence can be binge-watching TV for 6 hours. Indulgence can be having a couple beers every night of the week. Indulgence can be drinking one night a week but balls to the walls. Indulgence can be indulging in legal or illegal substances. Cookies or crack. Indulgence, in my eyes, is necessary. If you don’t indulge in anything, what are you going to enjoy in life? You must indulge. Hopefully you pick positive indulges. I indulge in surfing and working out and eating delicious foods. I sometimes indulge in things that may cause a negative reaction. But always in moderation. If it were not for indulgence, we would all be a lot less happy. Good indulgences can turn bad, and bad indulgences can turn good. You just never know. Only one way to really find out.

How Instagram Ruined Surfing: No more secrets and trying to prove oneself

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(This is an old piece from my minor in writing and rhetoric at Chapman University. Since most of my writing is pretty loose on here, I figured it would be cool to post something that had more structure. I wish I could find the prompt, alas I cannot. I also could not find the grade. I do recall it being a rather large chunk of your overall grade.)

Instagram can be used as a news source in a sort of way. I am saying this because very relevant things tend to be posted rather quickly in comparison to on a website. Obviously, news outlets for global events and such is most informational in its website form. However, by way of experience, if you tailor your news feed to a certain genre, you can have very timely news feed pertaining to what is going on in that genre. One example is the amount of different hip-hop Instagram pages. Follow all these pages and you’ll know about all the rap beefs and new songs that come out daily and are posted same day. It’s all about being the first to post, so it’s a race against the competing pages.

This theory of using Instagram as a news outlet can be seen in many different genres, especially surfing. If you were to follow these essential Instagram accounts of the surf world (@stab @Surfline @surfer @theinertia) you could essentially know what is going on all over the world in terms of surf. You would see posts of who won the most recent surf contests, what countries and places are having exceptional swells, and some of the craziest surf clips that would maybe not see the light of day had they not been posted. For the most part, surf media outlets post where the waves have been firing. This is where the problem resides.

This may sound cliché, but secret spots are becoming a lot less secretive since the birth of Instagram and the geotag. Prior to surf forecasting sites and the social media boom, it wasn’t uncommon to hear of spots photographers aren’t allowed in and are held sacred to the people who have kept them secretive for this long. Secret spots would soon start dying out as soon as everyone becomes Instagram crazy.

It would give a sense of a fragmented reality, as we see all these crazy good waves but don’t really know the story behind them. Since the world is so large, multiple different places can have really good waves at once, but the only people that really know the truth are the ones posting it. I know of one friend that when the waves are only O.K. he will post a photo claiming it was from the day but really was from a far better day, stoking people out and making them feel like they might have missed out (FOMO).

As well as a fragmented reality of we never really know if the waves are pumping unless we are there or know of some one in the area, we see a breaching of the private space involved in the sport of surfing. Surfing has always been an activity that in practice is somewhat private and just involves you and the ocean. Besides the people you tend to surf with and a couple people you can recognize by their face, it’s overall what seems to be a private space. However, we see increased posts of waves here and sandbars there that more and more people begin invading the private space. Now, when I surf I expect to have to interact with a stranger, which I don’t mind but sometimes just aren’t in the mood for.

With more people’s spaces being invaded, we see more people who do mind interacting with people they aren’t familiar with. We can refer to these people as “salty loc dogs.” These are older people and even some younger guys who just can’t stand new people surfing their spot. They typically tend to be loud and vocal about their dissatisfaction, and tend to act like they own the place. Here is a comical example featuring the late great Andy Irons being heckled for surfing a spot he wasn’t native to in a skit for a surf movie. (The irony is that usually the people who claim local status aren’t that good of surfers, and telling Andy not to surf a spot would be like telling Kobe you can’t shot on my court.)

Everyone needs to brag about how good of waves they scored. As a surfer, getting a good swell to surf is the ultimate challenge, and when you achieve this it is hard not to let others know. It wouldn’t be uncommon to see someone’s Instagram story perfect empty waves, and I am guilty of this as well. At first it seemed harmless, until the effects of the app really started changing the lineup.

I have a particular experience with one of the only waves I’ve ever missed from where I grew up (New Jersey). I would surf this wave before school junior and senior year of high school, and the crowd would be minor. Either it was only for good surfers or people who were known by the locals who would surf the wave. It wasn’t uncommon to hear someone getting yelled at along with the words “I’ve never seen you out here in my life.” I always was a little more cautious surfing this spots since I wasn’t born in the area, but was from a town down the road. However, my surfing would do the talking and people would notice I was just trying to surf good waves. Minding your p’s and q’s at a localized spot coupled with respect for older people at the spot can get you in the local crowd pretty quick. It was like a well-oiled machine: only people who were supposed to be there were surfing there. It’s a little selfish, but some waves should be this way, making it a lot less crowded.

I would come back to this spot winter break of my freshmen year, after being in school in SoCal but itching to surf this spot again. I heard from a friend down the grapevine it was doing its thing and made my way up the road. I arrived on the beach to see my favorite surf spot on the east coast going off. One thing was different: it seemed a lot more crowded, and seemed to be increasing in numbers out surfing by the minute. I went to take a snap to send to my 2 friends out in CA that grew up surfing the wave and was greeted with a “HEY NO PHOTOS” by a boogie boarder on the shoreline. I wasn’t too fazed since he was a boogie boarder (I now salute draggers but in my youthful ignorance definitely did not) and went on with my day. I would suit up and by the time I was in the water it was the most crowded I had ever surfed the wave. Probably 20 surfers, 20 boogie boarders, and 10 people bobbing in the water with GoPros. This made my surf session more dodging people in the water rather than actually surfing.

However, secret spots do still exist, again as cliché as that sounds. Check this clip of a wave only 4 people have surfed, and it might just stay that way if people keep their lips shut and put their phones away.

On top of the ruining of certain spots, people can get caught up in posting lots and lots of photos on their profile, even if they are not what they seem. We see the constant “who can do this better” on Instagram, and the surf community is no different. Everyday people are posting photos whether they authentic or not to make the illusion they are always scoring waves or always landing tricks in the photos they post. It can be a separate world, or act as a public diary of someone’s surfing progression. We can see it as “that different place,” where people can show their surfing talents when not actually surfing right in front of you. Instagram is changing the way we view media of the sport in many ways.

Overall, is Instagram going to kill surfing? No. Will it make it more public and “cool?” Yes. Exactly like the Olympics coming up in 2020. We can see popularity rising, but the ocean isn’t getting any bigger so I guess I should surf as much as I can before Huntington beach starts to look like this. (I swear some days it is pretty damn close.)