I tricked my mother into buying me my first journal in the summer before fifth grade. It was a composition notebook, the kind with the black and white dots in a random pattern. During our back-to-school shopping at the local suburban superstore compound, I snuck the contraband notebook into a shopping cart already overflowing with school supplies of every type—folders, scissors, glue sticks, and Trapper Keepers. I nestled it between a lunchbox and calendar, hoping my mom wouldn’t notice.

It wasn’t that she would have begrudged me the money; my parents were always willing to spend money on educational endeavors, as attested to by my collection of Hooked on Phonics and Schoolhouse Rock! Videos. I just wanted privacy. I did not want to answer questions about the notebook, didn’t want her to know I intended to begin a journal. Had my mother asked, I would have told her that the dotted-notebook was required, flashing the school supply list too quickly for her to ascertain that it didn’t contain a line item for a composition notebook.

I wish I could say that I wanted the journal because I knew that I was destined for greatness as a writer, but the reason was much simpler: I didn’t have any friends and I intended to use the notebook to make it seem like that was a choice. There were a myriad of reasons for my solitary state, most of which now seem like excuses: My family moved often, I was shy and anxious, and even as a child I was skeptical of the motives of strangers. It only took a few tastes of being teased and having my feelings hurt to adopt an adage: Being alone is easier than being disappointed.

Not having friends is socially awkward in a way that multiples loneliness, squares and cubes it. Living without closeness of others is obviously painful in itself, but think of all the little daily opportunities for you to be reminded of your singular status. Something as simple as taking a meal in public becomes a cause for sadness and embarrassment. Even as adults, most people don’t like to dine alone. It’s difficult to know where you should look and if you should even smile, because it’s suspect to see a stranger smiling without understanding what provoked it. The menu is taken away and you’re left with nothing to occupy your time outwardly, and it can be terrifying. In these instances, it’s important to provide your own entertainment and focal points, lest you stare too long or erupt in tears and storm out of the restaurant (or elementary school cafeteria) because the pressure of keeping up your façade becomes too great.

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The ebook that everyone’s been talking about, The Hall of Nearly Great, was released last Wednesday. Chances are, you’ve already purchased a copy, but if for some reason you got distracted, couldn’t find your credit card, hate happiness, or were waiting for your paycheck, I’d like to take the time to remind you that, “Good News! The ebook is still available!”

I’ve finished reading the whole book now,  and while you might find my opinion horribly biased since I’m one of the authors, I will assure you that it’s a fabulous book with some really great stories about baseball players that even my mom purchased. Essentially, if you don’t buy the book, you’re less cool than my mother, in which case I’ll tell everyone you like Barry Manilow albums, Murder, She Wrote re-runs, and mom jeans.

If you’d like to purchase the ebook, you can click here. Using this link will not only allow you to purchase the ebook (that can be read in any number of formats, including just .pdf on your computer), but it will also give me a little extra bourbon money… and to that I say, “Cheers, dear reader.”

In case you haven’t heard, The Hall of Nearly Great is, “is an ebook meant to celebrate the careers of those who are not celebrated. It’s not a book meant to reopen arguments about who does and does not deserve Hall of Fame enshrinement. Rather, it remembers those who, failing entrance into Cooperstown, may unfairly be lost to history. It’s for the players we grew up rooting for, the ones whose best years led to flags and memories that will fly together forever. Players like David Cone, Will Clark, Dwight Evans, Norm Cash, Kenny Lofton, Brad Radke, and many others.

This is not a numbers-driven project (although our contributors lean analytical in their views). Our plan isn’t to be overbearing with stats and spreadsheets to convince you that these players are worth remembering. What we aim to do, instead, is accomplish that same task through stories. Think of your favorite players growing up: they have their moments, games, seasons, quirks, personalities, and legends worth remembering and sharing. Now, combine the best of everyone’s forgotten favorites, and you’ve got a Hall of Nearly Great. Ask the people who have those memories and love for these players to write essays about them, and you have The Hall of Nearly Great ebook.”

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Today was the day.

I took the elevator to the eighth floor, and waved my badge in front of the keypad. I never let the badge touch the keypad, treating each morning’s entrance to the office suite as a challenge to test the limits of the RFID range in my badge, delighted to find that the badge and keypad don’t actually have to touch to open the door—the sheer approximation of its presence was enough to gain entry.

But that’d never happen again.

My messenger bag was uncharacteristically light that day, I’d reserve some real estate in the main compartment for my various personal effects like mardi gras beads, lavender hand lotion, Washington Capitals sock monkey, framed photo of Jason Varitek and Tim Wakefield.

They were going home.

My paper and electronic calendars for the day didn’t contain any meetings. Instead, both versions, the paper iteration scrawled in green sharpie, just contained the phrase, “Fuck Yeah” and two exclamation points—marking my last day in a job I hated.

The morning was meant for web-surfing, the lunch hour for fish tacos and bourbon with favorite coworkers, and the afternoon was spent catching up on box scores.

The Boston Red Sox lost to the Detroit Tigers, 7-3. Quintin Berry notched three singles, stole two bases, and scored two runs. He made a game-saving catch as the Tigers celebrated their first victory at Fenway Park since 2010.

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I worked as a kitchen designer while I was completing my undergraduate degree, almost by accident. I started in the showroom selling high-end appliances, embarrassing my co-worker competition by the sheer volume of product and extended warranties I could sell, even though I worked part-time. A customer once told me that I have the sort of face that could sell anything, there’s a real honesty in my eyes, and I suppose I have no reason not to believe him. In an attempt to boost sales, the manager decided I would attend the training classes to become certified in design, and that I’d no longer be polishing the stainless on the showroom floor.

I already had a love of real estate and architecture, which would later manifest itself in a career in real estate finance and development, and this job was an exercise in designing dream kitchens on any budget: matching paint colors, selecting subway tiles, explaining the purpose of a toe-kick, and working with AutoCAD, making perfect sense of gridlines and building standards to create renderings, blueprints, of what the path to a complete kitchen would look like.

In a consult, I’d make a rough sketch by hand, trying to capture the feel of the space, sometimes grabbing style magazines with dog-eared pages to belabor the design point I was trying to make to an ignorant consumer. When they left, I’d spend hours in front of the computer working to arrange the boxes on the computer screen, knowing all the tricks of a veteran like remembering heat-shields on cabinets next to stoves, the right side cabinet for a micro-hood, and that no matter how much customers resisted the price, kitchen organization is much better with sliding shelves.

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• We watched the Marlins’ game with one mission: to see the home run sculpture go off. We’d seen the drawings, the Youtube video, and we wanted to see the real thing in action. We thought we might be waiting awhile, but Omar Infante’s solo shot in the second inning set off the 75-foot monstrosity, much to our delight. In celebration, I raced to the shelf to grab a bottle of Bulleit and we did a shot directly from the bottle and turned on Gloria Estefan, which I’d argue only heightened the experience.

• He tried to convince me that the Bleacher Creatures at Yankee Stadium were an endearing fixture and that I should learn to appreciate the hard work and dedication they bring to the ballpark every game. Upon the third acknowledgement, I changed the station and he wrestled me for the remote. We settled on fifteen minutes of the banal History Channel television show Pawn Stars, before I agreed that Chumlee is far worse than Ali Ramirez ever could have been and I watched all nine innings.

• He wanted to wait in line at Shake Shack, which I thought was extremely ridiculous, disrespectful even, given the fact that there was a baseball game going on. Yet, he waited in line while I leaned over the balcony watching the game in the distance and he greeted me with a shake and a kiss—even though he missed two innings, I certainly felt as though I’d gained something.

• He doesn’t come to visit often, but when he does, I make sure to take him to a shop that sells action figures and other collectibles. Among the Alf dolls, Star Wars action figures, old records, and Lite Brites, there are bins filled with used action figures that haven’t seen regular playing time in twenty years. Being sheltered from nerdom, I don’t recognize most of the contents in these plastic totes, throwing aside the Han Solos and space creatures, because we’re looking for something very specific: the Starting Lineup baseball action figures we had as kids, but have since lost. A Mike Greenwell and a Carl Yastrzemski later, the trip was a success.

• At a bookstore that also serves dessert, he tried to convince me he was a man who knew what he wanted, despite his age.  While I’d usually find such conversations on first dates about wanting a relationship frightening, he said everything with such conviction; I had no choice but to believe him. And to be fair, for two months he was right.

• It had been a long day of work and travel, and by time I arrived at his place, I was exhausted. I kept fighting the urge to fall asleep, and even through cat naps, he kept talking to me about baseball. He’d go on a lengthy diatribe and ask, “Cee are you awake?” and I’d say yes, even though I wasn’t. We fell asleep on a sectional sofa, arms adjoined across the L shaped furniture, listening to Vin Scully call the Dodgers game. I remember it all, even though I was sleeping.

• Because of the patio party tickets at the White Sox game, we had unlimited hotdogs and beer, which ultimately leads to poor decision-making. Somehow we acquired stickers for the busy right-field patio bar, and six of us crammed into a picnic table attended for four. For three outs, in an act of pure drunken ignorance, he continued to scream, “IS IT PRONOUNCED BOSSSSSH or BOUUUUSSSSH?” at the right fielder for the Detroit Tigers.

• We sat on the floor for over an hour, digging through unorganized bins of baseball cards. Some were separated by team—the White Sox and Cubs had their own boxes—but most were sorted by era only, creating a grab bag of surprises. As the three of us sat there pilfering through the boxes, growing our collections, we shared laughs over tragic haircuts and statistics. When it was time to go, we paid nominally for the collection of cardboard, and purchased new packs to find rookie Jason Heyward’s. I wanted an autographed Varitek card that resided with the other cards of value underneath the glass, but couldn’t justify the expense on my graduate school budget. On the walk back to the train, I was surprised by a card a friend purchased for me—a Jason Varitek card in a camouflage chest protector, which I affectionately call my Camo-tek card.

• While at an Orioles game, he told me that the reason Nick Markakis would never reach his full-potential is because if you look at his spray chart, he hits everything to Center field, and so he just misses out on home runs frequently. In his next at-bat, Nick Markakis hit a homerun…over the Center field wall.

• At the Phillies/Red Sox game, my dad quizzed me on baseball trivia as the occasion necessitated. Fortunately, I could name all the teams John Mayberry played for and I also knew what year Pete Rose joined the Phillies. We ate peanuts, which is our ballpark tradition, and because of the wind the dust of the peanuts was blowing everywhere—including into the Paula Deenesque hair of the woman in front of us.

• Even though I had 103 fever on Opening Day, I decided to go anyway. I cuddled up on the sofa in the suite with a blanket that someone from the organization produced when he saw me shivering, drinking hot chocolate and Kahlua, watching the first game of the season. Though it didn’t aid in my recovery from the flu, it was at least a three-hour departure from feeling miserable.

• He told me that he’d bought the cheap seats for the game we attended because money is tight, and I completely understood. I didn’t look at the ticket as we entered the gates, and we stopped for beer, a new hat, and to hug a statue, in that order. I followed him through the concourse, because I’d follow him anywhere…and he led me to seats just a few rows from the dugout instead of the nosebleeds I’d expected. Even though we’re not together, he continues to be the best surprise of my life.

• When we met at the White Sox game, he had biked down from the north side. He had agreed to watch the White Sox/Red Sox game, instead of the Mets. From our seats, you couldn’t see the outfield scoreboard that posts the scores of other games, so he was insulated from seeing the Mets score, which he was recording at home. Our seats were in the shade along the right field line, while two friends baked in the sunshine of the third base line. Reaching their tolerance, they came to find us. Upon arrival, they introduced themselves to my friend. Noticing his Mets hat, one of them said, “Mets? Oh, they won” ruining the surprise of the game’s outcome that awaited him on the DVR. Luckily, they became friends anyway.

• Our second date was watching the San Francisco Giants win the World Series in his bed on a television that still had bunny ears, even though it was 2010. It largely didn’t matter, because there was good company, a bottle of champagne, and a cool breeze coming through the bedroom windows on an October evening. I’d cut out early on a pumpkin-carving party for this celebration, a decision I do not regret.

I spent the morning standing on the corner of 13^th and G Northwest in Washington, DC in the pouring rain. I kept pacing around a newspaper box, trying to collect my thoughts. Armed with an umbrella, my cell phone, and my journal with whales on the cover, I made phone calls.

I just needed reassurance that I was doing the right thing. That the decision I made was best for me personally, while also being the right move for my career. Throughout the calls, I weighed the pros and the cons. I shrugged my shoulders frequently saying, “I don’t know if it’s right!” and the revolving characters on the other end assured me that it was.

When I got back to my desk, I googled “How to Resign.”

I have left jobs before, but it’s never been a shock that I was leaving. In fact, I was always clear and honest with my employers when I had life-changing events that would lead me to quit my job, but this was uncharted territory: I was leaving a position after being there for six-months, because it wasn’t the right fit.

I knew that this day was going to be a possibility since February, but there were several delays in the process. Throughout this time, I’ve learned I’m terrible at keeping secrets. But sometimes, life demands that we keep secrets, no matter how badly we want to tell them.

But now, I don’t have to keep secrets anymore. The DC experiment is over, and in two weeks, I’ll be moving for a new job that I’m extremely excited to tackle. It will be complicated, demanding, and finally put my degrees to good use, and I couldn’t be happier.

The job search for me has always been interesting, because I’ve always said I’d be willing to move anywhere for the right opportunity. I applied for jobs in San Francisco, I interviewed with a company in Texas, I had interviews for jobs in Ohio and Maryland, before making my decision.

They say you can’t go home again, but I’m willing to give it a try. See you in two weeks, Chicago.

Of the last nine weeks, I have traveled seven of them.

My roommate laughs every time I write my absences on the calendar that coordinates our schedules on the refrigerator, because she assumes that all of this travel is for leisure. She’s jealous and inquisitive of the time I spend away, but the truth is that it’s been anything but leisure: it’s desperation for escape, a desire to be anywhere but here. I wish it were as simple as wanderlust.

I have lived a lot of places, and I’m kicking myself daily: the adjustment should be easy. But everything in DC is a reminder of failure, and honestly I don’t like the person I’ve become here: a person who begrudgingly wakes up in the morning. A person who exists, but doesn’t live.

It probably has very little to do with DC itself. Plenty of people are happy here. In fact, when I tell people that I do not like it here, I’m met with blank stares and confusion, as though I’ve told someone I do not enjoy daisies or sunshine. But to me, DC is a lot of things, none of them pleasant. It’s a constant comparison to a former life that is so fabled and exaggerated in my head, I’m not even sure those things ever really existed.

Close to the water, DC feels like a rowboat with a large hole in the bottom. This isn’t ideal because of my propensity for motion sickness, my disgust of fecal contaminated water, and I haven’t been swimming in years. Fortunately I have a bucket and I keep dumping gallon after gallon of water over the edge of the boat to keep things afloat, but no matter how comfortably I should be perched, the boat is still sinking.

Since DC isn’t creating happiness by happenstance, I’ve decided to chase it. My time here has turned into an attempt to interview as many potential eastern seaboard cities for future residence. I pull up to every location now and ask, “Could I live here?”

I find myself on street corners, closing my eyes to take deeper breaths, and think, “is this the place where I belong?” A few deep breaths later, I open my eyes and survey the landscape, immediately finding microscopic flaws in the place where I’m standing.

I’m finding it makes no difference if I’m there. Or here. Or there.

Some things don’t change. Cellphones are a reminder that we can be lonely anywhere—if I had a landline I could assume that the answering machine were full of messages from people that wanted to connect with me—but constant refreshing of the inbox, my timeline, and my voicemail have led me to conclude that’s not true. A watched phone never rings, and when you are desperate for someone to say hello, you remain desperate for a very long time.

I’m looking under rocks that haven’t been peeked under in years. I’ve tried picking up some hobbies that are long since forgotten, but none of them are bringing fulfillment. Playing with a digital SLR camera was the closest to happiness I’ve come lately, until I looked at the price tag and realized that contentment through a glass lens was several paychecks away.

I’ve tried unconventional relationships. I’ve made friends with people that I wouldn’t ordinarily give the time of day; I’ve opened pieces of my heart to explore new relationships, but I’ve largely failed. There is certainly not contentment in trying to commit yourself to someone then quickly realizing that you’re overcommitted and incapable of pulling the trigger even on momentary delight because of a fear of the future causing paralysis.

There have been a lot of baseball games, and there will be even more. I wish I could explain the escapism of being inside a ballpark, but it’s better than any other form of therapy I’ve paid for. Perhaps it’s the prescribed roles of all involved: the players play, the coaches coach, and the fans sit in the stands delighted in patronage.

It’s mostly impossible to have a bad time at a baseball game, save for a handful of reasons. Those events include, but are not limited to: being hit by a bat, being hit by ball, being hit by a drunk person doing the wave, getting a sunburn, ending up on the Jumbo-tron, or awkwardly refusing to hold someone’s hand, no matter how much they insist.

I particularly like keeping score at games because for three hours I am the keeper of all importance in the universe: that notebook depends on me to pay attention, keep my pencil sharp, and remain in my seat for the duration. There is no leaving, no time for daydreaming or fretting; there is only time to write numbers and letters in the scorebook. I put more care and thought into the scorebook than I have any project at work in six months—it’s a reminder that when challenged, even my dyslexic brain can stay engaged for long periods of time. I was starting to wonder if that was even still possible.

I hope that I am chasing an elusive happiness, not one that doesn’t exist. At the same time, I’m not exactly sure what I’m seeking—it’s difficult to quantity, qualify, and it’s impossible to Google. I’ve been operating under the assumption that I will know what it is when I see it, but it’s been years and I’ve seen nothing yet.

Some happiness has been a mirage. Most of those moments came recently in the form of a prospective friendship, turned relationship, turned friendship again. It came mostly in the form of intimate moments, thoughtful gifts, and an unrivaled spoiling. As it turns out, it couldn’t be any of those things, but even the idea of it was enough to be satisfying in some regards.

Right now, the greatest happiness comes in the prospect of the future. It’s easy to be consumed with the present and the laundry list of items that are not going right, but there’s satisfaction in knowing that as soon as I can gain a clear idea of what it means to be happy, genuinely happy, I can work towards carving those things out for myself. A wise person once told me that you are the keeper of your own satisfaction, and I believe that to be true. It’s just a matter of constant reassurance, readjustment, reconnecting. The rest might come easily.

I had a date a couple of months ago with someone that had found me on Match.com. We did the normal dance–corresponding via email, I eventually gave him my phone number which I told him was for actual phone calls not for texting*, and a week later we agreed to meet for drinks near my office after work.

We’ll call him John, though that’s not his real name. John seems like a great guy from the start of the date, though I can’t say the physical attraction is strong. He works at a school, he is well read, and it’s incredibly easy to have a conversation with him… at first.

After talking for 20 minutes, John brings up the thing that caught his eye about me was the fact that I am very knowledgeable and passionate about baseball. He said, “as a big baseball fan, that’s wildly attractive to me.” When he dropped phrases like “big baseball” and “wildly attractive” I couldn’t help but get excited about the fact that I was going to have my first real face-to-face baseball conversation with someone since I moved to Washington, DC. I braced myself.

But the conversation that followed, was one of my favorites that has ever happened with someone who identifies themselves as a “big baseball fan.” I should start this by saying that I do not judge levels of fandom as some do. If your interest in baseball really is attending Fenway Park in a Beadazzled Jacoby Ellsbury shirt and eating ice cream out of a plastic helmet, that is totally fine with me. If you’d like to crown yourself the Biggest Cubs Fan Ever (!!!) because you like to sit in the Bleachers at Wrigley at drink Old Style, more power to you. If you’re a sabermetrics nerd, attend conferences, and feel like you’re going through actual withdrawal symptoms in the off-season, that’s fine, too.

John, the gentlemen in question, is a New York Yankees fan. First, he insisted there be some sort of riff between us because of the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry, which I find fascinating. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had semi-successful relationships dating Yankees fans, and I wouldn’t decide not to date someone based on the team they supported or whether or not they liked baseball at all.

But, there are a few things that happen in these situations. In fact, I actually feel bad for John. In John’s head, he assumed we could have a very vague conversation about baseball, in which we could share our mutual love of the sport. In John’s head, the conversation goes something like this:

But unfortunately for John, I am not the type that can be satisfied with vague conversations about baseball, and admittedly when I sense that is as deep as the conversation is going to go, I tend to push a little bit for my own amusement. In the real conversation, I challenge John after he admits that he has never heard of Barry Larkin. And when I’m challenged to guess his favorite baseball player, who I figure out by his clues is Don Mattingly immediately, I could not help myself but guess players that fit the criteria that he might have never heard of.

Here is the real conversation that John and I had at the bar near my office on our first (and last) date. And I’m sorry for being mean to you, John. Sometimes a girl can’t help herself.

*Gentlemen, I beg of you: if you’re trying to build a relationship with a woman, do not take her phone number and text her incessantly. Connection and interact are made best in face to face environments or by talking via the telephone. Weeks of texting is not only a turn off, but completely unnecessary…especially if you use text-speak.

3/28/2012: There’s technically baseball today. It’s Opening Day, but there will be many to follow. It counts towards the 2012 season record, but if Americans are sleeping and baseball is happening on another continent, is it really baseball?

Yes, I suppose it is.

But it doesn’t mark the beginning of my season, because the only time I wake before 5am is exactly once a week for a meeting with a personal trainer, who straps my decaffeinated body to an apparatus that approximates stairs. I cringe and keep stride to LCD Soundsystem while bemoaning the fact that I am:

A)     Awake

B)     Reminded with each step that back surgery was not successful

C)     In need of coffee

D)    Embarrassed to even look at others in the gym or my trainer because of my lack of fitness

So you’ll forgive that on a non-gym day that I couldn’t stay awake long enough between assaults on the snooze button to even turn on the game. By the grace of extra innings, I see three outs of the game once I arrive at the office.

(Seattle Mariners 3, Oakland Athletics 1) 

4/3/2012: A pre-season gift from Bud Selig arrives in the form of an exhibition game between the Nationals and Red Sox, near my office on a workday. I trade uncomfortable heels and an office-length skirt for my preferred springtime uniform: comfortable denim and an oversized cardigan.

Armed with a new scorebook and G-2 straight from the box, the afternoon is spent at Nationals Park with the starting day lineups getting one more day of warm ups instead of conference calls.

No hyperbole, but I am surrounded by idiots. First, I’m insulted for knowing too much about the Boston Red Sox by a stranger; then I’m told that women shouldn’t know how to keep score as well as I do.

There’s someone four rows back who keeps loudly mispronouncing Saltalamacchia’s name; he has also never heard of Jason Repko. Edwin Jackson pitches this game, but loses. A man from Richmond, Virginia makes wonderful baseball company; he even buys beer.

Teddy loses the race because jugglers distract him. I wonder if this is a metaphor for something larger, but decide to let it go.

Explaining the yips can be tiresome, but sometimes necessary. A close play at the plate to end the game is the only thing to bring home team fans to their feet. It’s hard to tell if they were outraged or just heading for the exits.

Witness quite the kerfuffle on the ramp of death out of the stadium between two unlikely attendees: an Oklahoma Sooners fan and an Auburn Tiger. Not an actual tiger, mind you.

(Boston Red Sox 8, Washington Nationals 7)

4/5/2012: This is Opening Day. It is a holiday in Cincinnati that has been pilfered and shared with other teams, making 4/5/2012 Opening Day for many teams, but not Opening Day for the Mariners and Athletics, because they already had Opening Day a week before Opening Day on 3/28/2012 in Japan.

45,027 go to Comerica Park to see Justin Verlander pitch 8 innings and Jose Valverde earn a win. Jon Lester looks fine, but the bullpen explodes around him. Mark Melancon loses and should not be confused with closer Alfredo Aceves.

My three-monitor setup in the office finally proves useful for something beyond spreadsheets and analysis.

His parents named him Yonder, but it’s a name that they made up—at least that’s what Vin Scully tells me while I’m cuddled on a roommate-less sofa. Clayton Kershaw has a case of stomach unpleasantness, which a man of Scully’s advanced age has no problem addressing in detail.

Ernesto Frieri’s is not the same as Guy Fieri, though I’m certain they both love cheesecake and driving vintage cars.

(Detroit Tigers 3, Boston Red Sox 2) (Los Angeles Dodgers 5, San Diego Padres 2)

4/6/2012: This is also Opening Day. It should not be confused with Opening Day on 3/28/2012 or Opening Day on 4/5/2012. If a team did not have an Opening Day on the aforementioned dates, that team is entitled to an Opening Day on 4/6/2012. There is an exception for the Oakland Athletics, who did have an Opening Day on 3/28/2012, but were granted the right to two Opening Days. If a team spent 3/28/2012 or 4/5/2012 or today, 4/26/2012, on the road for Opening Day celebrations, they are also entitled to an Opening Day at their home park at a later date.

I took a vacation day, because I get one floating holiday for religious purposes. Though no longer a practicing Catholic, I exercised my right to Good Friday. It was indeed Good, as I spent the day in watching baseball on a wall-mounted high-definition television in a hotel room just blocks from where the Orioles were playing. The appeal of uncomplicated company, unlimited napping, and unfettered access to the remote lead me to believe I made the right decision in not actually attending Opening Day (the 4/6/2012 version).

Alex Gonzalez is the starting Shortstop for the Milwaukee Brewers, which stumped my bedmate.

(St. Louis Cardinals 11, Milwaukee Brewers 5)

4/7/2012: This is my Opening Day. It is not an official Opening Day, but it is the Opening Day for the first time I attended a major league game in the 2012 record. There is a sabermetrician, a girl just old enough for beer, and newly acquainted Twitter person. They eat bacon on a stick; I buy a round of expensive beers.

A man in our section appears homeless at first glance, but likely just intoxicated and unkempt. He reads the starting lineup demanding our attention between sips of beers he has stolen from a stranger.

The head-shot of Jamey Carroll is downright maniacal. Baltimore gets more excited about something called the Crab Shuffle than they do baseball. People who sit on the edge of their stadium seats, especially when tall or portly, should be asked to leave immediately.

Nick Markakis would have better success as a hitter if he’d learn to hit the ball to anywhere but Centerfield, he tells me. Markakis promptly hits a home run over the Centerfield wall.

(Baltimore Orioles 8, Minnesota Twins 2)

4/11/2012: My work engagement is canceled and I find myself in New York. Prompted by a Pulp reunion, my best friend is there too. Similar fates have us on the 7 train to Citi Field. Some tickets cost $2.50 in an attempt to bring people (and small children) to the baseball park that would inhabit considerably less people if the tickets were higher. This is a basic economic principle called “People Can’t Help Themselves: It’s Cheap Baseball.”

Some bring matzo crackers; others eat Shack Shake. A man dressed as Dwight Gooden is arrested, but he assures security that he had very little to do with what the cops say he had a lot to do with.

There is hot chocolate served in Dunkin Donuts cups, but judging by the dispensers there’s very little Dunkin Donuts about it. Perhaps I should have asked the cops.

Santana pitches well, but Stephen Strasburg pitches better, according to my scorebook. Lucas Duda has terrible walk-up music:  it should be Camptown Races, but it’s not. The disgust for Jason Bay, however warranted, is enough to make me uncomfortable. It’s not to say I want to paint rosy pictures for poor production; it is to say that I appreciate athletes, even Mets, are humans.

Freezing cold, milkshakes, fan arrests, and no run support: the true Mets experience. The song promises that the Mets would be socking the ball and knocking home runs over the wall… the Mets didn’t score a single run.

Contrary to insistence by New Yorkers, no one likes riding a train that long.

(Washington Nationals 4, New York Mets 0)

4/13/2012: The aforementioned Opening Days that could be scheduled by away teams from the previous Opening Days is here. The Boston Red Sox are ready and thanks to an eager computer genius I have tickets to attend.

Grab coffee early before my makeup and shower and run into people I know who are already on their way to the ballpark. They seem perplexed that I am not going to the ballpark five hours before the start time as well. Some eagerness is expected; other eagerness is terrifying. This classifies as the latter, in case there was a question.

There is a towering duck boot in the form of vehicle parked on the cracked cement of Commonwealth Avenue Mall. I am seated and perplexed by the passersby who seem overly eager to take their photograph with a mud boot reminiscent of a nursery rhyme that touts an old lady actually dwelling in a shoe. No mention on whether it was a duck boot, but that’s certainly how I picture it all happening now.

Relieved for sunglasses during the Wakefield-Varitek first pitches, as I can’t explain why sometimes tears form. The tears were hidden I returned to normal quickly. You made me so very happy, indeed.

It is aggravating that Luke Scott is booed, yet most don’t know enough to boo Josh Lueke.

The game continues and I make new friends. There’s something familiar and immediately comfortable about my seatmate and I appreciate being near him. It’s unlikely he feels the same, but at least there was a moment where loneliness was not a concern and laughter was constant. It’s a hopeful feeling with a lingering yet awkward goodbye.

(Boston Red Sox 12, Tampa Bay Rays 2)

4/14/2012: It is no longer Opening Day, which seems fitting for the reunion of old friends. The seats are the worst yet, but they are in the park. Intentionally arrived late to dodge awkward hellos, mostly stemming from social anxiety and guilt over the fact that I am sometimes an unkind person.

Cheap seats and bad behavior are correlated and the men in front of us are no exception. Profanities and projectiles are thrown; vitriol is spewed at an innocent Rays fan. Were it not for the fear of having a man hit me, I would have been more brazen in his defense.

A group of Chads and Trixies are distracting with an intruding foam finger. A drunken fan punches me in the right cheek: a hazard of doing the wave. Nothing about this experience is positive until the fifth inning when my nemesis leaves. There is iced cream in a helmet, which is scientifically proven to taste better than ice cream from dishes made of Styrofoam or waffles.

Clay Buchholz can pitch and does for 7 innings. There are six home runs, five of those hit by Carmines.

Sweet Caroline is still an obnoxious tradition, but I can’t help but feel the lyrics should be changed to Sweet Valentine, bunting never seemed so good (so good, so good, so good) for just one season.

Surely Valentine will be gone after that.

(Boston Red Sox 13, Tampa Bay Rays 3)

4/15/2012: There are eggs served from a whispering waitress and a view of tourists taking a morning march on the Freedom Trail. Is there anything free about following a red brick line down the sidewalk, bending and stopping as it prescribes?

Opening Days are distant memories, and the familiarity of being at a game without fanfare is appealing. The seats are better with infinite legroom and judging by his relaxed perched on the outfield wall, Aceves is just as happy to be there as we are.

I recognize him in my section and spend the better part of the game dodging glances and interaction. Keeping score is a convenient way to avoid relating and I encourage you to do so.

The eephus pitch is beautiful in person, though the man who throws it is sweaty and reports say his past is sketchy at best.

Overdosed on sunshine, there is ice cream: again in a helmet, this time with sprinkles. A homerun lands just one section over; idiocy in tradition dictates he throw it back on the field (and is promptly escorted from the confines by security).

Another files far over the monster, easily the longest I have witnessed in person. Cody Ross is the anti-Drew in demeanor, in ability, and in socks.

Three days in a row and all of them victories.

(Boston Red Sox 6, Tampa Bay Rays 4)

I spent the weekend in New Jersey. If you’d asked me a month ago what I thought about a jaunt to the Garden State, I would have shrugged and recited one of the many canned jokes I’ve heard about New Jersey that make fun of the way it smells, the shore, and the fact that you can’t pump your own gas. Being from the Midwest, especially with ties to Detroit, those jokes are never representative of the place or the people themselves, so I decided to go.

Lola and I returned from a weekend of Princeton exploration, counting the cars of on the New Jersey Turnpike as Paul Simon once did. Heading south, returning to DC  felt more like a punishment than homecoming. For miles I alternated between a thoughtless gaze out of the window and watching the odometer waiting for something momentous to happen, as Lola pacified herself by chewing on the slobber-matter fuzzy beak of her stuffed duck. She’d wag her tail when I reached down to stroke her side, but she looked so satisfied I didn’t dare disturb that.

Sometimes, people and animals, they just need to be left alone.

I got the MINI Cooper after much deliberation about finances. The decision to purchase a new car proved that everything could be turned into an argument where we were concerned. It was easy for him to say he believed that I should just save my money and drive the Volkswagen until the wheels fell off, considering he had just purchased a new BMW for himself that I was never allowed to drive. Besides, he’d say, if we were going to spend money on a new car, it’d have to be a family car, which was his demented way of saying me loved me and hoped I’d stay forever.

The family car was the next step in the Guide To Suburban Bliss, a handbook that some are armed with instinctively. We had been on the path to suburban utopia for three years and were 2.5 children away from living the dream in our generic suburban home in an even more generic development. All of the streets were named after animals, a diversionary tactic to create a neighborhood out of bland houses with even blander people living in them.

The talk of buying sensible cars always came back to the long-term plan, which for him meant marriage, pregnancy, home-cooked dinners, and a spiceless life of banal suburban existence. I was a sensible family car away from creating Facebook statuses of ultrasound pictures, whether I liked it or not.

We had a white fence installed and as I sat on the back porch watching the laborers digging deeper into the earth for stability, I felt like I was suffocating. Though the finished fence was just several feet high, the house suddenly felt like Alcatraz…few would even try to escape. Those that did? They rarely survived.

And in an act of defiance, possibly my first where this relationship was concerned, I went to Cincinnati and purchased the car that I wanted: Silver with black trim MINI Cooper with sport seats, and dual sunroofs. I was already envisioning how a Red Sox sticker would look on the back window and I pulled away from the dealership in the biggest purchase of my adult life, a hatchback with an oversized speedometer: a car that was not suitable for a family, because I did not want that.

There was silence when I returned home. The car became a symbol of everything he hated about me—a list which greatly outweighed the things he loved. Some were simple: he hated when I would lose the cap to the toothpaste. Some were complex: he didn’t like my freedom or my defiance. He resented the hatchback for not having room for a car seat, and he resented me for not seeing a future with him. And two months later, MINI and me left for good.

I never felt angry. In fact, I still don’t. Disappointed that the relationship I worked hard to fix for four years had ended, and frustrated that I spent years catering to the needs of someone who never once valued the things that made me unique. My value was assessed in a battery of tests, of hoop-jumping, to prove that I loved him and my existence became an obstacle course of jumping higher, running faster, and walking a tightrope with a tank of man-eating sharks below.

Instead of leaving town immediately, I spent one more night in Louisville. I checked into the hotel where we’d spent many evenings drinking Bulleit old fashioneds in a bar that F. Scott Fitzgerald used to frequent. It’s one of the last great hotels where the detailed luxuries of the lobby bleed over into the rooms as well with rich mahogany baseboards you would never see at a Holiday Inn.

Once settled, I collected my emotions which had been strewn about for weeks, and continued my mission to say goodbye to my favorite part of Louisville: Slugger Field, where the Bats play.

My love of baseball was renewed through this rocky relationship, mostly because he did not like baseball. On days when I needed to escape, I could watch a game on television alone in the den or I could go to the ballpark. I knew he wouldn’t want to be there, he was content to stay at home playing computer games or a variety of sci-fi movies that I lump into one category, though he always corrected me because they weren’t always Star Wars. In our four years I got him to the ballpark exactly once, and I had to lie about the origin of the tickets to do so.

I walked east, snuggled in an oversized sweatshirt that was his, the sun setting on my back. The field is nestled on the banks of the Ohio River, with Louisville’s petite yet pristine skyline as it’s’ backdrop. Across the river there’s an old fish restaurant that looks like a boat that always seemed to be a place where tourists would go for pina coladas and food poisioning, though locals seemed enthusiastic about their offerings. The jingle from their commercials played in my head as the sun setting created magnificent shadows on the ballpark’s parking lot and ticket windows, making the stout skyscrapers appear like the Goliath buildings of a bigger city.

It wasn’t time for baseball yet. The gates would remain locked for a few more weeks, as minor leaguers still fought for roster spots at camp. I would be leaving the next day to figure out life on my own, missing the day in which patrons would be ushered into the stadium’s concourse that had been fashioned from an old train station. But in a city filled with memories from my relationship, from college, from even better friendships, the only place I wanted to be was inside of this stadium where I had spent countless evenings escaping from everything—schoolwork, real work, and a relationship that spent years on life support.

As the shadows darkened and the moon rose, I peeked through the windows of the once train station.  There was the souvenir shop, the vending area with their locked metal doors, and with each passing glance I said goodbye. Goodbye to Josh Hamilton and Joey Votto, goodbye to section 102. Goodbye to Louisville and goodbye to him. Realizing I was alone, both in life and in the 400 block of Main Street, I sat down on the Pee Wee Reese statue, cuddled into the S shape metal support of his left leg, embracing my last evening in a city that I would no longer call home.

The months that followed were full of tears and sometimes regret. The questioning of whether I’d made the right decision crescendoed into moments where the only solution I felt was to run back to Louisville for comfort. But in time, I was relieved to never spend another day under someone’s microscope and in turn found what it meant to be resolute, autonomous, and confident.

Four years later, my car hit 50,000 miles on the New Jersey Turnpike. Still embracing the freedom of self-possession, still making decisions that are completely my own. There’s no greater freedom than realizing life is limitless when removed from the judgment and restrictions of others.

And in four years, I have changed everything. I finished graduate school, and the MINI and I have driven to countless baseball games, including two 22-hour road-trips to spring training. The hatchback that cemented the relationships’ demise has seen me on two moves across the country.

It’s been nearly 1500 days since I’ve seen his face, laughed at his jokes, or cried from a misunderstanding. Driving through the evening, returning to the life I’ve built for myself, I felt satisfied with the distance those miles and years have created. Not just because of the relationship I once had, but because a weaker and insecure version of myself got dropped off somewhere along the trip: and I finally feel the freedom and strength that didn’t exist before, and another 50,000 miles will make that even stronger.