Baseball

Friday July 24, 2026

We took Desi to his first baseball game last Friday. It did not go well.

He napped about a half hour past when we wanted to be out the door, which maybe we should have seen as an omen. Packing up and getting there was pretty easy, and throughout the process of getting inside, taking a picture at fan services, grabbing some first Sox game swag, and finding stroller storage, D seemed pretty interested in the goings-on of Fenway Park. We grabbed a hot dog and a beer, took another picture on Yawkey Way, and finally made it to our seats in the 4th inning, drenched in sweat, overloaded in concessions and baby.

Before it got bleak.

It might have been okay if we just sat down. Unfortunately, the first pitch as we arrived at our seats was lined directly at us in the 3rd base grandstand. My back was to the field, so I just heard a crack and a crescendo of excitement as everyone around us instinctively reached toward the ball. Lindsay practically dove into her seat, turning Des away from the field. I turned just in time to see the ball zipping through a guy’s hands three rows below and follow it directly into the back of the empty seat in front of me. If the seat hadn’t been there, the ball would have hit somewhere between my tibia and fibula.

My 15-year-old body took an 80mph pitch to the meaty part of my calf, and I didn’t make it halfway to second base before giving myself up when ordered to steal on the next pitch. (John Callahan was the dumbest, meanest, most unqualified coach I ever had, which is saying something because I had some morons.) 35-year-old me might have just shattered like a Fabergé egg if I took a 95mph liner to the bones.

It was scary for Lindsay and me. For Des, we might as well have just taken him directly into Hell without Bunnito and told Satan he jumped off a ledge. If he ever goes to a baseball game again, it will be to confront the core trauma of his infancy. The poor kid was horrified, didn’t understand what was happening, and every time the crowd made even a light cheer, he immediately burst into tears.

Annoyingly, the Sox have been red hot, so it was a damn good crowd for a Friday afternoon makeup game. Plus, we were under the second deck, so every sound was amplified. He just couldn’t do it. We didn’t last an inning. We walked to Timeout Market, got a drink, and watched on the big screen. Des was much happier, and it was actually a pretty good place to watch a game.

Much happier at the bar.

We’ll try again in a few years. And when I take him to a Celtics game this winter, we’ll at least try those noise-canceling baby headphones.

One Update: Building Permit

It’s been a while since we talked about the house, huh? Well, it’s been a while since we really had anything to do. We finalized the plans about a month ago and have been waiting on the long slog of bureaucracy — both public and private. It’s been a lot of letting Builder Scott do his thing to get the plans through state approvals, meeting our conditional loan approval benchmarks, and housekeeping items like removing wiring from the house. There’s a ton of red tape when you’re trying to knock down a house and build a new one, especially when insurance is involved. Scott Jones has been an absolute hero through all of this, and if anybody is ever thinking about building a house or an addition, I cannot recommend James V. Caggiano & Sons (his company) more highly.

On Tuesday, Scott officially applied for the building permit with the City of Melrose. They have 30 days to approve, but Scott says it typically happens within three weeks. The demolition permit processes faster, but he needs a few more signatures before he can file that one. Regardless, we should have this motherfucker knocked down by mid-August. The modules are currently scheduled to arrive on September 15, and then the final build should have us in by Christmas.

One Book: “The Covenant of Water” by Abraham Verghese

Close readers know I tipped the Kalshi markets on this one last week. I’m loving this book so far. I still haven’t read a synopsis, so I don’t know where it’s going, but at the moment, we have three stories across three time periods that are close enough that I expect them to intersect at some point.

At its core, "The Covenant of Water” is about the end of British rule in India, largely using medicine as a medium through which to examine the socioeconomic conflicts and motivations of the many peoples of early 20th-century India.

One Hollywood: The Hawk, Netflix

“This Will Farrell show is like a car accident,” said Liam O’Neil. “Terrible but I cannot look away.” That pretty much sums up The Hawk, an almost insultingly derivative rip-off of Happy Gilmore and Eastbound and Down on Netflix. It’s not good. Farrell’s washed-up, formerly great golfer, Lonnie Hawkins, is just the golf version of Kenny Powers, right down to the borderline mullet. In the second episode, they literally make a “play it as it lies” joke while setting up the death of the Black coach/caddy as a primary character developer, basically stealing the entire second act of Happy Gilmore.

I mean, the show sucks, but we can’t stop watching. Hawkins’ relationship with his ascending star son (Jimmy Tatro) is an interesting dynamic, and they let Molly Shannon just go completely unhinged every time she’s on screen, which is fun. It’s maybe the first time Fortune Feimster has ever been almost funny. I guess that’s enough to hold us for 30 minutes a night.

I wouldn’t recommend it, but maybe you’ll like it? I don’t know, sometimes this space is just trying to come to terms with why we do the things that we do.

One Song: Nirvana - Come As You Are

My cousin Elliott Matticks’ catchphrase might as well be “Take your time, hurry up.” It’s funny every time he says it. Did he get it from “Come As You Are”? I don’t know, maybe he’ll tell me now.

One Reel: