Transcript
Speaker: Welcome friends to another episode of lives effing nuts. I'm your host JR. Lives effing nuts. One man's stories and ruminations on being human in an upside down world.
Speaker: Coming at you live on a sunny Friday.
Speaker: Excuse me. I mean, let me scan back really quick for a second.
Speaker: i'm i'm ah I'm known to scan back. It's one of my specialties, scanning back. But just, there's there's an inherent absurdity. always like the meta-analysis of things, but the meta-analysis is probably kind of boring for most folks, but as I've already shared, I'm mostly just doing this podcast as a labor of love, and so I'm letting go, for now, of ah worrying how boring this is, because there's a chance that no one's listening anyway, so...
Speaker: But the meta-analysis being, it's just kind of absurd ah that i
Speaker: sit in my little car talking into my phone couple times a week and do these little quote-unquote podcast episodes.
Speaker: It's like, it's just kind of an absurd thing. I guess in this modern world, right, like,
Speaker: There's so many different ways that we can express ourselves. There's so many different ways to try and make our mark.
Speaker: to To embed ourselves in the social fabric.
Speaker: And it's just it's weird what drives that, you know? Like what what drives people to... want to be go viral to want to be a sensation to want to get their voice out there want to be a hit
Speaker: because ah my matt my guess is that most people or at least a good chunk of people have that desire
Speaker: and I think it it seems like it's definitely a product of social media. i mean, before social media, yeah, like, you know, people would do open mics or you know, whatever, like there different ways, like write books or whatever it is. Like, you know, there's, there's that, maybe it's a very human thing to want to make a contribution, to want to be seen, um to want to share ideas that feel meaningful or important to, to want to connect around stories. Like I imagine that's as old as time,
Speaker: But now, you know, I remember this is not even what this episode is about, but I actually have something else I want to talk about. But like I said, sometimes I just like to go on my little flights of fancy.
Speaker: um remember reading some article a couple of years ago where they did a study asking like fourth or fifth graders what they wanted to be when they grew up and like 78% or something said they wanted to be YouTube stars.
Speaker: Like that's definitely a thing now culturally. you know, these kids are growing up watching stupid YouTube shorts and dumb shit like that. And that that seems like the dream. Like, I i want to be Mr. Beast. I want to make stupid fucking videos and make millions of dollars, billions of dollars, whatever the fuck he makes.
Speaker: um
Speaker: And everything is screenified, right? Like every component of
Speaker: of life from the time you're young now everything is documented everything is posted everything is published everything is curated and like that just becomes the the water you swim in the air you breathe that's just what it is and so obviously people want to like Or it makes sense that everyone kind of wants to be a star, thinks of themselves a star as a star in their own lives.
Speaker: And i it like I always say, there's there's like and and a huge absurdity to the whole thing because i think i think it's absurd. And like the fact that we all think we're all so self-important or most of us have such a sense of self-importance.
Speaker: um that That like the the everyday trials and tribulations of our lives are somehow like these epic stories.
Speaker: Yeah. Anyway, that's my meta analysis. Just the absurdity of me so they um sitting in a car, talking into a phone in hopes that somehow my words mean something to someone somewhere.
Speaker: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about. Oh, and just a reminder.
Speaker: um
Speaker: As I shared in last episode, if you didn't catch it, i I'm really just experimenting doing this for the love of the game because I really, like I said, I enjoy talking. It's really fun for me.
Speaker: i do want an audience. I would love it if my words were helpful or meaningful or entertaining to people. I don't know if that's my fate in this world. but like There's a chance that I'm just not that interesting, um which is fine, but I enjoy I enjoy it enjoy it and so i'm not I'm not spending any money on this. I'm not editing it. I'm not working with producer.
Speaker: i'm not promoting it. And I'm not even looking at like analytics to like see how many people are listening. But if you are one of the small group people who are listening, who are hearing this voice right now, and you like it spread the word.
Speaker: Pass it around. Serious. um Like I said, I do want an audience. It would be very cool. i don't want to repeat myself. i already said what I need to say. Okay. right.
Speaker: What I wanted to talk about, the actual theme of the show, is the quirkiness of humans and me in particular. So on a larger scale...
Speaker: there's so much stuff happening in the world, so much consequential stuff, wars and existential threats and, uh, climate change and injustices and,
Speaker: um huge political brawls for the soul of our species, essentially, um huge, big things, huge consequential things, which I, I,
Speaker: I'm a pretty like avid quote unquote news reader. Like I try to keep up with as many things as possible and to educate myself as much as possible on things that are happening around the world. i don't like to talk about those publicly on a podcast. And I might do another episode at another point explaining why i don't like to talk about current events and politics explicitly for the most part.
Speaker: um But there's, yeah, that whole larger context of like the fate of our species, the fate of our civilization, um massive injustices and sufferings that are happening out there.
Speaker: But then there's like these micro quirks and and these little things. I imagine most people have these and I'm just going to sort of speak on my own.
Speaker: um But, you know, like little, little tiny things that my silly little pea brain noodle over or like orient around and and how it's kind of absurd. Like, they're you know, like because the things that I noodle on are usually like almost entirely inconsequential.
Speaker: And so here's an example.
Speaker: I really like sports. I like following sports. I like playing sports. It's always been part of my my life growing up. Sports was a big part of my family. I played sports. um My family was big sports fans. Like it was part of our culture.
Speaker: i always recall how like Sunday, like my family's household in general was like pretty structured and regimented and a lot of kind of like discipline and order and not not a huge amount of like just leisure or relaxation like it was like we were kind of like handle our shit or whatever but on Sundays when the Raiders would play it was like one of the rare times when no one would ask me to do any chores no one would nag me about my homework like I i got to just sit down with my dad and we were just it was like a sacred time it was a sacred three hours
Speaker: Um, and so sports has always been this kind of integral part of my family culture and identity and things like that. And to this day, I'm 41. I still really enjoy sports and my, my relationships to sports has evolved.
Speaker: Um, and my understanding of why, why i do think it actually, in a lot of cases is a good thing for me. um,
Speaker: So that's one of these things that my brain kind of noodles on that ultimately is inconsequential. Does fucking matter how many games over 500 the San Francisco Giants are in the larger scheme of humanity? No.
Speaker: In fact, it in in a lot of cases, it could be a distraction, um a harmful distraction, especially like in in our culture that's so obsessed with being entertained. um
Speaker: Anyway, so there's but the the quirkiness gets even deeper, though.
Speaker: So
Speaker: baseball, baseball is one of my favorite sports to follow. And
Speaker: i i don't know when, at some point i I started to become cognizant of the declining numbers of black Americans in major league baseball. Um,
Speaker: And it's it just it in in baseball's heyday, you know, I wasn't around then, but like what, 60s, 70s, maybe some of the eighty s It seemed like some of the biggest stars of the game were black Americans and that that was an important part of the baseball story and the American story.
Speaker: Um, you know, like Willie Mays, um, Willie McCovey, um, and later, you know, when I was growing up, Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds, uh, Frank Thomas, um,
Speaker: a Ricky Henderson, like the black Americans were a huge part of the game. Um, and in a very important part of the game. And now the numbers have dwindled. Last time I checked, haven't checked ah in maybe a year or so, but i think last time I checked, it was like 6% of major league baseball players are black Americans, which to me just feels sad. And it feels like, um, an important part of the cultural fabric has been lost.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: and
Speaker: what what am I trying to say?
Speaker: Hopefully you're following me. Are you guys with me? Yo, with me here? Oh boy. Yeah, my mind just goes, right? um But as as my old friend Lizzie once told me, she was like, she was like, man, you tell some like long-winded stories and i don't always know where you're going but I've learned over time that you always are going somewhere and that you do arrive i was like yeah appreciate that um so so trusted friends listening audience out there in podcast sphere we will arrive I promise
Speaker: um yeah Anyway, so this is just something I've kind of thought about on a sometimes conscious, sometimes subconscious level, like what's been lost um with the decrease decrease of ah black American players in Major League Baseball. and
Speaker: in two thousand And in 2021, the Giants got, they traded for a player named Lamont Wade Jr., who was like a career, essentially a career minor leaguer. And no one, I'd never heard of him before.
Speaker: But all of a sudden he stormed upon and he's a black American player stormed upon the scene. And he was just like a magnetic presence on the field. He had these huge clutch moments that year. Like he was ridiculously clutch.
Speaker: um I think he was batting like over 400 in like late inning situations with runners on base. Like it was like something was magical. It was awesome. And so I became a huge fan. and and then I also I have an eight year old son who um he's half black and he started getting into but like when when he was young, he wasn't that into baseball because baseball is a little hard to understand and it's slow. But I think probably like, I think it was like last year, maybe when he was seven, sixes, when he started taking more of an interest in baseball ah and started to understand and kind of put some of the pieces together and started to enjoy watching the games.
Speaker: and And over time, he started to really take to it. Like he, at this point, he knows every single player on the 26-man Giants roster. He um listens to the games on his little radio before he goes to bed.
Speaker: He has really interesting observations about the games. He asks interesting questions about the games. He thinks about the games even when he's not watching it. Like we'll be driving to school and he'll like give me a really interesting observation or insight.
Speaker: And it it was, it's been really cool to see him just sort of like... find a passion and a love and a connection to this really beautiful game. I think it's an incredibly beautiful game. And because i I was already a huge fan of Lamont Wade Jr. um He kind of picked up on that and and we kind of he started, that became his favorite player too. And we started kind of rooting for Lamont together. And it became a pretty like meaningful part of our
Speaker: I don't know, our like our relational ecosystem. like We like thought about um Lamont a lot. We talked about Lamont a lot. like He represented something meaningful and important to both of us. And last year...
Speaker: um Sorry, like I said, i'm I'm recording this in my car, um talking to my phone and there's a, I guess it's trash day. this's This is huge lumbering truck. So it's not super, it's a little distracting. Hopefully, hopefully you can't hear it too much.
Speaker: Anyway, um the culmination was last year, i just had this kind of Um, this hit of inspiration. Here comes the truck. Hopefully it's not too loud. It's probably going to stop right next to me. Yep.
Speaker: Oh boy. yeah if ah If I was doing this right, I would have a proper producer and editor to edit this part out. But we are, ah we are doing the musings version of life's effing nuts.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: can y'all hear that rumbling and all the jingling? It's really loud and annoying. um but kind of the The apex of this whole thing was last year had this wave of inspiration where like i was like, i was like i know I know the PR guy from the Giants. I used to know him from some work that I did back in the day. and so i don't know him I didn't know him super well personally, but I had his email address. I don't think I'd ever met him or anything.
Speaker: And so I sent him this email and said, like, hey, um this might be a total shot in the dark, long shot. But, you know, my my son's favorite player is Lamont Wade Jr. He relates to him a lot um as as one of the few black American players on the Giants. Like, it's just this guy's his hero.
Speaker: um Anyway, Lamont would be willing to, like, come to the railing during batting practice to, you know, just say wave to my son or say hi. Like, it would it would mean the world to him. And I didn't hear back from the guy from a few days. And i was like, well, that was stupid. Why did i even send that? It was like kind of embarrassing.
Speaker: But then I did hear back and and the guy said, he's like, you know what? Like, let's let's ah let's make some dreams come true. um You come to the field. I'll get you guys some field passes before the game.
Speaker: ah you and your son can watch batting practice. Then I'll bring Lamont Wade over to meet your son. And i was like, whoa, that's freaking cool. was so excited for my son. And I didn't tell him.
Speaker: He knew we were going to the game. um he didn't know we were going on the field. And so we got to the stadium really early and he's like, why are we here so early? i was like, well, I'm just i i a friend of mine is going to be here. i want to say hi to him.
Speaker: And so my son's like, OK, sure. um We've never come this early. OK, sure. You have a friend. That's fine. And then when we got to the stadium. ah We were going in this like special media entrance and my son was like, wait, um dad, all the fans are over there going into the gate over there. What what are we doing here?
Speaker: And I was like, oh, you know, just meeting my friend. So it's all good. And so he's like confused. And then the guy, the PR guy comes, shakes our hand. And then my son is really confused, like, what is going on And um so the PR guy super nice guy, is like walks us through the bowels of the stadium. And he says to my son, he's like, you want to want check out the field?
Speaker: And my son is like, what? ah His eyes were as big as saucers. like, yeah, we can go to the field? the guy's like, yeah, come on. And so the guy walks us onto the field. And my son is just like, his head is exploding.
Speaker: And, you know, he like I said, he's in love with all these players. And ah so all of a sudden, he's 10 feet away from them. And his, I mean, I've never seen eyes so big in my entire life. His eyes were bulging out of his head.
Speaker: It was so cool. And so we're sitting there watching batting practice and my son's like, hey, um dad, dude do you think we can wave to Lamont Wade? And I was like, he didn't know that we' were going to meet him. I was like, we'll see, sweetie. like ah he's warming up. Let me, you know, let's just let him warm up and we'll see.
Speaker: And so we're sitting there and my son is just like so happy and like I can't believe what's happening. And then the PR guy comes up to us. He's like, hey, ah guys, come over here. i want to show you something. And so he takes my son and me and he introduces us to Jordan Hicks, who was the other prominent black American player on the Giants roster. And my son was like, whoa.
Speaker: And Jordan Hicks talked to us, signed a ball. i was super nice. And then we went back to watching batting practice. And... um The PR guy comes up to us again. it was like, hey, come here. I got want to show you one more thing.
Speaker: And then this time he introduces us to Lamont. And Lamont, Jordan Hicks was a nice guy, but Lamont Wade was like an angel. He was so sweet to my son. It was amazing. he He gave my son ah ah bat and signed it.
Speaker: He gave my son his batting gloves off his hands. He took a picture with my son. he like He was warm and engaging. It was like a magical moment. my i I couldn't believe how special that night was for my son and and how sweet and nice Lamont was and the PR guy for setting this up. It was like, I i felt like we were dreaming. like Like, this is someone who my son just adored, um idolized. Like, it he was, you know, like, it was when you're an eight-year-old person and you're watching this guy on TV every day and he's becoming this hero and then all of a sudden you meet him in the flesh. It was like, it was so beautiful.
Speaker: And so essentially, like, we were... Both of us were like Lamont fans for life. And we watched Lamont even more closely, if that's even possible. like i said, we were already huge Lamont fans, but we watched him even more closely. And um he was having a dominant first half of the season last year.
Speaker: Like people were talking about him being an all-star. He was like batting 340 with like a 480 on base percentage at one point. um It was spectacular. It was magical. Like this player who he loved so much was just coming into his own and thriving in this wild dynamic way.
Speaker: And then he pulled a hamstring and he was out for like six weeks and he came back and he was never the same. He never regained form. But no one thought too much about it because he had such good numbers in the first half of the season that um by the end of the year, his numbers were still respectable, um even though he like totally slumped once he got back from the hamstring injury.
Speaker: So no one thought much about it. And so he was, you know, going into this season, he was the Giants leadoff hitter. And um my son and I felt good about, you know, where our favorite player was still kind of doing his thing.
Speaker: But he struggled mightily early in this season, like bad, um like like terrible. Just like couldn't hit the ball, stopped stop getting walks, which was his specialty. They said he like had the best plate discipline in the whole league, one of the best.
Speaker: And... i would I would kind of start obsessively checking the box scores of the game, just like hoping, come on, man, and come on, Lamont. like let's get this together come on get a couple hits and I and it became yeah I mean when I say obsession I you know i still not like I was like losing sleep over it but it you know it was like this little human quirk that I had I was just like constantly checking it and just hoping and it was like every time I would look on there and it would be like Lamont was 0 for 4 with three strikeouts I would just feel like devastated
Speaker: And again, relatively speaking, i I wouldn't totally lose perspective. But it was like this pang of deep sadness. And that event and i you know my son and I would talk about it. i'm like i I would sort of explain, like if and unfortunately, like if this continues, like he's going to lose his job.
Speaker: like Major leaguers have to hit. And if they're not hitting, it doesn't matter what they did last year. like they will they will He will lose his job. And both of us were pretty sad about it. And eventually, he did lose his job. He got cut.
Speaker: um And I felt I felt really sad, like really sad. And again, i'm ah the reason I'm telling the story is partially of the absurdity of it, like the inconsequential nature. Like, I don't know. We don't really know this guy.
Speaker: Like, it's it's just like this little mental quirk or whatever, micro obsession or something like that. um And anyway, point being, he got cut, but he did get picked up by another team, which was kind of surprising. I picked up by the Angels. And so even now he's on the Angels. I i don't usually follow any of baseball except for the Giants. But now I've been like checking the Angels box scores pretty, pretty obsessively, like seeing if he's getting it together, heating up a little bit.
Speaker: and so anyway, my my whole point, and the whole point of this long winded story is just that this, this, the strangeness of, I don't know, human quirks and obsessions.
Speaker: Um, what, what our little brains fixate on, um, amidst this larger scope of humanity, this larger kind of epic of our civilization, just these little,
Speaker: mostly inconsequential things that, that, uh, we glom to or give us little boosts of energy or keep our attention or things like that. So anyway, that's it.
Speaker: A long meandering story about nothing. All right, my friends, my, my few friends out there who are listening. Um, that's it.
Speaker: Life's effing nuts. Life's effing nuts.
