CK? You’re moving a little slow this morning.
Yeah, I’m just really sore.
Come on. We’ve played what, two games? And you’re already sore? You’re more out of shape than I thought!
Well, I was doing okay until that guy hit me in the ribs with an ax handle.
Say what?
(Photo credit: hardwarestore.com)
We were working at Microsoft. I was the captain of an intramural basketball team. CK was my 6’5″ power forward. He’d played college ball at Villanova. He was also my coworker answering phones about Microsoft Mail. And he was my best friend.
Oh yeah, and he happened to be black. That becomes important later in the story.
Microsoft is located in Redmond, WA. Redmond is one of the wealthiest cities in America. Microsoft created thousands of millionairs and a few billionaires. Redmond didn’t really have a “bad section” of town. But, Redmond shared a border with Bellevue which had some rough parts and just across Lake Washington was Seattle, a city that I love, but which has places there is no way I’m going into.
CK explained his cracked ribs. It was a lesson in human nature, self defense and more than a little bit of racism.
Well I was in White Center a couple days ago. Probably ten o’clock at night. I stopped at an ATM. As I turned around there were three of them. All three white kids. I thought, “this is not good.” If they had just asked me for the money, I would have handed over the $5. But, as I tried to turn away, this one kid hit me in the ribs with an ax handle.
CK grew up in LA. This was not his first fight.
Rodney, if you ever get into a fight, especially if you are outnumbered, make that first punch count. As he hit me, I wrapped my left arm around the handle and pinned it to my body. Then, I pulled him in and hit him in the nose as hard as I could. It broke his nose. He was now out of the fight. I turned to the other two as one of them rushed me. When the cops showed up I had him in a headlock. The third kid wanted nothing to do with the large angry black man.
Wow. I had no idea. So, what did the cops say?
Say? Nothing! A big black guy beating up on three little white kids? They arrested me, of course.
Seriously?
Yeah. I only spent a couple hours in jail though. The kids all had records.
But, you went to jail for getting mugged by three white kids?
Welcome to my world, buddy!
I’ve thought a lot about that story over the years. CK is one of the nicest, smartest guys I know. And yet, it’s still hard for me to envision the victim of a mugging getting arrested.
We talked about what would have happened if it had been me getting robbed and the three muggers had been black kids.
No question, the kids would have been arrested and the cops would have given you a ride back to your apartment.
Doesn’t that bother you?
It sure bothers me.
Microsoft, where we both worked at the time was very merit based. The smartest and brightest got promoted regardless of race or gender. I grew up in a high school that was 90% white. But, I also spent two years in South Chicago working with deaf people. I worked daily in black neighborhoods.
One time my missionary companion and I were joking with some black teenagers. They asked us,
Where y’all live?
We live over on 35th and Halsted. Bridgeport area.
Oh man, we don’t go around Bridgeport!
Why not? I mean, we come HERE.
That’s different. You’re white. You’ve got the law on your side.
The kids were right. I expected to run into that kind of institutional racism in South Chicago. I didn’t expect to hear about it while sitting in expensive offices in Redmond, WA. It was surprising to me, but I worked really hard to understand it.
After all, two of my sons are black.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children, seven of whom are black.
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You took the Windows for Workgroups test today didn’t you?
Yeah.
How did you do.
I passed and I missed a perfect score by one question. I got a 67.8% and passing was a 62.8%.
When I first joined Microsoft back in the 1994 I knew a ton about WordPerfect Office email, a lot about various industry email standards like MHS, and almost nothing about Microsoft products. However, as support engineers we were expected to complete the training for the new Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE) requirement.
Getting the MCSE certification would not help us do our jobs better. However, it would hopefully make customers trust our support teams a little more. And it wouldn’t hurt that it would boost the worldwide numbers for the fledgling certification.
Novell Certified Network Engineer (CNE) was the premier network certification at the time. Microsoft was working very hard to catch up, not just in certified engineers. They also wanted to be viewed as a viable networking company. Everyone in the world ran Novell Netware, or so it appeared. Microsoft was known for Windows and programming languages.
The MCSE certification was simply one way Microsoft was attempting to change the world’s perception.
The problem was that as support engineers, we had a very narrow focus. I knew Microsoft Mail, but I didn’t really have a clue about some of the network courses. The guys supporting Windows OS didn’t know about email or network routing. It was very frustrating, and often demoralizing for us to take tests on a topic we didn’t really understand and as a result fail the exams over and over and over.
We could retake the exams as many times as we wanted. But, if you don’t know the answers the first time, you often don’t do any better taking it multiple times. Management didn’t really have an interest in sending us off to be trained on a technology that wouldn’t necessarily help us do our job, but was only designed to help us pass the tests.
As a result the engineers came up with our own training curriculum. As engineers we started pooling our knowledge. I helped people understand MS Mail, they helped me understand networks. And we started to track how we did on the various certification tests.
And it started to have an effect. I remember one woman who failed the same exam 7 times in a row. When we finally started working as a group, she could better identify her weak areas and target her learning. She passed the next time she took it.
But, at the beginning of this story I said that 62.8% was a perfect score and I got a 67.8% and yet I “missed a perfect score by one question.”
Since we were taking tests that didn’t really aid our job, any time we spent studying for them was time taken away from our job, or more likely time taken away from our family. There was no benefit to getting a higher score. All the tests were pass/fail.
A perfect score meant that you scored an exact passing score; you studied just enough. You didn’t study too little. You didn’t study too much. Perfect. You were much more admired by other support engineers for achieving a “perfect” score than you were for achieving 100% on an exam.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant, a Certified Windows for Workgroups 3.11 professional. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children.
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For those of you whom I haven’t had a chance to meet yet, my name is Rodney Bliss and I’m the new Team Manager for the Messaging and Collaboration team. I like to start off my first team meeting by explaining some of the rules that I tend to manage by. The first one is the most important. In the absence of order, attack.
The reactions I got from the 6 men in the room were a study in contrasts; from confusion, to curiosity, to mild derision, to ernest attention. We were not in the army. In fact, we worked for a large non-profit organization. And it was clear that none of these guys had ever heard the phrase before.
Ah. . .Rodney?
Yeah?
What’s that mean?
Glad you asked. The phrase originated with General Edwin Rommel. He was a German tank commander who battled US General George Patton in North Africa and later was assassinated for attempting to kill Hitler.
(Photo Credit: Wikipedia)
Rommel understood that in battle, initiative was critical. He was empowering his troops to take that initiative. In the fog of war, communication lines go down, couriers never reach their destination, or key leadership is cut off or killed. What are his tank drivers to do in these situations?
Easy.
Attack the enemy.
I first heard the phrase as an ROTC cadet at BYU. Our Battalion commander drilled it into us from the first formation I stood in. If you don’t know what to do, figure out where the enemy is and attack him.
At this point several readers are thinking, “That’s okay for the military, maybe. But, that would never work in my workplace. We don’t even have guns!”
Here’s how I explained it to my team.
There will come a time when a decision needs to be made. A decision that I, as the Team Manager should make. Maybe it’s signing off on a new software contract. Maybe it’s agreeing to an exception to our provisioning policy. Maybe it’s committing to take on a special project for the CIO. Most of the time I’ll be here to make that call. But, there will come a time when I’m not available, and the decision has to be made right away. At that point, I want you to go ahead and make the call. And if you will commit to use your best judgement, I will back your decision. . .even if it later turns out to be wrong.
So, you want us to take over your job?
Well, not exactly. But, I want you to feel empowered enough to make a decision. What I want to avoid is having you guys paralyzed because you can’t move forward until a decision is made and all the managers are off at some “no cell phone” retreat.
And if we screw it up? We pick the wrong software?
I’ll take the blame. I will explain to upper management that it was MY decision.
They didn’t believe me, of course. Not at first. But, that was the start. I knew that trust would be only be given to me if I first gave it to them. In the absence of orders, attack is a rule that I’ve used with every team I’ve managed. Only once in all that time did I ever have to deal with a poor decision.
We were building a reservation system for rafting companies. Our beta site was several hours away. My head developer on the advice of one of our developers, made the determination that there was a problem with the beta site that required someone to physically drive down there. I spent several hours driving down to Moab, UT only to find that the server only needed to be turned off and back on, something our customer could have easily done. I had the entire hours long drive back to decide exactly how I was going to address the issue.
It was late in the afternoon when I got back. I pulled my head of development and the programmer into my office. All I said was
That was a mistake. Let’s not make that one again.
And that was the end of it. I had lost a day’s worth of work in a useless drive, but my team came to realize that I actually meant what I said when I told them I trusted them to make decisions.
It was well worth the drive.
This is the first in a series of 14 Management Rules That Make No Sense. Look for a new one each Friday for the next few months. If you have some experience of your own on empowering your employees, leave me a comment. The plan is to collect them into a book next summer.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children.
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Before we start the interview I’d like to mention something first.
Okay, go ahead.
You’ve seen my resume. It says I have a bachelors degree. I don’t. I only put that down so that my resume would make it past the automated screeners.
What would you do?
I head this story several years ago when I was in a protracted job search. The IT world can be a fickle mistress. It had been several months since my previous contract had ended. I’ve written before about how IT work, especially consulting can be like Feasting On Brownies. . .Every Three Weeks. This work break had been quite a bit longer than three weeks.
I was visiting with a friend who worked in finance. He’s the one who told me about a mutual acquaintance, Donald, who also worked in IT and had been out of work for months.
Donald found out it was the lack of a degree that kept him from even getting an interview on several jobs. He decided to add a degree to resume just so that he could get to the job interview.
So, what happened?
He managed to convince them he was the best fit and he got the job.
I’ve both interviewed for jobs and interviewed others for jobs. When interviewing I don’t think I’ve ever lied. I’ve certainly tried to emphasize my best points and downplay my worst, but a flat out lie? I don’t think so.
As an interviewer, obviously any hint of dishonesty immediately disqualified the candidate. I didn’t care how talented they were. I couldn’t see starting a employee/employer relationship on a lie.
But, did Donald really lie? He lied to a computer. As soon as he had the chance he told the truth to a real person. And according to my friend it appeared to have worked.
Despicable? Or Brilliant?
Would you lie to get an interview knowing you were going to confess at the beginning of the interview?
Would you hire someone who had lied to get an interview, if they made a clean breast of it at the beginning of the interview?
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children.
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They knew.
They must know. How could they not?
They must have figured out by now that I’m making this up as I go.
Rodney, can I see you in my office?
Uh oh, here it comes. Hopefully he won’t drag it out.
I just read your recommendations for next year’s curriculum map. You realize that your approach is pretty radically different than what any of the other Curriculum Designers suggested.
Ok. . .
I told them that I think we should adopt your plan. In fact, they will probably be approaching you for pointers on your design. I’ve asked them all to go back and rework their plans around your model. Good job.
He knows.
He must know. How could he not?
He must have figured out by now that I’m making this up as I go.
I used to think it was just me. From the time I entered business (Back To Where It All Began) I’ve always felt like everyone else is in on some secret of business that I’m missing.
Even when I went to Microsoft, (How Not To Quit A Job) I didn’t feel like I REALLY fit in. 1994, the year I was hired, Microsoft, a company of over 50,000 people hired less than 600 new employees. And I had actually been recruited away from WordPerfect. And WordPerfect was sorry to see me go.
But, that didn’t change the feeling I had down deep in the pit of my stomach that the rest of them really knew what was going on and I was simply faking it.
That’s not the type of thing you bring up in a meeting with your boss.
By the way, I don’t really feel I do my job adequately. I’m faking.
It’s also not something you bring up to your coworkers. We worked well as a team, but Microsoft back in the 90’s was a very competitive place. We considered ourselves the best of the best. Well, except I didn’t.
Then one day I was talking to Roger. Roger was a brilliant course designer. He was one of the people that gave classes to the rest of us on how to write. He’d worked directly with Bill Gates on a project. Roger and I got to be pretty good friends and so one day I confided in him.
Roger, do you ever feel like you’re not as good as people think you are? That you’re just faking it?
Oh, all the time.
Wait, what?
I was throwing out a question that I knew the answer to so that I could contrast his answer with mine. He caught me totally off guard.
Wait, YOU feel inadequate for your job?
Yeah all the time. I feel like one day someone’s going to appear at my cubicle and say, “We figured out that you really don’t know what you are doing and you’re going to have to go.”
Wow. . .
You feel that way too, don’t you?
Well, yeah, but I didn’t think that you did.
Trust me, everybody who’s any good feels that way. It’s part of what keeps us working so hard. We feel we have to prove them all wrong.
Roger taught me a valuable lesson that day. I’ve carried it with me through my career. I mentioned it to Riley. Riley had been a VP of Marketing for several companies. He’d earned hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for his marketing expertise. But, Riley always felt just a little inferior. Not in a self esteem way, but Riley never really felt he measured up to the standard he was held to.
Ironically, Riley exceeded the standard he was held to on a regular basis. But, he too felt like a fraud.
Over the years, I’ve realized that Roger was right. Anyone who’s any good at what they do has a secret fear that they aren’t good enough. It makes them try that much harder, makes them work that much longer.
I’ve also discovered that the opposite is true. People who are convinced that they deserve every bit of the accolades that are heaped on them generally don’t share credit. They are the people who are so convinced of their own infallibility that they miss out on the chance to learn and grow.
So, if you feel like your faking your way through your job, but your boss thinks you are doing great. Realize that there are a lot of us out there feeling that way. Just keep going.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children.
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Microsoft has a hockey team. Actually, they have multiple hockey teams. Over the past 15 years those hockey teams have earned $4.3M.
Yesterday I explained how in business it’s a bad thing when you get too wrapped up the extra-curricular sports events. (When Winning Is Really Losing.) I think I made a pretty good argument for why being the Intel Western Regional foosball champion is not something to aspire to.
Today I’m going to explain that sometimes it’s not enough to just play the game. But, going all out to play the game represents a huge win, and if you have a chance to achieve it, you absolutely should go all out.
Back in 1998 I was working for Microsoft in the Microsoft Exchange team writing courseware. The Vice President over Exchange was a guy named Brian Valentine. Brian was a great leader. And he was always looking for a way to motivate his team to become even more passionate.
In 1998 he decided he’d do this by challenging the Windows development team to a hockey game. I’m not sure why Brian picked hockey. He wasn’t much of a hockey player himself. But, the challenge was issued and the two divisions, two of the biggest at Microsoft (not counting the Office division) decided it would make sense to put on pads and smash into each other on the ice.
The two VPs also realized they had the opportunity to generate a little good will. They arranged to play their game on the home ice of the Seattle Thunderbirds hockey team. They’d sell some hockey sweaters and donate the money to the Ronald McDonald house.
I bought a sweater, actually I bought a couple.
And I talked trash to my counterparts in Windows. I didn’t attend the game, but I’m pretty sure Exchange took the inaugural game. The Windows team accused Exchange of hiring some sale reps out of Canada for their skating prowess rather than their selling skills. Never heard if it was true or not, but even it wasn’t, just the rumor gave Exchange an edge.
The merchandise sales were above everyone’s expectations. Brian V and his counterparts realized that rather than beat up on each other, it would be more fun to beat up on other companies. The Hockey Challenge was born. Over the years, they invited teams from Sun Microsystems, Oracle and other tech companies. Each year the event got bigger than the year before. And the money kept flowing to the Ronald McDonald House charities.
Last Saturday was the 15th annual Hockey Challenge. I’ve been gone from Microsoft for a lot of years. But, it looks like the tournament is bigger than ever with over 10 teams competing and a celebrity all-star game. Oh, and apparently the Seattle Thunderbirds play in there too.
Microsoft has no natural connection to hockey. But, because Brian was looking for something to fire up his team, it became a charity outlet for the entire company.
According to their website, it costs $3.4M per year to operate the Ronald McDonald house in Seattle. In the 15 years of the Hockey Challenge Microsoft has helped raise $4.3M. All the proceeds of the Hockey Challenge go to the charity.
I’ve never been to the Ronald McDonald House in Seattle, but several years ago my daughter needed a series of surgeries at Shriners hospital in Sacramento. (What Would You Do? On A Long Lonely Highway, With A Dead Car, A Young Child And Night Falling?) Ronald McDonald House was a huge help.
So, while I still don’t recommend aspiring to become the Intel Western Regional foosball champion, if you get a chance to raise money for charity by hosting a hockey tournament you might just find that you start a 15 year tradition that helps sick kids and their families.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children.
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He was the Western Regional Foosball Champion.
That sounds impressive doesn’t it? And this wasn’t a small deal. It was Intel’s Western Region. It covered the entire Western Half of the US. That’s a pretty impressive area.
Wait. . .Intel?
Yes, Intel. And that’s the problem. My friend Jacob was explaining to me that when he worked for Intel they started a foosball tournament and he became the overall champion for the entire Western Region.
And Intel paid you for that?
No. Of course not.
What was your “normal” job?
I was a financial analyst.
Years later, Jacob agreed that he did himself no favors by being the foosball champion. He never got a chance to see if it hurt his career since Intel sold their division and shut down their Seattle Office shortly afterward. . . it had nothing to do with the foosball tournament. . .he thinks.
Technology companies are famous for playing games. No matter if they are young hip companies or old established companies like Microsoft, games are a big part of IT life. While I worked for Microsoft, we once set up a ping pong tournament for the support people on our floor, probably because we didn’t have a foosball table.
In fact, I was the one who set it up. I remember we had to figure out how to set up a double elimination tournament with 20 people. You have to set up the tournament as if you have 32 people, and then give the top 12 a bye the first round.
As the tournament progressed, it became a point of discussion and no small amount of distraction. I began to realize that having my name too closely associated with a event that didn’t add to the mission of our department might not be the best thing for my career. Fortunately, people quickly forgot it was my idea and I lost in the middle rounds.
There’s a fine line between blowing off some steam and taking the focus off your core business. My immediate supervisor in Support understood the purpose of the tournament and fully supported it. I think he might have even been enrolled. But, his manager had less of an idea of what we were doing. And the higher up the management chain you went the riskier it became.
And certainly by the time you become the Western Regional champion, you are getting all kinds of the wrong kind of publicity. If you are mainly known for your hobby rather than your work, don’t be surprised if someone up the chain questions what they actually pay you for.
Your professional achievements should at least be as prestigious as your recreational ones. I’m not saying I would lose on purpose, but my final ping-pong ranking was in no way indicative of my ping-pong skill. And that was just the way I liked it.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children.
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I’ve been working in the IT field since 1988. I’ve been a manager for roughly the last ten years. I’ve tried to pay attention during that time. I’ve tried to figure out what worked and what didn’t.
In fact, I avoided management for a long time. I started out as an engineer, and I enjoyed it. When opportunities arose to go into management I passed on them. Not because I didn’t think I’d do a good job. But, because I’d had so many bad managers, that I didn’t want to subject myself to whatever bad stuff you had to endure to be a manager.
I was convinced that at some point while being a manager you had to be a jerk. I found out that wasn’t the case. It was simply that some of my past managers had been jerks. (Sometimes You Have To Be A Jerk. No, You’re Just a Jerk.)
I kept notes. Listed below are the 14 management rules I came up with over the course of my career. But, there’s a catch. The names don’t always make it clear what the rule or the lesson is. Read through the rules and then I’ll explain what I have planned with them.
1. In the absence of orders: ATTACK!
2. I want the jacks not the balls.
3. I saved my company $25K/month and all I got was this lousy t-shirt
4. Company loyalty only ever goes one way
5. Your company has a uniform even if it doesn’t have a dress code
6. Decide what you will accept and what you’re willing to give up. When you get one or the other: STOP!
7. The danger of being the smartest guy in the room
8. The power of saying “I don’t know.”
9. The art of the joke (Or why you shouldn’t worry about your job if I’m teasing you about your job.)
10. Always Remember Your Lines
11. Money is a lousy motivator
12. If you have to go anyway, it’s better to lead than to follow
13. Sometimes the best answer to a technical question is “It’s magic.”
14. If it bleeds it leads
I’ve touched on a couple of these in other posts. When I managed a team, I printed out these rules and gave a copy to each employee. I then told them that I would hold myself to these 14 principles. They replied,
These don’t make any sense.
So, each week at our team meeting, I would go over one rule. I’ve decided that Friday’s are my new team meeting day. Over the next few months, each Friday I’ll pick one of these and explain what I mean. You are welcome to agree or disagree or even provide your own examples.
The ultimate goal is to collect the stories around these 14 principles along with some selected reader submissions and then next summer see if I’ve written well enough to warrant putting them into a book.
I’m still working on the title. The two rejected titles were:
Company Loyalty Only Ever Goes One Way (Rejected because I still would like to be hired by companies in the future.)
Organization Agility: The ability to get things done in a large organization. (Rejected because my editor said, “Wow, that sounds really boring.”)
So, I’ll keep noodling on the title. Once you understand more of my management style feel free to offer advice on the title, or suggestions for new rules, or your own personal examples.
The order might change, but next Friday look for a post explaining why
In The Absence of Orders: ATTACK!
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children.
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(Image credit: 2/18/2014 Schlockmercenary.com)
5,000
Five thousand
0b1001110001000 (I’m a computer guy, it’s still the same number)
My friend Howard Tayler did something on Sunday February 18th, that he’s done 5,000 times in a row. He updated his comic, Schlock Mercenary. Since June 12th, 2000 without fail, every day, he’s offered up a free comic.
This blog (www.rodneymbliss.com) has updated every business day for almost a year. I take the weekend off, and I have still have 12 years to go to catch Howard.
Just to add some perspective to what that number means, in June 2000:
– Bill Clinton was finishing up his second term as president
– The tragedy of September 11, 2001 was still over a year away
– I had 4 of my 13 children
– A gallon of gas cost about $2.00
– The population of the United States was 281 million
– The world population was just a shade over six billion
Howard draws his comic on legal sized paper, 11×14. If you were to lay all the pages end to end, counting one page per day and three on Sunday, it would stretch over 77,000 feet, nearly 15 miles. And anyone who walked that 15 miles would be laughing every step of the way.
I have been fortunate to read Schlock for many years, but to be Howard’s friend for even longer than that. My office is adorned with some original Schlock art.
Here’s the original art work for the big shark who’s name I could never remember. Megalomanic or something like that.
Later Howard turned it into a poster which he was kind enough to sign.
When he released his second print collection in 2006, he again was kind enough to give me an autographed copy, this time of the cover.
I suspect he gave me these partly because he knew I’d frame them and value them. Last weekend while volunteering at Life, The Universe and . . .Well, Not Exactly Everything, I had a chance to help Howard’s wife Sandra by watching her booth for an hour while she attended a panel. I got the better end of the deal as I ended up with a copy of Howard’s 2014 Calendar.
In the 5000 rotations of the earth and it’s nearly 14 trips around the sun,
– We’ve not only changed presidents twice, but the new guy is in his second term
– We’ve fought wars and lost more people to terror
– I added nine children to my family, one son-in-law and will soon add a grandchild
– Gas has increased about $1.20 per gallon
– The US population has increased by nearly 50 million
– The World population has increased by about a billion people
And every one of those days has been started with a little humor and occasionally some thoughtful introspection. But, mostly the humor.
To my friend Howard, he remains an inspiration for me to keep going. A good friend said that the way to fame and riches on the internet was persistence and presence. Show up everyday and keep doing it for a long time. (Maybe that was just the way to fame.) Howard has certainly done both, and become one of the premier web cartoonists in the world.
Congratulations Howard. Here’s to 5000 more.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children.
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The four most exciting words in sports were spoken last week. (Yes, this is going to be a sports post. If sports bore you, you might want to stop reading at this point.)
Each year, I try to remember to mark the day. The words? My friends tend to guess boring things like “Gentleman, start your engines” or “The Cubs lose again,” or even “World Champion Seattle Seahawks.”
None of them are even close.
The four most exciting words in sports are
Pitchers and catchers report
And I missed it this year. It happened on February 13th. I was attending Life, The Universe. . and Well, Not Exactly Everything.
People think the groundhog holds the key to the end of winter and the promise of Spring. He doesn’t. Nope. Spring starts when the Boys of Summer return to the desert to start another Spring Training.
Spring Training is a magical time. Every team still “has a shot.” The camp is filled with old veterans trying to hold on for one more year, and young, not-yet-rookies, who will probably spend another couple of years in the minors, but for a few glorious weeks get to imagine what it’s like to make the big club.
It’s funny really. I live in Utah, which is next door to Arizona. And yet, I’ve never made it down for Spring ball. They’ll start scrimmaging in a few weeks and I’ll pay my $9.99 for the Internet Radio broadcast of the games. The first few games are fun since the announcers are still shaking off the rust as well.
As a Seattle Mariners fan, I’ll once again mourn the passing of Dave Niehaus. No one could call a game like he could. He could make a 10-0 shellacking an entertaining listen. This is the third Spring Training without his golden voice to call the games. We still miss him and always will.
In mid-March teams will break camp and head north, except for the AZ Diamondbacks. They, with the Dodgers will head to Australia for the league’s first official games on March 22. For everyone else it’s March 31 or April 1. And that will be when we hear the TWO most exciting words in sports,
Opening Day!
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife and thirteen children.
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