Hello. While I was on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, not Derek Jr., but soon to be Derek Jr. You can read all the entries here.
May 9
We have a fun new tradition at our apartment called Family Nap. When Derek Jr. he goes down to sleep during the day, my wife and I do the same. The whole family sleeps. Family Sleep. We really need you today. I didn’t get much sleep during the early labor, and at 6:30 AM, I gave Derek Jr. to my wife, who didn’t get as much sleep as I did because she pumped twice. Something in your body wakes up when you sleep – not as sleep, but as a normal part of your sleep – as the sun rises. I wake up three hours later and Derek Jr. he’s already down from his first nap of the day, so my wife encourages me to try to get some sleep. I shoot it pretty well, but when I go back to bed, something is wrong with my balance. Every time I close my eyes, it feels like I’m moving in a rocking chair. It strikes me as a worrying development.
In the afternoon, Derek Jr. you blow two diapers as violently as anyone has ever blown a diaper – you’re a hurricane; they are the roof of the Trop. Sometime a few weeks ago, I wrote in a magazine article that said, “Drying a diaper is like crying twice.” However, after checking with some friends, it turns out that I actually didn’t know what the meaning of double ringing was. Maybe I’ll write about that later and leave the diapers carved in it.
The explosion ended our supply of onesies. We’ve come to our last one, the compound dye number of infinite origin. It seems Hurricane Derek Jr. he ignores that, and after all his hard work, he decides to get some sleep. As he held me, my wife and I made the important decision to follow his example. It’s a really exciting prospect. When I said that the Family Nap is a tradition, I may have been exaggerating a bit. It’s more of an idea at this point. It is a dream of a better future.
When you have a baby, people tell you all the time that you should sleep when the baby sleeps. That’s what they say: “You have to sleep when the baby sleeps.” And they are right. You should sleep when the baby sleeps. But you also have to wash them. And dishes. And you have to boil water to make formula and sterilize baby bottles and pacifiers. You have to cook and eat and wash and go to the pharmacy and get groceries, and wow, we’re so behind on the thank you notes, and pay the bills, when was the last time you shaved, and get on the phone to argue some objections from Goddamned UnitedHealthcare, and try to do at least a minimum of stocking up if you feel like you’re just living “Batbi” in a hurricane, and then, after all that, maybe, just maybe, you can relax by taking a cool, calm breath, deep – no, the baby is awake and crying. Deep breathing will have to wait.
Well, today we do. I transfer Little Derek to bed, we get a load of laundry, and, whispering so as not to wake the baby, my wife starts singing: “Family Nap! Family Nap! Family Nap!” I think it shouldn’t technically speaking count because we don’t all sleep in the same room, but the spirit of Family Nap burns in our hearts. I sleep in Derek Jr.’s room. so that when he wakes up in the morning and needs attention, my wife will continue to sleep. Good call. Derek Jr. he got about 20 minutes of sleep in my arms, but he gets about 20 or 30 more in the crib, so the family part of the Family Nap is very short. I got him out of bed, put his back to sleep, turned up the Angels-Blue Jays game on my phone with the volume down all the time.
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It’s the bottom of the second inning, and I’m just in time to catch an oddity: back-to-back hits that almost hit the same spot. I often think infield singles don’t get enough credit for all the fun they provide. During one infield song, the entire infield is buzzing with action. The batter runs to first with all his might, the infielder gets all he can on the throw, and the first baseman stretches as far as his beefy legs will allow. But those are the main characters. The action around them continues: The catcher pulls it up the line in full gear to back up the play, the other players circle to cover their bags, the umpire gets into position to call, the outfielders (occasionally) support the play. And with the entire infield awhirl, it usually comes down to a bang-bang play at first, when the infield explodes with ideas because everyone is 100% sure they know a runner was safe or out.
The first infield single doesn’t really prove my point. Daulton Varsho slices a single up the middle, about 10 feet to the right of second base. Second baseman Vaughn Grissom has moved to first base for a happy Varsho, so he has to run to his right. Varsho isn’t hot, but he’s quick enough and has a head start due to swinging left, so Grissom should try to play a more difficult, sliding catch that will allow him to come up, invest hard, and fire first looks with more throws. But he does the holding part, and as it turns out, that was the part that carried the burden of the strategy. I don’t mean to make it sound like Grissom is screwed here. He didn’t have the luxury of reading the ball and picking the right spot to block; he had to rush to the spot, and he got stuck with a tricky hop in the middle. That makes the game harder than it seems. However, in the past, the game may have gone down as a mistake.
Righty Ernie Clement is next, so Grissom is playing about 15 feet to his right than he was playing Varsho. Unfortunately for him, Clement hit the worm burner about 15 feet to Grissom’s right than Varsho’s ball. This one slides to the third base side of the mound, and again Grissom runs into a sliding stop. He gloved the ball and looked to second base to get Varsho out, but shortstop Zach Neto was playing deep in the hole and Varsho would beat him to the bag. Playing the pull hurt the Angels a lot in this inning. Grissom gets his left knee under him, pops up, and goes deep, turning his body into a trebuchet to get as much as he can on the long throw to first, but it’s not enough. Clement steps on the bag while the ball is still far from the yard – I’m sorry; when we played at the Rogers Center, I should have said a meter – his arms were wide open. He’s not sure if it’s actually defeating the pitch, though. As he cuts his steps to slow down, he looks towards the referee and slowly lowers his arms. The body language version of the exclamation exchange after his original “Safe”! signal with a question mark:
More importantly, Dylan Cease is still letting his hair grow. He is no longer Drabek. The comparison honestly fails me. He has a lot of hair and his mustache is very thick. I can’t decide he looks like some kind of 1970s camouflage, like he’s an extra in a fight scene The Anchormanor as if you were one of Alexandre Dumas’ musketeers:
I missed the first inning, when Trey Yesavage struck out Mike Trout in the splitter. But I see him cough up Trout again in the third, and it’s cold. Trout entered the game ranked in the top 10 in WAR and wRC+, but Yesavage put him in the blender. The first pitch is the separator at the outer edge of the called strike. The second is a fastball six inches down, in the right corner of the zone, and Trout abuses it for two strikes. The third pitch is a slider six inches below that, which moves back and out of place to hit third. It’s called a strike, it’s bad, it’s a fluke. Three perfect spaces in three perfect spaces. It works relentlessly, perhaps the most impressive thing I’ve seen this season (besides Cease’s hair):
Meanwhile, Derek Jr. he’s been sleeping for a while, so I figure maybe I can put him back in bed. He’ll go to bed again, and I’ll go into the family room and watch the game on reality TV for once. We are making big changes today. What I’m learning about this situation is that his sleep is in an area of concern. I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep him asleep at bedtime and being re-settled in the bed, so I’m trying something I’ve never tried before: I just put him in the bed without the swaddle. I also don’t pull the dyed onesie down over her belly. I just entered his room, he is sleeping, his limbs are playing. I don’t think he’s going to sleep that much longer, so what’s the worst that can happen?
About two seconds after I take the game off the TV, I get it. I glance at the monitor, and his bed looks like it’s full of claws. Her pacifier has fallen, waking her up, and with no cloth to keep her calm and still, she is kicking her legs and flailing her arms at a steady pace. You look like you have about eight limbs and they move so fast you can make a smoothie in bed. I have never seen anything like this. It would be fun if it wasn’t my job to stop him from turning into a little human hybrid. I took him and humbled him, then took him out to watch the game. We take a few minutes before my wife wakes up. The Family Nap is officially dead, and it’s time to feed Derek Jr. and start the cycle again.
