I’ve been in vacation mode. And so has Kirby Yates.
Maybe.
I took three books and no computer with me, each in service of the one rule I generally force on myself for vacations with my family: bring things, and leave behind things, that will line up with the one real goal and purpose I have — to plan and to do as little as possible.
I broke the rule pretty much right away, since the Rangers saw fit to sign Joc Pederson in the middle of the night, hours before we got on a plane, a plane on which I harbored, and then honored, a self-inflicted duty not only to think about that maneuver but also to tell you what I thought about that maneuver.
On a phone. An attempted 20,000-foot view of the signing, at 30,000 feet.
Fortunately, at least from my own selfish standpoint, the Rangers refrained from doing any further business — well, refrained from closing any further business — the rest of the week.
The three books I packed — two I hadn’t yet gotten around to finishing, one that I decided to re-read — were not about baseball. But they each were written by a baseball fan (baseball’s a talking sport; and a writing sport; and a writer’s sport):
Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure and Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces, both by my favorite author Michael Chabon
Standing Up to China, by Newberg Report reader Ashley Yablon
I finished all three on the trip (all excellent), but let me skip ahead in my own story for a moment. (OK, not just for a moment. You didn’t subscribe for travel play-by-play.)
In the airport on Friday, waiting for another 30,000-foot journey back home (vertically, that is; horizontally, more like 7 million feet), I was hoping for — not so much hoping for, really, more like anticipating — a sign that I was going to be passing the three hours’ time in the air with another phoned-up story, just as I had on the flight in.
Twitter X (let’s just call it Twix) wasn’t delivering any breaking news. But I swear, as I nurtured the thought that a clue would surely drop any second, a harbinger would announce itself, a song lyric would jostle something up — I thought I saw Kirby Yates walking in the same airport I was sitting in.