All posts by Matthew Callan

Pointless Nostalgia

The Other Family

When I was a kid, my father had friends everywhere. No matter where we went–the mall, little league games, soccer tournaments–he was sure to run into someone he knew. They’d shake hands and trade energetic small talk I couldn’t understand. These friends covered a wide range of humanity, from well-dressed professionals to tattooed biker types.

This democratic taste in companions did not gel with his personality, as I knew it. To me, he was a master of sarcasm with snobbish pretensions. He did the New York Times Sunday crossword religiously, tracing block letters with a black pen, then filling in the interiors in red like panes of stained glass. He wouldn’t listen to any radio station but WQXR, the Times‘ classical music outpost. He owned one musical album, a doo-wop compilation. Everything else in his LP collection was comedy: George Carlin and Tom Lehrer, mostly.

He recoiled at his boys’ typically kid-like table manners. He’d storm away from the kitchen table muttering “Savages!” to himself when he could take it no more. (To this day, I find the word “savages” to be extremely funny.) If he came home from work and we were watching He-Man or G.I. Joe, he’d demand we “turn that drivel off”, in a silly voice that made it clear he was both joking and deadly serious. He preferred to watch PBS, which I found crushingly boring. I called every show he liked “Great Rocks of Our Time”.

And yet, in public I’d see him hanging out with total slobs, people I thought he wouldn’t be caught dead with. And not just talk with them, but joke and laugh like they were the best of buddies. My dad was a gifted storyteller, someone who could command a room with equal parts rhetorical skill and bullshit. But even so, it didn’t seem likely that he’d be swapping stories with many of the “friends” he ran into.

His friends had two things in common: (1) they were all men; (2) I had no idea who any of them were. They weren’t people he worked with, and he had no social life to speak of. If asked where he knew these people from, he’d say “around”. If pressed further, he’d change the subject.

My mother found this particularly infuriating. For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out the identities of these mystery people. After all, the man barely left the house, except to go to AA meetings…
Continue reading The Other Family →

Baseball

The Jeff Francoeur Guide to Media Relations

francoeur2.jpgThis is bogus, man! Jerry wants me to platoon just because I’m dangerously unqualified to play in the majors! And just when I’m about to hit my 100th home run, too! That’s it, I gotta get a trade outta this dump. Anywhere but here. This is so unfair! Carlos, back me up on this.

beltran2.jpgHuh? I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you. There’s hundreds of angry fans screaming at me for being a clubhouse cancer.

francoeur2.jpgWhoah, that’s totally unfair! If I were you, I’d grab a reporter and tell him my side of the story.
beltran2.jpgI would do that, but the reporters are right at front of the mob, brandishing pitchforks.

francoeur2.jpgYou’re too uptight, dude. You just gotta take it free and easy, like me.
beltran2.jpgBut if I take it free and easy, the reporters say I’m not hustling.
francoeur2.jpg*pfft* Don’t listen to those guys, man. If they write stuff like that, just give ’em the cold shoulder.
beltran2.jpgWhenever I ignore the writers, they say I’m aloof and unapproachable. Oh, and sometimes they threaten my family.
francoeur2.jpgI don’t know what half those words mean and you’re old. How about you, Jose? You’re a young go-getter. You gotta understand what I’m saying.
reyes2.jpgI’d like to help you out, Jeff, but I’m too busy trying to explain to the beat writers that me occasionally dancing isn’t the worst thing to happen to baseball since the Black Sox.
francoeur2.jpgSo you dance sometimes! Big deal! Why don’t you just ask for a trade to a different city, like me? You just gotta take what you want! I watched this motivational thingy once where this one really tall guy said that.
reyes2.jpgBecause the writers would throw bricks in my face if I did that.
francoeur2.jpgYou guys are too timid. Hey, there’s Angel Pagan. This guy gets it.
pagab.jpgYeah, I get it straight up the pooper from the sports press, because I’m having a huge year and yet somehow I don’t “play the game the right way”. Meanwhile, you swing at everything that moves and get away with murder.
francoeur2.jpgHey, don’t pin this on me, broham! Don’t get mad at me ’cause I make an effort to get to know the scribes.
pagab.jpgI tried to shake Bill Madden’s hand once, and he bit me! On the head!
beltran2.jpgWallace Matthews shit in a box and sent it to me, on my birthday.
reyes2.jpgThe only reason I’m still playing baseball is because Mike Lupica kidnapped my children.
francoeur2.jpgThat’s so weird. You guys are way better players than me. Why would the press give you such a hard time?
beltran2.jpgTake a guess.
francoeur2.jpgYou were all born on Tuesdays? I always heard reporters hate Tuesdays.
reyes2.jpgTake another guess.
francoeur2.jpgMaybe you don’t smile hard enough.
pagab.jpgTake another guess. Why do you think reporters might be more receptive to an aw-shucks boy from Georgia than three guys who come from foreign lands and have funny accents?
francoeur2.jpgI don’t have time to play your mind games. I gotta split. Me and Joel Sherman are gonna hit the lunch buffet at Temptations. Hasta manana, amigos!
reyes2.jpgIs it easier being that dumb if you’re that white?

beltran2.jpgShhh. If you listen hard, you can hear him swing and miss at something.

Pointless Nostalgia

A Barehanded Grasp

delmonicos.jpgI have touchstones all over New York that immediately bring back incidents in my life. All it takes is an awning or a doorway to bring memories flooding back. That’s that theater I used to go to all the time. There’s that bar where my friend pissed all over the window late one night. That’s the corner where I pushed a huge metal cog into oncoming traffic.

Right now, I’m working near Wall Street, right in the shadow of Ground Zero. I’ve never worked in this neighborhood before, which is somewhat unusual in my family (between finance, insurance, and the courts, most of my relatives have worked downtown at some point or another). But I used to go down there every now and then, because my father worked here for most of his adult life (when he was working).

When I was in college, we started to meet up for lunch, and it continued as I entered the workforce myself. We didn’t eat downtown too often–as I’ve quickly found out, the meal options down there are slim pickins. More often, we’d get lunch in the Village–my dad was a huge fan of the Waverly Diner on Sixth Avenue, for reasons that escape me.

But before my current gig, my only ventures into the Financial District area were to visit my dad, and so when I walk around those narrow, sloping streets, I feel haunted by him. Particularly since he used to work in the World Trade Center. I visited him a few times there, when he worked in an office on the 102nd floor, where you could actually feel the building yaw slightly to each side. I can’t pretend to know what it’s like to have lost someone on 9/11, but I think I know something like it when I look out my new office’s windows and see workers below laying foundations, paving things over, removing all evidence that anyone was once there.

I called his death years before it happened, at least in broad terms. I declared to my mother that he’d already put us through too much grief to go easily. It would not be a quick heart attack or car accident. It would be something prolonged and painful and probably crippling to all our wallets. I said these things as jokes, but I was 100 percent convinced they would come true, and I was right.
Continue reading A Barehanded Grasp →