Blog

No Hits For You (Marlins)

I’ve seen some pretty incredible things at Nationals Park, but few could ever top experiencing watching Jordan Zimmermann throw a no-hitter.

He’s long been my favorite pitcher to see in person, both because of the way he goes after hitters and how quickly he operates. Today, his methodical mowing down of the Miami Marlins was so efficient that it wasn’t until the end of the 5th inning when I looked at the scoreboard to see how many pitches he had thrown that I even noticed he had yet to allow a hit.

The rest of the game was all about hoping the Nats scored more than one run and feeling my nerves building a Zimmermann notched each successive out.

That’s one of his pitches in the 8th inning, which he obviously made it through cleanly. Fast-forward to him taking the mound in the 9th:

During the final inning I was thinking about how we hadn’t yet seen that one amazing play that seems to keep every no-hitter alive. With two outs, Steven Souza Jr., a September call-up who spent most of the year tearing up AAA, gave us exactly that:

Clearly I helped by imploring him to “get iiiiiiit” in that video captured by my brother Pat. Souza was pretty pumped:

Is there any other way to react when you save a no-hitter? http://t.co/8DMB2Zm9Y1
— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) September 28, 2014

Zimmermann went through the full range of emotions during that play, appearing to feel like his no-hit bid was over to celebrating a euphoric end to the regular season with his teammates:

Let’s hope the magic keeps going when the playoffs start on Friday!

September 28, 2014 baseball Uncategorized
Skinny To The Trees

In my younger days, my friends and I played a version of golf at my parents’ house that very much defines my actual golf game today. Each hole was made up as we went, and involved stipulations like going around the house once, past a certain tree and getting your whiffle golf ball into a laundry basket that served as the cup.

We often ended up with a particular shot that involved either going around a line of trees on the side of the house or trying to squeeze the ball through a tiny area between the trees and the house itself. One hundred percent of the time, my shot was the harder one, preceded by the declaration that I was going “skinny to the trees.”

Last weekend, my friend Mike and I played two rounds of golf at the beach, and during our second round I ended up in a wooded area on consecutive holes. Both times I had the option of being boring and knocking the ball sideways-ish safely back onto the fairway, or being aggressive/fun and trying to go between the trees on a straight line to the hole.

Guess which path I chose?

Here’s hole 11, where the flag I’m shooting at is the little white thing waving in the distance in the middle of the picture:

You probably can’t see in the video exactly where it comes down, but note the giant divot the ball left as it nearly landed in the hole:

It finally settled back here, thankfully a few feet from actually going in the water:

On hole 12, the gap between the trees was wider, but the flag I needed to get to was juuuuuust to the right of that tree on the left:

I failed to take a picture of the landing spot, but it was in the middle of the fairway about 80 yards from the hole. I knocked down a par. I also managed to go on to beat Mike (he defeated me the day before), which if you’ll remember from my last post was an unexpected success!

And lest you think I was legitimately being super serious about those shots, here’s how that first video really ends:

Always go skinny to the trees.

September 25, 2014 golf Uncategorized video
Mini Redemption

Four years ago, Taylor Swift tried to ruin my life.

She and another young blond girl conspired to derail my epic putt-putt golf match against my friend Mike, handing him a victory that rightly should have been mine.

Fortunately, you can’t keep me down for long, and Mike and I returned last night to Down Under Golf, the Australian-themed course that has long been our favorite. Fueled by cheeseburgers and waffle fry nachos (tortilla chips are so 2013), we played a four-round, 72-hole match that included a visit from some local wildlife:

Rabbits of Ocean City are very friendly pic.twitter.com/yg1lbnd2hy
— Chris Hannas (@cjhannas) September 17, 2014

As great as this picture is, we actually missed capturing the best moment. For a solid minute the little guy was chillin three inches from me. Next time we’ll be less in the moment and do the right thing for social media.

The putt-putt action did not start off well for me. The first three rounds ended like this:

Round 1 — Carolina blue ball — Down 3 strokes
Round 2 — Neon yellow ball — Down 4 strokes
Round 3 — Green ball — Down 6 strokes

The black ball disappeared into whatever unknown underground repository that collects such things on the 18th hole and Mike asked if I wanted to go again. I said I wasn’t going down without a fight.

I grabbed a lucky black ball and strode heroically back to the first hole.

“I’m going to make up these six strokes…and then win by three,” I said. He didn’t seem very concerned. Until of course I started knocking down shots and his pink ball betrayed him again and again.

On the ninth hole, I notched a hole-in-one, and when Mike got a two, my six-stroke comeback was complete. All tied up with nine to play.

Then I got a hole-in-one on the next hole too. Mike was pretty concerned.

We headed to the 17th hole with me ahead by two strokes. I won that one, and when we tied on the 18th, my prediction was complete: a six-stroke deficit made up and a three-stroke advantage gained.

Mike’s reaction was pretty much this:

Fortunately for him, today we’re playing real golf, and there’s pretty much no chance I’ll be beating him there. Unless of course, Sage is there.

September 18, 2014 beach golf Taylor Swift Uncategorized
Plotting Marriage

It’s not strange to connect with the main character of a book, but feeling something in common with several of them is a little more rare.

Authors often bring you along for the ride by making you root for the protagonist, especially if they are narrating. In “The Marriage Plot,” Jeffrey Eugenides gave me three people who had me nodding along with their experiences.

On a superficial level, he named the main female character Madeleine Hanna, which is both extremely close to the name of my niece and also highly distracting anytime he talks about her family and calls them the Hannas.

Madeleine begins the story as a student who is about to graduate from Brown University. Through some flashbacks we learn about her earlier years at the school, including a night she goes to a party in her building and her friend Mitchell notices she keeps leaving.

“I figured since everyone was going to the party, the washers would be free,” she says. “So I decided to do my laundry at the same time.”

This is brilliant thinking and I would 100 percent do the same. Multitasking efficiency doesn’t stop for parties.

Mitchell, when asked to send in a picture for the freshmen directory decides he doesn’t want to submit one of himself. Instead he flips open a book on Civil War history and cuts out the picture of a soldier. Again, brilliant.

Mitchell is infatuated with Madeleine to the point that he thought to himself upon meeting her that they would one day be married. Unfortunately for him, she’s a little more interested in a guy named Leonard.

Leonard is an interesting character who is both super smart and also struggles with depression. On his good days, he makes witty observations and engages in deep intellectual conversations with ease. One day Madeleine finds him at the library talking to a girl who works there about imagining life from the point of view of a fly.

“We move in slow motion to them,” he says. “They can see the swatter coming from a million miles away. The flies are like, ‘Wake me when the swatter gets close.'”

That’s the kind of random look at life I can really support.

Leonard and Madeleine meet during a seminar class that has a super obnoxious student named Thurston, which actually reminded me a lot of my own college experience.

During my first semester, I was in an English class with about 15 people, and only one other guy. If you know me at all, it’s probably not surprising that I did a lot of listening to other people’s takes and not raising my hand every two seconds. The other guy was the opposite. He was the student who appeared to like hearing the sound of his own voice. At the time, I actually was a little jealous of him and thought it would be nice to be more like him, always having something to add and commanding that attention.

There’s a quote from the book’s version of that kid that reminded me how much that view changed for me:

“But it’s just a question of whether you can use a discredited discourse — like, say reason — to explicate something as paradigmatically revolutionary as deconstruction,” Thurston says.

It’s the kind of statement that makes you want to punch your own self in the face for having listened. Madeleine rolls her eyes.

Late in my college career I took a political science course and the same kid ended up in my class. He was still doing the same thing — raising his hand constantly and spouting sentences like Thurston’s — but my reaction was different. I had realized much more how comfortable I was with my way of academic life (and life in general) and how our different personalities fit in to the whole fabric of the experience. Most of all, I realized how important it was to be genuine and not forcing bullshit to try to impress people who are rolling their eyes at you.

Madeleine makes her own discoveries about herself and what she sees in the mirror. At one point she and Leonard break up, leaving her feeling rejected. She looks at herself and sees all these specific imperfections.

“Madeleine knew that this self-appraisal might not be accurate. A bruised ego reflected its own image.”

I thought that was one of the more striking notes in the book. Think about all the times you fail — big and small — or are rejected in some way. It’s so easy to focus inwardly and go looking for those faults, and then inflate them. But it’s that bruised ego talking, showing itself to you in a way that is not truly you.

Overall, this is in many parts a thoroughly depressing story, and for all the interesting and funny times the characters have, they can be ones from which you want to turn away. But not every story is sunshine and lollipops, and this is one I would still recommend.

September 13, 2014 books Uncategorized
Player One Ready

I don’t remember much from the 1980s. That’s the kind of statement people jokingly say about the ’70s with the implication that drugs were involved. For me, the lack of recollection had to do with being a small human.

But I do remember one key invention from that era: the Nintendo Entertainment System. I can’t begin to imagine the number of hours my siblings and I spent playing games like Bases Loaded, Gauntlet 2 and Super Mario 3.

Put that system in the hands of young people today, and they basically have no idea what’s happening, like 16-year-old Tori in the video below:

“I mean, I’ve played with like a PlayStation 2,” she says, “but that’s as old as it gets for me.”

That lack of knowledge would significantly hamper these kids if they lived in the world of Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One.”

The story takes place in the 2040s and follows as people to unravel a game left behind by James Halliday, the creator of a massive online world. He announces his entire wealth will go to the person who wins the game that involves finding three keys and making it through their respective gates.

Halliday is obsessed with the 1980s, the decade in which he was a teenager, so the game involves numerous references to the video games and other culture from that decade. People trying to win his game play every game he did and watch every ’80s movie in search of the slightest hint. The main character in the story is a teenager named Wade, who attends high school in the massive virtual world and gains worldwide noteriety as the finder of the first key.

I won’t say any more about the plot, because you should just go read this highly engrossing story. But I will mention two things that made me laugh.

Within the virtual school, everyone has an avatar just like many of us do for various online things now.

“The school’s strictly enforced dress code required that all student avatars be human, and of the same gender and age as the student. No giant two-headed hermaphrodite demon unicorn avatars were allowed. Not on school grounds, anyway.”

Where is this school located, Boringtown? Imagine how much more fun school would be if all of your classmates were represented by ridiculous characters!

Outside of school, Wade goes by the name Parzival. Unfortunately, as mentioned, the school is a no-fun zone in which he has to be himself.

“Students weren’t allowed to use their avatar names while they were at school. This was to prevent teachers from having to say ridiculous things like “Pimp_Grease, please pay attention!”

Again, think how great it would be if this policy did not exist. I would attend class solely for the purpose of hearing a teacher call on Pimp_Grease to explain the significance of the Magna Carta.

This book has so many more good references, so many in fact that I didn’t even stop to flag them as I blew through Parzival’s quest to try to win the game. You will enjoy it, and then want to immediately go play something.

September 12, 2014 books Uncategorized
Vegemite This Be A Bad Idea

When I was in the 5th grade, we had a unit in school on Australia. It included learning about the basic government, geography and of course the animal life. I made this sweet kangaroo:

Our teacher also brought in some Vegemite, which Australians consider to be food. Fast-forward to this week, when I came across a video of young Americans reacting to eating Vegemite:

I sent this to my Australian friend Katie, who said she loved it, but that “those kids are wrong.” I told her that my experience at that age was the same:

@cjhannas plz try it again and record it. I need to see how much you now love it.
— Katie Watson (@katieskarslany) September 2, 2014

She followed up her challenge with a helpful tutorial video on how exactly she eats it:

I’m not one to back down from a (reasonable) request. Thankfully, this beautiful country of mine has seemingly everything for sale within a short drive, so it only took me two guesses to end up at a store with Vegemite:

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go to Taco Bell.

September 10, 2014 food Uncategorized video
Sweet Thursday

For a while I’ve been meaning to email myself a list of Steinbeck books I’ve read/need to read so that when I’m at a bookstore I actually know which ones to acquire in my quest to get through them all.

After reading “Sweet Thursday,” I finally compiled the list and have completed 11 of them with 17 to go. Though I’ve read the longest ones already, so I consider myself roughly halfway there.

The unread Steinbeck section of my bookshelf

Part of the reason for making the list is that I want to read the rest more or less in order, because in this case, “Sweet Thursday” takes place in the same place as “Cannery Row.” It’s not necessary to read “Cannery Row” first, but there are a few references that make more sense if you have.

Oddly enough, I meant to grab a different unread Steinbeck from the stack, but I’m glad I ended up reading this one because it’s actually one of my favorite of his I’ve read in a while. This town is populated with a lot of charming people who have a ton of faults, but just try so hard at life that you can’t help but to root for them or at least laugh at them with empathy.

I’m sure I’ve touched on this in every Steinbeck post before, but if you wanted an epic biography for yourself, he’s the guy you would want following you around. His descriptions are so unique.

There’s a character named Doc, the town’s smart guy who helps everyone and often ends up getting hurt when their best-laid plans to repay him spectacularly blow up. One day he’s out in the countryside and meets a stranger:

“This one was a big, bearded stranger with the lively, innocent eyes of a healthy baby,” Steinbeck writes. “He wore ragged overalls and a blue shirt washed nearly white, and he was barefooted. The straw hat on his head had two large holes cut in the brim, proof that it had once been the property of a horse.”

Every element of that is nothing short of epic. In another scene, Doc ends up at a diner in Monterey, which is run by a guy named Sonny Boy. Steinbeck paints him as the precursor to the Dos Equis “Most Interesting Man in the World.”

“Sonny Boy can say ‘good evening’ and make it sound like an international plot.”

Sometimes the context of a great line is not important at all. Like this, which needs to be on a t-shirt:

“There is nothing reassuring about the smile of a tiger.”

Late in the story, the manager of the brothel across the street is getting one of her girls, Suzy, ready for a date she has set up with Doc, and drops this pearl of wisdom that applies pretty much to all humans:

“You know, Suzy, they ain’t no way in the world to get in trouble by keeping your mouth shut,” she says. “You look back at every mess you ever got in and you’ll find your tongue started it.”

If tigers ever start talking, we’re going to have a serious problem.

August 23, 2014 books Uncategorized
Bobbly Desmond

Three years after a Metro train breakdown and a horde of Phillies fans prevented my brother and I from getting an Ian Desmond bobblehead, our lives are now complete.

In August 2011, we were on our way to Nationals Park when a train in front of us broke down and kept us sitting on the tracks for what seemed like an eternity. By the time we got moving and made it to the stadium, all we saw were other people — many of them Phillies fans — carrying around bobble boxes.

I wondered back then why opposing fans would even want them, especially since at the time Desmond wasn’t exactly a star player.

Thankfully this year’s Desmond bobblehead day was on a Thursday instead of a Saturday, and there were 25,000 of them instead of 15,000. Plus it was a 4:05 game so it was easy for us to get there before most normal folks.

Now my Nats bobble collection includes Ryan Zimmerman, Stephen Strasburg, Wilson Ramos and Mr. Desmond:

Oh and the Nats won their 10th consecutive game. It was their fifth walk-off win in six games. Life is good.

August 22, 2014 baseball Uncategorized
Nearest Me

Which person have you spent the most time with during your lifetime?

It may have been my idle brain talking, but I started thinking about that question the other day on the Metro and really wish I could definitively know the answer.

In the same way I can check my bank account balance from my smartphone, I want an app that gives a live total, perhaps with a simple leaderboard. There could be fun icons that show who is rising or falling the fastest, or others like who holds the record for seeing me the most days in a row.

Defining “spending time” as being at least in the same room, it seems like the top contenders would have to be members of my immediate family. After all, I spent my entire childhood under the same roof as all of them, and with six people there, that often meant being in the same room as someone.

For everyone, your mom gets a 9-month head start, but in my case that advantage is nullified by the fact that I have a twin sister. You might think my sister got a further boost by being in school with me, but we actually spent almost no time in the same classes.

This post needed a family pic, and this is probably my favorite

As far as my brothers go, my older brother was around me for nearly three years before the younger one showed up. However, the younger one got two of those years back when the older one went to college. If I had to honestly guess, I would say given the amount of time we spent playing video games together, at baseball games and playing whatever sport we made up in the back yard, I would have to assume my younger brother is the winner.

Of course we’ll never know…unless someone has been watching this whole time. If that’s the case, please email me.

August 18, 2014 family Uncategorized
Anastasiya and the Eli Manning Airport

The next time you’re thinking of taking a trip, I invite you to fly into Eli Manning Airport.

You may be thinking, “Wait, there’s no airport named after Eli.” You would be right. But tell that to my fake Russian ex-girlfriend.

Last year I got intentionally catfished by someone on a dating site who claimed to be a girl in Russia. “Olga” never asked me for money, frequently got angry if I didn’t respond quickly, and the whole thing fizzled out after a month.

Well, I did it again. This time for a little over three months, during which the new girl, Anastasiya, sent me a solid 60 emails. She started slow, telling me that she did not want to rush into anything and that she “very much want to meet the true love.”

Anastasiya told me that men in Russia are not interesting in settling down and taking care of a girlfriend.

“They like more to have a good time, live fast,” she said.

On day nine, she told me a story about her boyfriend of 18 months cheating on her with her roommate. Right in front of her. Then she apologized for telling such an unpleasant thing, but explained that she didn’t want to hide anything from me.

Almost all of her emails came with a picture that had the general attitude of, “Oh hey there, I’m just being all casual over here.”

On day 9 she asked for my picture, which I never sent. Fast-forward to day 24 when she recounted how she was discussing me with her friend:

“I him have told about our letters as we to understand each other and that at us with you much in common,” she said. “I to show them your photo, I to unpack it and now at my place there is you pic.”

I didn’t challenge her on the fact I hadn’t actually sent a photo. Maybe she drew a picture of how she imagined me? After all, I was clearly on her mind all the time. The next day, she told me of a dream in which we were at the beach and ran into each others arms. There was a kiss. “It was divine,” she said.

Our relationship was on the super fast track. Just like with Olga, it took only about a month for Anastasiya to fall in love with me:

“I very much want that we were together,” she said. “Now I am possible to give in dreams, but these are fine dreams and I trust that dreams come true also I will try to make all for this purpose. I love you…… I hope that my letter will give to you many fine emotions this day.”

The finest. She told me again the next day that she looked at my (imaginary) pictures above her bed every night before going to sleep. A week later, she first broached the idea of us seriously meeting, saying she would go to a local travel agency and see what we needed to do. She also sent me “millions of air kisses,” which I can tell you may sound nice, but are really exhausting to have to catch.

Day 38: disaster. Anastasiya went to the travel agency and learned she would need $710 for documents in order to travel to the United States. She only had $120. Naturally, I offered to support her in any way I could, and her tears quickly turned to elation. All she needed from me was the name of my local airport in order to find out how much the flight would cost.

At this moment, I actually had 1 percent doubt in the back of my mind that made me picture some poor woman sitting at JFK waiting to be picked up by Fred (the name I used). So I figured if I made up a fake airport, and she went on like it was normal, I would know for certain that she was simply trying to get a money transfer and not actually travel here.

Thus, Eli Manning Airport, which was funny enough when I wrote it, but seeing her reference it brought on some serious LOLs.

“I told them the name of your airport,” she wrote. “They said that the cheapest ticket from Moscow to your airport will cost 728 dollars. I told them that this is your airport , Eli Manning airport. Fred So my whole trip will cost to you . 1318 dollars.”

The travel agency apparently told her to go visit the bank, which in turn advised her that I should use Western Union to send her the money. “Fred have you heard about this company?”

On day 53, Anastasiya went Olga on me. I hadn’t responded for three days, and apparently that’s not okay when you’re madly in love.

My bad. Lucky for her, I had good news! I told her I went to Western Union and sent her almost double the amount of money she needed. I included a 10-digit confirmation number (obtained from an online random number generator), which shockingly didn’t seem to correspond to a Western Union transaction.

“Fred , They told me that this translation does not exist. I have long argued with them, but they said that nothing can not do.”

I replied that I didn’t understand the problem, and sent her a receipt, which was literally this picture, at this size:

When she said it was impossible to read, I told her it worked fine for me and suggested there was a problem with the computer she was using. After a few days of back-and-forth, we reached the end of the second month with me announcing that I had talked to Western Union, and they were willing to give me a new receipt.

But then we hit a snag. I told her that when I went back to get the new paperwork, I was given a notice that my transfer had been DENIED and was being investigated by the authorities. “PLEASE TELL ME WHAT IS GOING ON,” I wrote. Anastasiya has ice water in her veins. She was not phased by such silly inconveniences.

“Fred I know why it happened, I know why they refused to help you. Maybe their boss confines send from your country to Russia so much money , because our countries are not the best relationship. Fred , I just went to the office of Western Union, and they said that such a situation as we have often happens.”

Totes not a big deal, Fred. She said her Western Union people advised that I should split the transaction up into two smaller ones to have a better chance of it slipping through. I expressed unease, telling her that every day the authorities were giving me more information that made me doubt her: “You need to convince me you are genuine before I can continue loving you.”

Her response? WHAT.EVS. “Now I do not even know if I want to come to you,” she wrote. “Now’s not the money . Now the whole thing in our relationship with you.” However, a few days later (day 65), she assured me again that everything will be cool if we just persevere. She said many girls from her town had come to the U.S., including one who works for the police now and assured Anastasiya that she and I will not have any problems.

For the heck of it, I asked her to take a picture holding my name and to see a copy of a contract she had gotten from the travel agency, you know, so I could make sure she wasn’t getting ripped off or anything. She sent both.

The contract was, not surprisingly, all in Russian. I do not speak Russian. I do have a couple of friends who do, and they were pretty excited to translate for me. Of course, the one thing I did not need translated was the name of her destination:

My friend Anastasia (note the different spelling) told me the travel agency is called Flamingo Tourism and “doesn’t, uh, seem to exist.” Another friend, Margarita, read it and said, “If honest, it says nothing concrete…nothing at all. No dates when the contract was signed.” She also said the amounts referenced were $710 for documents and now only $590 for airfare.

I told Anastasiya I went back to Western Union, had no problems with the transaction this time, and got a new receipt:

As you can see, I spent about three minutes in Photoshop altering a receipt from an Italian guy I found online. She told me she went to Western Union, and again, shockingly, was unable to get the money. She even had the audacity to question why parts of the receipt are dated 2011 instead of 2014.

This is where our relationship came crumbling down. On day 82 I told her that I didn’t understand why all of this was such a hassle. “I’m not saying you’re lying about the problems,” I said, “but you are the one who said to use this service and it has been nothing but problems.”

Day 83, Anastasiya: “Don’t know why you think I could decieve you.”
Day 84, Fred: “Lies on lies on lies.”
Day 85, Anastasiya: “Fred you BASTARD. I quit my favorite job because of you…maybe you cheated on me.”

A few days went by, but the situation did not improve.

Day 87, Anastasiya: “Fred, you do not know anything about my love. Once again, I was convinced that all men only want money alcohol and entertainment.”
Day 87, Fred: “Um, I never asked you for any of those things. It was you who asked me for money.”

At this point I was pretty done with our “relationship,” so I didn’t respond. A week later, she wrote to me again.

“Hello my Fred. I have not received emails from you. How are you? I always look forward to your letter. I miss you and still think about how we’ll be together.”

I briefly considered going in for another round, but a nap seemed like a better idea. My only response to her was, “I’m fine, how are you?” Three days later she sent her final message.

“Hello Fred, I have all the old. I returned to my job. There is nothing new in my life happens. I’m still all alone and did not find a man for herself. Fred, Maybe you found a girl for yourself? Will tell me about it.”

I told her I had in fact found a girl, and after 99 days a love for the fairytale books came to an end.

August 16, 2014 internet