Roy Madison | Sportswriter

Recently divorced, semi-retired, broadcaster and sportswriter. I eat sandwiches, live in a hotel, and host a legendary card game on Wednesdays.

[roymadison]

Madison: A Goodbye That Goes On Forever

I don’t need to tell you Friends, fans, and followers, signs of finality are everywhere. The haze of darkness arrives earlier than you expect each night. The air in the morning has a chill in it. The leaves in the branches above your head cling to life while their thin membranes turn to dust, and the diamond at the south west corner of Vancouver’s Strathcona Park sits silent. It’s time to say farewell.

The East Van Baseball League saw their last game of the season play out. A 16 to 2 defeat of the Railtown Spikers at the end of a weekend long tournament of post season playoff games that produced the league’s first champions: the Mount Pleasant Murder. The Murder turned in an impressive record all season long and counted only two losses during the league’s inaugural regular season.

Don’t let that record fool you into thinking the Murder had it easy in the playoffs though, friends, fans, and followers; those fellas had to work for their title. The Murder barely escaped loss at the hands of a Black Sox team decked out in Saturday morning hangovers and new jerseys, and a Railtown Spikers crew that wouldn’t go away. The Spikers surprised everyone on the opening Friday of the tournament with a take down of the Strathcona Stevedores. And on Saturday, they managed to brand the only “L” into the Murder’s near impeccable weekend championship run, and earned the right to come back on Sunday for a rematch to determine who would get bragging rights all winter long. What a final it was, friends, fans, and followers. It held the beautiful possibility of a dramatic upset, with a Spikers victory over the Murder all the way into the last gasps of the 4th inning, but after that it was all Murder. That’s when Malibu Rum started making its way around the Official Roy Madison Broadcast Booth like we were sipping from a bottle of memories at a wake.

After the dust settled, everyone went up to the league’s hot dog provider, What’s Up Hot Dog? to celebrate. Suddenly it was the off season friends, fans, and followers; a time when there’s little use for Roy Madison. I took one last look at the green lawn of Strathcona Park darkening in the setting sun, and hired a car back to the hotel to pack up whatever belongings I had worth keeping. I went downstairs, ordered a final round in Sylvia’s Bar, and said so long to everyone there that made my stay so pleasant and welcoming. Then I high tailed it to the airport and got the hell out of town.

That was some time ago. I’m back in California now. Tina is nude and just out of the bath behind the sliding glass doors of my small patio here at the Highland Gardens Hotel. We’re going to Musso’s for dinner to celebrate my return, and I have just enough time to file this final East Van Baseball report from where I can see the teal-blue void of the pool that started this whole business in the first place, glowing into the night sky above. It feels good to be back, I’m a lucky fella to have managed to keep a setup like this intact. Tina runs the Gardens, and kept my room ambiguously occupied and unavailable while I was in Canada. Now I have to occupy her evenings every Tuesday for the foreseeable future.

Some might call me a goddamned prostitute, but for chrissakes what do you expect friends, fans, and followers? A sportswriter doesn’t make much of a living without a steady beat, and I haven’t had one in years. Hell, it was probably in Tina’s best interest to have me off the premises anyway. My crisis in front of the other guests at the Gardens seated around the pool on the day I decided to fall into it without a plan to return to the surface, likely brought plenty of questions Tina didn’t have answers for. Oliver helped out a bit too, by playing the part of a paying guest while I was gone, making it easier for Tina to keep my room out of the hands of holidayers until I was ready to come back.

Don’t go thinking Oliver is some kind of saint though, friends, fans, and followers. He was holed up in my place long before this whole East Van thing got started, and was likely ecstatic at the prospect of having the Madison suite to himself. Oliver and his wife Alice have been on rocks since I don’t know when, so he’s up in my corned beef sandwich on a regular basis. I can always tell a stint at my place is in Oliver’s forecast. He’ll come over for cards, something he rarely does — he says he can’t stand all the smoke — then he’ll stay late to clean up and never leave. All spring he was on my pull-out sofa, and we were bickering with each other night and day. Thank the lord above that he cleared out about a week ago so I didn’t have to put up with him when I got back from Vancouver.

Want to know why? Because Alice missed his cooking! For chrissakes friends, fans, and followers, can you imagine? His cooking! Hell, I can’t figure it out. I thought his cooking was a pain in the neck! The constant worrying over cooking times, the non-stop berating for a critique of his efforts, asking how it tasted, if there was too much salt, if there was something he should have done differently, then professing that there wasn’t enough turmeric, and finally that it was completely ruined. And I hadn’t even had bite yet.

When I got in from Vancouver, Oliver was gone, but his presence still greeted with me a tidal wave of cleanliness. He had sprayed the living bejesus out of the place with Lysol and it just about knocked me over. But that’s not all friends, fans, and followers. Oliver left one of his goddamned soufflés in the fridge with a note under it.

“Welcome back. I whipped up this little something for your arrival because you just can’t trust food on planes these days. And please stop ashing your cigarettes in the window sill of the shower, it’s disgusting. — Oliver.”

Not a word about how to cook the thing, so I threw that damn soufflé in the trash and ordered a bucket of chicken.

Oliver and Tina weren’t the only ones to miss me while I was gone. The fellas I have over on Wednesday’s weren’t too pleased to show up at the Madison suite to find Oliver in an apron, about to put a lasagne in the oven and forgo cards for charades! And Ruben, my bartender at Musso’s thought I might be in some sort of distress when I didn’t show up for my usual. Tina said Ruben actually came all the way up Hollywood Boulevard before dinner service one night to check up on me. Helluva guy. I’m telling you, I don’t need a doctor or a dame, just a bartender to sit in front of.

Now that I’m back, I realize Vancouver had a good effect on me. In the spring, when I didn’t have an inkling of where Vancouver was, another season of Major League Baseball was set to open and I could care less. Actually, come to think of it friends, fans, and followers, I didn’t have much interest in anything. I had no desire to take part in life’s greatest pleasures: not writing, not swimming, not eating, not smoking, christ not even drinking. Ok, I was still drinking, but I sure as hell wasn’t writing.

I was flat out on a lounger in my housecoat by the pool one morning in March under a haze of dilaudid, tomato juice and beer when I heard some kid floating on a yellow donut out on the water, talking with some actors about how he was from Canada and was set to play baseball for a new sandlot league in Vancouver. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but some days later, when I was waiting to run out of air on the floor of the pool’s deep end, I got the idea to come back to the surface and go to Vancouver to check it out.

I was in attendance for the first exhibition game of the season that spring, but didn’t leave the front seat of my car parked outside Strathcona Park. I guess I just wanted to see if what that fella was talking about in Hollywood was real, because there isn’t a goddamned ounce of truth in that town. But when I saw that group of guys and gals, just playing ball out there, in a roughed up park, in the middle of what seemed like nowhere, the mixture of familiarity and foreignness roused an interest in me that said: get out of the bloody car Madison! But it was too soon friends, fans, and followers. I had to take my time. My return to regular coverage had to be taken slowly, seriously, methodically. At that point, all I needed to hear was the tell tale hiss and pop from a ball hitting leather, and hell, I got it.

The next game, I left my car to sit on the grass, but still maintained a safe distance from the diamond and stands so as not to create any interest in my presence. It was still damp, and that goddamned, cold, wet, Canadian lawn put two big wet circles on the ass of my slacks. I snuck out of there somewhere in the fourth inning with my tail between my legs. I certainly wasn’t going to introduce myself in that state. Back in my room at the Sylvia Hotel, with my pants hanging in the window, drying in the breeze of English Bay, I filed my first East Van Baseball report to make it official, by simply stating: this was my beat.

Every time I returned to a East Van Baseball game, I moved a little closer. The fans in the bleachers, the cheers, the scent of the open air, the crack of tin cans being pulled open, the dust and dirt getting kicked up from wild plays around the bases in those early months when players were getting the tightness of winter off their throwing arms and catching hands, everything just felt fresh and full of promise. Finally one morning, as if possessed by the vast turf of Strathcona Park itself, I walked up to a few of the Black Sox to introduce myself like any other good citizen of the free world and said, “Fellas. I’m your writer, Roy Madison.” And that’s how it all got started.

Even though my coverage of East Van Baseball competed with the unexpected hypnosis of ocean surf that held me transfixed in my beach-facing room at the Sylvia Hotel, forcing me to report on games from my dining room table instead of an East Van ballpark, the league appreciated whatever words I managed to put together. All season long, players, friends, fans, and followers came up to me, shook my hand, thanked me for the stories I told, the games I managed to attend, and welcomed me into the community of what’s only getting started up there in Vancouver. I don’t think those kids knew just what the hell I was, where I had come from, or what I was doing, but by the time the season ended I was handed a microphone for the championship tournament.

In the final days of August, when East Van Baseball’s first playoffs were set to begin, Strathcona never looked better. The fields were kept green and lovely by the grounds crew ladies, the washrooms were open, the bbq was on and sizzling with weiner, the spa bus — painted red, and parked just behind the field — was hot, and hell even the goddamned sun decided to come out, making it one of the warmest weekends all summer long.

When I sat down in the official Roy Madison broadcast booth and asserted myself with a clearing of the throat, a flood of memories came through the worn out grass beneath my feet, up to my ankles, through my legs, across my heart and down to my left hand holding the mic. In that split second of amplified silence before I spoke, I heard a child’s cry crossfade into the sound of hard soled shoes on a sidewalk, the thunder of the 7 train pulling into Grand Central on its way to Shea Stadium, felt the warmth of a good meal cooked by someone that once loved me. I smelled exhaust in the autumn air from the car I bought new with the spoils of a good year at the Daily News, and pictured the fat little fingers of fellas I saw every day in the press box plucking away at a keyboard, jawing on about the sight of some sweet dame in the stands. Like a current of nostalgia that ran through the park all around us, it gave me a shock, and electrified my voice with the grandfatherly tone of knowledge I needed to profess to the fans in attendance that Friday evening — “Friends, fans, and followers, it’s time for East Van Baseball!”

And just like that, I had made a return to broadcasting, but christ was I rusty. Thankfully I had a crew of great fellas to help me out. Some kid from the Murder named Rob, kept me on the course of balls and strikes. And Andrew, my color man and sound technician knew all the players, because hell I didn’t know who was at plate half the time. They were just swell friends, fans and followers, and obviously enamored at the chance to work with a self-proclaimed legend! I could see a glint of wonder in their eyes, as I stumbled my way through inning after inning to the annoyance of the umpires, and some of the players that weren’t much impressed with the idea of hearing their motions translated into my brand of poetic play-by-play.

I’m sure those fellas with me in the box thought they might want to get into the press box game one day, so I did my best to make the life of a sportswriter sound terrible. Because it is friends, fans, and followers! I warned those two that every meal would be lunch — an endless cavalcade of plastic wrapped sandwiches, chased with concealed beer in a paper cup. Every town would start to look the same, and the highway at night would start to speak to them through painted streaking signals of light, so that by the time they stepped up to a microphone they would talk in an alien language few people could understand. Home would be a filthy hotel room, an ice machine down the hall their fridge, a vending machine their pantry, an adult movie their lover, and if they happened to check into a joint with a pool in the parking lot... Aw hell, who am I kidding? Sportswriting is great! My life is a good one, it just took me a summer in Vancouver to admit it.

Well, Tina’s turned off her hair dryer. That means she’s just about ready for dinner, and any second now she’ll be stepping onto the patio to complain that I’m still in my underwear. I don’t know why I thought Hollywood was ever so bad in the first place. A writer can only spend so much time courting modesty. Eventually I had to give in and accept that what I have is exceptional: solitude, sun, a swimming pool, sex on Tuesdays, a steady card game every Wednesday, and the desire to spin a yarn to anyone that will listen. I’m a sportswriter. I’m the guy that tells people what’s really going on in that split second between a ball leaving the sweat-glistened hand of a pitcher on its way to the dry wood of a bat — redemption! Friends, fans, and followers, redemption.

But that’s a story best left for another season, because this one has long since finished. The end is good. The constraints of finality are needed. “The last,” defines things, and gives them meaning and purpose. I’m sure you thought Roy Madison was just going to go on forever, didn’t you friends, fans, and followers? A thank you is in order if you made it this far into my endless goodbye, but the only story I have left is for Manny, my usual waiter at Musso’s. It starts like this: a martini and shrimp louie salad in one of Musso’s luscious booths, followed by a rib eye steak, baked potatoe, and bottle of wine that Manny suggests by just bringing it to the table. The climax is dessert, with a tawny port, and several healthy doses of tobacco appear throughout the whole thing. It ends with a late night swim under palm trees that blot the darkness of the sky with their even darker, ink black crowns.

Oh hell, friends, fans, and followers, I’ll be back — or maybe I won’t. I don’t know. That’s the thing, nobody can tell if the air entering their lungs is their last breath or not. Life will always be without a natural, convincing closure. So I’ll just stop.

[roymadison]

MADISON: THE VOICE GOES SILENT

A coverage of play-by-play coverage event.

Friends, fans, and followers, you might not notice, but every day you awake you’re opening your eyes to a new world. The differences are minute, and can be hard to detect — the store where buy your cigarettes up and closed, a house is built, a mother dies, it starts to rain, a room is painted blue where it was once eggshell white, that shirt you always wore goes into the trash, a sidewalk is repaved, the day has a new label — but add it all up, and it makes for a disorienting whirlwind of perception with only one conclusion: there is no forever. Which is why I get so bloody excited, friends, fans, and followers, when we can collectively dance with permanence. It makes us believe for just a moment that we might be able to experience a perpetual always, even though we know it doesn’t exist.

For 67 seasons of baseball we were able to arrive at the doorstep of dawn with the confidence that, if it was game day, Vin Scully would be seated before a microphone that afternoon or evening, describing moments on the field in context to life around us. On Sunday, October 2nd, 2016, that too will end. But Vin gave forever one hell of a shot, and in that time achieved what no other broadcaster has done or will do as the official voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Join me, Roy Madison as I use that crackpot social media platform Twitter to call Vin’s last broadcast as an announcer for Major League Baseball. A broadcast that will no doubt entail endless anecdotes and stories, highlights from days of yore, and moments of emotion that will require coverage of its own. October 2nd, 2016 needs a broadcaster dedicated entirely to translating Vin’s final moments in the Dodger’s press box at San Francisco’s AT&T Park into tangible dispatches of history! Friends, fans, and followers, I am that broadcaster.

Starting at 12:00pm California time, follow along as Vin’s final words fade out over the airwaves on my Twitter account. Listen in on, @roymadison, where I’ll be using the hashtag #LastCallVin to give you, play-by-play action from the broadcast booth of Vin Scully, from my lounger beside the pool of the Highland Gardens Hotel, here in Hollywood California.

To my knowledge friends, fans, and followers, this will be the first time a sportscaster has delivered running commentary of another broadcaster’s play-by-play broadcast, so I hope you’ll join me for this historic event.

[roymadison]

Leaders at the half: The Mount Pleasant Murder.

Madison: The Mid-Season Breaking Point

The sound of waves. It was about 4 o’clock in the morning, friends, fans, and followers when I was brought to consciousness from the sound of aquatic rhythms coming from my open window and was forced to ponder the past few months. They were golden hours. The only reward for being awake at such an ungodly, goddamned hour is an empty city. It was just me and the crashing surf of English Bay, and I lay there listening to it, thinking about Roy Madison in this country, in this city, in this hotel, in this bed, with a self-assigned assignment to cover a baseball league of self-starting, beer swilling, dugout smoking, tattooed, diamond hustlers that gathered in the less desirable parks of Vancouver’s more easterly regions with hangovers, bruises, and sunburns, to play ball. They didn’t have a writer, and they sure as hell didn’t ask for one either. A question came in the sound of those waves that morning: with the mid-season break approaching, I had to ask myself, what the hell was I doing?

Just over four months have passed since the day I decided to come to Canada. The events of my arrival are soggy, but lying awake on a morning like that one, where nothing but memory exists, things were vivid. I left Hollywood in a state of confusion. Tina, my landlady, was yelling about the scene I created for the other guests at the Gardens. Oliver was fretting over a set of sandwiches he was making so I wouldn’t go hungry on the flight. There were worried looks, followed by a train to Union Station on the Red Line, then a bus, an airport, a plane, a takeoff, a landing, the overcast skies of a foreign place, and a cab to the Sylvia hotel in Vancouver.

It was freezing, but I was soaked in sweat. I stepped towards the front desk in a white shirt stained yellow under the arms. The silk, black band of my hat was worn with white wavelength-like patterns of salt, made from a series of Hollywood heatwaves. My slacks were covered in teriyaki sauce from too many poolside rib dinners with Tina — goddamn I miss that gal, but there’s no time for that right now. Oh, and the bag on the floor beside me was bursting at the seams from Oliver’s last minute, frantic and neurotic packing; it wafted the scent of cured meats every time I shifted in my well worn leather shoes.

It’s no goddamn wonder they gave me the least desirable room in the building, an obvious and direct result of presenting myself to the Sylvia’s desk clerk 36 hours after trying to drown myself in a California swimming pool. A coffin for the dead but still alive, placed on top of the hotel’s bar. Neon spills onto the walls of the living room from the large “S” of the hotel’s namesake, just outside my window.  Notes from a rotating cavalcade of circuit lounge performers fumble their way into the kitchen, usually while I heat up a late night snack of bacon cooked two days ago. Most guests wouldn’t want a room above a bar that features the garish glow of neon and the unpredictable talents of hired entertainers, but there’s something in my desperate, uncomfortable demeanour that warrants this kind of mediocrity. Hell, friends, fans, and followers, I’ve even managed to find a certain pleasure in the things nobody else wants. I’m sure it’s a relief for the staff here to know that I’m not a deranged, slovenly animal about to take the next step towards complete insanity, and that room 222 has been filled on a monthly rate without complaint.

Sometimes the noise keeps me up, others it doesn’t. That Saturday it did. My open-eyes embraced the lack of comfort insomnia delivers to its sufferer until the sound of a fella named Kentish Steele, who was performing downstairs, was replaced by the sound of surf, and the pink fuzzy neon light, licking the walls of my bedroom, was swallowed by the more powerful rays of the day’s first sun. After that, there was nothing but emptiness and hallucinations of solitude. A welcomed unbalance to routine that I rely upon for very slight, disorienting visions throughout the day. Small derailments like these were impossible to predict, but I knew they were always a prelude to long sieges in front of a keyboard.

There were waves, and there was baseball. The Black Sox were set to play the Stevedores later that afternoon, and instead of worrying about a lack of sleep effecting my inability to properly cover life on the field, I treated the events of that night as a gift. I found myself unusually prepared for the day ahead; both spiritually and physically. My failures at trying to cover this league so far are well documented in the lack of documentation I’ve managed to produce since the season began. Despite the ambitions of my arrival, a lot of my time here so far has been spent complaining about the weather from the warmth of my hotel room, where I’m reduced to covering the Black Sox through their own updates on the East Vancouver Baseball League’s Facebook page. When I do make it to the park, my observations are maintained from the edges of the field, or worse, the passenger seat of my car. And that’s when I actually manage to make it to a game, friends, fans, and followers! It’s fine. Being a sportswriter is to live within your own thoughts, and to cover life from the edges of others. After witnessing the the sky slowly turn from a regal purple galaxy to an intense vastness of blue, and with it, the arrival of heat I’d been missing since leaving California, I knew this day would be different. The game ahead was one of the last the Black Sox would play before a break in the season. It was obvious this wasn’t just baseball. This wasn’t just a game. This was the progressions of nature, the sounds of jazz, the sizzle of late night bacon, pressed slacks, a well-worn Italian panama hat that was dying for the kind of weather that would warrant a return to my head, a waiting crowd, a rivalry between two teams, a series of ties that needed to be settled, a breaking point for all involved — this friends, fans, and followers was destiny.

The city was alive again. Cyclists, joggers, swimmers, bathers, kids in their goddamned cars with the engines revving. The city had returned itself to a new and fresh representation of hell, but today it was a different kind of same. Instead of being repulsed, I was transfixed by the sights out my window. Rather than escape the view for my usual pregame routine of fetching the morning papers from the 7-Eleven on Denman Street, along with a disgustingly weak, hot beverage they call coffee, I phoned the kitchen downstairs for breakfast. While I pressed my slacks through the heat of an iron one last time, I waited for a coffee service to arrive at my door and continued to watch the scene outside. It was still morning when I left, and it was already hot. I had to get to the park early because the territory was unfamiliar. Although the Black Sox had played a few games from Sunrise Park, a much further destination than their usual grounds in Strathcona, I had missed each one. Worried I might spend the opening innings hunting for the game, I made a smart decision and deferred my arrival to a professional driver.

Which is why I arrived without incident. The park was gorgeous. You’ve probably seen it already friends, fans, and followers, but there’s nothing like stepping into the panoramic expanse of a field that’s been etched in dirt with the shape of a diamond, so allow me this. The dugouts are well appointed with ample seating that provides players the luxury to sit and rest between at bats; the grass, lush and green, stretches far beyond the needs of sport and fills an entire city block; the fences, in their factory appointed dullness of grey and silver, are pristine and rust free, fully confident in their task to keep spectators safe. The whole park sits on a pedestal that offers itself, and everyone in it, to the north shore mountains just above center field.

It’s a shame that my work in broadcasting has been reduced to using Twitter as a means of communicating the action on the field, limiting me to short, 140 character dispatches. Such restraints will never allow for the endless interstitials Sunrise Park can provide; like the way the cloudless sky looked that afternoon, the way planes lazed overhead, or how the crowd crooned its neck to get a look down the first base line when something exciting would happen, and then returned to the sharing of a story, a beverage, or sunscreen. Moments like those friends, fans, and followers, where a broadcaster is able bring the scene on the field, and in the stands, into a higher meaning that connects the game with life’s larger pursuits — that is to say, things that help us satisfy an endless desire to distract ourselves from the fact that we are all dying as we sit there — are moments that I live for as a sportswriter and broadcaster. Instead, I am a shamed man. There was, and will likely never be, a radio station waiting for Roy Madison to take to the air again. So rather than worry about things beyond my control, I set forth in the best way I knew how, by thumbing my phone, and pounding out the action in an attempt to capture the story that was unfolding on the field.  

As much of an upgrade Sunrise Park was to its more disheveled sister park to the west, I was dismayed to see that there wasn’t an area designated for the press. Suddenly I missed the filthy couch I had been using as a means to comfortably cover the play at Strathcona Park. In previous games, it was the ideal spot, just down the third base line. From there, I was strictly bound to the role as observer, not participant — a very important distinction for any serious journalist. For chrissakes friends, fans, and followers, did you ever imagine a time when Roy Madison, sportswriter, would lament a filthy old couch used as a stand in for a park’s broadcast gondola? Well I missed that damn love seat! And if I didn’t have the sense to shove a towel into the shopping bag that held my usual seventh inning stretch sandwich before I left the hotel, I would have had to sit my damn slacks straight into the grass at Sunrise.

I’m sure nobody noticed just how ridiculous I looked, tucked behind the fence at home plate with a towel under my ass, because all eyes were on the field, and rightfully so. The Sox and Stevedores had been exchanging shots from the outset of the game, and were head-to-head going into the bottom of the second. That’s precisely when the stage was set for victory. The Sox’s Chris Cullen hit an RBI single off Kevin Wood’s delivery from the mound, which scored Rohan Karnick, who had been waiting patiently on the pads. Now that he was allowed to touch home and add a point to the scoreboard, he trotted back into to the dugout. The sun began to beat down on the field, forcing everyone in the bleachers to react in unique ways in an effort to protect themselves from the heat. For the Stevedore’s, there would be no relief. Two more Sox runners would add to the score from a single hit by Dave McEwen. Mick McDiarmid delivered the final blow, with an RBI that would put the score at 6-4. A deficit, friends, fans, and followers that the Strathcona Stevedores would never recover from.

With the lead set, Al Smith came onto the mound as pitcher for the Sox. The heat was taking its toll on the players and press now too. The beauty of a cloudless sky, which I had celebrated with such enthusiasm only hours earlier, had commingled with my inability to sleep the night before, and took on a demonic intensity that was almost palatable. Despite the wide brim of my hat, I was an easy target out there on my official broadcast towel, where the fury and heat of a late afternoon without cover funnelled in thoughts of the past. My earlier life as a beat writer for the Daily News, where I was assigned to the Mets, was near impossible to keep in check. Back then I would usually spend the innings of a game reclined in my padded, corduroy chair in the comfort of an open front, but quaintly roofed, press box. Every once in awhile I would lean forward in my chair to view the packed stadium, where the crowd was forced to sink their chances of survival into park-priced beer, with the hopes that their money would last long enough until they could return to air conditioned homes. As much as I tried to stay focused on the present, it was damn near impossible to stay out of the past.

There was no escape for Smith either, at least not until he delivered the mandatory outs required to rest the Sox defence. I could see tension manifesting itself with sweat on his brow as he struggled to throw a single strike. I couldn’t take it anymore. Roy Madison, Californian sportswriter, was melting in the rays of a pacific northwest sun. I picked up my broadcast towel, put it in my shopping bag, and headed for any sliver of shade I could find on the bleachers, something I had yet to do all season. This was new territory. This was life. Close up, crowded, loud, and loose. Beer cans were being tossed to the ground, dogs had their tongues hanging out, sundress straps came off tattooed and tanned shoulders, and babies wearing sun hats with vacant stares wondered just what in god’s name was going on. Jeers and cheers were being hurled towards Smith on the mound, still trying to find the strike zone. I found a spot on the bottom bleacher just as Smith pulled it together. That’s when the outs started coming, building up on the Stevedores, one after the other in freak acts of flies and grounders. Smith was he relieved of his duty with success.

At the top of the 5th, the ball was returned to the Sox, and given to Scott Fogden who came in to close things down for a victory. Like Smith, he had a hard time finding the strike zone, but found it somewhere out there in a place only he knows, because suddenly, the  Stevedores were sat in succession: first Chong, then Watt, and finally Cuellar — who stayed on the field to take up residence on the mound in an effort to try to keep a win within reach for the Stevedores. And by golly, friends, fans and followers, Cueller came in there and made it look easy, sitting the Sox one, two, three, in an up down inning. But the bats couldn’t return the call. The Stevedore’s had to get back up against Fogden. Despite being forced back to the mound after little rest while the Sox bats tried to add some runs to their lead, his three inning closing session was near flawless during his tenure in the heat at Sunrise Park.

I called a car immediately, and got in as soon as it arrived. The last Black Sox game before the East Van Baseball League’s mid-season hiatus I would cover had been played. To my shock and horror, as the driver was pulling away, my last vision before returning to my temporary seaside home and the hypnotic rhythms of the ocean, was of the Sox and Stevedores organizing themselves on the field for another game. Spectators were even taking up available positions, creating a mix of friends and enemies, winners and losers in silhouette against the falling sunset in Sunrise Park. I realized then that the game never really ends.

[roymadison]

Madison: On the Sound of a Long Stretch

I always imagined myself being feted for a long illustrious career by singing the 7th inning stretch anthem at Wrigley Field friends, fans, and followers. Just like legendary broadcaster Craig Sager did tonight.

At the top of the inning, just before the well known song was performed in the way Chicago fans are accustomed to — with a celebrity filling in for another broadcasting great, Harry Carey, leading the crowd through the verses from the press box — a short montage showed moments from Craig’s long career: his flamboyant outfits; scenes of him interviewing legends past and present; the moment he stood on the grass at the Friendly Confines with his family beside him as he shook hands with Billy Williams, the player that had inspired him since being a youngster. It’s moments like these that make a man pause and reflect at what was friends, fans, and followers.

I make no bones about the choices I made throughout my career. Decisions that seem to have accumulated in the form of a 233 sq. ft. hotel room on the west coast of Canada I currently call home. I prepare my food in a microwave that sits on the counter of my kitchenette, my clothes are that of another era, I’m surrounded by discarded newspapers even though they seem harder to find every day, and the memories of a time I was called a family man seem to have faded so far into the past, I can no longer conjure them.

The team I’ve self-appointed myself to cover is a long way from the crowded stands of a Major League Baseball stadium, but this is my song friends, fans, and followers, and it’s a lonesome tune. Although there’s only a few people listening, I’ll still try to lead us through a good long stretch with it, just before we sit down and get back to the matter at hand. After a few verses have allowed us pause, we can think about what’s good in life, but only if life is good.

[roymadison]

The First Rivals

It was easily the game of the season friends, fans, and followers, as the East Van Black Sox and Mount Pleasant Murder went head to head at Sunrise Park. The lead seesawed back and forth five times, but it was the Black Sox that put an end to things with a 6-5 win in seven innings, putting the Murder’s undefeated streak in the morgue. Fans, we might have a new rivalry on our hands!

Things game to a rousing finish in the 6th inning as Mick McDiarmid swatted an RBI triple off of Heath Fenton’s arm which brought in the go ahead run as Sox’er Andy Resto’s feet crossed the Sunrise plate.

A season wrought with high-scoring games, friends fans, and followers saw a change in gears with the Murder’s ace Pernsky throwing balls and strikes. He gave up just three hits, allowed no earned runs, walked none and struck out four during during his three innings of work. But the Murder eventually had to give way to the pen, and when Greg Geipel came in, the Sox got going, scoring three hits and five runs. A though shift on the rubber for sure, but you can’t win them all, friends, fans, and followers.

The sun is out, the weather has warmed, and there’s plenty of great baseball ahead as the East Van Baseball season moves into May. No doubt the Murder will be looking to even the score when these two rivals are set to meet again on on Saturday, June 11th.

[roymadison]

Madison: Hot Snap into a Cold Season

Friends, Fans, and followers, it’s time for an update from the desk of Roy Madison, and the green lawns of the East Van Baseball League. It’s been a tough season for your overly seasoned writer so far. Summer has taken its sweet as a peach time to arrive here in Canada, and a short stint under the radiantly gorgeous California sunshine to cover the celebrations at Chavez Ravine for the Dodgers’ opener, and Vin Scully’s street naming ceremony, didn’t help any. Hell, I’m lucky I even had a room to return to at the Gardens after Oliver damn near burnt the place down. Tina was waiting for me at the front desk after I dragged my suitcase across Franklin Avenue. I could hear her before I even opened the door to the lobby.

“Es muy larga, Roy!” She yelled, holding a long list of charges in front my 5 O’Clock shadow that was glistening from a late afternoon blast of heat. I can still hear her playfully barking between drags of her cigarette once I smoothed things over with some poolside Dubonnet. “es muy larga,” now she was saying it with a giggle instead of a growl. If that gal wasn’t saddled with her duties at the Gardens, I would have scooped her right up then and there and brought her back up to Canada with me.

The life of a sportswriter is a lonely one though friends, fans, and followers. After things had quieted down some at the Gardens, and my assignment in Hollywood was complete. I was alone again, and in Vancouver. Standing in the solitude of my living room at the Sylvia Hotel, ironing my slacks in my underwear and looking at the dark, moody clouds that were taking shape over the waters of English Bay, my thoughts quickly returned to poolside sunsets, Dubonnet, and pre-cooked BBQ ribs, picked out of the Fresh N’ Easy at North Sycamore and Hollywood Boulevard. “Es muy larga, my darling,” I whispered to the open window while the iron in my hand spit out a plume of steam. The East Van Baseball League Season was going to open at 6:00pm that evening, and all I could think about was what could have been.

That’s right, friends, fans, and followers, the season hadn’t even started, and already it was apparent that my attempts at covering this new league were off to dismal beginnings. Standing there in white Jockey briefs, I realized if this was going to go anywhere, I needed to forget Hollywood, the Gardens, Oliver, and especially Tina. I had to get my head out of the sunshine, and into the atmosphere of uncertainty that lay ahead in Canada. In just a few hours everything on those goddamn east Vancouver fields would start to be officially recorded! Heroes would be created! History would be made! I needed a drastic act to snap into it, and before I even realized what I was doing, my mind decided on one. “Es muy larga!!!” I screamed in pain as the hot iron met my bare forearm in an attempt to expel the demons of comfort and love. Then, I put my shirt on and went to the park.

Friday April 15–6:00pm: Black Sox vs Isotopes

I didn’t even get out of my car. it was so goddamn cold, friends, fans, and followers. I just sat there with the gear in park and the motor running. WIth a clear view of the diamond, I got out my pencil and paper with a sigh as I prepared to score the game. Then, something wonderful and unexpected happened. Just before the Isotopes were getting set to challenge the East Van Black Sox, one of the gals on the Mount Pleasant Murder — scheduled to play the next day against the Railtown Spikers — opened the East Van Baseball League’s season with a rousing rendition of Canada’s national anthem. Something in those words and in that voice reminded me what I was there to do, friends, fans, and followers, and I got to it! By the time I was finished scoring the game, I had a final of 13 to 11 for the Black Sox. One of the fellas for the Sox by the roster name of Peter Plett, hit a homerun. Bygolly friends, fans, and followers, in the sweet words of Tina back at the gardens: it was very long.

Saturday April 16–12:00pm: Murder vs. Spikers

Day two: Opening Weekend. I thought the bloody sun might pull through for the two games scheduled for that Saturday afternoon at Strathcona Park, but I forgot about the weather pretty damn quick once I was treated to just about the worst goddamned thing a sportswriter could suffer: getting scooped! And not even two games into the season. I know I haven’t made myself known to these kids yet, and that baseball is a complex game that requires many hands to record the complexities of life it plays venue to, but that doesn’t discount the plan I hatched to be the one that would introduce the East Van Baseball League to the world, and the fact that I had planned on doing it all in good time; you can’t rush this stuff!

You think that once these kids figure out there’s a bonafide professional from California watching their every move, translating their slides, steals, and singles into poetry that could melt oil-based paint off the back of a slaughterhouse, they’re not going to get stiff hands? It doesn’t mean a bloody thing now anyway. Before I could get my pencil out to start scoring the game, some local author stepped onto the diamond of Strathcona Park for a ceremonial first pitch and then wrote about it in one of the papers here in Vancouver. Roy Madison, officially scooped. I suppose this author fella threw the ball down the plate alright, which only made the fury of jealousy burn hotter. Sometimes it’s just not your day, or your life. The score was 11 to 5 for the Murder, but I’ll be honest, once I realized the story of the East Van Baseball League had slipped through my hands, I took refuge in the Strathcona Park Sauna Bus for some much needed R&R. Yes, you heard that right friends, fans, and followers — a sauna bus; finally I was warm.

Saturday April 16–3:00pm: Stevedores vs. Black Sox

It’s amazing what a little heat and Canadian beer can do to warm the soul. The previous night’s winners, the East Van Black Sox, took to the field for a match against the Strathcona Stevedores, and I was roused from the Strathcona Park Spa Bus with a sense of purpose after sweating out the self revulsion produced by the ceremony of the previous match. I settled into the Official Roy Madison Broadcasting Gondola to watch the action unfold through my field glasses and began scoring the game. I tell you friends, fans, and followers, covering the action at Strathcona Park can be a challenge when there’s no replay to revisit the past, no outfield board to reacquaint yourself with the score, or count indicator to figure out where a player sits in the count. Even the slightest distraction: a mustard spill on your slacks, a quick nip from a paper-bagged beverage, or a sultry look from a sweet looking dame in the stands will have you lost in the plot unfolding on the field in the fraction of a second.

The throwback, sandlot style these fellas and gals have brought back to baseball keeps a broadcaster on their toes! But old Roy didn’t need a scoreboard to see that this Black Sox team was a different one that had produced victory the night previous. Oh don’t get me wrong, I witnessed some hustle — Sean Elbe showed some great versatility, and Mick McDiarmid has an inspiring arm in left field — but it wasn’t enough to overcome the deficit that the Stevedores kept piling onto the Sox almost every inning. I suspect some of the celebrating that was going on after their Friday night win might of had an effect on their ability to pull out another win. I’ve seen those tired eyes before my friends, fans, and followers. If you’re not careful, life can just turn into an endless series of nights turning into day, unless you have something to help you snap back into it: like the sun, or a burning hot iron.

[roymadison]

Madison: A Very Fine Afternoon

Well friends, fans, and followers another spring day in season is upon us and the Los Angeles Dodgers will take to the field once more as they’ve done since their arrival in California in 1962. We’re just 2 days over the April 10th date that Dodger Stadium welcomed baseball fans for the first time. This will be the 59th time the team has taken to the field under the moniker of Opening Day.

Although I am sure there are a few of us that might be able to say so, there is only one man publicly associated with this organization that can say he has attended every Opening Day, a near unheard of feat. Oh, goddamnit fine, I know he’s missed a few games due to illness, but really does it matter friends, fans, and followers? His name is Vin Scully: a legend in the transmission of action from field to audience. I’m talking about sportscasting, which most certainly has its roots in the literary genre of sportswriting.

I am a sportswriter friends, fans, and followers. I am a restless voyeur who sees the warts on the world through the act of sport; it’s the only thing that we can still rely on as truth. I look for the imperfections in the people associated with the game — from player, to staff, to spectator — and places in which they gather to consume it.

I have already dug through the dailies to get acquainted with today’s starting lineup, but really friends, fans and followers, as I sit here over my lunch at Musso and Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard, this game — I mean the actual game part, and the score attached to it — means little. What we are assembled here to honor is the ritual of beginnings, and the times we’ve managed to acknowledge this moment, when things will be watched, recorded, and tallied. We are celebrating the beauty of answered questions and undetermined futures, when there is still a chance. Let’s take this afternoon to enjoy it, before defeat sets in, drama unfolds, and stories find their ending: like when Vin Scully calls his final game of the season on October 2nd, 2016 in San Francisco.

[roymadison]

A record breaking Opening Day friends, fans, and followers. I haven’t seen one like that put in the books before: probably because it’s never happened for chrissakes! 

15 - 0 for the Dodgers. Can you believe these kids? I’m curious to see what they can put together tomorrow, but for now, it’s time for a cold shower and a sandwich, because damn this was a hot one.

[roymadison]

Home, suite, hotel home friends, fans and followers! Room 118 at the Highland Gardens Hotel in Hollywood California is where I’ll be hanging my press hat for the next while as I’m taking a short break from covering the East Vancouver Baseball League up in Canada so I can turn my attention to the Dodgers home opener on April 12th.

I didn’t have much choice. Oliver was minding the joint for me while I was gone and the twit started a small kitchen fire when he burned one of his soufflés. Soufflé!? For chrissakes, can you believe it? I don’t even know what the hell a Soufflé is friends, fans, and followers. 

Although I've called The Gardens my home for years, questions about just who the hell was occupying #118 started to get hurled at Oliver after smoke was billowing out onto the patio and that neurotic nut bar started to crack! So I figured it would be best to put in an appearance by the pool to stave off any suspicions. Tina, the gal that runs the day desk, she likes her Dubonnet. All I need to do is put a little bit of that on ice for her, turn on a little bit of the Roy Madison charm, and everything will be ok.

The East Vancouver Baseball League has their home opener at the glorious little heap of grass I’ve come to know as Stratchcona Park, on April 15, and I'll be back just in time, so stay tuned until then friends, fans, and followers.

[roymadison]

Madison: Saturday Among the Living

Friends, fans, and followers, it’s time for another update from the fresh spring fields of Canadian amateur baseball. If you recall, I’m up here from California on a personal assignment to cover a new club, the East Van Baseball League, in an attempt to rediscover the thrill of the game. But we all know that’s not the only reason I’m here, don’t we friends, fans, and followers? I’m not one to pull wool over the eyes of my readers, so I’ll come clean. Sure, I’m up here to find something in baseball I haven’t seen for awhile, but really, after an ambiguous attempt at suicide in the Highland Garden’s pool in Hollywood, what I’m really looking for is a reason to keep living.

I’ll be the first to say it, sportswriters are among the worst of people.

I know it’s all a bit heavy handed, but goddamnit fans, being a sportswriter is a tough racket! You try spending a lifetime nosing around for the faintest hint of weakness, thirsty for the grit of survival, hungry to document failure, desperate to uncover the tawdry behavior that lays dormant within us all until it’s unleashed by the money and fame of a game played at the professional level — or maybe it’s not, some of us are the devil incarnate right from the start — it matters little, we are a species always able to find an excuse to partake in evil. Spinning these kinds of tales for the dailies, where they’re consumed over a bbq, bed, table, or martini has led the cheapo-drama artists of my profession to a certain degree of madness untold. I’ll be the first to say it, sportswriters are among the worst of people, damned to a life peddling lies and false tragedies all in an effort to get words in the minds of others quicker and longer than the other guy.

Which is why I’m here. Since reporting on the East Vancouver Baseball League’s very first practice of 2016, I have felt a palatable promise in the winds of change that are currently billowing the sails of a refreshed Roy Madison. We are headed towards a summer of rejuvenation friends, fans, and followers! There’s something in the way this has all come together that just feels so bloody right. But what about the game? It’s why we’re all here isn’t it? I got word of not one, but two such events brewing this past Saturday, March 19th. A double header between two of the league’s teams: the Isotopes and Black Sox, followed by a matching of the Mt. Pleasant Murder and Strathcona Stevedores — hah! Murder! I doubt that would fly in the big leagues, fans. It was going to take place at Strathcona Park, the official field of the EVBL, and Roy Madison, Sportswriter was going to cover it.

This is how the game breathes, getting its air from references to past histories with the tossing of a ball in the present.

Much like the games it’s devoted to, sportswriting is mired in routine. That Saturday morning, I went through mine: wake up, take coffee, then get up to gather every possible paper I can get my hands on. Back in California, I would sometimes walk from the hotel, down North Sycamore to Hollywood Boulevard in my robe, pajamas and slippers to get my papers, but not up here fans! It’s too damn cold. Then, and without delay, I return to bed with the day’s news strewn about my room so I can pour over the box scores and editorial bits, gathering the intelligence I need to bring numbers to life. Questions are answered: like just what the hell is a Stevedor? Well, friends, fans and followers, it’s a fella, or I guess a gal nowadays too, that unloads cargo from a ship. Dockworkers! This league has a real blue-collar element embedded into it that’s rooted in the spirit of neighborhoods, trades, and cultures that have helped to shape Vancouver. This is how the game breathes, getting its air from references to past histories with the tossing of a ball in the present. It’s the details like these that I try to find from the bed of my hotel room before any writing is to start. They act as magnets for what else will occur that day. Instead of pounding out the ruts, the streaks, the injuries, and the heaves and sways of a game as it makes its way to a final score, I fill a blank page by trying to catch myself off guard with the way the air smells or how the wind lifts and trickles its way from English Bay to my open window at the Sylvia Hotel. Then, once I have a few things down, I get cleaned up, order a sandwich wrapped in wax paper from the kitchen downstairs, apply my uniform of slacks and blazer with a hat that acts as both reprieve from the elements and notification to others that I’m press, and make my way to the park. This is how good sportswriting gets done.

I told her I had no time for casual talk! Then delegated her eyes to the press card in my hat.

Things were looking grim for the Black Sox, who were already in a rut they never got out of by the time I arrived by cab at Strathcona Park. I took up a spot just beside the well-weathered wood bleachers, got out my notepad, and got to work. The last innings only confirmed the inevitable: a final score of 15 to 5 for the Isotopes. At least I think that’s what the score was, fans. Most sportswriters would balk at the thought of covering a game without a press box staff delivering all the minutiae required for a writer to cover their beat, but not Roy Madison! I’ve yet to get acquainted with all the players, but that didn’t stop me from keeping track of the rotation and score with a zest for the way things should be done. At one point a dame came up and wanted to know where I got my socks, and I told her I had no time for casual talk! Then delegated her eyes to the press card in my hat and told her to come by the Sylvia Hotel for a drink where we could get into, or out of, the subject of socks all we want. Such is the nature of the business, there are many distractions, but you have to stick to the story that’s unfolding, not the one that’s been told a thousand times.

Things took an ominous tone as the day headed into its later hours and the Murder took to the field. These kids look tough friends, fans, and followers. Real roughnecks: cut off sleeves, mullets, and straggly beards. I was tempted to have a sartorial word or two with these guys and girls about the honors involved with getting in front of an audience, but thought better of it. Besides, that’s what makes this whole experience so unique. Not a damn chance these players would be put under the lights of a major league venue, but at Strathcona Park major doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. As for the Stevedores, they look bloody young. Hell I had to ask myself if these kids had even started shaving yet! It was really something to see, because this team came onto the diamond full of moxy, and went hard against the Murder. Hell, I put them at something like 9 runs over the Murder’s 5; a real inspiration!

But then it came time for a piss, friends, fans and followers.

Now, a word or two about Strathcona Park, friends, fans and followers. I love it. There are no amenities, shelters, ground crews, cheerleaders, or seats for sale, and as I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, no press box. Although rain constantly threatened both games, passers by out walking their dog or strolling aimlessly about the neighborhood would find themselves curious about the small crowd gathered around the caged diamond, only to be hooked by the action on the field. Chinese women collecting cans worked the crowds, picking up anything worth something at the depots. I’m telling you, these ladies are in the wrong racket. Instead of picking up the trash they ought to offer up some hot dogs. Jesus, one of them had a NASCAR hat on, and I thought she would have made a good outfield for the Murder while she was at her can game. But then it came time for a piss, friends, fans and followers. It was my first visit to the park john, and I was pretty surprised to see a couple guys smoking a crack pipe in there. I said for chrissakes, fellas, there’s a goddamn ball game going on, and I kicked their asses out of there, not because they were smoking crack, but because there was a damn fine ball game going on out there. I don’t have much to say about some of the things I’ve seen during my short time here in Vancouver so far, because some parts of life just don’t give in to a sportswriter’s point of view.

It’s been awhile since I’ve had to cover that many innings, fans. All that pencil pushing in the fresh Canadian mountain air had me slung over a Manhattan at the Sylvia later that evening, but all I could think about was the games I had witnessed, and the schedule ahead. The EVBL is still in preseason, so I’ve got to get in shape! But Oliver, the neurotic pain in the ass, sometime roommate I have — well, let’s just say Oliver is my roommate when he and his wife aren’t getting along — has been stirring trouble back in Hollywood, so I’ve got to pay the Gardens a visit. But hasn’t this been fun so far, friends, fans, and followers? The consolation of sport is so temporary, we should enjoy these moments while they last, because life is always so quick to begin again.

[roymadison]

Madison: New Season, New Beat.

Well friends, fans and followers, a new season is upon us and it’s time for your sportswriter, Roy Madison to put away the cards, put down the sandwich, and pick up the pen. I should probably tell you what happened to me about a week ago. I was going through my usual pre-season ritual of shedding whatever dame I had hanging around, kicking any fellas having trouble with their wives and using my place as a test-flight for a second attempt at bachelorhood off the couch, emptying the ashtrays, and filling the fridge with Bud Light so as to not be interrupted in my efforts to report on the minutiae of another season of men at play, when I realized something was different. 

Usually this time of year fills me with excitement and anticipation, but after years of seeing the same stories, and writing the same words about players coming up, going down, finding fame, losing grace, and not to mention the same old cronies in the press box pushing pencils and whatever else they can push around, I realized that I’ve been caring less and less about baseball. Which frightens me, fans. It fills me with a certain kind of palatable fear. Without baseball there is no way to view the constant flux of society through the controlled lens of a game, with crowds assembled around it, regularly played in the same fashion that it’s been played since the beginning of time; well, at least the beginning of my time.

I like repetition. The only damn way to tell if anything is right in this world is to measure whether or not it happens over and over again, and in the same way it did before, but during the winter months, something in the comfort of same felt a little off. Here in Hollywood, the weather is reliably predictable and unwavering. This is a good thing. My days by the pool here at the Highland Gardens hotel — where I’ve been residing since I was run out of New York some years ago for my slovenly behavior in the press box, on the busses, and beside the field — was something to behold because I felt like nobody else had the guts to live a life dedicated to something that left them behind, that didn’t want them anymore.

My days start early. I wake up, assess the sky, look at the box scores if a season is in play, watch a little I Love Lucy if there isn’t, then get out for a swim, some sun, and a six pack with the radio transmitting anything I needed to know about from Dodger Stadium. As evening approached, I would put a shirt over my still wet shorts, walk down the Boulevard to Musso’s for dinner (usually only on Thursday’s, I’m not made of dough you know) and try to get a few rounds of cards in if I could rouse up some of the regular fellas that are known to skulk about. Finally, and only after the sun set behind the hills, I’d file a story. Year upon year, season after season, this was how I lived my life, and I wouldn’t change it for a bit. Published or not, I was goddamned sportswriter! And there wasn’t a thing anybody could say about it.

Then something strange happened. Just last week, I was sitting by the pool when I got up without a thought of warning, and dropped myself into the deep end where I let myself float to the bottom of the pool, just to sit there. Jesus, I think I might have been trying to drown myself! Yes, friends, fans and followers, I was clearly trying to drown myself, but don’t worry, I finally surfaced, gasping for air and wanting a change. I realized that another season covering the Dodgers down here in Los Angeles wasn’t going to provide me with the usual feeling of purpose that it had in the past. How long would it be before I wound up blowing bubbles to the bottom of the pool again? I was drowning in the repetition of the game, and would soon be drowning where the game of life is concerned, fans.

We get all types here at the Gardens, making the pool scene quite a thing, which is why I usually do all my work there. The place is a bit of a dump, but it’s cheap and it’s just behind Hollywood Boulevard. It’s a less of a hotel and more of a flop house where actors who come here from all over in the spring take up residence to see if they can get picked up for a show in the hopes of extending their dream a little longer. Come to think of it, it’s not unlike spring training. A lot of them are from Canada, and I got to talking to one kid, Romey, a young Venezuelan fella from Vancouver, British Columbia that would usually take the lounger beside me with the shortest goddamn shorts on with an unbuttoned blue denim shirt. Christ, this kid was a real playboy, what I wouldn’t give to swap his body with my wrinkled ball bag for an afternoon. Anyway, he didn’t have much to say. He’d just sit there in his Ray Bans on the lounger beside mine, smoking Marlboros, waiting for his phone to ring in an audition. Finally, out of nowhere, we got to talking one day about baseball of all things, and he told me about a new league up in Vancouver that was formed from a bunch of kids who played music at night, and baseball during the day. Other fellas, and girls too for chrissakes, caught the bug and started playing, forming their own teams, designing uniforms, the whole shebang. Now there’s something like 4 teams. Romey says that not a dollar changes hands, and that playing in an East Van park is like that scene in Rocky when he punches the meat for practice — ok, those are my words, not his — but Romey said there’s no place to sit, nevermind concessions or a press box. Just the field. Just the game.

I told Romey that was just about the most delightful thing I ever heard, and when I went to bed later that night, it was just about all I could think about. By morning, I had an idea! Roy Madison: on assignment! It was all set. I was going to go up to Canada to report on the early days of the East Van Baseball League. Now don’t think for one second, when this whole plan together, that I didn’t think of this as being a way to relive my time travelling with the Mets. Those days were plum! The hotels, the girls, the late night steak dinners, it wouldn’t be a different city every day, but it would still be different every day. This was a fresh league, with no other crumbs holding pencils in hand, hanging around, shooting bull, trying to scoop a story before the other guy got it. Just me. In a new city! A new start! A new everything! A new me.

So, friends, and followers, it begins. A new season is upon us. I’m now reporting to you from beautiful British Columbia, Canada. As always, I’m living in a hotel. It’s called Sylvia, and what a dame she is, fans! There isn’t a pool, but there’s a bar in the bottom, a beach out front, and it’s covered in vines. It’s bloody freezing up here, but the mountains and waters, with their tides rolling in and out, just outside the window of my room on the 7th floor, has given me a new perspective on the game through the idea of writing about this league. And these kids should be so happy, that a seasoned professional is going to devote his beat to their bats, because a baseball league isn’t worth a lick of spit if it doesn’t a have writer in the stands. Or in this case the, rocky, mud covered, wet ground. Things have turned out to be a in a little rougher shape than what i anticipated, but no worry, we’re in the early stages here.

[roymadison]

Friends, fans and followers. I’d show you my dump of a hotel room here in Hollywood, but then I’d feel bad for subjecting you to such a thing. Instead. Why don’t you look at my colleague, Ron Darling’s place. Someone who’s made it. Someone that can inspire you to reach higher instead of looking at the filth of failure. Someone that can take you high up into the sky, where there are no limits, no sounds. Somewhere you won’t be able to hear me yelling across the pool to some dame that we’re out of Bud Light. And you can go there fans, with someone that has something interesting to say.  

[roymadison]

Notes on a Season

Well fans, friends and followers, a new season is upon us and I’m just getting my head back into the world of the Dodgers and baseball. The off season was a good one. I spent some time away from the hotel I call home for a hotel I don’t. Paris, London, a few days in Dublin putting a fear into a few local Irish with my ability to drink their whiskey. Then to Berlin where I rode the U-Bahn day and night. Then wound up in Budapest, where it was so bloody cold, all I could do was sit in my bed and look out the window until it was time to leave.

I spent a lot of that time writing about other things than fields and the players on them, but no sport is as geared for writing as baseball is. My thoughts would often drift to the fall of last year and how we saw one of the greatest players to come along in some time end their career. It’s my job as sportswriter to put these moments into words and I was pretty darn happy with how things came together. I was able to pay tribute to Derek Jeter, Ted Williams, John Updike and I guess you could say myself, in one swing of the mighty pen. It’s like we were all sitting at the same card table for a moment as the weather turned cold behind us. Each with our reasons for being there.

It’s funny how the beginning of a new season makes the one that preceded it seem like a lifetime ago, but if you remember, Derek Jeter played his last game at Fenway on the same day Ted Williams did. I wrote about that September 28th afternoon the same way John Updike did in 1960 and then published my story about Jeter on the same day Updike put his up about Williams; 24 days later on October 22nd. I never got to write stuff like that when I had to do it for a living.

I was amazed at the way history was playing back that day in Boston to us in the present. Baseball is great for that. The years and the players change, but the repetitious nature of the game creates many illuminations of the past in the present. A friend once told me back in New York, when we were both writing for the Daily, that Americans read too much into the past. I don’t think he was right. I look at history as the future because it’s always repeating itself.

Not much has changed since last fall. Except that once again, I am alone. Oliver — a friend of mine that moved in because he and his girl were on rocks — went back to his former life as a married man. He cleared out of his bachelor life just about three weeks ago now. That guy. He couldn’t hack it anyway. To be alone. It’s tough. It’s not for everyone, no way kiddo, but once you get to a place where the past doesn’t effect you in the same kind of way it used to. When you can live without it making you go this way or that because of who you are or where you came from. Well then you’re free. Then you don’t need anybody. Maybe that’s what my buddy was trying to say back then, in New York. Yeah, that’s it. Maybe he was right. History is a crutch.

Oliver couldn’t sit still for a minute because his past life would come flooding into the present. You could see it in his eyes. They would glaze over and take him someplace else where he would have a frantic fit in the silence of his head.

What the hell am I doing here, living in a dump with Roy in Hollywood. I’m a married man! I’m a husband! A father. Oh jesus Phyllis, I love you.

To keep moments like that under control, Oliver would be constantly tidying the joint up (even though we have a girl that comes in every couple days) and he was always cooking. The food was good. The fellas on card nights, I can’t tell you enough how much they loved it. But I’m a sandwiches for lunch and ribs for dinner kind of guy. I didn’t like all the variety. When I want to mix things up, I walk down the boulevard to the only restaurant I’ll eat at in Hollywood: Musso & Frank. Other than that it’s home cookin’ every night. Anyway, Oliver drove me nuts. Sometimes I miss the guy  But if the past has taught me anything it’s that I’ve always been alone, even when I wasn’t. So I guess I’m just as locked up as anyone else.

Enough of that though fans, friends, and followers! Here we are. Just me, and just you. With a fresh schedule ahead of us. Wins, losses, awards, records and rewards will be calculated. Careers will end, legends will take form, mistakes will be made, and brilliant flashes of what it means to be alive will come out of nowhere, between bites of a hot dog, and sips of beer or soda pop. Make sure you’re watching. I’ll be trying to write as much of it down in case you do miss anything. It’s my job. I’m a sportswriter.

[roymadison]

Legends are fresh, ready to be unfold. Failures are imminent, stories will told. Inning after inning, until a trophy is bestowed.

Roy Madison 2015

[roymadison]

I know it's technically illegal to do so, but I couldn't think of a better way to honor an important day in the history of literature and baseball: October 22nd, 1960.

I have re-written, or perhaps re-mixed is a better word, John Updike's seminal essay, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu to reflect our more recent times. Please take a moment to remember all involved: John Updike, Ted Williams, Derek Jeter, The New Yorker, and of course, myself Roy Madison — and, I guess, my roommate Oliver. Read Hub Fans Bid #2 Adieu

[roymadison]

Fans, friends, and followers as we head into the finality of fall I don't think October will be the same without Jeter in pinstripes. All those years, all those games, all those playoff evenings with the backdrop of an early New York night behind him on my television.

There are many detractors to the Jeter era of baseball, likely because men and women coming of age in the early nineties would prefer to associate their personal histories to more majestic names like Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle, Berra or DiMaggio who all seem more valuable because they're cast through the romantic lens of history.

"Jeter" is as close as most of us will get to the kind of era those monumental names represent. Which is ok by me, because I expect that once time works its magic on the Jeter age, he'll likely be the envy of generations to come as they put the careers of the stars that belong to their daily experience in doubt and the whole process starts over again. The past makes everything seem more precious than it really is.

So I ask you dear friends, fans and followers, to remember, as this final run of games unfolds for the Captain, that the past is happening right now.

[ladodgers-deactivated20190611]

[roymadison]

ladodgers: Matt Kemp and Alanna Rizzo: The sequel.

Roy Madison: A nice night in LA last evening friends, fans and followers! As a longtime broadcaster I can attest to the importance of making sure you're on your cooler game. As my colleague, the wonderful Alanna Rizzo can attest to, when on the field there is no shortage of things that can be thrown on or at you. It all comes with the job; also I love her, and hope to host her by the pool for a sandwich soon one day.