The night following Day Two of the Major League Baseball Draft I should have been in bed, asleep. I had every reason to be exhausted. The draft, in my experience, is the busiest time at Baseball America. I knew this going in and had prepared for the three-day, 50-round event by covering the Chapel Hill Regional and sleeping about six hours on the eve of the draft.
I hadn’t slept much the night after the first round either. I should have been passed out and curled up in bed by 10:30 p.m. And I might have been, if it weren’t for all the Vitamin Water Energy and sweet tea I had that day, a volume I’ll estimate of at least half a gallon.
Instead of my bed, I found myself on my friend Kelsey’s futon, watching a movie and waiting for the sugar crash she thought was inevitable. While the crash eventually did come, it didn’t hit me until about 2 p.m. on Day Three of the draft. So Kelsey and I had plenty of time to talk once the movie ended.
We talked about our day at work and our friends, our families and our pets, cooking and running, and, of course, graduation and our futures. Even a year away, the uncertainty scares both of us.
Kelsey has the arduous process of applying to graduate school staring her in the face. Once she passes the GRE, that is. I face the prospect of entering an industry in the process of reinventing itself, then trying to force my way into one of the most competitive parts of the business. In some ways it is nothing short of terrifying.
But Kelsey doesn’t see it that way for me.
“You’re too stubborn not to succeed,” she said.
“Stubborn?” I said.
“Yeah, you’re too stubborn to fail.”
We moved on, to talk about the merits of sleep and movies and so much else, but that comment stuck with me.
Stubborn. I’d never thought of myself as that. Driven, sure. Persistent, yes. Dogged, determined, check and check. Maybe even obstinate at times. But stubborn?
Yet, upon further reflection, Kelsey is right. I am stubborn. I hope I’m too stubborn to fail, but we won’t know that for a while. I prefer to think the reason why I read so much good writing is that I’m driven to get better. Same goes for the late nights in press boxes and the hours spent pouring over box scores. While driven sounds better in a job interview, stubborn is probably a more truthful description.
And so, it is that drive or stubbornness or determination that has led to the creation of this blog. As I leave my internship with Baseball America after five wonderful months, my writing will be homeless until school, and with it The Ball State Daily News, begins again in late August. There will be the occasional freelanced story to be sure, but not enough to quiet the voice in my head demanding I be the best.
I have long resisted a personal blog, preferring instead to pour my work into the two blogs I created at the DN or one of the various websites I have occasionally written for. But for the next six weeks or so, it’s just me. So for the first time in its storied life, teddycahill.com will play host to more than just my digital portfolio and resume.
What, exactly, will appear in this space remains to be seen. Originally, I didn’t think I’d be writing too much about sports. I now see that as an impossibility. I know my newly-acquired sacrifice bunting tic is just waiting to boil over into a post. But this can’t be just about sports. I’ve always felt uncomfortable writing anything about sports without being at a game, press conference, practice, coach’s office, somewhere. And I don’t know how many of those places I’ll be for the next few weeks.
What appears here is likely to be a collection of thoughts from a 21-year old who is staring down one of the most important years of his life, one that can see the real world beckoning just past one last year of tests and homework. They might be revelations about myself Kelsey explains to me on her futon. They might be my feelings about the forced patriotism of baseball or whatever else is weighing on my mind. I’m not completely sure yet. What I do know, however, is that there will be something here.
Because I’m too stubborn to fail.
