John Gorka Live On All Mixed Up

Singer-songwriter John Gorka will be my guest in the 8 AM hour tomorrow morning on "All Mixed Up." The show streams live at www.wdhafm.com.

How I've Spent My Summer Vacation

I turned to my wife Lauren last week and said, "I think I finally hit my limit."

Since March, I've been coaching 8-year olds for the equivalent of four seasons. My son Matthew played for a town recreation team this spring, along with a more advanced travel team sponsored by the training facility I work at. That travel team continued into the summer; we have a playoff game tomorrow and if we win that, a championship game on Thursday to finish up the season. Without sounding too much like one of "those" parents, he had a remarkable spring. He was one of the better pitchers in his town league (8 and 9 year-olds) and gave up only three hits all spring. So when it came time to put an 8-year old town travel team together for a local summer tournament, he was one of the first kids chosen. That in itself was fine, except that the other coaches unanimously asked me to be the head coach which I knew was going to present a conflict or two with two full-time jobs and the other travel team. However, the other coaches pledged full support and delivered BIG TIME (thanks Rich & Larry!). So for the past six weeks, it's been 6 to 7 games a week split between Matthew's two summer teams. Matthew has given up just two or three hits all summer on these two teams and has really blossomed as a pitcher. Lauren and I are already looking for ways to spend his signing bonus when he gets to the Major Leagues (I say, that's a joke son, and by the way, he gets the talent from my Dad who was scouted by the Red Sox while in high school.)

One other thing - you don't know just how hard an 8-year old boy can throw a baseball until one of those kids hits you in the face with a fastball. One of Matthew's teammates hit me on my right cheekbone last Friday night during a warm-up drill. I literally never saw the ball coming. All I remember hearing is another kid yelling, "LOOK OUT!" before everything went black for a second. I never lost consciousness, but I've had a pounding headache for more than 72 hours and there's some swelling, numbing and discoloration around my right eye. I'm lacking some of the better-known symptoms, but I'm pretty sure I suffered a low-grade concussion. (Side note - I suffered what the doctor called a "minor concussion" about 9 years ago and if these two situations are minor, I can't even begin to imagine what a serious concussion must feel like. Both times the headaches have been brutal and I have a reasonably high threshhold of pain.)

Matthew's travel team has a playoff game Tuesday night. If they lose, they're done; if they win they play for their summer league championship on Thursday. Either way, the season ends no later than this Thursday. By the time all is said and done, it will have been about 60 games since March. As I said, "I think I finally hit my limit."

Thank God!

And I wouldn't trade a minute of it for anything.

Jacoby!

Happy Father's Day

When I was a kid, I thought my Dad was the coolest person on the planet. And I remember saying to him on more than one occasion, "I wish you were a kid so we could play together."

He did some amazing things in his lifetime. He was an All State high school basketball player. He was scouted by the Red Sox based upon his high school baseball career. He served his country in the United States Navy in World War II. He was the first male in his family to graduate from college. He married a girl from Brooklyn and raised a family in places like Richmond Hill, Elkins Park, King Of Prussia and Basking Ridge.

We used to play catch all the time, until a tear in the rotator cuff in his throwing arm simply made it impossible to make more than a few throws.



Those are his three grandchildren; unfortunately he never got to see them which means they were never able to meet the man I thought was the coolest person on the planet. There isn't a day that's gone by in the last 28+ years that I haven't thought about him. In the faces of those three kids, though, I see him. And while I never got to be a kid with him, I got to play catch with all three of them. And I swear, there are moments when we're doing it that I just KNOW he's right there with us.

Happy Father's Day.

The High Holy Days 2009

It's official! Spring is on its way! Here is official run down for the 2009 High Holy Days.

February 6 - Truck Day
February 12 - Pitchers and catchers report
February 16 - Position players report
February 18 - Full squad workouts begin
February 25 - First Red Sox Spring Training game
March 1 - First day of spring (unofficial)
March 14 - Morris County St. Patrick's Day Parade
March 16 - Matthew's birthday
March 17 - St. Patrick's Day
March 20 - First day of spring (official)
April 5 - 2009 Major League Baseball Opening Day
April 6 - Red Sox Home Opener

Athbhliain faoi Mhaise Duit ("Happy New Year" in Irish)

It's New Year's Day
Just like the day before
Same old skies of grey
Same empty bottles on the floor
Another year gone by
And I'm thinking once again
How can I take this losing hand
And somehow win

Just give me one good year
To get my feet back on the ground
I've been chasing grace
But grace ain't so easily found
One bad hand can devil a man
Chase him and carry him down
I gotta get out of here
Just give me one good year

I'm burning oil
Engine's running rough
I drive from job to job
But it's never enough
I can't find the will
To just up and get away
Some kind of chains holding me down
To make me stay.

Just give me one good year.....

It's a bitter wind
In your face every day
It's the little sins
That wear your soul away
When you start giving in
Where do the promises all go
Will your darkest hour
Write a blank check on your soul

Just give me one good year
To get my feet back on the ground
I've been chasing grace
But grace ain't so easily found
One bad hand can devil a man
A good one can turn him around
I gotta get out of here
Just give me one good year
I gotta get out of here
Just give me one good year

Slaid Cleaves - "One Good Year"

Merry Christmas 2008

I'm a little late doing this - two days to be exact. But I have an excuse...and a written note from my Mom, too!We tried something a little different at the Monaghan household this year - we started cleaning the house for Christmas before Thanksgiving. OK, so that's not exactly how it happened. Let me 'splain, Lucy.

Over the past couple of years we've had not one, not two, but three different episodes of the Dreaded Flooded Basement. I can't tell you how much memorabilia from my WNEW-FM days was completely destroyed in the process. The most recent episode happened in the fall. I woke up on a Sunday morning and went down into the basement/family room to check something before coming into the radio station to do All Mixed Up. As I moved around, I noticed that my socks were starting to get wet. And that's when I realized that water was coming out of the laundry room, and up through the French drain, through the rug and into everything that was on the floor.

I ran upstairs and told my wife what was happening. The two of us spent the better part of a half hour trying to pull buckets of water out of the sump in an attempt to get the water flow under control. With both of us having to go to work later that day, we ended up having my sister-in-law come down to keep an eye on things and empty the sump when needed. I borrowed a pump from my friend Bob and the Monaghans spent the next couple of days turning it on every couple of hours in an effort to make sure that no more water came in. No one was spared; even my Mom and our two younger children were put on pump duty. So what does this have to do with Christmas? Hang on.

The damage was extensive. All the carpeting downstairs was destroyed. Everything that was in the basement had to be moved upstairs. The house looked as if a bomb had gone off. In the process of replacing the basement rug, my wife and I decided that maybe we could afford to get new carpeting in the living room, too. After 12 years, three kids, and a dog it was time. I mean, Dad IS working two jobs, right? Maybe we could actually swing this financially. But if we were going to put new carpet in the living room, it meant that the living room also needed to be painted. So for three consecutive weekends, I had "help" from my wife's parents. In the interest of One Big Happy Family, let's just leave it at that. We made the appointment to have carpeting installed in both rooms and moved the living room furniture into the dining room. The house now looked as if a second bomb had gone off. What does this have to do with Christmas? I'm getting there.

To top it off, Daughter #1 had asked a few weeks earlier if, instead of driving into the city to have Thanksgiving with my sister and her husband as we had done for the past couple of years, we could have everyone come over to our house. You know, freshman year of college and all; she wanted to really feel as if she was home. That meant that all the painting and the carpet installation and moving of furniture and whatever had to be done by Thanksgiving Eve. The race was on.

Somehow we managed to get it done. All of it. The house (or at least the family room/basement and first floor) was done. And it was clean. Spotless. And with Thanksgiving a little later this year it meant that if we could keep an eye on things, we might actually be able to not have to scramble to get the house ready for Christmas.

For three and a half weeks my wife was positively relentless. If something was left on the kitchen counter for more than three minutes it disappeared. Our two little ones felt as if their parents had turned into Marine drill instructors. But the bottom line was that on the morning of December 24th, outside of wrapping some presents and making sure that we got the kids to church on time to sing at 4 PM Mass, we had very little to do.

Christmas Eve meant the Invasion Of the In-Laws. Santa made his phone call from somewhere over the South Atlantic. The kids were bouncing off the walls. In other words, business as usual around the Monaghan house.

2008 has been a strange year. The economy is an absolute disaster. We watched a historic presidential primary campaign turn into an even bigger historical election. As a country we're still mired in a war we can't seem to find an end-game to. But we're together. As dysfunctional as we all are sometimes, we're still together. Amid the chaos of flooded basements, and rugs, and painting, and the usual holiday stress, and whatever else gets thrown in our midst, we're still together. And THAT'S the point. THAT'S what this has to do with Christmas.

Christmas Day, I was nodding off on the couch in my in-laws' living room. Every so often I would wake up to hear someone laughing as stories about Christmases Past were being told. Funny, but in none of those stories were any presents mentioned. It was always about the idea of a family being together, working together, just trying to get through the day to day nonsense that attempts to drag us down. Think about that First Christmas - a young couple struggling against pretty heavy odds along with a rather unexpected baby, but together.

I hope you've been able to spend these past few days together with people you care about...together with people who care back.

Merry Christmas.

Take this silver lining
Keep it in your own sweet head
Shine it when the night is burning red
Shine it in the twilight
Shine it on the cold cold ground
Shine it till these walls come
Tumbling down

David Gray