Take a Bow

After years of blogging for others, I've decided to do it for myself.

My name is Gary Jacobs, and to the extent that the Internet community knows me at all (which is admittedly an infinitessimally small extent), they know me as a sports reporter. I used to submit baseball and hockey game stories for an online sports network - that relationship ended with a surprising amount of acrimony. Maybe I'll tell you about it one day when I'm starved for subject matter. Anyway, I currently produce features for the Boston Dirt Dogs web page. Mostly, since I'm credentialed there, my features focus on the Pawtucket Red Sox, the Boston Red Sox' AAA affiliate. For those of you who are sports-minded, I'll be reprinting my articles so that you'll be able to see them all here, as well as provide a rant or two that wouldn't be appropriate for such an august site as BDD.

But sports is not the central focus of my life: in fact, it's not even one of the central foci. Predominant among my life's pursuits is slipping in odd pluralisations that make me appear worldly (see foci). When I'm not doing that, I play the guitar - not well, but loudly - and am an avid poker player. Thankfully for my wallet, I'm a better poker player than I am a musician.

I'm not a professional poker player but I will allow myself the conceit that I'm a decent amateur. Put it this way: I've won more money than I've lost playing poker, and there aren't a whole lot of people who can say that. If I ever win the lottery (difficult indeed since I don't play), I'm heading right out to the professional circuit.

My relationship with music is purposefully frustrating. It's good to have a pursuit in your life that you know will never result in victory. I suppose it's the same sort of feeling golfers get, watching yet another drive sail majectically into the drink. You don't need to destroy the windmill - it's enough to joust at it. In fact it's comforting to know that you can joust all you like, and that goddamn windmill is going to still be there tomorrow.

I'm left-handed - hence the "crafty southpaw" monniker. The term usually describes a left handed pitcher, specifically one who throws a lot of off-speed pitches like curve balls and the like. Ironic, considering my promising career in professional baseball was cut short at the tender age of 11 when it occurred to me and my coaches that I had a crucial lack of athleticism, eye-hand coordination, or in fact any baseball skills of any kind beyond the ability to spit. I could neither throw nor hit a curve ball, and I'm proud to say that in the ensuing 30-odd years nothing has changed along those lines. The triple I hit as a member of the Minor-B Cobras stands as my lone shining athletic achievement. Sure - some, including perhaps the official scorer, might better remember the event as a "three-base error" - but I choose to see the cup as being half-full. Which, given the fact that I was 11 and Jewish, was more or less true.

I have a day job, of course, and it pays the bills. That's more or less all you'll hear about that here. We're a public company so I can't dish too much about it - besides, it's pretty boring stuff. I usually describe my job as "cog in the corporate wheel," which is accurate enough and saves me the trouble of describing a job that's difficult to define. I sit at a desk, I move paper from hither to yon, I make stuff happen, I talk on the phone. It's a living.

I live in Rhode Island, a state so small they've had to annex half of Connecticut to fit in all the corruption. My parents still live in the ancestral Manse in north suburban Boston, MA, and my brother Ross lives in the westernmost city in the Commonwealth, North Adams, Massachusetts.

That's more or less enough for you to go on. If you've read this far you probably already know me, but for those strangers among you, welcome! Look for a new post every so often.