"I Dream Of Vinnie" & Other Bizarre Tidbits

and thought your were dreaming of Vinnie Mazzaro.

And I Tweeted the link to Vince. I hope he reads it.

When I got back home after this game:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/OAK/OAK200507140.shtml
my wife told me that my dog Emma had gotten out of our yard in Oakland and was missing. So I spent the next hour driving around looking for her. I finally gave up and went to bed around midnight.
That night I had a dream where I’m looking for Eric Byrnes cause he’d somehow gotten away – the dream got even weirder, with Byrnsie making an appearance in a Revolutionary War outfit at some point!

and here’s a thread about A’s related dreams from “back in the day”, some of which are pretty funny (I think my favorite one is of Jim Mecir as a stalker:
http://www.athleticsnation.com/2005/7/15/141728/503#185362

It means your dream is to become a broadcaster but you’re afraid of making a fool of yourself.

if we’re doing dreams… here’s one i wrote down a while back. (please excuse the length.)

i had to admit to a somewhat embarrassing dream to my wife this morning because i had woken her up in the middle of the night with a very loud, like screaming it and holding my hand out in the air for emphasis loud, “uhm-pah!!!” and this morning she wanted to know what i was dreaming about, what had agitated me so. even as i lay there trying to calm myself down and go back to sleep after the dream, i already knew she was going to ask what’d happened. “umpa” could be a willy wonka thing, i thought. maybe i’ll tell her the umpalumpas were after me…

but no. i had to tell the truth. i braced her first, saying that it was going to turn my cheeks red and want to hide, but that i thought she should know…

the A’s were playing the yankees and it was the last game of a championship. if the A’s won, they were in the world series. if the yankees won, it was going to be yet another time that the A’s didn’t nail the lid on the coffin and let the yankees go on probably to win it all (think 2001 ALCS). it was the bottom of the 9th at yankee stadium, the A’s were up by 1, but the momentum was definitely with the yankees and their fans. but that wasn’t all. i was playing in the outfield.

with two outs and two strikes, some yankee hits a fly for an easy catch near the wall. half the fans thinking that it would be a home run and the other half not wanting to let the last out fall in the mitt of the guy playing center field, they go crazy and start encroaching over the barriers (think yankees-orioles with the kid catching the ball in 1996). mark ellis, who i guess was playing center, sets up to catch that last out and start celebrating for the A’s. but the fans start coming out of the stands onto the field and madness is on, full scale. there are people everywhere standing in the way of the players, and because ellis can’t drift with the ball to catch it, it drops. and that only makes the fans go crazier (think bronx zoo 1976, royals-yankees).

so while ellis is trying to find the ball among the feet of these insane fans, they are playing keep away as the play continues. the runner goes to second. suddenly i’m close to the action and i get the ball. i throw it in to the infield to hold the runner. but a fan intercepts it and throws it back at me. by this time i am closer and i just run with the ball straight to home plate. since the runner has to run twice around third and i can bisect the diamond, have a chance. he gets to third, looks around, and then heads for the plate hoping that in the madness nobody’ll see him. but i am at the plate ready for him.

according to some dreamtime rule of baseball, i touch the ball to the middle of the plate, which helps me block it, then i put my feet up the line and as the yankee player slides, he gets spiked by my cleats on the top of his head and loses all momentum. he is just laying there, outstretched, a good foot or more away from the plate, surrounded by the feet of all the fans. i quickly tag him out with a good hard rap of the ball on his face. it’s the right thing to do; they are trying to cheat and i am stopping it. all i need is an official to see the play and call him out. so i’m waving my hand in the air, trying to get an official’s attention through the roar of the crowd, and yelling, “UMPIRE!”

my theory of dreams is that our minds move toward narrative and, as surrealism proved, a narrative can be woven out of any two pieces of disparate information. so the mind takes a bunch of pieces that sometimes do and sometimes don’t fit somewhere else, that are mostly active in our minds or that are inactive but can be triggered through association, and weaves them together into a story, even if that story doesn’t always go anywhere.

you said it yourself, the two unavoidable pieces of sports info flying right now are venezuela and penn state. venezuela is in south america, where october is spring. (and yes, i know venezuela is north of the equator, but nico’s subconscious doesn’t! J/K, this isn’t that much of a relevant point. i just wanted to say that spring during october isn’t impossible).

no this wasn’t directly in your dream other than there is a kid/parent/outsider relationship, some feelings of guilt, and that you mentioned it in your post, but, penn state: the navigation of the private/public perception woven in with leadership roles in sports…. i hope you don’t take this as kit for kat, but nico, have you had an easy time lately re: your role as a leader, baseball, others’ opinions lately? i’m guessing, because you’re an insightful dude, that you’ve been wondering a little about how others’ opinions are shaped and what the mechanisms might be if you do/say one thing versus do/say another. your thoughts about this might be showing up here where you say the right thing to the mother but you also subvert your own intentions, almost by accident it seems like, and suddenly you’re flirting with guilty feelings. there’s even the bit in your dream about your duty to present info in the lineup card… no, these are not perfect parallels. but that’s dreams are not sabermetrical, and close-enough associations work. or maybe they don’t. it’s up to you, in your feelings that your dream elements bring up, who can say what’s close-enough or not.

whoops. i’m sorry but our time’s up for today. see my receptionist on the way out. i think we need to schedule for 3 times a week from now on.

Mickey Mantle, after he retired, used to dream of driving around and around in his car, unable to find the ballpark. Another common baseball dream is the AAA player’s nightmare… he gets called up, but can’t find his glove or his bat and certainly can’t go on without it, yet can’t find it, either.

Citizen Nico

It’s seems evident that the underlying principle/conflict of the dream is the duty you feel toward the A’s organization (which may or may not contain your hope or ambition of one day being in the booth) and your desire to feel kinship towards or be accepted by the Mother and Child on their Halloween jaunt.

The Mother and Halloween garbed child represent your feelings towards AN and the members of the board. The Mother represents the judgment you were subjected to and guilt you felt when you revealed some bit of inside information you received as a journalist. The Child represents two things. First, the maturity level of the reaction you received, and the alienation you felt not being able to participate in the fun of dressing up for the holiday. Actually, it could be that or that costumes indicate deception. Not that you committed a deception, necessarily, but that you were accused of creating one.

The disapproval of the Mother and Son when you reached for the Kit Kat represent the pain of rejection. The phrase “I’m going to give it to a child” probably represents your desire to give a small precious goodie, a nugget of information, to AN. The fact that you ate it might mean you were eating your words, conflicted by your desire to help and your need to withhold your sources which made you appear guilty and subjected you to the scorn of the Mother and Child.

Must be a slow A’s news day lol