My intellectual Rays

I love baseball, which is very odd to my old high school friends who remember me as being very anti-sports. "I see you as the cool goth girl under the bleachers, smoking cloves, and making fun of the cheerleaders," my friend RF recently messaged me.
Well, yes. But I would submit that that image and being a baseball fan are not as incompatible as it might seem. There's a lot of diversity in baseball among its fans and its players. Which brings us to today's New York Times story on Fernando Perez, who plays in the outfield for my most beloved team the Tampa Bay Rays. (For you non-baseball fans, the Rays have made it to the play-offs this year for the first time after ten straight losing seasons.)

While classmates at his New Jersey prep school back in 2000 listened to the Dandy Warhols and watched “Survivor,” Fernando Perez had his own idols.

“I was big into Hermann Hesse,” he remembered proudly.

This would be less remarkable if Perez, who went on to major in American Studies with an emphasis on creative writing at Columbia University, had followed his dream to write short narrative prose for a living. But that plan has been shelved while he helps craft a fairy tale otherwise known as the Tampa Bay Rays.

Perez, a switch-hitting outfielder with wit as quick as his lightning legs, has emerged as a surprising contributor to the no-longer-surprising Rays. ...

Then it goes into his development through the Rays minor league system before coming back around to his writing.

He is committed to pursuing this career [baseball], but just in case, he keeps his writing skills sharp by working on short prose and some personal essays on his laptop. He does not care about being published, and if he ever is he will do so under a pseudonym.

“So that it’s taken on its own merits, not because I’m a baseball player,” Perez said. Meanwhile, he will gladly collaborate with 24 other Rays on baseball’s story of the year.