indmboyle

I've never been a fan of clichés, and "Time flies when you're having fun" was always near the top of my list of ridiculous bon mots. But that was before we became partners and friends; I'm still not big on clichés, but I can tell you without hesitation that our 25 years together have seemed more like 25 minutes.

People are always asking me to share stories about you and/or our time together, and while it's always easy to come up with an episode or two, for me it's not about the stories. It's about a connection. I remember when you used to always tell me to "own the ground you live on", but I rented for the first seven or eight years I was here because I'd moved seven times over the first nine years of my career and figured that Indianapolis was just another pit stop. Then, when I finally took your advice, you made sure that your wife Nancy was my real estate agent and that your son Tommy built my first house.

I've never been a people person, and by now it's safe to say that I probably never will be. But I'm better than I was, and a lot of that comes from being around you. Your knack for making everybody feel like they're the most important person in the room is rare, and it resonates. You've touched so many; I will never forget the night you had that second heart attack on the bus outside Madison Square Garden, and standing outside that bus while our trainers, Carl Eaton and Josh Corbeil saved your life. The rest of us – players, coaches, and staff – couldn't see what was happening on that bus, and the thought of losing you had more than a few grown men standing outside that bus, crying.

As I get older, I tend to appreciate things more than I used to, and the chance to spend 41 nights a year working together is something that I cherish. I know how difficult it is for you to get around, and that some nights you'd probably be wise to stay home. But you don't, and your love for the Pacers, our city, and our state comes through loud and clear every night. You and I have laughed together, we've shared a good part of our lives together, and while our working relationship is without question the highlight of my career, it pales in comparison to the impact our friendship has had on me.

Yeah, 25 years does go by fast when you're having fun. I can't wait for the next 25 to unfold.

dear-slick-a-letter-from-mark-boyle

Dear Slick: A Letter from Mark Boyle

I'm always sorry to see the season end, because it means that I'll be going months without doing something I still have a passion for after all these years. Still, there's always a silver lining involved, because the end of the season means I now have down time and can walk 518 miles across Indiana, participate in community theatre, do standup comedy, or broadcast minor league baseball, all of which I've done at one time or another with my summers.

I'm still sorry to see it end, but the silver lining isn't there this time. Oh, I'll find something to do with my time off – I always do – but I'm feeling a sense of loss that I've rarely, if ever, felt at the end of a season. We've had teams here that were better than this one was and advanced further in the playoffs than this one did, but I've never been around a group of guys like this. That's not to say we haven't had teams populated by good guys, or teams chock full of guys that I liked and admired, because we have. But to understand my appreciation for this group, you need to understand something that I think most fans aren't aware of, because they don't have access to this environment like we do.

A professional basketball team is made up of highly accomplished people, and part of the reason these people are so accomplished is that they're driven to succeed and have considerable egos. You don't get to be the best at anything if that's not a part of your DNA, and while those are essential traits, they can often become negatives if the people involved don't manage those egos and the individual agendas that often come with those egos. Throw in the inevitable personality conflicts that exist in any work environment, and I doubt that you'd be surprised if I told you that I've seen more than one team unravel due to such issues.

I'm not naïve enough to think this team didn't have egos and agendas; of course they did, just like we all do. But whatever those agendas were, you never saw them surface. I don't know this for a fact, but I'd be willing to bet you that there are guys on this team that don't like each other (true in any work place, no?). If so, you never saw it. These guys genuinely pulled for each other, even if it meant supporting someone that was taking minutes from somebody that thought he deserved them more. This team worked hard every night, and every day in practice (full disclosure: I was way too lazy to hit every practice, but I'll still stand by that statement), and competed as zealously as any team I've ever been around. There's a common misconception among casual fans that NBA players are motivated by money and lifestyle. Well, so what? Aren't most of us? But this group was as committed to winning as any team I've been around, and it was a commitment everybody up and down the roster shared, and that includes the coaches, who are all top shelf and didn't get nearly the credit they deserved for the work they did this season.

All of that is a rather long winded way of saying that I am really going to miss this team. I get the impression that management likes this mix, and a lot of these guys – perhaps even the majority – will be back next season. Still, the reality of the NBA is that no team ever returns entirely intact, and that means the mix will be different next season, if only slightly.

So no matter what harebrained project I come up with to get me through the summer (did I mention the summer I spent time as a coffee barista? Or the time I delivered pizzas and worked in a tire store?), the memory of this team is going to stay with me for a long, long time, and I'm grateful to have been around a bunch of people that were so professional, likeable, and even inspiring. I am a cynic by nature, but because of these guys I find myself just a bit less cynical than I was last August.

This team made 2017-2018 the most memorable season of my career.

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Boyle: Reflections on a Special Season

Editor's Note: Pacers radio broadcaster Mark Boyle is spending his summer working as a broadcaster/mentor with the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox of the Cape Cod Baseball League.

Earlier Installements:Boyle's Excellent Adventure »Kobayashi and Me »Meet the Parents »The Search for the Perfect Chowder »Stop, Thief »

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do" – English proverb

I'm not in Rome. Nor, for that matter, have I seen any Romans here on the cape. But I've tried to be respectful and open minded regarding local norms and customs, which is how I found myself waist deep in the Atlantic Ocean rummaging around for clams at 6:30 one morning not too long ago.

The General Manager of the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox is a man named Steve Faucher. I'm indebted to him for affording me the opportunity to spend a huge chunk of this summer broadcasting baseball and mentoring young broadcasters, so when he suggested that I join him for a morning of clamming, I readily agreed even though I really had no idea what he was talking about.

As you might imagine, people out here are really into seafood, and it turns out that many are more than willing to put in the work to get their own. Which is where clamming comes into play. It's exactly what it sounds like. You wander into the ocean with a bucket and some tools (more on that later) and rummage around until you fill that bucket. Sounds simple, and I suppose it is, if you're a hearty New Englander. However, if you grew up in Minnesota, feared the water as a little boy and never really grew to be much more than tolerant of it, and have been convinced that the ocean is full of predatory creatures ever since you saw Jaws, well, then suddenly it's not so simple.

I've been curious forever, and that curiosity nearly did me in when I was a little boy. My family was at a local pool one day, I grew bored hanging with the rest of the little urchins in the shallow end of said pool, and wandered along the pool's apron to the deep end, where it looked like the adults were having much more fun than we were. Thinking it would be cool to hobnob with the large folk, I jumped right in. Alas, I didn't know how to swim, and had my dad not heroically yanked me from the water, you wouldn't know and love (tolerate?) me today.

When I got a bit older, I tried to overcome what was now a near terror of the water, but I was dismissed from swimming lessons on Day One when I wandered into the lake with the rest of the kids and the instructor and immediately vomited. After religiously avoiding pools, lakes, streams, and ponds (not easy to do in Minnesota) for the next several years, I finally sucked it up when I was 13 and enrolled in swimming lessons. Now, if you don't think being the only teenager in a class full of six-year-olds is anything less than humiliating, I suggest that you think again. But I did learn to swim, I became less afraid of the water, and even became a pretty flashy water skier during my high school days. Still, I've never become completely comfortable in the water, I couldn't tell you the last time I've actually been in a lake or a pool, and I've never been in the ocean.

Which brings us back to MJB's Great Clamming Adventure.

Steve and his buddy Eddie, a robust, genial, full of life type, picked me up early one Sunday morning and we headed for a local beach. In the back of Eddie's pickup, there was everything we needed, including mesh buckets, clamming rakes, and old tennis shoes. Old shoes were needed because salt water apparently destroys everything, and Steve and Eddie were adamant that I not wear my stylish lime green Nikes on our expedition. Both Steve and Eddie are bigger than I am, and it was never really clear to me where they dug up shoes that fit me perfectly. At the time, I remember entertaining a vague notion that they probably came from the feet of the last guy they took clamming. A guy that, for all I knew (the closer I get to the water, the more vivid and panicked my imagination becomes), never returned and is likely floating out there halfway to Europe by now.

As we pull up to the beach, there are a surprising number of people already out in the water, many of whom are dressed in hip waders. This makes sense to me, as I assume that the ocean is probably pretty cold.  When I ask Steve and Eddie where our hip waders are, they look at me pitiably and Steve says, "We don't use waders. Those are for other people."

Okay, then. So we grab our stuff and wander out into the water. I'm more than pleasantly surprised to discover that the water is really not that cold. As we move further out, I start to become concerned about predators. I know this is idiotic, but it doesn't stop me from imagining that at any moment some deep sea denizen (an octopus? A mutant crab? The Loch Ness Monster?) will rise up, snatch me whole, and put an end to this lovely Sunday morning frolicking amongst the locals. As the minutes tick away, I begin to feel a little less terrorized and start to focus on the matter at hand.  Eddie's off on his own, and I'm with Steve. We have our bucket, which is kept afloat in an inner tube, and our rakes. These rakes look a bit like garden rakes, except that there's a scooping basket on the end. Steve demonstrates the proper way to use the rake – you sort of dig around a bit, as the clams are typically a few inches under the ocean floor – and we get started.

Steve and Eddie have done this hundreds of times, and they start adding clams to their baskets right away. Steve also scoops up an occasional crab, which he is forced to return, as things like crabs, oysters, and scallops are not in season yet. Who knew? I had just assumed you could take home whatever you could find, but such is not the case. Your boy, meanwhile, is harvesting plenty, too. However, unlike Steve and Eddie, I am coming up with stuff like rocks, chipped clamshells, seaweed, and other detritus. This frustrates me, as I'm very competitive, and while I know that I can't hope to harvest with the skill that my seasoned partners obviously possess, I would like to contribute something. Steve is very encouraging, though, and when I do occasionally manage to dig up a small clam or two, he congratulates me as though I had just scored a goal to win the Stanley Cup. Adding to my frustration is the fact that everyone else out there makes it look so easy. At one point, an old guy – and when I say old, think pre-rotary phone old – and his seemingly even older wife wandered past with their buckets brimming to overflow, making me feel totally incompetent. Which, let's face it, wasn't far from the truth.

Anyway, we eventually filled our buckets and headed back to land. Though I wasn't exactly The Gorton's Fisherman, I did enjoy the experience, mainly because Steve and Eddie were so cool about it. So much so that, feeling pretty good about trying something new in an environment that is not exactly my milieu, I was emboldened enough to suggest that we try deep sea fishing before I headed home.

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The Old Middle Aged Man and the Sea

Earlier Installements:Boyle's Excellent Adventure »Kobayashi and Me »Meet the Parents »The Search for the Perfect Chowder »

Of all of the questions I get asked about MJB's Excellent Adventure (Version 2015), the most common seems to have to do with the differences between broadcasting basketball versus baseball, or more specifically, the differences between the NBA and the Cape Cod Baseball League.

As you might imagine, there are many. In the NBA we have road trips, with air travel and long stretches away from home. In the CCBL, we have road games. We're no more than 45 minutes from any given opponent, we drive ourselves, and we never stay over night. In the NBA we play in magnificent arenas. In the CCBL, we play on fields (not stadiums, or even ballparks) that are usually used by local high schools and town rec departments. There are other differences, too, but until last night I considered those to be the most notable.

When we play on the road, we broadcast at field level. We're right behind the screen, and we have a very small card table to work off of. This table is not nearly large enough to hold all of our stuff, so I typically put my bag on the ground near the table. It's far from ideal, but it's workable, and we manage just fine.

You may recall that my partner, Anthony Santaniello (Hofstra, class of 2016), handles the play-by-play in the first, second, fifth, sixth, eighth, and ninth innings. I do the third and fourth, plus the seventh. Now, when I'm doing something, I'm always focused, and occasionally intense. Last night, we're in the third inning, I'm on the play-by-play, very immersed in the broadcast, and nothing else really registers. At Brewster, we're really right in with the fans, so close that they could literally reach out and touch us, but things like that register minimally with me, if at all. There are stands off to my left, too, and that's where our sideline reporter, Kaley Kiss (Lasell, class of 2015) sits.

Anyway, I'm calling the play-by-play, and I hear Kaley say, "No, no, little girl. Where are you going with that?" Kaley has a very high-pitched voice, it's rather distinctive, and it caught my attention. I turn to my left, unsure of what it is that has Kaley so alarmed, and I see a little girl, maybe two or three years old (I'm really bad at guessing ages, but I can tell you she was sucking on a pacifier. Ergo, my razor sharp mind instantly concluded that she wasn't a teenager) walking away. She's a real cutie, which is the first thing I notice, and then, as I lock in further, I notice something that I never expected to see.

This little cutie, no doubt the pride and joy of some local couple (and where are these diligent parents, by the way, leaving their little girl unattended?), and I suddenly realize that she's not just walking away.

Kaley, who has now intercepted this budding criminal genius, later tells me that this brazen lass just walked right up, reached into my bag, apparently took a liking to the iPad, and decided to wander off with it. Captured, the little girls walks back to me, gives me the iPad, then reaches into my bag and pulls out a plastic bag holding three chicken breasts (my post game grub), and heads for the hills. Kaley captures her again, and Bonnie Parker, JR (look it up) returns and gives me back my food. Meanwhile, I'm trying to describe the action on the field, and all of this is happening in full view of the fans, who are in varying stages of hysteria.

So. As it relates to the differences between the NBA and the Cape Cod League, what have we learned? Well, two-year-olds don't roam the stands at an NBA game, looking to abscond with whatever they can find, do they? I don't doubt that there might be the occasional scalawag at an Association tussle, but I'm fairly certain that most have long ago put away the pacifier.  And I can assure you that most NBA broadcasters (MJB included) don't lug around bags of chicken for post-game consumption. But unlike the Association, there is no per diem in the CCBL. And being thrifty, I only do fine dining on other people's money and grocery store delis have become a staple for me.

In any event, just another night in the CCBL. Oh, and just in case you're wondering?

Pictured: Mark Boyle's typical office for CCBL road games. (Photo: Mark Boyle)

stop-thief

Stop, Thief

Earlier Installements:Boyle's Excellent Adventure »Kobayashi and Me »Meet the Parents »

I came to Cape Cod for two very specific reasons. I wanted to do some baseball play-by-play, and I wanted to work with young broadcasters, and I'm getting ample opportunity to do both. Now that I'm here, though, I've come to understand that there is one other thing I'd like to accomplish.

I want to find the perfect bowl of clam chowder.

While I understand that this is a very subjective endeavor – what I consider to be perfect, you may deem mediocre, or worse – I still think it's something worth pursuing. With that in mind, I've hit several spots on the cape, an area known for chowders and seafood, and have been very impressed with the quality and the selection. Almost without exception, these restaurants have met the only single inviolable rule that I have when evaluating chowder: if your chowder is thin, if it has the same consistency as a hemophiliac's blood, then you are a sham and an impostor and should cease serving chowder immediately, and in an MJB Ruled World, be subject to prosecution. On the cape, unlike the Midwest, this is not an issue.

I started my quest at a place called Captain Parker's Pub. It's one of the more popular dining establishments in West Yarmouth, it's minutes from my temporary summer castle, and it comes highly recommended by the locals. The place itself boasts about its chowder, and I thought it as good a place as any to start.

Was it good? Yes, but I still felt disappointed. Even cheated. While it was very thick and flavorful, with a slightly spicy taste, it had a skewed ratio of clams to potatoes. Unacceptable! It's supposed to be clam chowder, Captain Parker, not potato chowder. If I wanted potato chowder, I would go to Idaho. Or Ireland. Or somewhere else renowned for potato production. I expected more from you, sir. In my eyes, you've been demoted. You are now Ensign Parker.

I've tried several quirky, hole-in-the-wall, more reasonably priced places, too. I will admit that this was partly because I'm thrifty (cheap, in common vernacular), but mainly due to my theory, proven time and time again over the years, that you can sometimes find the most satisfying meals in the less fancy establishments. I did find some good chowder in places like Seafood Sam's and Salty's, a quirky low key spot that only uses paper plates and plastic tableware, and a place where I was seated at the same long picnic type table with three delightful couples who looked old enough to have landed at Plymouth Rock (which, by the way, is not all that far from here) with the pilgrims. And while I gave Salty's the edge over Captain Parker's, I was still left thinking that there was something better.

The place that's come closest so far, at least for me, is called Chapin's. A nice place, with outdoor seating, and really good food aside from the chowder, which was thick, creamy, had the right amount of clams (and minimal potato invasion), and was very zesty and flavorful. And while I like to consider myself above such petty, shallow tendencies, I strongly suspect the fact that the owner picked up the tab for our meal may have unduly influenced my view of the cuisine, chowder included.

I still have some time. But I'm starting to at least consider the possibility that there is no perfect bowl of clam chowder, just as there are no perfect women, political parties, or commercial flights. But I will continue to try, as the search for perfection – which almost always takes years, if not decades, and almost always proves to be ultimately fruitless - frequently leads to finding excellence.

How do you think I settled on Knob Creek and Cohibas?

Pictured: Three of the clam chowders Mark Boyle has sampled this summer. (Photo: Mark Boyle)

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The Search for the Perfect Chowder

Earlier Installements:Boyle's Excellent Adventure »Kobayashi and Me »

I consider my self to be, at least relatively speaking, unflappable. I find most situations to be at least navigable, and over the years I can think of just three things that really rattled me.

•	The dreaded colonoscopy. For obvious reasons, this can be a daunting experience. And if the actual colonoscopy weren't distressing enough, that vile concoction they make you drink the day before to get, um, ready is a taste treat not soon forgotten. HELPFUL TIP: For some reason, I thought that it would be educational to eschew the anesthesia so that I could watch that dastardly endoscope wander around my large intestine on the monitor, and while it was mildly interesting, it wasn't worth it. Not even close. Don't. Do. It.

•	Doing community theatre. A few years ago, I decided to see if I had the chops to be a thespian, and conned my way into a minor role in a play put on by the folks at the Indiana Repertory Theatre. I had, at most, 20 lines, and though I rehearsed them to the point where I could recite them in my sleep, I was terrified about going out on stage. There couldn't have been more than a couple hundred people in the audience, but for a split second, I feared that I would become the first actor in recorded history to soil himself in public.

•	Meeting the Parents. This is universal, no? Over the years, I've actually had pretty good luck with this, as I can be downright charming when the spirit moves. However, my initial experience in this area was so bad that it ended up scarring me for eternity. I was 17, had a mad crush on this girl, and she seemed really into me until I met her mom. At that point, she did a 180, and I found out years later that her mom's nickname for me was Smartass Sam. I didn't know then that some people don't appreciate sarcasm.

So it was with some trepidation that I met Anthony Santaniello's parents this week. Anthony, you may recall, is my broadcast partner here on the cape for the Internet broadcasts of the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox, and while meeting my partner's parents at my age is dramatically different than meeting a girl's parents as a teenager, I still wasn't sure what to expect.

After all, their precious son was now being exposed to daily musings, both on broadcasting and life, by someone that could reasonably be deemed eccentric by any rational person. Anthony himself seems fine with me, though I suspect that my incessant harping on his grammar, syntax, and vocabulary is probably starting to wear thin. But put yourself in his parents' position. Would you want your child influenced by someone that once kept a life sized cardboard cutout of himself on the front porch to keep the neighbors away? Someone who couldn't even get his act together enough to get his first ATM card until a month ago? Someone who has been known to wander neighborhoods in pajama bottoms adorned with the face of cartoon icon Stewie Griffin?

But it turns out that his family couldn't have been nicer. His dad, Anthony, SR (Tony), is an avid sports fan and sat in on the broadcast for an inning Wednesday night, and his mom, Elaine, is a real sweetheart. Anthony's grandmother, Marna, an energetic sort that seems half her age, and sister, Allie (an eighth grader that will be breaking hearts before too much longer) were there, too, and all of them seemed oblivious to my idiosyncratic ways. Or maybe they just pretended to be. Either way, they were a delight to be around, we shared a couple of meals before they headed back to their home base, and I hope they left town feeling good about their son being a part of my orbit this summer.

Mr. and Mrs. Santaniello, I've done almost twenty games with Anthony now, I can see that he has some talent, and I hope that his career goes the way he dreams it will. Meanwhile, I'm starting to teach him the about the important things in life, like good cigars and Knob Creek bourbon. But that's about all I can offer him. He's a good kid with a good heart, and that will carry him much further than an ability to yak into a microphone ever will. That comes from you, and it impresses even a relentless cynic like me.

Pictured: Tony and Elaine Santaniello during their visit to see their son, Anthony. (Photo: Mark Boyle)

meet-the-parents

Meet the Parents

Editor's Note: Pacers radio broadcaster Mark Boyle is spending his summer working as a broadcaster/mentor with the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox of the Cape Cod Baseball League. See Also: Boyle's Excellent Adventure »

It wasn't long after arriving at the cape that I began to hear whispers. They would eventually grow louder, but in the beginning that's all they were. Whispers. Oh, I'd catch snippets from time to time, but never enough that I really understood the topic, much less the meaning. And then one day, the whispers morphed into a question.

"Do you think you could eat a donut burger on the air?"

As you might imagine, the question caught me off guard, primarily because I had never heard of a donut burger before arriving in Yarmouth. It was explained to me that a few years back, some guy – later to be christened Donut Bob – came up with the idea of taking the typical ballpark hamburger and replacing the bun with a Dunkin Donut, in the process creating a taste sensation that, if nothing else, is unique to Red Wilson Field.

The idea of eating this burger on the air was not unprecedented. My broadcast partner, Anthony Santaniello, had managed to choke one down last season and was willing to give it a go again, as was our sideline reporter, Kaley Kiss. Being competitive, there was no way I was not going to accept the gauntlet thrown by two kids who weren't even alive back in the day when I would routinely slam down an entire bag of Oreo cookies, then gamely force down dinner three hours later so my mom would remain oblivious to my highly questionable dietary choices.

I looked at this as a two pronged challenge. First order of business was to choose the donut. Now, there's an art to this, as not every donut in the box works well with a big slab of ground beef (did I mention that the patty was slathered in cheese whiz? No? Well, yum, yum). Powdered? No. Too dry. I needed something that would help the whole mess slide smoothly down my throat and into my unsuspecting stomach. A jelly donut would work; alas, I've always found jelly to be a loathsome product best confined to America's prisons. If you don't think being forced to eat jelly on a regular basis for years on end would be a serious impediment to recidivism, I suggest that you reconsider.

Anyway, I settled on the Boston Kreme (their spelling, not mine), reasoning that a) it's delicious, b) it should help slide the whole mess on down to paydirt, and c) nothing really goes with beef and cheese whiz anyway, so what difference does it make?

The second part of the process was a bit more challenging. This meal, it seemed to me, could cause great gastrointestinal distress if I didn't prepare properly. But how to go about it? And then it occurred to me. Surely I could learn something by mimicking the training methods of Takeru Kobayashi, who has won the Nathan's Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest six times, and also holds or has held world records for consumption of pizza, tacos, pasta, meatballs, ice cream, Twinkies, and, most importantly, hamburgers.

Kobayashi, my friend The Internet revealed, "revolutionized professional eating with his 'Solomon method', which was named for biblical king, but instead of cutting babies in half, Kobayashi yanks the dogs from their buns and eats them separately". Further research claimed that Mr. K likes to down three gallons of water in ninety seconds, which seems beyond human capability to me. At the very least, it's way beyond anything I can do, and in the end I decided to discard his methods, hope that the fact both of us would be going about our business on the fourth of July would provide us with some sort of a psychic bond that I could tap into, and go with what I would come to refer to as "The MJB Blueprint For Competitive Eating Success".

This is what I did. I had a cup of coffee at 9:00 the morning of the fourth, ate a banana at 10:30, and didn't consume anything else until leaving for the game at 2:30. Game time was 5:00, and the donuts appeared in the booth around 5:30, by which time I was starving and dealing with a hunger induced cloud of anger that had me half believing that Hannibal Lechter was a righteous man.

Kaley went with the powdered donut, while Anthony and I both opted for Boston Kreme (totally irrelevant observation: why does corporate American so often find misspelling to be such a savvy marketing ploy? No wonder we're devolving into a nation of imbeciles). While Kaley and Anthony discussed the merits of their choices, punctuating their dialogue with periodic schoolgirl-like giggling, your boy attacked. I devoured my burger in less than two minutes, leaving only microscopic crumbs as evidence that the thing ever existed in the first place. Kaley and Anthony managed to finish theirs, too, but not in the same impressive, carnivorous, frighteningly efficient manner that Yours Truly demonstrated.

Meanwhile, while we were savoring our donut burgers, Mr. Kobayashi was nowhere to be seen at Nathan's, as Matt Stonie defeated runner up Joey Chestnut for this year's championship.

Perhaps next year he should consider emulating my methods.

kobayashi-and-me

Kobayashi and Me

Remember when you were in school, maybe seventh or eighth grade, and on the first day of class your English teacher asked you to write a theme paper entitled “What I Did On My Summer Vacation?” Well, I’m not in eighth grade, and I don’t have an English teacher, but I do like to write, so I thought I’d channel my inner eighth grader and tell you a little bit about MJB’s Excellent Adventure (Version 2015).

Technically, I’m not actually on vacation. My contract with the Pacers runs year round, and while there’s not a lot to do this time of the year, I still have an obligation to be available. But my outside-the-box, eccentric (read: difficult) personality works to my advantage here - would YOU want me around all the time? – and the Pacers seemed more than happy to grant me an excused absence for a couple of months.

So. How best to use that time? For me, summer has always been a time to try new things and move just a bit outside my comfort zone. In years past, I’ve done standup comedy, played in the US Open Chess Tournament, walked 518 miles across Indiana, tried community theatre, and worked on a NASCAR pit crew, among other things. Two of my passions are baseball and working with aspiring young play-by-play types, and this summer I’ve somehow managed to con my way into a job as a broadcaster/mentor with the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox of the Cape Cod Baseball League.

Job is actually a misnomer here, as this is a volunteer league and nobody, up to and including the team’s general manager, Steve Faucher, ever sees a dime. Admission to the games is free, and the baseball is exceptional. The leagues consists of top shelf college players, many of whom have already been drafted by major league teams, and is considered to be the top summer league of its kind in the country.  Last season alone, there were 276 CCBL alums players playing in the big leagues, and the Red Sox – the 2014 CCBL champions – count Craig Biggio, Buster Posey, Chris Sale, and countless other prominent big leaguers among their former players.

There are ten teams in the league, the games are broadcast on line, and the broadcasters, like the players, are college kids. My partners on the Y-D broadcasts are Anthony Santaniello (Hofstra, class of 2016), Ryan Gallant (UMass, class of 2016), and Kaley Kiss (Lasell, class of 2015). Anthony does six innings, I do three – yes, I’m the backup to a kid that wasn’t even born when I broke into the NBA – and Kaley and Ryan provide us with interviews, scoreboard updates, and so on.

The cape itself is fantastic. Breathtaking scenery, quirky little towns, and all the clam chowder you can eat. Pauline Judge, a woman who has lived in the area most of her life, has opened a loft in her home, and this serves as my headquarters. It’s a neat little place, the highlight being the outdoor shower that is far from unusual around here. I’m way past the point where I care if anyone sees me au naturel, though I am fully cognizant of the potential trauma this might inflict on the neighbors and always make sure to wander outside in a towel. The idea of an outdoor shower caught me off guard at first, but I eventually figured that if it was good enough for Daniel Boone, it’s good enough for me.

I’ve been here for a little over three weeks, and will be here for another month or so. I’ll check in from time to time, assuming I can break away from the baseball, the seafood, the beach, and the local watering holes. Meanwhile, if you find yourself out this way, look me up and I’ll get you tickets to one of our games. It’s the only league I’m aware of that can guarantee you’ll get more than you paid for.