Over the weekend I read an article by John Maffei of the North County Times in which the trials and tribulations of MLB veteran David Newhan were chronicled. You see, David Newhan went for a surf back in 2009, and suffered a broken neck. Yet here he is today, at 37, trying to make the Padres roster. It's amazing. It's inspirational. And it should be read.
Why don't more people know of this story?
David Newhan played for the Padres back in 1999 and 2000. Those were dark times for Padres fans. A World Series had just left our rear view mirror and the construction of a ballpark, while imminent, seemed like light years away because of assholes named Henderson and Aguirre. I simply don't remember David Newhan's stint as a Padre. It was forgettable.
Over the years I recall hearing David Newhan's name from time to time but never knew too much about him until I was reading the blog of former Padre, Morgan Ensberg. Ensberg plugged a blog being written by David Newhan and his father Ross who incidentally was a noted sports writer. Their posts were well written and informative but unfortunately, sporadic. I didn't keep up with it.
Not too long ago, the bear known as Beautown, awoke from his blogging slumber and wrote something about David Newhan. It was a cool anecdote about a minor league game Beau had attended in Las Vegas where Newhan was playing. Beau and his pops formed a bond with Newhan that day. And in reading I learned a little more about David Newhan.
Which brings me back to the Maffei article describing Newhan's ordeal of a broken neck. I wondered how I could have been a baseball fan yet not heard this story. I wasn't the only one who felt the same thing...
The next day I received an email notifying me that Morgan Ensberg had written a new post on his blog. Morgan has been sporadic with his posting as well but when he writes it's generally an interesting read.
I clicked the link and arrived at a very short post, no more than a paragraph, describing a friend of his who had broken his neck in a surf accident and was in Spring Training trying to make a team. It was Ensberg's plea that reporters would begin asking around so that his friend's story could be told. He never mentioned a name but it didn't take much to connect the dots on this one. I dropped a link to the Maffei story in the comment section of Morgan Ensberg's blog and went on my way.
Within a couple of hours I was alerted to a story about David Newhan at HardballTalk, the baseball blog for NBC Sports. I went to check it out and sure enough the story of David Newhan was being recounted on a national website. In the story, writer Bob Harkins mentioned the John Maffei story in detail and provided a link. At the end of the article Harkins provided the proper courtesy to Morgan Ensberg (a hat tip or h/t) for alerting him to the story.
I was incredulous! Didn't I deserve a hat tip from one of the biggest and far reaching baseball blogs on the internet? Clearly it was the link to the Maffei article provided by me which allowed Harkins to write his article. A link from Craig Calcaterra's HardballTalk would have been huge!
Fortunately the internet is awesome. I sent a tweet to Bob Harkins and in my best Carl Spackler voice essentially said, "Hey, How bout a little something... you know... for the effort?"
And just like the Dalai Lama providing total consciousness on Spackler's deathbed acknowledgment arrived via Tweet and the name of ~Avenging Jack Murphy*~ appeared in bright lights over at HardballTalk. With a link!**
Bob Harkins is my Dalai Lama.
This blog has now devolved (as it does so frequently) into a piece about me and my baseball writing hubris. For that I apologize. This is about David Newhan. I wish him the best in his pursuits with the Padres and it is my sincere hope that he is providing a veteran bat off the bench by mid summer.
* If the lights aren't bright enough for you... scroll to the bottom of the article.
**Of course the link went to my AJM Twitter page rather than my AJM website so the traffic increase was negligible but that is neither here nor there. I feel like a guy who just got a cup of coffee in the bigs, knocked a hit only to return to the minors the very same night. Kind of like those guys you've heard about over at Ducksnorts.
No comments:
Post a Comment