Phanatic Magazine Pop quiz, hotshot.
You're 48 years old, out of work for the fifth time in your adult working life and have a clear late-winter-to-early-spring schedule ahead of turning your eyeballs into pinholes staring at a computer on a 9-to-5 basis trying to find your next source of employment and mortgage payments.
What do you do?
This year, the answer is to put aside a pity party, spend a week-and-a-half setting up unemployment payments and insurance coverage, then add 2,200 miles on your aging car over the next 7 days for a one-of-a-kind trip to Florida's Gulf Coast where you get crispy in the southern sun and see as many baseball games as your budget permits.
False spring? You bet. I hit the road at 6:30 am on a Saturday in sweats and a knit cap under murky skies and chilly temps and by 12:30 pm, well into North Carolina, had to contort myself into a shape approximating a human operating on less than 6 hours of rest who could safely operate a vehicle at 70 mph while simultaneously shedding layers.
With no travel buddy for 15 hours, it was up to me to calm the space between my ears when radio reception faltered or spins of the dial found repeated pleas to embrace Jesus as a personal friend and for potential lovers to reconsider Tennessee when choosing Texas.
If we happen to have a conversation in the near future which coincides with your own travel plans for the beachy regions of this time zone, I have ya covered. Can do a tight 10 on the following: the first sighting of a Wawa just off I-95 in Wilson, NC. Four chances to experience the Texan-born roadside phenomenon of Buc-ee's (Florence, SC; Brunswick, GA; World Golf Village, FL & Daytona Beach, FL). That one place off US Highway 301 between Jacksonville and Gainesville where you can see live gators up close before breakfast. The Wawa in Clearwooder that's a 15-minute walk from the Phillies' spring training complex. Hulkamaniacs of all ages can find refuge in his restaurant, where ESPN and old WWF highlights exist side-by-side.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth
Let's get this out of the way first. There's no sense in trying to craft a narrative to protect my ego or reputation just because I'm in control of the content. I was fired for cause.
Not let go, not downsized or laid off. In 2024, my old company adopted a pretty stringent "zero tolerance" policy on "plagiarism" when crafting draft copies of summaries taken from academic journal articles. That meant pretty much every single word submitted under your by-line had to be your own from the drop.
You'd have to be a grade-A fuck up to plagiarize a Zoom call or emailed interview with an academic or clinician and we were encouraged to dive more and more into the journalistic side of recaps, but it's a little bit harder when you have to fill a weekly quota with some quality research that's been rigorously reviewed and submitted for public perusal.
I signed a document, like we all did, back in October of 2024. Three sentences I failed to properly put into my own words when I submitted the draft for editing. I provided an opportunity and the big boss levied his decision. Never mind that the situation was brought to my attention when crafting a draft of the research summary, I was given a chance to make edits on top of those made by my editorial director, those edits were approved by the ED and I, personally, posted the final approved version of the summary without incident or question.
It happened bright and early on a Thursday morning after I took a well deserved travel comp day for working on a weekend at an annual MS conference which took place in San Diego. The reasons aren't worth diving into here, but I saw the situation a mile away. I was prepared. As Bill Belichick might say, we're on to joblessness.
One of the reasons I was interested in the company and took my position when offered almost 4 1/2 years ago, was the opportunity to spend multiple blocks of days per year on-site covering conferences where the latest research and clinical trials in neurology and psychiatry were presented. Masters in the discipline and young investigators, all in one place, awaiting an audience.
In that first year, I was sent packing with a week's notice down to West Palm Beach for the aforementioned MS conference. Later, Denver and Seattle in short order. Then San Diego via Phoenix and Chicago. The next year, new horizons in Boston, Miami Beach and Orlando, followed by Los Angeles in 2024.
Last year, the options began to shrink as I only attended 3 meetings in person and one was in Baltimore but was denied the chance to travel to LA for the No. 1 psych conference and was shut out of a pre-Christmas jaunt to the A-T-L to ply my trade at the top national epilepsy conference.
In 2026, while I was granted the chance for another cross-country junket to southern California, it was 2 days instead of 3. Due to budgetary concerns, it didn't look like there was much enthusiasm for spending much time at all or sending more than 1 of our 2-person staff to cover the two major conferences under my purview: American Psychiatric Association (San Francisco) and American Academy of Neurology (Chicago).
Over the last year, I half-joked way too often that the most meaningful relationship I had at the job was with my computer screen. Reducing the number of trips and the number of days I'd get to see folks in person, drop some business cards and chat up key opinion leaders was going to have the opposite effect of remedying our hybrid work environment which saw me alone, staring at a up blank wall in the home office for 3 days then staring up at a cubicle wall in the office the other 2.
The work itself was intense; on site, when I went alone and it was more often that not, I packed 4 days worth of work into 3 days and 3 days into 2. I was lucky to find a 20-minute session to decompress, take a deep breath and, in the warmer climes, catch some sun. It was important to finally plan a trip with no solid plan with no deadlines. Not working provides a perfect complement to that goal.
In short, it was the main reason I was not long for the situation. Any task or responsibility can be added, but once tasks and responsibilities are taken away, they very rarely ever come back.
I have a raging case of wanderlust that ebbs and flows depending on the season. I never wanted to stay in Philadelphia for work or life and formulating a career in sports media was going to satisfy that craving. My parents retired to northern Arizona in 2017, then unretired. In between I caravanned back and forth between here and there twice. How you gonna keep me down on the farm once I've seen Zuzax?
Approaching 50 years old, this avenue is largely blocked. It was always important, wherever I worked, that I didn't just marinate in any enclosed space all day errry day, passing time plotting against those who would covet my leftover turkey tetrazzini.
For almost 9 years, I was looking live at Boston, St. Paul and Denver, sometimes all in one night, sometimes back-to-back, but always through a 17-inch TV screen hunkered down in the Philly suburbs. It's why, whenever warm weather hit the region and I spent yet another Saturday night under artificial lights, I purposely found photos of interstate highways, preferably one with a mileage sign for two or more control cities, and slapped it on my desktop du jour.
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| Courtesy of AARoads.com |
From April 2016 to August 2018, I was, let's say, "chronically underemployed." The first 6 months, I actually enjoyed it. Like an extended vacation, since I had only racked up 10 total vacation weeks in the previous 15 years.
It's been a month since this latest separation and I'm bored and restless to the nth degree caught in the cycle of submitting and waiting. It has been 6 years since the world was put on pause for the 2-week curve flattening due to COVID-19 and I have yet to find an environment where folks are willing to return to what used to be normal working culture.
Two jobs ago, the editorial staff fled to their homes, never to return. One job ago, a certain amount of coworkers slowly returned to populate its cubicle maze in the spring of 2022 and then quickly begged off until ordered to show up about a year ago.
So this latest spike of wanderlust appeared as an opportunity borne out of a crisis.
In the 3 years since my mom's death, I simply didn't want to travel far in my own car or by any means where I assumed the majority of responsibility. I destroyed two others, one at 125,000 miles the other at 245K, as a result of repeated stops and starts from the daily grind and chronic planned and unplanned trips throughout eastern half of the country. The travel schedule from this most recent job rendered my car inert for an extra 25 days a year on top of the other 156 days I didn't travel to the office.
The gray ghost has only 94K of wear and tear after 8 1/2 years of good service and the furthest I ventured was to Cleveland and back in 2023 for a Phillies-Guardians series. The time was right to make an escape.
It was only last year that I managed to massage my on-site sked in WPB and make it to a Grapefruit League game, since the Astros and Nationals home field was just a 10-minute ride from the convention center. I'd only ever seen the Phillies complex in Clearwater once before, during a surprise middle-school trip to relatives on the Space Coast. Never a witnessed a game in Jack Russell Stadium or the new ballpark that replaced it.
I wanted the stars to align so I could visit five different parks in across all five days allotted, but three-in-three is good enough, no? Blue Jays, Phils & Yankees on tap.
Mythbusting and memory making
If you're the type of reader who passively absorbs any kind of media, I can see how easy it would be to mythologize a place like Clearwater and an annual ritual like Spring Training. Writers have waxed poetic about it for generations, working a different angle with each story which embeds a certain ideal about the pleasantness and possibility that's supposed to blossom with the passing of winter. Over a series of decades, these starry-eyed word salads collectively become part of team legend.
Then again, I never was someone who, as Hall of Famer and Pittsburgh Pirate Rogers Hornsby put it, "stared out the window and waited for spring." There's too much to do to occupy a busy mind in bad weather and scant sunlight to just concede creeping depression in the cold. Football. Hockey. Basketball. Progression of the seasons was never fossilized in amber.
From this perspective, the Phillies' Florida forever home is nothing special. A Gulf Coast town which goes about its business every day, 24-7-365, one of 15 down here which welcome MLB clubs and their fans each year, embraces them for 5 weeks and lets them go.
It's not Brigadoon, disappearing into the mist before magically appearing at a pundit's mention of "pitchers and catchers report." Clearwater is the seat of government for Pinellas County -- a shock to learn because St. Petersburg, 30 minutes south, is clearly the most prominent city.
Life goes on outside the lines, but well hidden. On that first Sunday in Dunedin, the only visible locals were those working at the stadium. The rest? Probably in church or restaurants after church, or nestled snug in their ranchers. You had to get within a block of the field to even sense something other than ordinary existence. Loads of New York, Ontario and Michigan license plates dotted the library adjacent to the field. Not a lot of Florida plates or southern accents.
For the uninitiated, it's nothing like the Jersey Shore. You're not going to get a 5-to-10-degree drop from the mainland to the beaches, and the gulf breeze during periods of early, record-setting warmth is more a rumor than fact. When I made my travel plans, it looked like temps would be in the 72-to-75-degree range.
Instead, it was in the mid-to-upper 80s. Hot and stagnant. No relief. Protect ya neck and any other body part susceptible to blazing sunlight.
It stood in stark contrast to the Atlantic Coast, where there's a bit more action among the mottled coastal populations along I-95. The ocean waves and ocean breeze provide a clear respite and are more reminiscent of home. There's still a whiff of "God's waiting room" on the gulf that permeates the culture. It may not be a typical experience, but that second week of March, I saw few Philly transplants out and about in town.
That said, the water itself -- and you're traveling over a lot of it to get from the mainland to the peninsula -- is stunningly beautiful, crisp and clear. Nothing compares on the East Coast. The only thing I've seen remotely like it is one cruise my family took out of Cape Canaveral the summer before I started 7th grade, which landed us in the Caribbean. The way beams of sunlight burst through intermittent cloud cover and make the top of the gently-lapping waves shimmer can turn any jabroni with an iPhone into an amateur photog.
When I attended the Phillies home game on Tuesday, I decided to save the gas and the cash and walk from my hotel to BayCare Ballpark and I still regret that decision through slippery fingers as I start to commit these memories to screen. In the heat, you move slowly down here or not at all, and what 15 minutes of brisk exercise up and back got me was a tan like leather, a body greased like Crisco and ready for a midday nap by the hotel pool.
Those elusive Philly fans I didn't see anywhere in town, sure showed up in force for an eventual 4-2 loss to the Yankees.
Still, there is something prideful about a team choosing a community and sticking with it, marking the passage of the eras. This rings truer when you consider how other franchises such as the White Sox, Royals, Indians, Rangers, Reds and Dodgers dipped out (or returned) for sunnier skies in Arizona, while clubs like the Braves (Lake Buena Vista to North Port), Astros (Kissimmee to West Palm Beach), Nationals (Viera to WPB) and Orioles (Fort Lauderdale to Sarasota) have all burst through their Grapefruit League roots and relocated in recent years.
One zip code to the north, in Dunedin, the Blue Jays are celebrating their 50th season of operation and 50th in the city and there are multiple banners ringing the poles from TD Bank Stadium to the town center 6 blocks north, commemorating this union.
In Clearwater, it's 1947.
That's two years after the conclusion of World War II, one year before Richie Ashburn began his professional career and the same year Jackie Robinson ushered in the modern era by breaking the color barrier.
At Frenchy's and Lenny's, they wear the colors and welcome long-distance travelers ahead of first pitch and I don't get the sense the smiles, southern charm and wishes for blessed days are all about tips and return business. There's an investment in seeing generations of customers pass through, an upside to what can be a suffocating kind of comfort attached to repeated presence within familiar sights and spaces.
That familiarity is hammered home once you visit these mini stadia. The influx of millions of dollars in revenue over the last 20 years made it possible for an immersive experience: even though you're conscious of your subtropical location, the dimensions of the fields -- if not the designs of the parks themselves -- is meant to evoke a strong connection with the home squad right down to the color and size of the outfield walls.
I miss the aura of major-league teams playing on their older stomping grounds from the 1980s and 1990s. On TV it radiated a sense of nostalgia where hundred-thousand-aires built up their fundamentals on high-school-grade fields.
Nowhere is that more evident than in 2026-era exhibition game pricing. Let's just say without the benefit of a rant that it was a shock that a Yankees game was more cost effective than a Phillies game and the Blue Jays might have offered the best bang for the buck on all three locations.
Baseball aside, everyone should make the pilgrimage once. Once. Don't wait until adverse circumstances give you the time and energy to plan a trip. Carve out some quality time with the fans in your clan, stay about a week and soak up as much as you can. Make it a roadie to remember, something you talk about 20 years later.
If you've made it this far, your reward for the investment of time is this: my resume and cover letter can be forwarded to whomever is hiring at the earliest convenience. Writing samples, shorter than this, provided upon request.
