Life in the minors
Life on the road
never seems to end
By Brendan Sagara
Special to the Star-Bulletin
Living in perpetual motion has become a fact of life for me. Over the past year I've coached 87 minor-league baseball games and watched 52 University of Hawaii soccer and volleyball matches in my various job capacities. Thirty or so bus rides of over six hours and 11 round-trip flights between the continental U.S. and the 50th state and counting.That would equate to more than a thousand bus hours and almost a hundred airplane hours -- which would account for about 155 days on the mainland, meaning that I spent 201 days at home in Hawaii this past year.
Doesn't seem like I've been home even that much.
Living life out of a suitcase has become old hat. And I do mean old. There definitely are times when I'd like to be able to get up in the morning and know where the heck I am and what time zone I'm in. My body clock gets so screwy that I often stay up until four in the morning on the road and wake up at noon. Coach Wilton always gets a kick out of that.
Travelling with the Wahine soccer team for the past couple of years, coach Tenzing knows that a call to my hotel room before the clock hits double-digits will probably go straight to voice mail.
So to take advantage of my disorientation. I just stay up all night to get my work done. When my friends call me on my cell phone now, conventional greetings do not apply. They always open by asking me what state I'm in. I usually just say confusion.
I don't even bother to completely empty the contents of my suitcase anymore. I just take out the clothes that need to be washed, and throw them right back in after they've been washed.
Last summer, in my first go-round as pitching coach for the Dubois County Dragons of the Frontier League, I spent four months watching our team scrap to a West Division title and a franchise record 48 wins.
As an assistant sports media relations director in charge of women's soccer and men's volleyball at UH this year, I was able to watch the Wahine advance to the title match of the Western Athletic Conference tournament. And of course, I was there when Mike Wilton and his boys captured their national championship two weekends ago.
Sure there are times when I'd like to eat some Frosted Flakes in front of my own TV set in my own house sitting on my very own couch instead of ordering room service -- which by the way I am quite fond of..
But how many people get to go to work every day caring about winning or losing? I'm guessing not many.
The thrill of a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth -- a game-winning goal in extra time, a national championship for crying out loud.
So as I sit in the passenger seat of a silver Dodge Caravan in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in some town called Colby, Kansas, waiting for the Dragons' manager and my travel buddy, Greg Tagert, I'm kinda chuckling to myself.
We're about three-fifths of the way done with a two-day, cross-country drive from California to Indiana that I somehow got talked into. Forty hours and 2,300 miles of road-trip insanity. Winnemucca, Nev. Coalville, Utah. Lyman, Wyo. Loveland, Colo. Grainfield, Kan.
Where the heck am I?
Brendan Sagara, a former University of Hawaii-Hilo pitcher, is in his second year as pitching coach for the Dubois County (Ind.) Dragons.