Well, here I am again.  Alive, safe, and bored out of my mind.  Let’s go ahead and start by talking about the one thing that has been on every channel in the South, and on every radio station in any area that has wind blowing harder than three miles an hour.  The hurricane.  AKA, Dennis.  Dennis?  Are you for real?  Out of all the names for the supposedly fiercest storm to hit in a long time, you name it Dennis?  Not, Tritan?  Or Hurricane Brutis?

Dennis? 

By the way, anyone out there with the name Dennis, please don’t be offended, I mean Dennis is a nice name for a person, but for a hurricane…I mean, let’s be honest, we are talking about a natural disaster.  If a person can go through towns and people actually say that he was a bad MoFo because of the damage he caused, okay, but let’s just try to make the next terrorist weather system’s name a little scarier.  Also, I’m talking about weather when I’m talking about a ‘terrorist’ so all of you that take offense to just about anything that might give you a goose bump, let’s be clear about that.  And when I say what I said about the hurricane being kinda whimpy, please note that I do send out prayers and best wishes to those of you who did experience the rougher stages of this storm. 

Now I’m going to go back to the fact that we were in Birmingham for a four game series and what do ya know, I get to pitch the first game of that series.  So, basically, I got the chance to get my head beat in by this team and all the rest of our starters got to dodge the bullet of ‘The ERA boosters of Birmingham.’  Yes, that’s right; I went out and had one those outings again where I was really ready to go into the clubhouse and stop breathing due to tightness of threads.  Its okay though, I learned several things from this last outing that should help me get out of the Southern League in four years instead of six, so hey, always progressing right? 

Anyway, the next day we tried to play a seven-thirty start because of the storm coming towards us, eventually that got called…as well as the next two days.  We just basically had three days off before the All-Star break, then the All-Star break, then a home stand, I mean come on, how much rougher can we have it?  Though I will say that the drive we had was definitely longer than I would have liked.  On this ride home I finally watched The Count of Monte Cristo and let me tell you it was a pretty good flick.  My dad always talked about it, in fact he made me buy it like two years ago and I never ever watched it.   It was a nice change from some of the movies we watch, but we also watched Family Guy and that was very entertaining. 

So, about that ride home.  I’m just sitting in my seat in the back, watchin the movie as we are driving down in the highway in mild to medium traffic, and I notice that the bus driver is walking down the isle as if he were coming to the back for something.  Yeah, he’s on his way to the bathroom and Mike Davis, our hitting coach, is driving this hog full of Double-A baseball players twelve hours after a hurricane.  I’m sure this makes tons of you mothers happy, to know that in the middle of a field trip your son’s bus driver got up in the middle of his or her driving to go to the back and, I don’t know, maybe slide a window up or something. 

You can imagine the look on my face.  Tied in with the fear and disbelief that was surrounding my thoughts something in my brain was going, “What the hell is this guy doing?”  By the way, if you all don’t know yet, I’m extremely scared of driving on highways, or any roads, that have bodies of water on either side because…let’s just face it I’m a cookie and have many fears.  So all of you that have been down this way and know the roads and highways, you know that a lot of them have water all around.

Yeah.

Plus throw in flash flood warnings and hurricanes touching down, and then a 22 year old fruity pie that is honestly so scared that when we drive on these roads, I get in the middle of the isle by my seat and either sit on the ground or at least kneel until we pass it.  Make jokes, go ahead, cuz don’t forget, even though my tail is between my legs and I’m crouched down in the middle of a bus, after I’m done being a sally, I’m still a Double-A pitcher for the San Diego Padres! 

So don’t feel too bad for me or think of too many little jokes to email me because I promise I’m doing okay.  Anyhow, that’s about all that has happened since the last time I checked in with you all, but I would like to wish a Happy Birthday to my little brother, who really isn’t that little at all.  David is twenty today, the twelfth of July, so if any of you are interested in a 20 year old, 6’0” 190 plus-pound-soon-to-be-a-college-baseball-player…well, wait.  First of all if there are going to be emails, please keep them tasteful, I’m still his brother and get weirded out very easy, and also remember I read these emails as well so I will pass judgment on you when talking with my brother so good luck with that.  Okay I’m out till next time.

Email Sean (with jokes about his 'sally-ness' or pictures for his brother) via his editor at Renwick@SanDiegoSports.net.