Gene Carney

I'm a little angry with work. I resent it, I guess.

I'm a little angry with work because things have been so busy lately, there's been so much going on, so much interdepartmental warfare and turmoil, so many goals to hit, that I didn't have the time to process things the way I might have. The way I wanted to. I didn't have time to think the things I needed to think or feel and say what I wanted to feel and say.

So I'm a little pissed. A little unhappy.

But I shouldn't begin like that.

I should begin something like this:

I don't care about baseball.

I don't care about baseball at all.

I know that that's unAmerican, or at least un-American male. I realize this is some sort of cultural shortcoming, a social disability.

But I just don't care about baseball. I never did.

Sure, when I was a kid, if you asked me, I would have told you that what I wanted to be was a "ball player." If you asked me what team, I probably would have said the Yankees, most likely because that's the only team I was really aware of. I had a baseball glove, a bat, a ball, a couple of Yankees hats. In college, I even went to Toronto for a Blue Jays game with a few friends and had a blast. Since moving to Syracuse, I've sat through a Chiefs game or two, and more or less enjoyed myself.

Of course, I stopped saying I wanted to be a ball player by the time I was eight or nine, which is lucky, since I had absolutely no skills that would have helped me in my pursuit of that goal. The ball, glove and bat got very little use. I enjoyed the Toronto game because it was a road trip and night out with a few good friends before exams, and at those Chiefs games, I was the only male in the stands who flinched and turned his head when a ball came flying into the stands; what fun I had there was due more to big pretzels, cold Saranacs, and a chance to sit outside on a summer day with my wife, rooting for the "home team" (I do, in fact, have genuine home town pride, you know).

I just have really never cared about baseball.

Or football. Or basketball. Or hockey.

I was briefly into soccer, which figures, because it's the kind of sport that real, genuine, patriotic American males don't pay any attention to; but I was only really into while I was playing on the YMCA team in grade school, and then again when it was a big deal at my college. And, once again, it probably had a lot more to do with friends and rooting for the people you know and hanging out in the bleachers with girls than it did with an actual love of the sport.

I don't care much about baseball.

Except for the Chicago Black Sox.

I know an awful lot about the Chicago Black Sox, about the throwing of the 1919 World Series, the payoffs, the cover up.

I've read more than one book about the Chicago Black Sox. I've watched documentaries. Hell, I watched "Eight Men Out."

I can throw names like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Lefty Williams and Buck Weaver and Arnold Rothstein and Charles Comiskey and Judge Landis into casual conversations about baseball history, and if you don't ask any difficult follow-up questions, I might sound like I know what I'm talking about.

The reason I know names like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Lefty Williams and Buck Williams (he got screwed, I tell you! Clear Buck's name!) is that I spent a lot of time listening to, and eventually reading, Gene Carney.

Here's how I met Gene Carney:

I used to shave my head just about every day. But I ran out of razors. After a few days, I looked in the mirror, and BLAM!, right there, I saw it: gray hair. Not a lot of gray hair, but what was there was undeniable. It shimmered in the bathroom light like a pirate's treasure, just a-glowin' at the side of my head.

"What am I doing with my life?" I asked myself. "Twenty-six, with gray hair, and I'm living in this one room apartment where I can stir the pot on the stove while sitting on the edge of my bed, I'm chain smoking, drinking too much, playing in a metal band that's never gone break big, dating messed up girls with low self-esteem, driving a car held together with good intentions and crazy glue, and delivering pizzas for a living. Dominoes pizzas, no less! It's time to figure my life out."

And with that, I looked in the classifieds for a job. My mom did too, hoping to help me out, and she saw an ad for a Senior Job Coach.

I didn't know what a Senior Job Coach was. I had a vague idea that I was going to be the guy at McDonald's helping elderly employees learn how to use the new-fangled computerized cash registers (I was wrong). But I figured a job was a job and it sounded like something vaguely "positive" and human service oriented, so I applied.

I wrote a long, meandering cover letter. I highlighted my degree in Philosophy, my minor in Theology, and all the awesome bands I'd been in. I may have mentioned that I was a vegetarian and that it was my intention to save the world.

The guy who read that letter was Gene Carney.

I am really lucky that the guy who read that letter was Gene Carney.

Gene had been a Theology major in college, with a minor in Philosophy. He had kids a little younger than me, one of whom was a vegetarian, both of whom were into music. Gene was in favor of saving the world, having taught Catholic school while a member of a lay order, worked at the Red Cross for many years, and having spent the last 20 or so years in the human service field, helping people with disabilities find and keep jobs (for starters; there's a whole lot more to the job than that). Most important, Gene was a writer. A good writer. And he saw in my cover letter that I had the desire to be a writer too. So he had to meet me.

No. Most important? Most important, Gene was just a good guy.

I showed up for that interview about a half hour late (lucky for me, there was a snow storm, and everybody assumed that that's why I was late, even though it wasn't). I was nervous. I'd only ever been to a couple of interviews before (the interview process for Dominoes not being as tough as you might think). Gene let me talk about my short-lived experiences as a concert promoter (putting together the wildly unsuccessful "Summerfest 2000," which my band Alterfiction headlined) as if that was really, truly relevant to the job I was applying for. He took the time to explain to me exactly what it was that I was applying for. And he told me how much he'd enjoyed that long, strange cover letter.

His boss did a second interview a week later, but told me when she saw me that she was comfortable going with whatever Gene decided.

I got the job.

Eight and a half years later, and I'm running similar programs of my own at another agency one county over, completely wedded to the field, a "lifer," as they say. Giving (generally bad) speeches at Annual Dinners and Rotary events, writing grant proposals, hiring people, firing people, getting certified to do specialized testing, feeling important. Feeling more important than I felt when I was delivering bad pizza and staring at gray hair in the bathroom mirror.

You could say that that interview with Gene Carney sort of changed my life. I got a chance, largely because of Gene, to figure out what it was that I was good at. To find a direction in life that hadn't even remotely occurred to me.

I took the job, and Gene took me under his wing. He'd just been promoted to his new position, and I was taking over the bulk of his caseload. He introduced me to all the clients (I've never been able to stomach the term "consumers," as technically correct as it may be) he'd been working with, gave me direction, helped me learn the ropes. He got me started.

For the three and a half years I stayed with that agency, Gene was not just my direct supervisor, but my friend. My mentor. In ways that it will always be hard to explain, he was, in some ways, a sort of a father figure. Gene quickly became a person whose opinion-- and whose opinion of me-- mattered.

Gene even made me care about baseball. Or, if not "baseball," he at least made me care-- really care, really take interest in-- the 1919 Black Sox.

During the years I spent at that agency, Gene was working on his book, Burying The Black Sox. It wasn't his first book. Or his last. Gene wrote about baseball an awful lot (you can find some of his stuff at this site, or this one, or just google his name and scroll through the list). But Burying The Black Sox was THE book. The big one. The one he was pouring his heart and soul into.

Gene would come back from research trips (he did a hell of a lot of research on this) and he'd tell me stories. At first, I tried to make Gene get that I just didn't care. I wasn't really into baseball. But he was persistent. He told me those stories again and again, filled me in on every twist in the research, every new angle he was taking, every detail that I never thought I could possibly care about at all... until finally, really, truly, honestly, I wanted to know how it would all turn out. Until I found myself caring-- actually caring-- about the 1919 Black Sox.

When I left the agency, to take a clinical position with the agency I'm with now (it turned out to be a brief stop on the way to management, which I did not at all foresee), Gene threw me a goodbye party at work. A lunch party. A lunch party that made me cry a little, when no one was looking, that made me laugh an awful lot when all eyes were on me. He hit the bars with us that night, something he usually did not do. I struggled with a way to say how much I'd miss him, how much I'd miss all the people I'd become so attached to and involved with.

But I didn't miss Gene.

I fell in well with my new (and current) manager, developed strong, new work relationships. And the goodbye to Gene turned out to be premature.

Gene stuck around.

Gene continued to meet me at a mutual friend's burrito shop. He attended my wedding. He came to my house a week after my son was born. He met me for lunch in sub shops and Chinese restaurants and continued to give me work advice from his years of experience in the field.

He gave me a copy of Blue Ruin, a fictionalized account of (go figure) the Black Sox scandal, which I read (and enjoyed) in the hammock in my back yard.

When Burying The Black Sox was released, I went to the signing party, bought one of the first copies available. On the first page, he wrote:

"3/5/06, Jim-- Invite me to your book signing and we'll be even!"

I told him I would make every effort to make that happen (a promise I have not lived up to).

I read that book and loved it. From what I gather, everyone who read that book loved it (read the customer reviews on the Amazon site I linked to above; you won't find a bad one, but you'll find a lot of "the foremost expert in his field" and such).

Gene retired. Took some time to focus on his writing. He appeared as an expert on ESPN (for the first and only time in my life, I recorded and watched a show on ESPN). He went on cruises and talked about his book. Emailed me or called me now and then just to tell me that he was having a blast. And to brag about his kids (there's no pleasure quite like bragging about your kids, right?).

A few months ago, the last time Gene and I got together, he gave me a copy of his newest book, A Baseball Family Album.

We traded some emails over the next few weeks. I told him that, while I generally don't go in for poetry about historical figures in baseball, I found these lines

No doubt if Cap hadn't spoken up
Someone else would have
Majority rules
And the times, they weren't a changin'

All we can say for sure
Is that Cap Anson had the chance
To be a far different kind of hero
Maybe history will prove
We all do

to be particularly inspiring. And challenging (read the book and you'll understand; "Cap" appears on page 6).

I told him that this

Ruth confirmed with his crowns and titles
That America needed no royalty but his own
Anyone could make superstar
If that ugly saloon-keeper's kid
Who winked like a con man
Could wash the sport's black sox clean

Season by season
Swat by swat
He grew in our imagination and childlike eyes
By being himself
Standing against that profound current
Which would make us all less

was particulalry good too (that's from "Bambino," page 70).

This morning, in the midst of all kinds of nonsense-- reports to be written, incidents to be reported, staff to be counseled, and that damn interdepartmental warfare-- I got a phone call from a mutual friend and former coworker.

He told me that, over the weekend, while on a trip in Alaska, Gene died.

I thanked him for letting me know. I asked him to call me again when he had more details, when he knew when there would be calling hours, when he knew anything else.

I hung up the phone angry. Angry because it was ringing again. Angry because I had to go on to something else. Angry because, right at that moment, I could not shut my door, I could not put my head on my desk, I could not shed just a couple of tears over the loss of someone who meant so much to me, to whom I owe so much, who I did not get to spend nearly enough time with (we were planning that vague, "soon, soon, really" get together at the burrito shop again), who I will miss.