Conquering the Last of Tennessee's Three Biggest Cities

I suppose the title's a little misleading. I haven't exactly conquered Memphis just yet, but I have started to piece my way around the city. A few weekends ago Ben and I road around looking for quality vinyl/CD shops along with various thrift stores (for I needed a computer bag). I took pictures.

{Be sure to note my Academy Award predictions located below this post}

This Is Memphis:
This one here I think might make a nice banner one day for the blog. The Memphis skyline perhaps with some words in the top-right.


I see this sign everyday as I travel to work, and boy is it a relief. Returning to the mother-state is such a refreshing feeling, unfortunately I stop my travels in Memphis.


That's right friends. An AmVets in Memphis. Doesn't that just make you super excited. Hurry. Well...it's not as good as the old Knoxville original, but it's nice to see.


Ah yes...one of the seven wonders of the world. The great pyramid. A former basketball arena and a future Bass Pro Shops. I kid you not.


And finally the shocker of them all. A large statue of liberty begging America back to Christ, posted up right in front of this huge church. Strange.

More About My Job: The season doesn't start until April 9th, so in the meantime we have been doing preliminary work. The first task we did was write play bios for the media guide. Every sports team on every level has some kind of media guide which is provided by the organization and given to members of the press during ballgames. The broadcasters and news writers use the media guides to get quick information about the players, who they probably know very little about. Ben and I were given 17 players each and asked to find ten unique stats about their 2008 season. We were given privileged access to Minor League Baseball's stat database in order to create our bios. Bio info basically looked like this...

Chris Perez - Right-Handed Pitcher

• Played 26 games for Memphis with a 3.20 ERA (9ERx25.1IP) before being called up to St. Louis to play 41 games for a 3.46 ERA (16x41.2).
• Struck out one in his major league debut, allowing no hits in one inning pitched on 5/16 against Tampa Bay.
• Had a career-high 67.0 innings pitched in '08 (41.2 in STL / 25.1 in MEM).
  
• Had the third most saves (6) in the Pacific Coast League for the month of April.
  

We also have been learning how to do baseball scoring, which if you did not know is a very complex string of numbers and letters. For example if a player doubles on a line drive to right field, bringing in the runner on third, the code would be: D9/L.3-H . But if the runner on first also scores due to a throwing error by the right fielder the play would look like this: D9/L.3-H;1-H(E9/TH) . I don't expect this to make a lot of since but you can kind of make since of it when you look at it carefully. The first week Nicole, a MLB employee, sent me game notes from one of last year's baseball games. The notes had a play-by-play written out and I was instructed to translate the plays into baseball code. I would send it to Nicole and she would correct it, sending me a new game to code. The process repeats and repeats. Ben and I have both been doing this because when the season starts we will be doing game coding during the games. Thus we've been preparing.

Mistakes & Questions: In case you wrote down my apartment address before now, it is probably wrong. I live on 2000 North Avalon Ave. NOT 200 North Avalon. Sender be warned.

Also I have been asked, outside of my blog, if I will be traveling with the team for away games. The answer is no, we will work in the office on those days and publish the game stories from Memphis.