Good News x2 – And A Happy Birthday!

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April 28th, 2016

Welcome back, on yet another Thursday Blog Day. Here’s what this late-April installment will be mostly about: You gotta play the cards you’re dealt, and recognize the signs. Got that?

So here’s the deal, for parts number one and two of what are two really good things. Heck, they’re absolutely great things.

I played professional baseball for four different teams in three different leagues, back in 1978 and 1979. None of those teams, and none of those leagues, had baseball cards produced for their players. Therefore, for about 36 years I’ve gone through life absolutely certain that my mug has never been featured on any sort of baseball card. That always seemed like a bit of a hole in my life, considering how hard I worked at it, for so many years, just to get a chance to play in the minor leagues.

Today, just about every team in every league, from Class-A Rookie Leagues to Triple-A and the big leagues, has baseball cards and they often are made by two or three different companies. If you play a couple of seasons of low minor-league ball now, you’ll have a stack of those things. Back in the late 70s, not so much. As in not at all.

Then, earlier this week I was writing Chapter 16 of “Bats, Balls, and Burnouts” and I came to a point where I needed to do some quick online research. You see, in 1980 I transitioned from being a player to being a professional baseball scout, and my employer, the Toronto Blue Jays, also wanted me to spend a few weeks in Utica, N.Y. after the draft in June. I’d be headed up there to help out as a coach for the Utica Blue Jays in the New York-Penn League, a Class-A circuit mostly made up of players selected just a week earlier in the draft. After being a professional player, and then having just started my professional scouting career, I was going to be able to add “Professional Baseball Coach” to my resume’, and I was really looking forward to it.

I did some Google searches to refresh my memory of the guys on that team, since I was only there about 3 and a half weeks before I had to get back to my full-time scouting job, and as I browsed through the stats and remembered a great many of those players, I also saw a few Google images on the page, and there were black  & white baseball cards among the images. I thought “Well that’s cool, I can put names to faces again and I bet I remember all sorts of stories I haven’t thought of in decades.”

So I clicked on one of the cards, and it took me to a page full of cards, of all the Utica Blue Jays. As I was scanning the screen, remembering some of the guys very well and others basically not at all, I came to a card on the far right of the group. And my jaw, quite literally, fell open. I was speechless, I honestly could not believe my eyes, and the hair on my arms was standing straight up. There, on an official baseball card, was the 24-year-old version of me, in a Blue Jays uniform with a small “chew” of Red Man tobacco in my cheek, smiling like I was still a ballplayer who had the world by the tail.

The card I never knew existed. Yes, I was that young once!
The card I never knew existed. Yes, I was that young once!

There is, after all these years of thinking there wasn’t, an honest-to-goodness baseball card of me. I’m still stunned. I had absolutely zero idea the the headshot some nameless photographer took that day would end up on a baseball card. So, after 36 years of assuming I never had one, now I do. I grabbed a screen shot of the card, just to put it on Facebook (and on this blog) and then I went to eBay to see if I could find it there. I assumed there would be no chance of that happening. Of course, I also assumed this card never existed for 36 years, so why wouldn’t I find a full set of 1980 Utica Blue Jays cards for sale? Yahtzee!

I contacted the seller to make sure my card was in the set, and he wrote back and said “Yes, your card is in the set. Are you related to former Major League catcher Del Wilber?” I told him I was, indeed, the youngest son of Big Del Wilber, and I also told him to package that set of cards for shipping, because I was hitting the “Buy It Now” button as soon as I sent my reply. The cards shipped yesterday, so I should have the actual one-and-only Bob Wilber card within a few days.

The only snafu with the card is that the manufacturer made a common mistake all of us in the Wilber family are quite used to. They misspelled my last name as “Wilbur” instead of Wilber. We all deal with that regularly, so much so that when I give my name to someone I always emphasize the “E” when I spell it out. I’ll say “Last name is Wilber, and that’s w-i-l-b-E-r” putting all the emphasis on the E.

It would be better if the card was spelled right, but it’s too cool to even care about that. I have a baseball card. I want to write that again, because I enjoy seeing the words. I HAVE A BASEBALL CARD!

It’s not quite like finding out at 59 that you have a sister or brother you never knew about (I assume) but it’s still awesome and very, very, cool.

So how about that? Sometimes you just gotta play the cards you’re dealt, and I never knew I’d been dealt that card back in 1980. I have, though, long since given up tobacco of any kind. As Barbara Doyle said “That’s a very good thing” and I agree.

And now about the second part of the hint at the top of this installment. You gotta recognize the signs…  I’m not talking about speed-limit signs, or a coach’s signs to steal or bunt. I’m not talking about signs that say “We’re Open” or “No Parking” either. I’m talking about signs that say “For Sale”.

We’ve kept this under wraps for a few weeks, which was very hard to do, but now it’s official and I feel the need to share the news.

We are moving again!

Where, you ask?

Back to….  Wait for it… Drum roll, please…

MINNESOTA!

When we came out here to the Spokane area, we almost bought a condo in downtown but then changed our minds. We found this lovely home out in Liberty Lake, just two short minutes from Barb’s office, and we rented it from a Lieutenant-Colonel in the military who had bought it at the worst possible time and couldn’t sell it when he got transferred to the western side of the state. We figured we’d be here two or three years, and we even signed a two-year lease just to make sure we had a roof over our heads for at least that long. That was four years ago.

The owner has graciously allowed us to keep living here on a month-to-month basis for last two years, and we’ve kept our commitment to him to take care of this place as if we owned it. It’s been a wonderful home, in a wonderful area, and with its steam room and home theater it has some luxuries that are far nicer than any other home we’ve ever owned. It also has million-dollar sunset views, it’s on a golf course, and it’s a gated community where the HOA takes care of the lawn mowing and snow removal. There’s absolutely NOTHING not to like about it. It feels like home.

But it’s not home. And when the Lieutenant-Colonel called me in March and told me that he thought he could finally sell this place without taking a bath on it, he asked me if he could put it on the market. He only asked because he’s that nice of a guy. He easily could’ve said “Sorry, you have to get out.”

It went on the market April 15. We worked our butts off to make everything perfect for the Open House, and we have a good system in place for showings. The agents have to give us 24-hours notice to show the house, because we don’t want people walking through the place if we’re not home but Buster and Boofus are. With the 24-hour notice, we have plenty of time to get organized, get the boyz in their carriers, and take them for a ride while the house is shown. I’ve done that four times now, including the Open House and I’ve been happy to do it in far less than 24 hours. The boyz didn’t like it the first time, but now they’re pros and they go for rides without much squawking. I do feel the obsessive need to vacuum and clean my car every time we get back, though. They shed a little bit when they get nervous. Just a little. Like just enough to build an entirely new cat after an hour in the car.

This week, the selling agent, Joanne (who is a real pro and a very nice person who really loved what we’ve done to the place) got two offers. One of the offers is now under contract.

For Sale, and now under contract. It's been a great place to live!
For Sale, and now under contract. It’s been a great place to live!

The other detail we needed to put in place was that no buyer could close before June 1, so that we can stay here until the movers come and load us up to take us back to Minnesota. At the end of the month, we’ll take what we need for a week and move the boyz over to the Residence Inn for a few nights, then we’ll get packed up on May 24, loaded on May 25, and we’ll give the house one more good cleaning when it’s empty before we hit the road on May 26 in the afternoon. We’ll do the same trip we’ve done twice before, when we’ve gone back for the summer, and just drive a few hours to Missoula the first day, then make the long haul to Bismarck on the second day. Then we’ll only have about five or six hours on the third day to get to Woodbury. We should beat the movers there by at least a couple of days.

And yes, we’re moving back to Woodbury. That’s where our friends are, and that’s where are hearts are. We’re not going back to the same neighborhood, though. When we came out here we took it as the final sign that we needed to downsize, despite the fact we lived in a home we loved with zillion-dollar views of the pond and lake. Three levels and 4,900 square feet was just way too much house for two adults and two cats. The new place in Woodbury is much like this house in Liberty Lake, although it’s not on a golf course. It’s a “detached townhome” so it is a stand-alone house, but the HOA cuts the grass, trims the landscaping, and scrapes the snow. All the joys of having a house without some of the headaches.

And coincidentally, a lot of our best friends from the neighborhood, who had kids in school when we moved there, are now empty-nesters looking to downsize, as well. It won’t matter where we all end up living in the Twin Cities, because we’ll all be friends for life.

Earlier today, a home inspector came to tour the house and write up his report for the prospective owners, and I got to meet one of the buyers. The young woman and her husband-to-be are first-time home buyers, and it was great to show her around and point out all of the cool features this house offers. After meeting her, my first words were “You are going to LOVE this house” and I can tell she really will. She was so excited about purchasing her first home, and she made it clear that she and her boyfriend are really thrilled to have landed this place. I feel great knowing it’s going to such great people who will enjoy every square foot of it.

We’ve had the new home back in Minnesota for a little while, and we manage to check on it a couple of times a month since we got it. You wondered why I stopped in the Twin Cities on so many race trips last year, didn’t you? We’ve also been furnishing it bit by bit, as well, because we want the new place to really be new, while we also keep a lot of the stuff we’ve had for a long time and will never get rid of.

We’re still doing a ton of de-cluttering here, and we’ll probably sell some furniture (or give some things away) so that we don’t have to move it back there at all. And man, do we have a lot of stuff here. I remember how much junk we threw out or gave away before we sold the big house in Woodbury, and yet we still have things crammed into cabinets and closets here, as if we’re hoarding this miscellaneous stuff. We have a month to make additional trips to Goodwill, send some stuff to nieces and  nephews, and basically purge until we’re down to just the stuff we really use and only the things we really need. If I can sell the sofa and recliner, and a few other really nice pieces of furniture we’re just not going to need, that will be great too.

As for Barb’s job, the company here is being great and she will continue to work for them in the same capacity, as Vice-President of Investor Relations. She’ll join me in the realm of us cool folks who have a home office, where she will work remotely from Woodbury some of the time, and she’ll commute to spend a few weeks per month back out here, living in either in a corporate apartment or a hotel room.

It’s our next great adventure, and we can’t wait.

And speaking of Barbara Doyle, who is clearly an MVP at her company, today is a big day. It’s her BIRTHDAY!!!

Since her birthday fell on a Thursday, I’m just going to make my new fave dinner of cedar-plank salmon on the grill tonight, but on Saturday we’ll head over to the absolutely fabulous Coeur d’Alene Resort for a night of fantastic dining, at a world-class restaurant called Beverly’s, massages at the spa, and gorgeous views of the lake.  There is likely to be some champagne, as well. Imagine that…

Happy Birthday, Sweetie!!!  I can’t believe you’re finally 30, and I can’t believe how well I did in the marriage and best-friend sweepstakes!

So that’s enough big news for one day, don’tcha think? I have a baseball card, we sold this house for the owners in only a week, we’re moving back to Minnesota where we belong, and it’s Barbara Doyle’s birthday. I’m on overload!

See you next week, everyone.

Bob Wilber, at your service and on a baseball card!

 

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