Writing is For Jocks Too

By Dave Sheinin

ANAHEIM, Calif., Oct. 13 -- Josh Paul attended Vanderbilt University, an English major with a soft spot for "Beowulf" and Yeats. "They taught me," he said of his English professors, "how to express myself through writing. What a gift that is. It opened up a whole new world to me." These days, whenever his day job -- as the Los Angeles Angels' third-string catcher -- permits, Paul spends long hours writing his first book, a work of nonfiction on a subject close to his heart.

"It's about catching strategy -- all the subtle things that go into the job," Paul said Wednesday afternoon, as the Angels took batting practice at Chicago's U.S. Cellular Field before Game 2 of the American League Championship Series.

As part of his research, he has interviewed several former and current major league catchers -- including his Angels manager, Mike Scioscia, and Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk, the former Chicago White Sox catcher who was Paul's idol as a kid growing up in suburban Buffalo Grove, Ill.

"And," Paul said, before jumping into the batting cage to take his hacks, "I've got some pretty cool interviews set up this winter."

Some five hours later, near the end of that night's game, Paul would be part of a bizarre and critical play that may force him to rework the introduction to his book, or at the very least, add another chapter. He could call it, "Never Assume -- Or, Why You Should Always Tag the Batter On a Pitch That Might Have Been In the Dirt, Even If It Really Wasn't."

With the Angels and the White Sox tied at 1, and with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, Paul -- who, unlike the Angels' starting catcher, Bengie Molina, is entrusted to call pitches -- caught what appeared to be the third strike of an inning-ending strikeout, a split-fingered pitch that Angels reliever Kelvim Escobar threw past White Sox batter A.J. Pierzynski.

But in a sequence of events that has dominated the discourse around the ALCS the past 24 hours, and that has given Paul by far his biggest measure of fame as a big leaguer -- albeit for reasons he would rather not be famous for -- Paul rolled the ball back to the mound, Pierzynski ran to first base, and home plate umpire Doug Eddings ruled that the pitch was in the dirt and Pierzynski was safe at first.

The third out would never come. With the winning run now on base -- technically, on an error charged to Paul -- the White Sox' next batter, Joe Crede, lined a game-winning double off Escobar into the left field corner to send the series to Anaheim tied at one game apiece. Game 3 is Friday night.

"I caught the ball," Paul said in measured tones after the game. "When you catch the ball, you just walk off the field."

Paul, 30, was not available to the media on Thursday. The Angels were given a day off following a grueling travel schedule that has seen them play four games in four nights in New York, Anaheim and Chicago.

However, in Buffalo Grove on Thursday, Paul's parents were greeted all day long by a parade of local television and newspaper reporters, who remembered Paul fondly from his days as a high school star and also from the years he spent with the White Sox from 1999 to 2003.

"The majority of people realize the umpire made a mistake, that [the umpiring crew] tried to cover up," Bill Paul, Josh's father, said Thursday in a telephone interview. ". . . If the ball had been in the dirt, Josh would have reached over and tagged A.J. on the rear end."

Still, in places other than Southern California and the Chicago suburbs, Paul is taking almost as much heat for the Angels' loss as Eddings, whose possibly errant ruling that the pitch was in the dirt (video replays were inconclusive) was compounded by the fact he made the signal for "you're out" -- a raised fist -- which the Angels took to mean he had called Pierzynski out.

With so much ambiguity, Paul, according to the critics, should have just tagged Pierzynski immediately -- even if there was only the slightest bit of question whether he had caught the ball above the ground.

"If anybody's putting the blame on [Paul], that's unfair," said White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko, Paul's former teammate, on Thursday. "He's as innocent as the guy playing right field. Any catcher in the league, they're going to do the same thing."

However, when Pierzynski was asked what he would do in a similar situation as the one that Paul faced, he said, "Usually, you'd tag the guy, or whatever."

It was almost comical that the other protagonist in this drama was Pierzynski, himself a catcher, with a personality that is the polar opposite of Paul's. While Pierzynski often grates on opponents and teammates alike with his annoying chatter and mannerisms -- a Pierzynski specialty is elbowing batters and stepping on their bat as they leave the batter's box -- Paul is universally beloved by anyone he comes in contact with.

The first time Paul was invited to an interview room for a postgame news conference -- after hitting his first big league homer on April 24, 2000 -- Paul told the assembled media that he had an opening statement he'd like to make, then, looking straight into the cameras, said, "I am not a crook."

In later years with the White Sox, Paul grew to be so popular with fans and left so many tickets for friends and family, he became known, mockingly, as "Pope Josh Paul." He also wrote a touching piece for the Chicago Tribune when a former Vanderbilt teammate died in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York City.

The events of Wednesday night's wild ninth inning may not have done much for Paul's catching career, but for a writer there is nothing like a wealth of good material to make a story sing.

Cyber-Catharsis: Bloggers Use Web Sites as Therapy

By Yuki Noguchi
(The Washington Post, Front Page, October 12, 2005)

Walker White never kept a diary, but when his wife, Lindsay, was diagnosed with lymphoma in April, he started a Web log.

What began as a message center about tests, spinal taps and diagnoses evolved into a kind of personal journal, he said. "It became pretty clear to me it was an outlet for me," said White, 39, who lives and works in Washington. "I think it made me think through the issue and it made me think about what lay behind us and what lay ahead of us."

The Internet is now teeming with some 15 million blogs. Although the medium first drew mainstream attention with commentary on high-profile events such as the presidential election, many now use it to chronicle intensely personal experiences, venting confessions in front of millions of strangers who can write back.

Nearly half of bloggers consider it a form of therapy, according to a recent survey sponsored by America Online Inc. And although some psychologists question the use of the Internet for therapy, one hospital in High Point, N.C., started devoting space to patients' blogs on its Web site, a practice Inova Fairfax Hospital is also considering.

The patients use only first names on their blogs. Mary, a patient at the High Point Regional Health System, started blogging about ups and downs following her mini-gastric bypass surgery in March.

"Before having this surgery, I could look at the largest person on earth and think I was as big or bigger," she wrote.

The project has been so successful -- both as a marketing tool for the hospital and a form of group therapy for patients who get feedback from their readers -- that High Point is considering adding video blogs, said Eric Fletcher, a spokesman for the hospital.

Most individual bloggers use Internet sites like Google, Yahoo, Lycos, MSN and AOL, which offer free software for users to set up their blog and add or withdraw comments. Blogs are different from the personal Web pages that were popular a few years ago because they are more interactive, designed to look like a dialogue between the blogger and the audience.

Although AOL provides tools that allow bloggers to limit their audience to selected viewers, most don't, said Bill Schreiner, vice president for AOL's community programming. "It's like they're writing the novel of their lives, and [public] participation adds truth to their story."

Blogging combines two recommended techniques for people to work through problems: writing in a journal and using a computer to type out thoughts. Some bloggers say the extra dimension of posting thoughts on the Web enables them to broach difficult subjects with loved ones, as well as reap support from a virtual community of people they don't know.

"I think it's a way of validating feelings. It's a way of purging things inside of you," said Judith HeartSong, a 41-year-old Rockville artist. As a child, she kept diaries filled with anguished accounts of abuse hidden under her bed, she said, but now she posts entries on the Web.

"This month is the third anniversary of my sobriety . . . three years totally free of alcohol," HeartSong wrote in a recent Web log entry. "Next month is the third-year anniversary of my leaving my old life."

Although it may feel good to blog, psychologists warn that going public with private musings may have ramifications, and that little research has been done on the consequences of the Internet confessional.

"I certainly don't advise anyone to do it. They're taking a big risk," said Patricia Wallace, a psychologist and researcher at Johns Hopkins University and author of "The Psychology of the Internet." People open themselves up to cruel comments, and worse: identity theft, for instance, or even losing a job for kvetching about a boss.

HeartSong said most of her reader comments are positive, but that she does get occasional attacks. At one point, she received so many hostile and threatening e-mails from a reader that she asked AOL to intervene and prevent the man from contacting her again, she said.

Some bloggers are unprepared for the attention and don't realize that what seems to be a disposable medium is anything but.

"It seems that although we tell people that the Internet is a public space, people just don't get it," said Susan B. Barnes, associate director of the Lab for Social Computing at the Rochester Institute for Technology, which studies social issues in computing. A blogger can erase a previous entry, but it's often saved on an Internet server and remains visible for years to come. "If you have a journal, that's your private journal, and it's assumed that you can control your journal. But what if it's online?"

White initially felt cloaked from public view by the vastness of the Internet, assuming that few people would be interested in his inner thoughts. But he was wrong: "You find out pretty quickly that a lot of people you don't expect to read it, read it."

Despite the element of risk, the relationships that develop between the writer and the audience can become very real, said Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, assistant professor of English at the University of Maryland, who studies blogs.

Pamela Hilger, for example, considers herself a member of a very tightknit community of dozens of people who read each others' online journals -- even though, after more than two years, most know her only by her first name.

"My father used to say, 'You don't air your dirty laundry in public,' " she said. But now Hilger, who lives in Los Gatos, Calif., said she shares nearly everything online, including photos of scars from the surgery she had after her lung cancer was diagnosed in June. "After I was diagnosed, the first people I turned to are my friends and journaling buddies," said Hilger, who reads about 50 other blogs. "They're never failing with support and encouragement."

Her readers send e-mails if she doesn't post daily messages. Some want to start an online fund to help pay her medical bills. When her fellow blogger's brother split from his wife, several online friends drove hundreds of miles to save the man's dogs from the pound where the wife had left them.

"With my blog, I've learned how to share things with people that are close to me," including her sister and her 14-year-old daughter and 20-year-old son, she said. But of the 6,271 comments she has received over the years, most are from complete strangers who found her online. "Sometimes it's easier to write about it to 1,000 strangers than to sit face to face with someone you know well."