“So what’s your story?”

I am not sure if this is supposed to be an elevator pitch for my new book or some type of flowy prose, but if there's something I can't stand, it’s writing promotionally for myself, and I love to write. But I like to be authentic and get to know people, let them know who I am. Maybe that's weird coming from someone who works in marketing and PR who is trying to sell you a book that is, more or less, a memoir. I’m full of surprises and foibles like that, but in my writing I promise one thing: sincerity. For now, here’s what you need to know about me and my story.

I grew up in Huntington, NY, in a close-knit family of four. Some of my first memories involve playing whiffle ball with my dad, and as he'd tell it, I was smashing home runs with a nerf ball in our living room almost before I could walk. I fell in love with baseball early, and that same love for the game burns bright today.

Growing up, baseball was a major, no the major thing in my life. I was a walking baseball maniac, and I was not even a teenager yet when I started thinking that I really wanted to play professional baseball. Precocious and brazen, yet I was a kid with a dream and the thing is, everyone around me supported my dream and my vision. From my dad, who coached me from seven years old through college summer league, to my mom, who attended every single game I pitched, to my sister, who always cheered like crazy for me when she watched me take the mound. Plus, dozens of coaches, major league and minor league players, and instructors. There are so many people who played a role, and I will be recounting many of them in my blog posts, so be sure to subscribe here for lots of fun reading.

Fortune found me in another way that eventually drew almost equal attention: surfing. As a kid living on Long Island in the eighties and early nineties, I spent a lot of time at the beach, mostly on family trips to Westhampton or Montauk. While dad bodysurfed I was initially terrified of the great unknown horrors surely lurking beyond the feathering shorebreak. I finally got the nerve and ventured out to the sandbars with him, learning to get the longest rides by angling along on the face of the wave. By twelve I was bodyboarding, riding minuscule summer wind swells that provided joy, but not much of a rush. That is until one sticky-hot, windless August day in 1990. It was a weekday, and mom and I were in East Hampton visiting a friend at their beach house. Bodyboard in hand, I checked the surf to see perfectly peeling head-high waves with a sheet-glass surface, and a handful of surfers out. Somehow they were the first surfers I ever saw on Long Island. I paddled out on my bodyboard and mostly watched from the shoulder as they put on a show, the kind I had never seen up close. That morning, within minutes, I knew I simply had to surf. It looked like the most fun thing ever. Thirty years have passed since I got my first board, and with many trips, epic days, miserably freezing days, shark encounters, friendships forged, and lessons learned, I can confirm it is still the most fun thing ever. Yes, there will be plenty of surf-related stuff in my posts. A little-known fact, I started my professional career as a freelancing surf-journalist, and I actually did quite well at it for a few years.

Surfing became the yin to my baseball yang, as I learned many things from the presence and mindfulness that spending thousands of hours in the ocean tends to do. So I also credit surfing for helping me along my baseball path.

Getting to the pros took a lot of work, and the path was not always clear or easy, but when I was right on the cusp of giving up my dream when I wasn’t drafted in 1998, there was that strong but steady inner voice that said to keep going, keep pushing, and well, I made it, which you know or else you wouldn’t be here reading this since my book is about the experience.

So we’ve got baseball, surfing, and writing. Though I don’t view myself or the world through such a simplistic prism, they are the three things that most define me, and that I am sure glad I don’t have to do without any of the three. Many of my more recent friends aren’t even aware that I have been writing since 1999, and that I have published work in several media outlets (sorry, I am not listing my CV here, but I will republish a few of my older gems, for fun), which is just fine with me because I will admit something here since we’re getting acquainted and I’m getting some things off my chest: I stopped pursuing almost all writing opportunities when the interwebs killed the print star. I know how that sounds, but I earned up to $1 per word and made very good money, which I worked hard for. Within a flash, the market sank and we writers were being asked to work three times as hard for less than half the pay. I couldn’t get excited about it the same way, so I shifted and focused on a career in marketing and PR, which has been rewarding, and as it goes, book-worthy in itself.

I didn’t give up writing though, in fact, I write way more now than I ever did while freelancing for newspapers and magazines. I ran a successful PR firm for 10 years, and most days I would produce several thousand words for all sorts of cool projects, artists, albums, and festivals. Add to that all of the web and promotional copy, ghost-writing, biographical work, TV show pilots, etc, and you get a ton of writing I’ve done through the years. But writing this book felt different from all of the other things I’ve done because the good stuff comes when it’s personal, and in the end writing this book became the greatest lesson in determination I’ve ever known. I started hand-writing (who else still does this?) the original manuscript in 2005 after I met my wife, Virginia. I had completed about 80% of it when it was stolen out of my pickup truck. I kept it in my laptop bag, someone got sticky fingers, and I lost my only copy of my book. I was heartbroken and it took me a long time to hit reset and start from scratch. 12 years to be precise. Listen, whichever way you write, make sure to back up your work. Don’t risk losing a book as I did. Virginia will always be the only person who ever read any of that first version, and she was the first person to read this version, also written by hand but backed up via cell-phone pictures backed up in the cloud.

I’ll let you in on something else. “One Summer in the Minors” isn’t the first book I’ve written. My first book project is surf-related, and while it probably won’t become the large-format behemoth I and a big-wave surfer friend initially envisioned, it will find its way into print someday, it’s too good not to. You’ll have to trust me on that since I am currently preparing my pitch to one of the last print surf publications remaining.

For the last 10 years, I have also honed my skills as a pitching instructor and coach, working with hundreds of pitchers throughout Maryland. I never thought I could be as happy in baseball as when I played, but working with young pitchers to develop their abilities and characters is just as satisfying as stepping on the mound myself. That said, I’d lop off a pinky toe in a heartbeat to have the chance to pitch one more meaningful game.

I could keep blathering on about myself, but we’ll be getting better acquainted through my blog posts and on social media. I hope you enjoy my book and my website. If you do please share the link and the book with your friends who you think would like it. Thank you for reading!