Dear Linc,

Are you Filipino enough that you have ever turned your head without thinking when you’ve heard someone go “HOY”?

“Hoy,” to me, is the American “hey” and the Yiddish “oy” fused together. That’s what we Filipinos do. We bridge cultures.

There’s a game on right now but your home-plate collision from yesterday is still getting to me. On the one hand, you could call this a belated reaction. But I think the reaction already happened — it’s just that it has been sitting inside of me, unformed and even paralyzed, ever since I first saw that picture. All day today, the more I thought about it, the more something began to emerge that was probably the kind of horror that I should have expressed yesterday instead of just gasping and then moving on.

You could have ended up like Posey last year.

That thought was certainly in the back of my mind when I first saw that picture but today it got louder and louder. Now when I look at that picture I get really sad. I know that these are the risks of the game — in fact, today I was reading about Mark Ellis. You guys know what you’re getting yourselves into. This is the game.

Still, the collision only compounded your season so far. How does a humble fan like me react to such realities? Maybe by being more athletic himself or, at the very least, in shape. I don’t have plans to send these letters, Linc — that’s why they are called never-to-be-sents. And even if I did, the likelihood of you writing back rests only in the stars. I write these letters to collect my own thoughts, and because I am a fan and because you are, well, I guess you’re a little bit of a role model. We’ll never become lovers — this is the part where you snap your fingers really sarcastically and go, “Aw, shucks” or something — but that doesn’t mean you are any less inspirational. No matter how badly you do in the game, you got there in the first place because you’re a pro. You became a pro because you worked your ass off and you made yourself better, and when you were finished making yourself better, you made yourself even more.

I weigh too much, Linc. Spencer posted some pictures from her wedding, and even though I genuinely tried to look on the bright side — at how much fun we all had, and I even tried to tell myself that it’s not the weight on my body but it’s how I carry it, whatever that means — I knew that right then, as always, I was having serious body and self-esteem issues. But these issues are not merely of vanity — definitely, I could stand to be healthier. Mostly, though, it has to do with how, over the weekend, I happened to catch some college softball on ESPN. Those ladies are incredible, Linc! The way they pitch, the way they play, the way they hustle… that shit is amazing. They’ve got more heart than I sometimes see in baseball. And I realized that someone like you would most likely gravitate to some lucky girl from that kind of world.

My best sport has always been running. It doesn’t take a lot of skill, just endurance. I can’t catch worth shit, but I can move — it’s just that I haven’t done much of it lately. I haven’t so much as taken a lap. It’s been a long time coming, but today I dropped 100 smackers and signed up for Team In Training. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. I’ve made myself a commitment to emerge from this summer as a runner again and, hopefully, a semi-attractive runner. Team In Training will be fun. I’m also looking forward to meeting new people, making some new friends, maybe even finding someone real, someone who will laugh at these never-to-be-sents and even wonder if I could write, say and confess some of the same things to him. 

Oh, and I have to raise $1800 by October. I’ve got my little fundraising page all set up but there’s not much on there yet besides the canned filler text. The first $100 is mine because the registration fee goes toward the fundraising goal. October seems like a lot of time from now, but I’m terrified that September will come and I’ll barely have a drop in the bucket. If you do happen to catch this never-to-be-sent, spread the word. I’m racing for a cure to blood cancer. I’m racing so I can make new friends. I’m racing so that when I look at a picture of myself, my first thought isn’t “meatball.”

Joe