10 Things I Would Have Asked If I’d Gotten a Press Pass to Dodgers Camp on Thursday

As you read this, I am undoubtedly sleeping in after flying to Phoenix for Spring Training and the great FanGraphs Jamboree with my two beloved, wretched children, ages 6 years and 17 months respectively. I’m staying with my mother in Scottsdale, which is why the kids are along. I don’t have to pay any money for accommodations, but I will be paying in other, more subtle ways. Agreeing to bring her grandchildren with me across the country, through the air, in a tiny cylinder with small seats that are easily kicked at a time of day when both of them are typically asleep,  is part of that cost.

Nevertheless, I’m excited to be here. I’d be more excited if I was credentialed for this week. I had dreams of standing shoulder to mid-thigh with guys like Jonathan Broxton and Brandon McCarthy, and peppering them with questions both insightful and inane. But alas, somewhere along the way, a ball got dropped and I won’t be cornering Vin Scully and demanding to know how he stops time and apparates like a Harry Potter villain to startle Don Blasingame.

Sure, this is a loss to me, and I feel terrible about it. But I don’t feel bad for me; I feel bad for you. Because while I will still be tremendously important and generally terrific even without my credentials, not needing the external validation they would provide, you will never learn the answers to the answers to the burning questions that I was all set to ask.

Unless…unless I posted them here and intrepid reporters across this great land banded together to locate the interview subjects I won’t be able to get to, and demand answers to these important questions! Yes! Yes, this is what we will do. Here, my friends, is what I was planning to ask at Dodgers camp on Thursday. Feel free to share anything you discover in the comments below. Now, go forth my minions, and seek answers to the following:

1) (To Andre Ethier) You French or sumthin’?

2) (To Zack Greinke) Who would win in a pillowfight, you or TJ Simers?

3) (To Juan Uribe) Why are you?

4) (To Clayton Kershaw) You’re a lefty, and everybody says all lefties are junkballers. Show me your junk.

5) (To Don Mattingly) How come you never shaved your sideburns?

6) (To Nick Punto) Really? You think tearing the clothes off of athletic young men isn’t even a little gay?

7) (To Ned Colletti) How much of your ability to convince others you know what you’re doing do you attribute to your mustache?

8) (To Alyssa Milano, who appears without warning next to me in the locker room) How the hell did you get in here?

9) (To Josh Beckett) TJ Simers and Dan Shaughnessy strip down to the waist and engage in a spirited boxing match according to the Queensbury Rules. Who would win, how many rounds would it take, how much joy would America derive from the proceedings provided it was streamed live to the Inter Nets, and how much beer could you consume in the interim between the first punch and one of them collapsing dead to the delight of millions?

10) (To Vin Scully) Will you adopt me?