Chase Headley: One on One and On Target!

After the 2008 season I had Chase Headley on my list to feature in 2009. He was a second round draft pick and had his second stint in the Majors, so one who fans would want to know more about.

I knew he was getting married in November so there would be that nice dimension to his story, too. His now wife Casey was great at gathering pictures and elements over the winter and early spring. But what would our activity be? They would be living downtown and have a dog. Check. Check. Hmmm. He’s an outdoorsy guy, turns out, but traveling to go hunting in the winter was not in the budget.

So, it came to be one day in Spring Training. My photographer Dan Roper and I went to Nick Hundley’s apartment to tape him playing the guitar, and shoot Will Venable doing his drawing. They were part of the trio-show with Josh Geer. While we were there, Chase said that for his activity, he’s shoot some arrows and show me how to do it. You mean as in bow hunting? Well, archery practice… close enough.

Back in San Diego, we scheduled the sit-down interview for June. Lucky me. As I was calling around to his family to get the inside scoop on him, his brother Nate said he was going to be in town for a few days. That worked out great as I didn’t have to twist his arm to be at the apartment that Friday to talk about his brother. That, plus the awesome view from their apartment and walking their dog Memphis just about had the video bases covered. But, what about that archery practice?

Turns out San Diego’s beautiful Balboa Park has an Archery Range. We got the okay to go there and met up on a mid-morning in July. We paid our $2 and Chase pulled out his beautiful bow case and put his bow together. He was only shooting paper – with ducks on them. And then later, paper with rabbits on them.

It takes a whole lot of strength, so I just watched. No lessons here.

There was one funny moment. Chase shot an arrow in to the paper/hay target. Then, he couldn’t get the arrow out of the hay! It was probably the trajectory of the arrow… or maybe the force by which it pounded the target… but after some pulling and tugging, it took a few of the crew with Chase to finally get it loose. He’s a big strong guy and was a little frustrated. But, we all laughed. Casey, his wife, was shooting pictures with her camera. So it was one big “shooting” day – but no animals were touched for the purposes of this show.

Listening… an added bonus for David Eckstein

A week or so after the One on One featuring David Eckstein debuted I saw David down at the field during batting practice.

He came up to me and thanked me for returning their pictures and giving them a copy of the show. He said he probably won’t watch it until later, because that’s “just how I am” during the season. And said that he really appreciated it, that his family loved it and he and Ashley have heard all kinds of positive things about the show.

In fact… he said when they returned from the road trip, he went down to sign autographs as usual. And while he was there, a few kids came up to him and gave him something. I’m paraphrasing what he said: “They told me, because you always sign for us, we wanted to give you something you like. And they gave me some Nintendo games… because they had seen it in the show that I like to play Nintendo. That was really, really cool.”

David was so touched. I asked if I could share the story and he said yes.

I was touched too. It made me feel good that he felt good and that those kids actually watched the show, paid attention to the details (the part about autographs, David’s favorite old Nintendo games) and then, they came up with an idea of giving back… and then actually followed through.

Good going guys. Keep it up.

An example of how television can have a positive impact. Stay tuned.