Just like the first time we were expecting a baby, suggestions for potential names have been flooding my inbox since I broke the news. Debbie and I don’t have any particular names in mind, so we appreciate the help. The last time we just settled on Carter so we wouldn’t have to write his name on the tags of all his shirts.

Coincidentally, the Social Security Administration also just released their list of the most popular names from 2007, so between that and your fine suggestions, we have plenty of ideas. But to save you some time, I’d again like to provide a list of names culled from those two sources that we will NOT be naming our baby girl.

In no particular order:

• Holly
• Kerry
• Certainly, Absolutely, Probably, or any other adverb (sound out the full name)
• Britney
• Suri
• Hannah
• Montana
• Jayden, Jadyn, Jaden, Jaiden, or Jaidyn
• Trinity
• Serenity
• Harmony
• Miracle
• Hillary

Debbie and I found out today that we’re having a girl. Perhaps more importantly, we also found out that she has all the required organs, limbs, and appendages in the proper proportions. Both of these revelations are good things because they satisfy my sense of symmetry and order. Now I’ll have collected the whole set: one boy, one girl, and, well, who wants a kid with two livers and four kidneys?

Debbie is excited for the arrival of another female to counter the penis-dominated household. I contend that the dog still puts us over the top, even though he no longer has the trailer to go with the hitch, so to speak. For his part, Carter has updated his choice of baby names to “Coopy” and “Doo-Doo.”

In my quest to get my name in every publication with “Chicago” in its name, I’ve crossed another off my list. This week I have an interview with children’s musician Thaddeus Rex in TimeOut Chicago. For a guy who wears safety-orange polos and sings about Martian televisions, he’s surprisingly grounded, and was fun to interview.

If you’re into weird kids music about books and dinosaurs, he’s hosting a CD release show and two songwriting workshops this Saturday at Gorton Community Center in Lake Forest. You’ll see me there in the front row with my lighter.

Recently, I bought a fancy new digital SLR camera, and have been considering eBaying my clunky DV camcorder in favor of a Flip, so as to document my son’s life a little better. If I’m not taking good shots and getting some quality footage, I’ll forget how he was as a little boy forever, right?

Last night he did something that poked all kinds of holes in this reasoning, because while I didn’t capture it on film, I’ll never forget it. He and I had gone to the grocery store together, and we bought Debbie a box of those little powdered white donuts as a surprise. He wanted to tear into them right in the store, but I kept telling him, “You can have some for breakfast tomorrow.” This seemed to placate him.

When we got home, I put away most of the food, and left the donuts on the kitchen counter. I told him, “When Mommy comes home, bring these to her and say, ‘Surprise!’” He did and it was cute, but that wasn’t the Kodak moment. As Debbie started telling me about her day, Carter pulled the box of donuts down on the floor, opened it from the wrong end, and started eating one. Debbie saw what he was doing and gasped, “Carter! No!” He looked up and burst into tears, his mouth covered with powdered sugar. “Daddy said I could eat one,” he sobbed, as the snot running down his lip mixed with the sugar into something like school paste.

We had to take it away, and he knew immediately what he had done wrong, but I had to duck my head behind the refrigerator door so he wouldn’t see me laughing. I know it’s trite to say that the look on his face was priceless, but no amount of pictures or film could have done justice to the poetry of that whole scene. Every time I think of his anguished, guilt-stricken little face, streaming with tears and covered with crusty donut sugar, I smile. I’m glad I didn’t have a camera in the way to ruin it.

Against my better judgment, I gave more of my money to Comcast this week, ponying up for the MLB Extra Innings package so I could finally watch the Cardinals games here in Chicago. A man can subsist only so long watching his team’s archrivals and their tattooed, mulleted stepchildren from the South Side.

Growing up in Poseyville, I never saw many Cardinals games on TV either. I actually got hooked on the Redbirds by Jack Buck on the radio. But since I’ve moved away, my parents now get all the games, and I’ve been insanely jealous. So jealous, in fact, that it took me just two games this year to turn into my dad: tonight, I fell asleep watching the end of their 8-3 win over the Rockies. Now I can just sit back and wait for the chronic heartburn, flatulence, and bad back to kick in.

I know I’ve been talking about this for two years, but Anatomy of Baseball, featuring my essay “First Base of Last Resort,” is finally on sale. With contributions by writers more famous than me, including Roger Angell, Frank Deford, and George Plimpton, the book is a collection of essays that reflect on the unique aspects of the game, and the role it plays in our national history and collective imagination.

My piece is about the tradition of moving aging, gimpy-kneed superstars from more “challenging” positions to first base, the only position I ever played. In the process, I compare myself favorably to Bill Buckner, Nomar Garciaparra, and Mark McGwire while chronicling the sad demise of my own career, from the sweet-swinging promise of Little League to a rotator cuff injury on the abandoned fields of Chicago State while playing in a weekend beer league.

I’m really excited about it, and the whole book should be a good read, but if you don’t believe me, here’s what other people are saying about it:

• “When your team is slumping, when the scandalous headlines have got you down, or when winter seems like it will never end, Anatomy of Baseball will remind you why you fell in love with the game. This is one of the finest baseball anthologies of all time.”—Jonathan Eig, author of Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season and Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig
• “An exceptional collection—a lively, rewarding read.”—Robert W. Creamer, former Sports Illustrated writer and editor and author of Babe: The Legend Comes to Life
• “These charming essays on baseball themes range from topics like first gloves—mine was a Rawlings Marty Marion model—to the tragic story of the Billy Southworths, father and son, to being relegated to right field or having troubles playing first base. These are tasty morsels.”—Fay Vincent, former baseball commissioner
• “Matt Wood is the finest writer of his generation. If you don’t buy Anatomy of Baseball to read his essay, you’ll not only be letting him down, you’ll be letting down the entire nation.”–Barack Obama, United States Senator (D-IL) and presidential candidate

Okay, so I made that last one up, but I’m sure Senator Obama feels the same way.

If you can think of a more depressing way to announce that we’re having another baby, then you’re one up on me. Despite what you read below, however, Debbie and I are both equally excited. These essays are my therapy.

The baby is due at the end of September. We don’t know what we’re having yet, but boy or girl, Carter has decided that it shall be named “Poopy.”

“There’s no heartbeat. The baby died,” my wife, Debbie, said on the phone, sobbing. This is how I found out about her first miscarriage. I hadn’t gone to the doctor’s appointment with her that time. It was her second pregnancy. She had sailed through the first one, and our son, Carter, then two-years-old, was happy and healthy. I didn’t need to go to every OB appointment this time. It was old hat, something only nervous, first-time dads do. I stood there in my kitchen, helpless. Now, an ultrasound technician, a stranger, was telling my wife she’d had a miscarriage, and all I could do for her is repeat, “I’m so sorry” into the phone.

(more…)

Two new articles I wrote for the IPC Association Connecting Electronics Industries are up on their website this month. Thrill to the printed circuit board industry’s attempts to develop a market in Vietnam! Marvel at IPC’s efforts to create a power conversion standard!

Made it back from Mississippi last night wishing I could have brought the southern weather with me. When I left there, it was sunny and 77 degrees. When I got back to Chicago, it was wet, cold, dreary, and dirty. Still.

The trip was just what I needed to set my mind straight about a number of things, but now I have to conquer that nauseous feeling I get thinking about all the things I want to do now. That’s always been the trick, setting the bar high enough to push yourself, but not so high that you’ll clunk your head and fail every time you try. I tend to forget that the rules allow ratcheting the bar up a few inches every time you succeed. You don’t have to go straight from amateur to world class in one jump.

Now that I’ve exhausted that lame track and field metaphor, some housekeeping. I’m going to be making some cosmetic changes around here, so please excuse any stray bits while I figure out how to do what I have in mind. Fear not, it doesn’t mean I’m going to stop writing here (again), but it may ultimately mean writing less often for greater effect. The general plan is that I want to find a setup where I can feature the best of what I’m doing here and elsewhere. I’m sure that means nothing to 99% of you, but sometimes an obsessive like me has to just give in and re-sort the sock drawer.

On my way to Mississippi for the Mid-South creative nonfiction conference. I’ll be back Monday with tales of manuscripts passed, suede-patched elbows rubbed, and Manning statues spotted.