PORT ST. LUCIE, FL – We got to sit down with New York Met Reliever Duaner Sanchez for a solid 40 minutes yesterday afternoon and had a great chat ranging from his favorite moments in baseball to the Met with the worst English.
But it wasn’t easy. As we were approaching the *2nd greatest highway exit in the country – Exit 121 of Florida Interstate 95 – on our way to the **2nd greatest baseball park in the country – Tradition Field; Spring Training home of the NY Metropolitans – our battery challenged cell phone resounded with an urgent warning, “YOUR LIFE IS OVER” it cried over and over. It was Ceasar, our new cameraman (www.DanCoplan.com had just flown back to L.A.). His car broke down and he had no other way to traverse the 80 miles from where he was to St. Lucie. So, instead of relaxing and getting our game plan up to speed with an actual printed outline of a script, we had to pull back the emergency brake on our burnt orange Mitsubishi Eclipse (Bat Car spins in rental cars are always fun) and bang a U-ie south on 95 to go get Carlos. Mind you, we didn’t know Ceasar; we met briefly at a toga party and weren’t exactly convinced that his car broke down. In the meantime, we were frantically dialing 1-800-CAMERA-PERSON, looking for a replacement and cursing www.DanCoplan.com for having gone home as planned.
We got to Ceasar at 1PM. Duaner was going to be avail at 3PM. In the meantime, Juan the Film Guy answered one of our urgent group texts and agreed to help. So, now we two cameras but would we be on time?! Thankfully, speeding is fully acceptable on the Florida Highways when you are wearing a blue jacket and extremely bright orange pants the roads just open up. We rolled into St. Lucie at 3PM and raced to the Staples to print out our new script outline. Meanwhile, Duaner had since heard our plea to the Time Gods and graciously agreed to move our Frost/Nixon-esque exchange to 4PM. All was good but it was getting a tad chilly and the wind was picking up considerably. By the time we were started shooting it was 4:20PM and freezing. The wind kept knocking our scripted pages of the table. Yet, Mr. Duaner Sanchez sat with us while all our collective choppers were rattling in our heads and didn’t bat an eye at our Keystone-Kop-chasing-of-papers between takes. We did indeed lose one of our key pages to a particularly intrusive gust but what are you gonna do? We’ll still come up with something cool because while we were off our game, great guy Duaner Sanchez was lights out. In fact, our moms are saying novenas right now, ensuring his waltz into Heaven. Thank you, Duaner.
Please chime in below and check in with Sam/Cookie manana. NOTES: *Northern Blvd Exit is #1 exit **New Shea is #1 ballpark.
