You don't have to live in a small town to get your name in the paper.

Growing up in a small town, you get used to the idea that everything makes the local paper. From Suzy's piano recital to Johnny's first buck, anything more than the usual breathing in and out can warrant a picture and your name in the daily news. Just an added bonus to small town life, your 15 minutes of fame gets stretched a little even if it's to a reduced audience. And all those newspaper clippings sure help fill out that Senior scrapbook.

When I left the West Texas hamlet of Snyder, I figured my days in the paper were over as well. In Lubbock, a college student's best chance of making the A-J is by playing a collegiate sport and in Dallas, well, you'd have to accomplish something great or do something really foolish to grace the pages of that periodical.

Therefore, I was quite surprised a few days ago when my dad asked me if I'd seen my quote in the paper. "Which paper?" I asked. "The paper - the Dallas Morning News." Now, I will admit I was not unaware to what he was referring; while we were avoiding the wind gusts during the Ranger's Opening Game (see post below), Geneva and I were approached by a reporter who asked us a few questions about the changes to the stadium. But this reporter hardly seemed professional - he just said he worked for the paper (for all I knew the Rangers have their own publication) and was clearly uncomfortable approaching people to interview. So, I didn't give it another thought until Dad mentioned it. Even then, my assumption was that it would show up somewhere on the Rangers blog. But no, it was a real article and Dad had the evidence - "hard copies" of both the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star Telegram. Turns out they share sports reporters, so the article is the same in both.

If you want to view my 5 seconds of Dallas fame, here's the link to the article on the DMN website. Though the reporter asked us about all of the changes, my quote is in reference to the Left Field Scoreboard. Rangers fans will know this is where the scores of other MLB games were manually kept - one of my favorite of The Ballpark's nostalgic aspects. But this season it has been replaced by a digital scoreboard with 4 games at a time and displays much more information than a person watching a live game needs. Sure wished they'd asked me before they made the change. Nonetheless, my name is in print again. Hold a page in the scrapbook, I've got another clipping.