Warning Track Puppy

Good girl

Welcome to Warning Track Power, an independent newsletter of baseball stories and analysis grounded in front office and scouting experiences and the personalities encountered along the way.

We’re entering the sweet spot of the season: the halfway point, when optimism yields to reality, when what a team is going to be is most likely what that team has been so far. Bill Parcells made his feelings very clear when he said, “You are what your record says you are.” NFL or MLB, it’s dangerous to argue otherwise.

There are a lot of topics I plan to write about in the next month: the Beatles and the Mets (36-45), the Padres (37-44), the Draft, the outfield dimensions at Camden Yards, a recently released book by a former colleague, Shohei Ohtani (MVP), and maybe even a lawsuit (not against me).

But we got a dog on Tuesday — that good girl already watched her first perfect game! — and like Mike Tyson once almost said, “Everybody has a plan until they get licked in the face.”

I am not a dog person. I also don’t like ketchup, and I’d rather not be on a diving board. Force me to choose one, though, and I will walk through that doggie door every time.

My wife loves dogs. My daughter apparently does, too.

My son — ah, my boy — he talks a good game, and he’s come a long way in a couple days in the role of Boy With A Dog, but I wouldn’t call his enthusiasm boundless.

None of that really matters anymore because the Warning Track Puppy, Vivian Rose Isaac, is a member of the family now. On her first full day in the household, the four-month-old pup had me blotting the rug in multiple locations and deftly scooping off the floor like a Gold Glove first baseman.

On Wednesday morning, while making breakfast for the kids, I was also mixing a cocktail of white vinegar, baking soda, and dish soap. I almost put two dashes of bitters and a twist of lemon in it out of force of habit. Yet somehow, in that moment, life made sense.

You see, long ago, my sister and I would circle listings for dogs in the Classified section. We’d arrive home after school, I’d remove The Evening Sun from its protective plastic cover, and we would scour the pages for boxers. I can’t even remember why that was our breed of choice; maybe because it was the only dog I was confident that I could identify correctly.

Later in the night, we’d perform a poorly rehearsed appeal of empty promises to our parents. It covered the predictable talking points about walking it, feeding it, cleaning up after it.

Now, decades later, looking at a bowl of freshly mixed all-natural cleaning solution and wishing it was a pot of freshly brewed coffee, I better understood my dog-absent childhood. I still think it was the right choice. My sister and I didn’t really want a dog, and my parents knew it.

But my wife and kids did want one, and I wouldn’t mind a friend who might watch the final out of the final game most every night with me.

Upon learning of our family’s newest member, one friend remarked that I never struck him as a dog person. Glad it took 40-plus years of friendship for him to piece that one together! Hey folks, he wasn’t the Best Man at my wedding for nothing.

He’s right, though. He knows I’d much rather talk about the Crime Dog and Mad Dog than tussle with an actual dog.

Having a dog would be life-changing for my family, he assured me, in a “good and chaotic way.”

Still, while bagging up the second deposit of my first full day of dog ownership, I started to wonder if this is sometimes how Ohtani feels: Do I have to do everything around here?

By the end of the day, I knew the answer to that question. No. Not even close. My daughter’s heart is so full with this puppy in her life. My son is fiercely protective of an animal he’s still not entirely sure about, but he considers her family and is assuming this unexpected role of big brother. My wife has successfully passed along her love of dogs to the rest of us, gained a new office mate, and unconditionally loves another thing that will never do a great job of listening to her.

The Warning Track Pup has arrived just in time for the dog days of summer.

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