On an early afternoon in late February, I looked up into the vacant eyes of a demon Teddy Roosevelt. Looming above me, he raised an orange traffic cone in his right hand, and suddenly and instinctually, I understood the full power of the presidency. This was not hell, but it might as well have been purgatory—the cement concourse of an otherwise empty baseball stadium in winter.
The Washington Nationals were holding auditions for a new bullpen cart driver, and I was doing terribly.
The team posted an open call for the position and received hundreds of applications in just a few days.