Male Magnet teachers bond over baseball

The male Magnet teachers took a brief trip to Florida on Friday, March 4, supposedly for "spring training." They weren't lying – well, not exactly. The teachers all took a couple of days out of their rigorous class schedules to spend some precious time bonding over the baseball spring training games.

Divide and conquer

Old habits die hard, organization ranking among them. The teachers took it upon themselves to assign nicknames. "[Mark] Curran was 'Transportation,' [Dennis] Heidler was 'Communication,' [John] Templin was 'History,' [Ralph] Bunday was 'Geezer' and I was 'Entertainment,'" Magnet science teacher Robert Donaldson says. "That's how we would answer our phones. Every time Templin picked up, he'd answer 'I'm History.'"

Resident Research and Experimentation teacher Mark Curran was the most enthusiastic, according to Magnet physics teacher Ralph Bunday. "Curran's like a 'let's do stuff!' kind of guy," Bunday explains. "He made us bags of goodies to take with us, so we're going in [to the baseball games] like Girl Scouts, you know, with our little party bags."

The bags consisted of baseball New Year's Eve-type noisemakers, baseball chocolates and newspaper clips with the latest news on the teachers' teams, says Donaldson. "We even had 'manly' competitions, such as seeing who could throw the farthest at the pitching cage or hit the hardest at the batting cage."

Take me out to the ball game

The teachers watched two baseball games: a Mets-Cardinals game on Friday and a Nationals-Orioles game on Sunday. "We got to see [Sammy] Sosa thrown out," Bunday says. "He had a bad attitude, went into the outfield still complaining, and the outfield umpire threw him out of the game. Nobody gets kicked out of spring training!"

They even shared stadium space with a local celebrity at the Orioles' game, says Magnet math teacher Eric Walstein. "We were at the game where the D.C. mayor was; we didn't see him, but he was there."

Sunshine and beaches

Baseball games weren't the only reason for the trip, though. "We got to go to Florida, where there's sunshine and it's green," Bunday says. "You can go wear khakis and shorts. There are a lot of people eating, a lot of people watching. It's a blast!"

"Saturday, there wasn't a cloud in the sky," Walstein says. "Eighty degrees – just perfect! What a day."

All the teachers with the exception of Walstein, who split time between the baseball games and visiting his grandkids, took a trip down to South Beach for a day. "We looked like a gaggle of ducks going along next to the water," admits Bunday. "All these old men…"

Restaurants, bars and late-night phone calls

In addition to the beach, the Magnet teachers also visited a "seedy" restaurant, Bunday claims. "We went to this really great Greek restaurant where they managed a rowdy crowd with napkins," he says. "The women got up and danced on tables, and people got up and danced with them. Then the waiters walked by throwing up napkins, yelling 'Opa!' It looked like it was snowing – the whole floor was covered in napkins!"

The teachers weren't above brief juvenile moments, either. "I was sort of looked at askance when I got into a conversation with a woman at the airport," Walstein admits. "She was visiting her parents in London, I was going to Florida, and we were talking about BBC America. All the guys were like, 'Ooh, he's talking to a woman.'"

For all their bravado, however, the teachers had their coy moments. According to Walstein, Curran, a Buffalo native, met a Buffalo math teacher at a bar and started talking to her. "There were eight of [her friends] and eight of us and we didn't even go to talk to them, that's how scandalous we were," he scoffs. The teachers also visited the bar from the "It's 5 o'clock somewhere" music video.

Bunday insists that it was exhaustion that resulted in Curran's calling up Research Project teacher Glenda Torrence, still in Maryland, at 3:00 in the morning. "The first thing she said was, 'Is everything all right? Is Bunday dead??'" Bunday says, chuckling. "She took it pretty well."

Riding the wind

The teachers' vehicles of choice were convertibles with the top kept down. "It was always windy because we had the convertibles," Curran explains, "so there were two people in the front of the car, and the person in the back had no idea what they were talking about."

The convertibles were indeed a memorable experience for Bunday. "The guys put the short people in the back for fun, then drove really fast," he says. "I've learned to sit sideways to avoid any issues, but when Heidler went from 60-something to 80-something, I started going deaf in the back seat."

The music equipment in the cars required that the two convertibles stay within 30 feet of each other. Being Magnet teachers, the men had set up a transmitter that broadcast music from one car to the other. "Somebody made a CD of songs, and as long as you were within 30 feet of the other car, everyone could hear them," Bunday explains. "We were raising our arms in the air in time to the music with all these baseball songs on, and we were going at 60 miles per hour trying to stay close together – it's pretty adolescent, don't you think?"

The trip isn't a long-standing tradition, unlike the Magnet department's annual trips down to Aruba. The male-bonding trip originated last year, and "looks like it'll probably continue," says Walstein.

Indeed, the trip is a welcome excuse for the teachers to get together and have some fun. "We thought [the trip] would be kind of hokey, but it gave a nice sense of togetherness," Bunday says.