Diamond notes (9)
Won 12-7 on Tuesday night. 3-4 with a walk and a double. Scored 3 runs. We play in Elkhart tomorrow night and in Frankenmuth Saturday and Sunday.
Won 12-7 on Tuesday night. 3-4 with a walk and a double. Scored 3 runs. We play in Elkhart tomorrow night and in Frankenmuth Saturday and Sunday.
"The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy and remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating. The knowledge of the good health of the garden relieves and frees and comforts the eater. The same goes for eating meat. The thought of the good pasture and of the calf contentedly grazing flavors the steak. Some, I know, will think of it as bloodthirsty or worse to eat a fellow creature you have known all its life. On the contrary, I think it means that you eat with understanding and with gratitude. A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one's accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes. The pleasure of eating, then, may be the best available standard of our health. And this pleasure, I think, is pretty fully available to the urban consumer who will make the necessary effort."
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HagzTRmUBIE&w=425&h=349]
…“Dr.” in front of the name of anybody but a medical doctor, veterinarian, or dentist.
The rest of us just don’t deserve to be called “doctor” and it’s laughably pompous for academics to insist the we be called such.
That is all.
Won 10-0 on Thursday night in Benton Harbor. 1-4 with my 6th homer of the season. Next game Tuesday night. Tournament in Frankenmuth–home of the most ridiculously overpriced hotels in the state of Michigan–next weekend. Luckily, I’ll be driving in from Port Huron and not staying in a hotel.
My approach to education would be like my approach to everything else. I’d change the standard. I would make the standard that of community health rather than the career of the student. You see, if you make the standard the health of the community, that would change everything. Once you begin to ask what would be the best thing for our community, what’s the best thing that we can do here for our community, you can’t rule out any kind of knowledge. You need to know everything you possibly can know. So, once you raise that standard of the health of the community, all the departmental walls fall down, because you can no longer feel that it’s safe not to know something. And then you begin to see that these supposedly discreet and separate disciplines, these “specializations,” aren’t separate at all, but are connected. And of course our mistakes, over and over again, show us what the connections are, or show us that connections exist.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8za1x–cN4&w=425&h=349]
Monday, July 25 @ 7:00 p.m.
Prenkert’s house
We will be discussing Mark Richard’s fantastic memoir, House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer’s Journey Home. Don’t miss this one!!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9gxrExNBQQ&w=425&h=349]
My “pick-up” team and I went 3-0 in pool play on Saturday, in what was most likely the hottest day on which I’ve played three games of softball. The heat index was 101 when we started our game at 11:00 a.m. I didn’t check it after that. Suffice it to say, it was brutally hot.
We lost a heartbreaker in the bottom of the 7th 4-3 in the first game on Sunday, ending our tournament. I played shortstop the whole weekend and went 8-13 (.453) with two triples and a couple walks. Not bad.
My team plays Wednesday and Thursday this week.
Tomorrow I play softball in Wabash, IN. I would like to explain why.
My regular team (Smalltown Fastpitch) is not playing in Wabash. Instead, I have been “picked up” by another team (Goshen Gators), who happen to be short some of their regular players for the weekend. This happens fairly regularly throughout the course of a season. As a matter of fact, this season my own team has picked up at least one player for each of the tournaments we have played in.
Here is another interesting thing about this particular tournament. The winning team takes home a cash prize. That’s not normal. Neither is the format of the tournament.
We play three games in “pool play” tomorrow (11, 3, & 5). Based on our performance in pool play we will be entered into a single elimination bracket on Sunday. The top two teams from each pool go into the “gold” bracket. The bottom two teams from each pool go into the “silver” bracket. By the end of the day Sunday there will be a silver champion ($300 cash prize) and a gold champion ($500 cash prize). It’s not much, but it’s a lot more than any other tournament I’ve ever played in. Not sure who they found to sponsor this, but kudos to the people in Wabash.
Hope we don’t lose all of our games.
p.s. Don’t you feel enlightened about the workings of men’s fastpitch softball now?
Such is the way of the world
You can never know
Just where to put all your faith
And how will it grow
Gonna rise up
Burning back holes in dark memories
Gonna rise up
Turning mistakes into gold
Such is the passage of time
Too fast to fold
And suddenly swallowed by signs
Low and behold
Gonna rise up
Find my direction magnetically
Gonna rise up
Throw down my ace in the hole
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Js2Ef5Ojg&w=560&h=349]
Turned on my computer today for the first time in a week. Here’s what you’ve missed.
I bet my ticket we’ll hear this one.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi52HjJbwVQ&w=560&h=349]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCY9OEmObig&w=560&h=349]
Moved to 12-9 on the season with our 8-5 win last night. I played centerfield and went 2-3 (.426) with a double.
Now let me mention one of the best ways to determine how well a fastpitch game is played: time. On Saturday night we lost a game 11-8 that lasted easily two and half hours. That is bad. Last night, our game took an hour and twenty minutes. That’s much more like it.
It’s not that I wish to hurry my recreation along. But sloppy play typically slows the game to a snail’s pace. Last night’s game had a couple of errors, but it didn’t have countless wild pitches and walks and pitching changes. It also had one very long homerun hit by our opponent’s left fielder–a hanging changeup got launched about 330 feet.
Notre Dame, October 2001
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgnVHxE171M&w=425&h=349]
So, next Sunday night I’ll be going to my 5th U2 concert. It will be Jeanie’s 4th. But I’m envious that she actually saw one of the Joshua Tree tour concerts. Anyhow, leading up to this, songs I’d love to see performed (again) in concert.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVR7s-25Bio&w=425&h=349]
Long story short: We finished second in the Rich Plangger Invitational this year.
After winning our game Friday night [see Diamond notes (4)], we won 5-2 on Saturday morning. I went 2-4 and scored a couple runs. That guaranteed us a spot in the elimination round on Sunday, but we still had one more game of pool play late Saturday night. We lost a marathon game in the sultry, mosquito infested Benton Harbor midnight, 11-8. I led off the game with a homerun (5), and then went 0-3 the rest of the way.
On Sunday morning in the elimination round we won a tight game 3-2 against Jack Daniels from Ohio. I hit the ball hard all game, but had nothing to show for it (0-4). We dropped the championship to Munger, MI, 11-8. I went 2-4–the two balls I hit hard were outs, the two I didn’t hit hard were hits. Go figure.
Numbers:
Tournament record = 3-2
My tournament hitting stats = 8-20, 3 HR
Season Record = 11-9
Season hitting stats = .415, 5 HR
Below is me about to connect. I believe that ended up being a line drive right to the second basemen.
Buddy Holly lives!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPs9WMWlbaU&w=425&h=349]
We won our first game of pool play last night 11-3 in five innings. We played one of our better games of the season. We’re 8-7 now, with pool play games today at 2 and 8, and single elimination tomorrow if we qualify. I went 3-4 (.456) with two homers (4). Made an error at shortstop that cost us a run. I’ll try to do better today.
Just because cigar box guitar has to be one of the coolest instruments ever.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsnXQ99RX7k&w=480&h=390]
We played (sort of) a nine inning game last night. The other team only had 9 players, so we provided them with the three extra fielders each inning while we batted. We lost a 14-7. I played shortstop (for both teams) and for one inning rightfield (for the other team). Went 4-6 (.424) with a homerun (2) and three RBI. We play our first game of the Plangger Invitational tourney at 9:00 p.m. on Friday night, and we complete pool play on Saturday with games at 2 and 8.
Trivia: Most fastpitch players wear metal spikes. I’ve never been comfortable in spikes. At 41, I’m much more in danger of catching a spike and blowing out a knee or turning an ankle than I am of slipping in my turf shoes, which are way more comfortable than any cleats or spikes I could buy (thanks Boombah! http://www.boombah.com/s.nl/sc.26/category.304486/.f )
In honor of Sydney, who figured out how to play this song on the piano app on mama’s phone ALL BY HERSELF this morning.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCjJyiqpAuU&w=560&h=349]