Today might have been the nicest day of the summer so far with temperatures in the mid 70s and the humidity a ridiculously low 50%. So, to mark the occasion, David, Kelly and I took a bike ride down by the river. Unfortunately, David came up lame with a ever-worsening flat. But, in the spirit of adventure, he plugged onward. Eventually, it was losing too much air and David found a good samaritan at the Bike Depot with a pump, and he got a boost. We made it just a little way down the RiverWalk before having to turn back. We got back into the Highlands shortly before David’s tire went completely flat.
To honor to the day, I took some photos. You can check them out in the Bike Ride gallery.
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Charlie, Geoff and I did a little geocaching today at lunch with much better results than yesterday.
We hit 3 for 3 today. First up was Turn Where ? Was: Sams Club — the first in a Louisville-themed collection of caches where you are guided by the age-old method of “Do you remember where (some long-gone landmark USED to be) was?”. For example, the old White Castle on Bardstown Road, Shillito’s, The Sams Club… etc. The second was Camo 826 in the heart of the industrial park. The last was Charley the Cat, next to J-Town’s Little League park, Skyview. Down by the train track where the cache was, I think we may have interrupted a pair of locals in some sort of naughty business as when we approached they high-tailed it out of there blanket in hand. Charlie took some very nice photos indeed, and you can check them out in my geocaching gallery
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Charlie and I hit some geocaches today during our lunch break! Turns out there are quite a few within walking distance from our workplace, and two of them were right across the street on Papa John’s beautiful coroporate campus. We didn’t find the first (titled “Better Pizza 2”), but we did find the second (titled “Papa’s Paradise”). A nice little jaunt on a not-so-hot day.
Geocaching is a pseudo-sport where people hide little treasures called “caches”, record their longitude and latitude with the help of GPS receiver, and then using the Geocaching website, they list their new cache for all to see. Prospective geocachers go to the site, search for local caches, get the longitude and latitude and then commence to searching. Some caches are tiny film canisters (like the ones we found today) some are coffee cans, some are for swapping old ties. Write your name in the log and move on!
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A couple of days ago, Major League Baseball unveiled a plan to use the first, second and third bases in 15 major-league ballparks as billboards for the new Spider-Man 2 film, due out in June. After a collective “what in the hell are you thinking?” from most Americans — they have decided to shelve that plan.
Advertising in ballparks is nothing new — it is a tradition so old that it almost seems part of the game. However, there are two aspects of the game that have never been touched, and in my mind, should never be touched — those being the uniform and the field. To do so would be to break the sanctity of the sport itself.
Major League Baseball has rules about pitchers not having “distracting” parts of their uniform (like a bright wristband, for example).
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Birthday Gallery is up! Pics of Kelly’s cake for me (tasty!) and pics of Kelly, mum, brother Nick and I at the Bats game!
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Apparently, Dusty Baker, the manager for the Chicago Cubs baseball team, made a comment about race and heat and is, um, catching heat for it. Now, I don’t know about you, but his comments — or at least the gist of the idea — make sense to me. People brought up in warmer climates are going to be used to higher temperatures. The reason white people are white is because over many, many generations, they lived in the colder areas of the earth where the sun was not as direct, hence not needing the melanin in their skin. Blacks and latinos lived closer to the equator in hotter areas of the world. Luckily, ol’ Dusty is sticking to his guns and not apologizing.
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Yeah, that title isn’t dirty, is it? well, i happened to be watching a highlight from the Red Sox last night featuring Tim Wakefield, and I got to thinking: I should research Wakefield’s primary pitch, the knuckleball.
Google finds a trove of information, but the first link is the best — Knuckleball H.Q.. A bunch of info on throwing, hitting, and knuckleball lore. My personal fave: “You need the fingers of a safecracker and the mind of a Zen Bhuddist to throw it.” – Jim Bouton, Ball Four, and this anecdote — “Floyd Robinson actually swung at one that went BEHIND him…”
So, yeah, knuckleballers are an interesting lot. No one has become extremely successful with a knuckleball, but they certainly hold an interesting place in the baseball world. Many of them have had extremely long careers — Charlie Hough, Wilhelm Hoyt, and Phil Niekro all had 20 year-plus careers. However, along with the longevity that the knuckleball affords — there is the problem that the pitch is hard as hell to catch. A list of passed ball records (note the run-causing, game-winning passed ball list) shows that many of the catchers and lost games were from famous knuckleballers. As Bob Uecker explains, the best way to catch it is “wait’ll it stops rolling, then go pick it up.”
Finally, what happens when you put Boston’s Tim Wakefield up against Toronto’s Frank Castillo? (Keeping in mind that Toronto is an American League team, and they have the Designated Hitter rule, and Castillo is a pitcher with a .110 lifetime batting average) Here’s the punchline in video format.
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Well, The White Viking, Jackson, Kelly and myself went out to the ballgame last thursday to see the Louisville Bats vs. the Richmond Braves (that link is to the gallery, so click it). The White Viking (that being Hunter, by the way) pointed out that the the Louisville Extreme Park “RULES” sign was funny in itself.
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