Slept in, late breakfast. Enjoyed the beautiful day, with the late afternoon spent entirely at the baseball park. There’s the hint of spring into things again now. The pear trees are blooming. The Japanese maples have exploded. We have roses. The mysterious flowering bush we can’t identify has tried twice to impress us with its yellows. The dogwoods will be next, and several of the trees have buds on them.
The days are getting longer, and there’s the overwhelming sense that you’ll make it to another spring. Love that feeling.
Auburn hosted Brown for game two of the weekend series. JUCO transfer Michael O’Neal commanded a complete game shutout as the Tigers beat the Bears 6-0.
Brown’s head coach is a character, and he’s been entertained by the people on the third base side of the field, but perhaps not as much as he’s amused us. I’ll write more about him tomorrow.
I saw this nice lady walking her dogs as we headed home. I snapped a shot just because the disparity of the dogs amused me. And then I got home and realized I caught her in mid-expression:
I like to think she’s saying “Dude. Not when I have a doggie bag in my hand.”
Later: The officially sanctioned baseball highlights:
A Michigan elementary school is defending its decision to confiscate a third-graders batch of homemade cupcakes because the birthday treats were decorated with plastic green Army soldiers.
Casey Fountain told Fox News that the principal of his son’s elementary school called the cupcakes “insensitive” — in light of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
“It disgusted me,” he said. “It’s vile they lump true American heroes with psychopathic killers.”
The principal chimes in and, as you might expect, does not acquit herself especially well of the situation.
According to the National Coalition against Censorship, about 100 students across the country have been suspended for making and posting their own version of the viral video on the Web. School districts have offered a variety of reasons for the suspensions, said NCAC Director Joan Bertin, with most saying that the videos, which feature suggestive dancing, are inappropriate. However, Bertin said, she believes that regardless of how the videos could be interpreted, decisions to suspend students and keep them out of class cross the line. The NCAC has compared the schools’ actions to the plot of the 1984 film “Footloose,” in which a town outlaws dancing and rock music.
“It seems a rather disproportionate response by educators to something that, at most, I would characterize as teenage hijinks,” Bertin said.
[…]
“We are very strongly in the camp of telling schools that this is protected speech. Even if it’s unpleasant, we do protect that kind of speech in this country and should, as much for students as adults,” she said.
Disproportionate response seems the right words to use there.
When I was a little tot my mother used to tell me about how dirty Birmingham was. It was an industrial center back then, the Pittsburgh of the South, right up until the 1970s. Bio-tech, medical service, UAB and banking changed much of the economic landscape. Between those shifts and more strict ecological rules it changed things in the air too.
The air, my mother said, used to be brown.
Never sure if I’ve ever seen a picture of that, until today. That was the summer of ’72, when there probably was no such thing as air quality reports and ozone alerts. Your emphysema will kick in just looking at it.
And so it was that I enjoyed a much more clear evening outdoors tonight. There’s a lot to be grateful for, if you like, and being breathless under blooming pear trees because your bicycle has your heart rate up is one of those things. Better than the heavy industrial alternative, at least. I got in 21 quick miles this evening, my first time on the bike in several weeks because of travel and sickness. That’s the way of it: build up a bit of form and a few miles, something else always comes along to distract me.
At the baseball game, Auburn led off with a triple, one of Jackson Burgreen’s two hits of the night. He’d also score later in the inning, before sending in a run in the second:
We moved from behind the plate to over third base, so we could enjoy the heckling. Brown had four errors in the seventh (they’d make another later) when I had what was roundly considered the line of the night. The Brown shortstop was standing on third, and he was just about the only guy in his entire infield that hadn’t erred. So I asked him “J.J., do you know what you can make with four Es?”
The professional hecklers in Section 111 made the sound, so I simply said “A Taylor Swift song.”
Turned around to see them bowing to me. It was a bit awkward.
Brown’s left fielder, Will Marcal, had a nice night. He gathered two hits and demonstrated a cannon in the field. I bet no one runs on him more than once:
Auburn won 9-4 and we caught the Brown head coach enjoying all of the playful little jokes the hecklers were sharing with his team. Guess we’ll work on him more tomorrow.
So it is cold. Overcast. It flurried all morning. The flurries were supposed to stay well north, but no, here they are in my yard.
We have baseball tickets. I’m still coughing a bit and fighting my sinuses, but I slept some last night and generally feeling a bit better. This is the beginning of feeling better, anyway. In a few more days I’ll be tip top.
Today, though, there is baseball. And snow flurries. Deep South in March, baseball and snow.
So I’m wearing thermals and a sweatshirt and a parka — I’m wearing my honest, actual parka — and we carry two blankets and hats and gloves into the stadium. I managed to stay warm for about seven innings. I imagine the only person that was really warm was Aubie:
Even still, he had to work to keep up his body heat. Here he’s showing us a new dance:
It flurries for the first four innings and the last two innings. Nothing sticks, but for a brief time it was really coming down. It was all very hysterical. And I couldn’t feel my feet after a while.
Auburn won 14-7. We got snowed on. The guys from Eastern Illinois, who no doubt booked this southeastern swing to avoid a few days of winter, were probably less than pleased about all of that.
We got home and were just starting to prepare ingredients for dinner when we got a text invitation to join our friends Adam and Jessa at a Mexican restaurant. We closed the joint down. We should do this every week.
I’m standing on the parking deck, trying to simultaneously suck in the sun and hide in the stairs. That defeated the wind, but put me back in the shade. And it was cold. Windy and cold. Gloves, hat and scarf cold.
And so we sat, sniffly, watching Auburn take easy, steady control over Maine, who were the most comfortable people in the weather. The locals were coming and going, and it all had to do with the sun, which was behind a giant cloud for far too long.
A lady asked me if I had a child on either team. Her husband struck up a conversation, not realizing that when he asked me about the War Eagles thing he’d get an inning long conversation and a chamber of commerce speech. He was from California, by way of Georgia.
Turns out they were part of a family there to watch their son/nephew/cousin who was hoping to get into his first collegiate game. And then, after chatting with them for most of the game, the stadium announcer called his name.
Rock Rucker was brought in to pinch hit in the eighth inning. He fell behind 0-2 and then had the patience to wait for the pitcher to work his way into a full count and took a walk. So now his family, the folks of this first round caliber talent were very excited to see their guy standing on first base.
The next batter quickly doubled down the left field line. By the time the ball was getting out to the wall, 315 feet from the plate, Rucker was already touching second. He never slowed down and so we all celebrated his first score together:
It can be easy to lose the proper perspective of collegiate sports, I think, until you meet the players’ families. They appreciate the game at a different, better, level.
This was the first game of a doubleheader, which Auburn won 12-3. I walked two blocks away to the aquatics center where The Yankee was in the Short-Course Yards Invitational
Here she is, in the orange Auburn cap, leaving the blocks in her first race:
Mind you, she started out saying “I don’t know if I should sign up for any events.”
And I would say Go ahead, do one, have a good time, meet more people.
Then she came home one day and said “I signed up for three races.”
Today was her first race:
She had a good swim today, finishing second in the 200 freestyle.
Today she said “I might race as part of a relay, too.” So we’ll be back at the pool tomorrow afternoon.
After spending the rest of the evening at a very cold second baseball game. The sun had gone down by then, but Auburn won 4-3.
Then Chinese takeout, and resting up for tomorrow’s swim.
Football wound down. We tolerated basketball for two weeks. Now we have the ping of ball off bat. Today was the opening day of the college baseball season.
Auburn opens their season with a four game homestand against Maine. Why Maine? Because the coach from Maine would rather be in the South in February. And he was handsomely rewarded today. Just a gorgeous evening for the game, even if we forgot the peanuts:
A good game too. There are so many new players even veteran fans were diving for rosters. Even still, there were plenty of things to remind us all of seasons past in this close game. We had random bunts. There was an error at shortstop. We had fun with the good-natured heckling of the opposing left fielder.
And there we were, in the bottom of the 9th, in a tie game. Someone started the heckling chant version of the slow clap for the freshman left fielder. (Who had put together a nice game for himself.) To lead off the inning was Auburn’s new third baseman, Damek Tomscha, a junior college transfer brought in to add some defense at the corner. He took a hanging fastball and put it somewhere the pitcher hadn’t anticipated:
Earlier another one of the new players saved a home run:
And the bullpen looked sharp, too. Baseball season is here.
Oh, look, one of those sunset photos made it on the nice new AUSunset Tumblr. Follow her.
Tomorrow: Intolerably colder, but more baseball and one other important sport.
