baseball


24
Mar 12

Gorgeous day

It was the kind of day that should last forever and not change at all. Only you’d get bored of it. Sunny, breezy and 79? Again?

Maybe you’d get bored of it. Not me.

And if you don’t believe me, here:

Me

Look at that sky, check out those clouds, ignore the guy pretending he knows how to ride a bike.

Rode 30 miles today, my first time on the bike since Tuesday. I was just beginning to convince myself that I was figuring something out about my bike or my legs or … something … earlier in the week because everything felt great. And then I got sick, and then it rained and now here we are. I’m on some precipice where three days off feels like a long time for whatever I have that passes for conditioning. I thought that today might be feel like I’d taking a slide backward.

But it felt a lot better than I thought it might. My legs were fairly strong. On the particular route I took today, one third was familiar and the rest was new. It didn’t include the most daunting hills around, but I was moving up rollers and slight hills with ease. I’d look down and realize I hadn’t even changed from my smallest gear.

Not sure what to make of that.

Baseball: Auburn beat LSU 3-2 in another game where the outcome was in doubt until the last pitch.

Here are the highlights:

That’s eighth ranked LSU. Auburn has won five in a row and is tied for the division lead in the young season. And this is a young team, picked to finished closed to last, still learning to put it all together, still stranding almost 10 runners on base per game.

The future looks bright. Maybe all of the days will be as pleasant as this one.


23
Mar 12

Tigers host Tigers

It was one of those days that you thought it would rain all day. When it finally started raining, which seemed delayed somehow. But then it did rain and, even though it didn’t rain hard, you thought it might take over the entire day. Except for when it wasn’t raining, which was beautiful.

My meteorological skills may be a bit off.

But there was the rain, so it was an indoors morning, which suited me just fine. We had our weekly Barbecue House breakfast today — one of my favorite parts of the week and not even because of the hash browns — where we did not see any local celebrities for a change. We also did not see anyone pulled over nearby for a change.

We had a quiet breakfast, a biscuit for The Yankee and a sandwich for me. The food is all delicious and they know us by name and the place is busy, but quiet. You could probably get a splinter by rubbing your hand on the wall. The restaurant is the same age as I am, so I’m trying not to make the details of the joint autobiographical, but I wonder about the splinters.

It rained in the afternoon. I don’t ride in the rain if I don’t have too — one day I’ll change my mind about that — so I stayed on the computer.

Things cleared away late in the afternoon, just in time for baseball. Only as time for the game drew close there was an allegation of a lightning bolt. So they kept the field covered. The sky was beautiful, but the radar showed a blob, and this is a day that seemed like it could rain at any time. The fans were impatient for baseball:

fan

Here was sunset over Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum (click to embiggen):

BeardEavesMemorial

Finally they played removed the tarp:

And finally they played, the young Auburn squad trying to figure out where they should sit on the spectrum of SEC baseball this year, and the eighth ranked LSU team. It was a terrific game of back and forth momentum. It was tied at two after six innings. Auburn scored in the seventh. LSU answered in the eighth frame to tie things at three. In the bottom of the eighth Zach Alvord doubled. He moved to third on a sacrifice and then Ryan Tella brought his hot bat to the plate:

Tella

That swing gave Auburn a 4-3 lead. LSU would manufacture a double in the ninth. They put in a pinch runner. Auburn collected two outs. And Auburn baseball announcer Rod Bramblett takes it over from there (this video is helpfully queued to the last play of the game):

There’s a certain way you can look at the framing of that shot that might give you the inclination to say that umpire’s call was a bit of home cooking. LSU certainly seemed to think so, but they lost 4-3. It was a great game.


20
Mar 12

These pictures look perfectly composed to me

I think squirrels need Instagram treatments too:

squirrel

For the record: I do Instagram the old-fashioned way. I shoot through a window screen and lower the shutter speed on the camera to kill the exposure. I’m an old school member of pointless photographs.

I was about to step outside and take this picture in the last of the high evening’s dying light, but the cat snuck out behind me. She sits and watches squirrels and birds all day. Sometimes she gets agitated by this and meeps and peeps at them. We think this is cute. And then we read it is frustration.

I felt bad about that once, for about 25 minutes, and then I remembered how often she wakes me up in the middle of the night, just to show off how good of a “hunter” she is that she found and retrieved one of her toys. I stopped feeling bad about it after that.

Anyway, I was stepping outside, Allie sneaked out around me. You’d think with that much time staring at the wildlife she’d consider going out to play with them. “Pickup hoops, anyone?” Or at least chase them. But no. This cat just goes outside and rolls around in the dirt.

Our cat thinks she’s a dog.

Baseball night. Auburn, fresh off winning a road series against 12th ranked Mississippi, was hosting South Alabama for the Tuesday contest. Determined not to look ahead to this weekend’s homestand against 12th ranked LSU, the Tigers put John Luke Jacobs on the mound.

He pitched shutout baseball for eight innings, allowing only three hits and two walks. He struck out 11:

Ks

A five run fifth inning cracked it open for Auburn and the Tigers rolled to a 7-0 victory. (Jacobs, as the Tuesday starter, leads the team in strikeouts, and leads Auburn’s starters in hits, runs and home runs allowed, opponent batting average, ERA.)

By this point, unfortunately, I’ve noticed a suddenly less-than-good feeling for the evening. So this is abbreviated, but I’m going to go try and sleep off this general feeling of mild blah.


11
Mar 12

Catching up

The weekly effort to put a few more colorful photographs on this page, the excuse to go through stuff that hasn’t been seen on the site and add it here, the transparent attempt to have a Sunday post with little effort. It’s our regular installment of catching up!

birds

birds

birds

birds

Belmont’s Greg Brody had a hit and scored the tying run in the ninth inning:

Belmont

In the eighth inning of a 1-1 game Ryan Tella singled and advanced to third. Dan Glevenyak, on the pitch below, grounded into a double play. Tella was stuck at third. Auburn stranded eight runners on the day:

Auburn

Belmont scored two runs in the top of the ninth. Auburn couldn’t get on in the bottom of the frame. The Bruins won the Sunday game of the three-game set 3-1.

A baseball fan:

fan


10
Mar 12

Birds, baseball and bad navigation

birds

Sat inside and watched the birds. Sneaked outside to watch the birds. Finally shook off the tired, not-quite-my-usual-self feeling.

It was a beautiful day. A great day for baseball. Auburn hosted Belmont for the second game of a three-game series this afternoon. The Tigers scored in the bottom of the first inning, and again in the third and fourth innings. Belmont touched the plate twice in the fifth inning and rallied in the top of the ninth. Auburn got out of a jam, and won the game 3-2 on a crisp double play.

Auburn only stranded four runners on base, a season low. I looked this up: The Tigers are getting on base, but not getting all the way around. They’re leaving 9.93 runners on base per game on the short season, including several 14 or 15 LOB games.

birds

Things to read: Will “indecent proposals” soon be a crime in Kentucky? “Anti-harassment” bills reach cinematic heights:

A Kentucky legislator is proposing to greatly expand the meaning of unlawful harassment, to include sending anyone a “comment, request, suggestion, or proposal” that is “filthy” or “indecent.”

[…]

Sending someone a “filthy” message with the intent to “annoy” is impolite, to be sure. But “good manners” has never been the standard for constitutional protection. If Kentucky were to pass HB 129 in anything like its current form, a court would surely strike it down as unconstitutionally over-broad.

Not to be outdone, Alabama lawmakers are proposing to criminalize a broad range of conduct (for adults as well as for kids) under the umbrella of “cyberbullying.” The prohibition would include sending or posting material with the intent to “annoy” or “alarm” someone, if it causes “substantial embarrassment or humiliation” in professional or academic circles. Conviction would carry misdemeanor criminal sanctions.

The bill contains no protective language for editorial commentary, nor does it afford any greater latitude for criticism of the performance of public officials. If House Bill 400 [sponsored by Rep. Paul DeMarco (R – Homewood)]or its Senate counterpart, SB 356 [sponsored by Sen. Cam Ward (R – Alabaster) and Sen. Phil Williams (R – Gadsden)], were to become law as introduced, a political candidate whose “substantially embarrassing” personal behavior was truthfully exposed on a news blog could seek criminal charges against the author. (That is, until a court threw out the law as unconstitutional, as undoubtedly would happen if a political commentator was prosecuted for disclosing “embarrassing” facts.)

Also, the bill seems to be lacking some key definitions which should give one pause.

One-third of U.S. adults will own a tablet by 2016, says report:

Tablet fever will grip more than a third of all U.S. adults by 2016, according to Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps.

In a report released yesterday, Forrester upped its estimates for U.S. tablet ownership, now forecasting that 112.5 million adults, or 34 percent of the population, will own a tablet in another four years. If that prediction proves correct, it means the industry will sell almost 293 million tablets in the six years from 2010 to 2016.

The price point needs to come down, or a lot of those people will have vastly inferior tablets giving longing looks to people holding iPads.

How thick is your bubble?:

This quiz is inspired by American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray’s new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” which explores the unprecedented, class-based cultural gap in America. How culturally isolated are you? Answer these 20 questions to find out.

I happily answered enough questions to land right in the middle of everyone.

I question the methodology.

@TitanicRealTime:

That should be a great Twitter account, until mid-April.