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This day had doughnuts

Grading, reading, writing. Preparing for a class.

We held the last critique meeting of the school year for the newspaper. The newsroom closes down for the summer. Some people graduate, others take a deep breath. I thanked them for their hard work. I bragged on them, despite the huge error in the headline of the lead story.

Class was held. Things were discussed. Everyone’s mind is outside because the beautiful spring weather has shown up and it all feels very real and, finally, incontrovertibly here.

The newsroom folks gave me two doughnuts. That’s how you end a Wednesday:

Made it home in time to see the last half of the baseball game. Auburn hosted Samford. Everyone wanted to know who I would cheer for. Samford pays me so …

Auburn won 9-3, in yet another comeback. Both teams are in their respective conference post-season hunts. The two teams have almost identical conference records. Samford hits for power, Auburn has lately been looking for any hits that drive in runs. They’ve spent their conference schedule getting beaten up by the baseball teams in the country. Auburn has won both of the two mid-week games this season.

The last time Samford beat Auburn was March of last year, at Samford, and it was dramatic:

Here’s a mystery: After tonight’s game The Yankee, Adam and I caught dinner at Mellow Mushroom. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed this on the ground next to the door. I’ve boosted the contrast so we can see it a bit more clearly:

It says “Heard & Swope 1905.” A quick search of the genealogy sites tells me there was a Sylvester McDaniel Swope (1852-1923). He was a preacher in Talladega, which is about 90 minutes away today. It was a little different in his day. But Sylvester had a son in 1877, Arthur, who married Addie Lee Heard. Arthur is buried here in Auburn, so maybe these are the right people. (There were 31,000 people in the county and about 1,600 in the town at the time. How many different Heards and Swopes could there have been?)

The first gas pump was four years away and the year before there a total of 37 party line phones in town. Those tidbits, and this picture, come from Logue and Simms’ (1981) incomparable pictorial history.

That map is from 1903, when College Street was still Main. See that empty spot at lot 34? I think that’s where this Heard & Swope marker would go in in 1905. You can count the front doors today and it makes sense, for the most part. But I’m not sure what Heard and Swope were building. Yet.

Auburn / baseball / photo / video / weekend — Comments Off
5
May 13

Catching up

The weekly post with extra pictures that would otherwise just sit on my phone or in my camera and never be seen because there was no logical place for them, except for Catching Up.

The seniors give us all awards at the end of the year. This year’s seniors acknowledged my Twitter account. I try to share helpful material with them there.

For the first time in years I looked at the dates on coins. These are the ones sitting on my desk. All week I’ve been checking out dates, since taking this picture. I’ve learned it has become difficult to find a random coin that is as old as I am. Birthdays and years don’t make me feel old. Little things like that have a way of getting to you, though.

I don’t remember why I took this picture, which is a rare thing for me to say. But I did, and here it is. I was on my bike one evening, I think. I seldom forget why I took a picture. I regret taking them even less.

Our friend and baseball smart guy Kevin Ives is holding up the rebel black bear that Dr. Magical Balloons made. We were his warmup act — he just volunteered us — and this took him about 45 seconds. He’s good. Book him:

So there was John Pawlowski, an otherwise quiet, even-tempered, nice guy, watching his team struggle in this very inert fashion today. The weather was getting to everyone. And just as the sun came out Pawlowski saw something he could get animated about. So he went out to argue a strike call against one of his batters.

Only you don’t argue balls and strikes. So when Pawlowski, the likable man did it, the umpire heard him out and walked up the first base line. Pawlowski stayed by the batter’s box, like he was getting ready to dig in. He said a few more things. The fans were egging it on. And the ump came back down the line and they argued a bit more. And then the ump tossed the manager, which was his plan and what the ump was trying to avoid. This ejection, his first of the season, fired up the team. You can see the video below:

There was a C-130 flyover. He was very low. A C-130 did some historic and record-breaking landings on the USS Forrestal in the 1960s. And yet this is still strange to see knowing the only airport close by is a small municipal airport that has two runways which are … both … long enough for the Hercules. OK, never mind. Still cool to see:

The Mother’s Day gift you’ll want to leave on the shelf:

Great game at the ballpark today. This game had it all: pickoff moves, base stealers thrown out by a mile, moonshots, two home runs denied, two comebacks, ejections, arguing from both sides, sunshine and, naturally, an over-the-shoulder catch by the closer to end the game. It was a gritty performance by Auburn to take the series and the best game I’ve seen all year:

At the end of the weekend Auburn is now 11th in the SEC. The top 12 teams advance to the conference tournament in Hoover. It will come down to the last two weekend series again for the Tigers.

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4
May 13

We haven’t bested 72 in a week

OK, I’ll complain about the weather this much: “Tomorrow morning temperatures will drop into the 38-42 degree range.”

Checking my elaborately Photoshopped gag gift calendar … yes, I see that this is May.

In Albany, NY, where Maine is playing baseball today, it is sunny and 75. We haven’t seen 75 in a week. It is 57 right now. The high temperatures for Auburn on this day in this century: 80, 78, 82, 69, 71, 84, 82, 79, 77, 84, 70, 84 and 60.

I’ve seen snow in the Deep South in April. But I’m pretty sure I’ve never huddled under a blanket in May. This is a strange season.

Also, it is rainy.

The baseball game was delayed from the afternoon until the evening. So that meant even cooler still. Which wouldn’t have been so bad itself, but for the continual drizzle and threat of rain. And, also, it is May.

By the end of the night you could see your breath in the air.

But it was a quality baseball game:

The coach called it magical dust in one interview and said in another “I don’t know what works and what doesn’t work – just try to put guys in different spots.”

Whatever gets you into postseason play.

Today the high was 61. Tomorrow will be about the same, overcast, unseasonably cool and curiously devoid of any hints of spring. Mostly I just miss my friend, the sun.

adventures / Auburn / baseball / Friday / memories / video — 1 Comment
3
May 13

Confirming the Not Good At That list

I did something unusual today. I got in a pool.

Now, I like the water. One of my earliest memories is being fished out of the deep end of a pool I had no business being in. As a child the local YMCA had the fish-themed swimming lessons and I made it up to the shark level. I was a certified lifeguard, back in the old style where you had to go get people and in the kinder, gentler, let’s don’t get hurt or sued and throw in a float instead style. I have memories, for some thing or other, of turning blue jeans into a floatation device. I’ve treaded water for more than an hour. I’ve been a SCUBA diver for two decades.

I’m good with the water, at peace with what I can and can’t do there, particularly below the surface. You still have some control of things there. If you know yourself you have fairly defined ideas of your limits, and that is satisfying and comforting; I’m not afraid of the water because I know what I am and what I am not, he said, hoping that sounded wise. But I treat it recreationally.

One thing I am not is a lap swimmer.

Never could hold a straight line. That’s just the basic problem. Olympic and national champion swimming coach David Marsh once told me “You have to respect someone willing to spend hours and hours, swimming hundreds of laps, to shave a thousandth of a second off of their best time.”

I respect that level of dedication and discipline, even more in the context of things I’d never do. I’m not that kind of swimmer.

So there I was today, cool new reflective race goggles, in an outside lane of an outdoor pool with the temperature hovering around 65 degrees and falling and trying to swim.

I haven’t done anything more than tread water or float on my back in a year or so.

Today I just tried to make the goggles fit. They didn’t. Water got in. I don’t like water in my eyes. So I quickly realized you don’t clear goggles like you would clear a diving mask:

It just brings in more water. Because your nose isn’t inside the confined area, of course. But, hey, the training is never forgotten. So up on the rope line, work on the goggles. Swim a bit, fiddle a bit, swim a bit, drown my eyes awhile. And so on. Finally this was resolved. Finally I can swim. Only I’ve all but forgotten how to breathe. I like to breathe. Breathing, in my book, is vastly underrated. This goes on in a thoroughly unsatisfying manner.

Finally it all comes together. I can see. I can breathe. I can actually think about the stroke. I get through four circuits of the freestyle stroke — really bringing my arms and shoulders out of the water and overhead and down properly — and realize this hurts my shoulder. So the now 10-month old injury and surgery still limits me.

So I do other things, try other strokes. Back to the sidestroke and a modified breaststroke and my favorite: underwater, handcuffed criminal stroke.

But I did 700 meters — a warmup, really — which is more than I would have done otherwise.

Also, it turned cold again today. Chilly, in fact. Downright unseasonable and noticeable, too. I’d complain, but there is snow in places like Iowa and Minnesota that would also like a bit of May, thank you. I’ve mentioned it. Remarked, maybe. But I haven’t complained too much. And if I have, it was entirely good-natured, because some places are dealing with unseasonal May snows.

But I would like spring to come back, because the first part of summer can hurt if it just shows up without a preamble.

Tonight, baseball:

After falling 6-1 to Ole Miss tonight, Auburn is now 16-51 against the SEC in the big four sports — football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and baseball — since the 2012 SEC baseball tournament. That’s a bad year.

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6
Apr 13

Go Jack, go!

Today we went for a bike ride. I am on the cusp of going from the high-end of a slow rider to the low-end of a medium rider and I don’t understand this degree of progress whatsoever. So I am not very good, but I hold my own when riding with The Yankee, who is now an amateur racer.

There’s a 13 mile circle of bypass road around the town proper and we did that today. I just stayed on her back wheel for the first half. There are two “big” hills on that route. (It is coastal-plains-flat here so I qualify our hills.) When the second hill game I bent to the left and passed her.

I am good on this one hill, because I have figured out a way that I can essentially keep my pace or accelerate all the way up it. It involves closing my eyes, counting out pedal strokes and shifting to an easier gear all the way “up.”

So today I shifted down, start counting, shift up, start counting. Normally I go through about 10 strokes per gear on that hill and it keeps everything working pretty well. Only today I overcounted my pedal strokes and that just killed everything on that hill. I counted to 20 in the second gear and that was too much so then there’s the lactic acid build up and so on. I got greedy.

In cycling, commentators could say “Bang. Dropped him just like that.” Which is to say you left the other person standing still as you accelerated away from them. I was trying to do that, but I could not because I got greedy. So I pulled away from her modestly, but I was really trying to assert my control of that particular hill.

So I let her catch up to me at the next light and we rode on the rest of our route.

She stopped when she got to the distance of her first upcoming race and looked on her computer at the pace she was setting and she was very pleased. She said “I’m going to ride hard the rest of the way home to try to boost my average pace.”

I just happened to be in front of her right there, so I started off, standing up and generating more power so that I can get out of her way since she wants to go hard and she’d stopped on this little incline. She goes right by me.

Bang. She dropped me.

Nice day for Auburn sports and technology. We listened to the baseball game on the iPhone app as the Tigers beat Texas A&M at College Station. They finally found the string of at bats they’ve been struggling to put together and it paid off on the scoreboard, felling the Aggies 10-5.

Three home runs contributed to a 9-0 lead in the fourth inning, and then the usually solid pitching simply had to hold things together which, happily, was exactly how it went.

Later in the evening we watched the regional gymnastics meet. Twelfth-ranked Auburn notched a school record regional score of 196.700. That put them third in Gainesville tonight. The top two of each region move on to nationals. That score in any other region would have advanced, but instead they were third behind Florida and Minnesota.

Sophomore Bri Guy and freshman Caitlin Atkinson both advance to the NCAA Gymnastics championships, so, the future is very bright for the gymnastics team.

Finally, I share this video to make you cry. On fourth-and-one the running back breaks a 69-yard touchdown run that cleared the benches in celebration. It is the best of sports and youth and humanity and perseverance and this little guy can run:

More about Team Jack.

And his big run:

Asked what he was thinking when he ran onto the field, Jack said, “Scoring a touchdown.”

And when he broke free and scored? “It felt awesome.” And the crowd reaction? “Really awesome.”

[…]

Jack was diagnosed with cancer in April 2011 and has had two surgeries. He’s now on a two-week break from a 60-week chemotherapy regimen.

Andy said Jack is “doing great” and that an MRI at Children’s Hospital in Boston showed that the tumor has shrunk substantially in the past year.

The official Team Jack shirt.