We had dinner with our friend Paige tonight. Drove up to her house.
She let me take a picture of the famous Rory:
This is only slightly intimidating. I was shooting her cat with my phone. Paige is a photographer on the side. In fact, she shot our engagement:
It was 17 degrees with about nine inches of snow on the ground. Maybe more. We shot those at a park up the street from The Yankee’s parents’ home, a park where she’d played as a child. There’s a pavilion there. Under that roof, there was six inches of snow covering everything.
It seems we can’t all get together without severe weather, so naturally it rained tonight.
By the time we got back home there was lots of rain.
We ate dinner at a Thai place called Somewhere in Bangkok. Good food, lousy website. The server was … well, she was as American as could be.
Today I fixed a printer problem, which is a piece of equipment normally beyond me. Samford won a huge baseball game in NCAA regional play. I uploaded three pictures to the Tumblr blog.
I never played baseball, but no matter what sport you might have been involved in you always heard the coach yelling at you about keeping your head in the game.
Or maybe that was just me.
Anyway, here’s an example of that. This is the penultimate example of poor base running. The situation: Justin Shafer is standing on third base in the fourth inning yesterday as Florida led Auburn 3-2. A ground ball turned into a fielder’s choice when Shafer ran home.
The infielder threw to the catcher and Shafer pulled up short:
The catcher, Caleb Bowen, almost dropped the ball.
The baserunner patiently stood by while Bowen spun, dropped down and leaped to his feet. Shafer looked up:
No doubt someone in the dugout was by now bursting a blood vessel yelling at him.
Bowen tagged him out.
Florida would score a few moments later in the fourth, extending their lead to 4-2. But it should have been 5-2, at least. And this little play helped determine the outcome.
And, oddly, it was only the second-worst thing we’ve seen on the field this year. There’s also the tale of the baserunner who tried to steal second standing up …
Today was Senior Day for Auburn baseball. The last game of the regular season. The Tigers, battling a host of injuries and displaying plenty of talented young players, are the 10th and last seed in next week’s SEC Tournament in Hoover, Ala. They’ve dropped two in a row to second-ranked Florida.
But today the sun was brilliant, the temperatures were warm without being overbearing. Eight young men had their name called as seniors and were given handsomely framed jerseys to commemorate their time playing for Auburn. Two trainers were similarly honored for all of their efforts.
And before the first pitch one of the players proposed to his girlfriend. She said yes. Someone in the crowd yelled “War Damn Wedding!”
So you never know.
Senior Caleb Bowen had just one hit, but as catcher he figured into this game plenty:
Auburn’s ace pitcher, Derek Varnadore was on the mound:
The senior has had a tough year of it. He led the team last year in wins, innings and strikeouts, making him the first Auburn pitcher to collect all three in more than a decade. He turned down a pro contract for his senior year, but things just haven’t worked out as he’d hoped. He found himself in the bullpen recently, but his name was called today. He scattered 10 runs across seven innings, allowing three earned runs and striking out three
Auburn trailed early, 3-0 in the second, and by the fifth inning it was 4-2.
In the seventh inning, still staring at a 4-2 deficit, Auburn collected three singles. The bases were loaded for another senior, Creede Simpson. He pushed in a run on a fielder’s choice. The lead was cut to 4-3. A few moments later, with runners on second and third, designated hitter Justin Bryant dug into the batter’s box:
And the senior created one of your more remarkable plays in baseball:
A ground ball to second that scored two runs? Fans were doing defiant muscle poses in the stands. Take that, Florida. Auburn took a 5-4 lead in the seventh, scoring three runs on four hits.
And then Bryant, as he’s done once or twice this year, went from driving in the potential game-winning RBI to working to collect a save out of the bullpen. He pitched a hitless eighth in relief for Varnadore. He returned for the final frame, which unfolded in high drama.
Florida’s leadoff batter was the first man up in the ninth. He grounded out to second. The next man to the plate singled to right field. There was a double to left. Auburn held a one-run lead in the ninth inning with one out and two runners in scoring position.
Don’t forget the injuries. The left fielder went down two weeks ago with a knee. The right fielder left this game early with a thumb. Auburn’s first baseman was in the dugout because of a oblique muscle injury. The shortstop didn’t start this game. The second baseman is now playing right field.
And so it was that a Gator named Brian Johnson, who has five home runs, 34 RBIs and a .313 batting average licked his lips and lobbed a ball into short right field.
Creede Simpson, who has played second all year but is in right field now because of an injury, made the catch for the second out. Now screaming down the line from third is Florida’s offensive statistical leader, Preston Tucker.
But Tucker forgot this was Senior Day. And Simpson long-hopped a ball to Bowen at the plate.
Auburn won 5-4. Here’s the play, with the Auburn Network’s Rod Bramblett making the call:
Senior Caleb Bowen got the putout. Senior Creede Simpson turned a season-ending double play from right. He also scored the winning run. Senior Justin Bryant got the save and the game-winning RBI. Senior Derek Varnadore got the win.
For those three innings, a struggling team were world beaters. They finished their regular season mobbing each other in right field with a 30-26, 13-17 record.
And now all they have to do is go to Hoover and … face Florida again in the first round of the tournament.
Tomorrow: Pictures of the second strangest thing I’ve seen in baseball all year.
I’ve been sneaking in a few rides this week. I huffed through 10 miles yesterday and 15 today, pronouncing myself fully healed from my amazingly persistent neck soreness.
That has been much better for a week and change, actually. The one thing I’ve struggled with since then was riding my bike. Something about being over the bars — in the drops or properly Flemish on the hoods — was giving me aches and pains. The looking up, to keep an eye on the road in front of me, had been bothersome even if I felt normal in pretty much every other way.
So I’ve been stretching my bike chain a bit this week. Whatever fitness I had are gone, but my neck feels better. Limited by time, I scurried around over yesterday’s 10 miles at what is, for me, a respectable pace.
Today I added to that, confident I am OK and just waiting impatiently for my legs to come back.
And so naturally I fell off my bike.
I’m at the top of one side of the hill on which our neighborhood rests upon. This is the largest hill in town — which, again, isn’t saying much compared to places with real elevation, but still. The one slightly tricky thing about it from this approach is that on this particular road you go up from an easy gradient into a slight right curve to a stop sign, which marks the crest of the hill. Now you have a road in front of you that goes from right to left.
I’m turning right, so naturally any oncoming cars from my left are the primary consideration here. Having reached the intersection, l take my right cleat out of the clipless pedal while simultaneously glancing left. There is a car. My shoe goes right back into the pedal. I fell over. (The car did not touch me.)
That was the part that happened the fastest. You know how, when you recount some memorable moment of life or death you have a 45-minute stream of conscious monologue you can return home with? Not this time.
Unclip, car, clip, ground.
And it was faster than that sentence. I landed on my right hip and arm, somehow managing to keep the bike off the ground with my legs. I think I might have gotten my left hand over, too, because that wrist hurt for a few minutes. I have two little scratches on my knee.
I’m fine. My bike is perfectly fine. My pride was slightly wounded.
Then again, I’m not a very good cyclist.
Just like riding a bike? Just like falling off of one, too.
But I got in 15 miles, which is a joke, really. That’s the most time I’ve had in the saddle in five weeks, though, and I finally feel comfortable about building up the distance again. It feels so good to feel good again.
About baseball, ugh.
Beautiful evening to be at the park. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. There were three Florida home runs, though, and plenty of other scores as the Gators beat Auburn 10-1.
At least they’ll be overconfident for tomorrow’s game, the finale of the regular season.
I was going to write a bit about baseball tonight, and all through Saturday. That was originally the plan. The grading is almost done. The weather is just agonizingly perfect. That’s not a good description. Let me try again.
You know that one moment around Christmas that you aren’t obsessing over presents, traffic, wrapping paper, relatives or cooking? That moment where the moment settles on you nice and quietly? That’s the same moment you get on mild Fourth of July evenings if you get a gentle little breeze. That bit of easy peace, that’s what the weather feels like right now.
It’ll be in the 90s next week, but what we have now we have to soak up, low 80s, light breezes, beautiful skies, brilliant sun, quiet nights. Perfect springtime weather.
So the weather is behaving marvelously. I’ve made serious headway in the grading. (Almost done in fact!) This is the last weekend of regular season baseball. Our plan was to eat a lot of peanuts.
And before I could even zoom in:
Florida had a 5-0 run by the time Auburn collected their fifth out of the game. One of those nights.
This might have been the highlight:
Creede Simpson got back to first safely. On the next pitch he’d bluff a steal. The catcher threw down to second, missed the shortstop and the ball sailed into center. Simpson stayed at first. He was, literally, staring at his shoes.
So it was that kind of night. But Florida is the second or third ranked team in the nation depending on which poll you use. These guys are almost a AAA team. Oh, look, something shiny!
That’s hanging from a crane over the lot that formerly was Sewell Hall behind right field. They tore that old dorm down for a new one recently and the work crews are quickly building a new one. There are three cranes on the job right now, that’s hanging over the pine trees tonight.
Florida won 6-0 over Auburn. It was a game where not much went right. But there’s always tomorrow.
And there’s the new decoration for the top of the blog that came out of the game:
