baseball


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.


9
Mar 12

No really, buy me some peanuts

I couldn’t say if there is a lot of video like this, or if it is a one-of-a-kind contribution to the International Institute of Outflow Mesoscale Gradients.

That’s from a small town east of Lexington, Ky. and that’s serious business. They aren’t used to seeing that sort of thing up there. Once a Louisville meteorologist confessed to his shock at seeing three rotations in one radar sweep. He’d never seen that before.

Here we call that Tuesday.

Of course they can deal with snow, so there’s a trade off.

Felt sluggish all day. I guess it was the week catching up with me, but there was no energy to be found anywhere. So this evening I made myself ride my bike. I want to ride even when I don’t feel like it, not just when I feel good. That’s how I can really churn out the miles — I told myself while inflating my tires.

So I set off on the warm up routine, down and out throw the neighborhood and then on the two back roads that border the local area. My legs were heavy. Actually they were dead. The wind was blowing. I’ve found that a mild headwind kills two or three miles an hour. Going up hills felt more like standing still.

I did have two nice sprints, the first hitting 31 miles per hour and the second at 30. Otherwise it was a remarkably poor 30 mile ride. Except for this:

trees

It is a lovely neighborhood.

At the Auburn baseball game, the Tigers were leading here 5-3:

HitchcockFIeld

They’d jumped out to that score early, and it stayed there a long time. In the top of the ninth Belmont scored two runners on sacrifice flies. It was tied when the Tigers ran off the field.

In the bottom of the ninth Auburn’s leadoff man reached first on a field error. Jay Gonzalez then stole second. There was a strikeout and then an intentional walk. And then Cullen Walker hit one just past Belmont’s diving second baseman. Gonzalez raced around the diamond from second, giving Auburn the 6-5 win.

Nice way to start the weekend series. The only thing missing? The peanuts.


4
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 the weekly installment of catching up!

Freshman Daniel Koger pitched 5 1/3 innings, allowing just three runs on five hits and four walks, striking out three. Somehow a guy that bunted on base against him with two outs managed to score, walked in, in a one-hit inning. That kind of game for Auburn today.

Jay Gonzalez, who came into the weekend leading the SEC in runs scored, added another to his total today:

I wonder if he was recounting old days at the park:

Someone’s keeping score:

These two people have great seats:

He’s such an easy, obvious target:

We all know this guy: