We visited Fox Theatre in Atlanta to see the Tony award-winning Jersey Boys. Great show: funny, dramatic and a terrific juxebox musical. Many of the tunes, of course, have forced their way into a certain level of timelessness, and all of your favorite Four Seasons songs made their way into the show.
It was a great way to learn about the band, too. Some things had to be capsulized for theater purposes, of course. Condensing the better part of three decades into two hours can’t be easy. But there’s a great tale in this show and, if you didn’t know any better you’d think it highly improbable.
My in-laws saw it on Broadway some time back. They grew up with this music, they lived in some of the same areas, so they find it very relatable. We might have been the youngest people in the place when we saw the show, but it transcends generations easily. After all, we grew up with the music too, just in a different time.
They said the performers they saw were better than the original Four Seasons. (The guy they saw playing Valli was in his debut role on Broadway. Incredible.)
Here’s that original cast performing at the Tony Awards in 2006:
The cast we saw wasn’t the Four Seasons, but they were great. Catch the show if you can.
We went for a ride yesterday. Well, I went for a ride. The Yankee is in training and so she did something called a brick. This involves swimming and riding and I’ve no idea at all how bricks have entered into this.
So she swam in the neighborhood pool. The Olympic pool was closed, on account of their being no Olympians there that day. (There usually are. We live in a place where she gets to be drowned in the wake of people showing off Olympic ring tattoos. Not a bad perk to the locale.)
We counted out the laps, measuring and doing math. The neighborhood pool is small; she did a lot of laps. And then she hopped on her bike and I hopped on mine and I chased her through the countryside.
She was moving on well. I had great legs, owing to taking a day or two off, perhaps. But I was also going on the longest ride I’ve been on in a while, so I wanted to pace myself.
I caught her on a hill after about eight miles. I’m a little bit stronger on hills and this was a series of three respectable climbs. She caught me again later, I let her play out in front and then chased her down just before home. She took the direct route and I meandered through the neighborhood. It was a 20.75 mile ride. Felt great.
I’d intended to take a few wide pictures to celebrate the day, but there was too much huffing.
Did take this somewhere along the way though:
Pretty as a roadside wildflower can be, it was the three buds on this one that intrigued me.
And now for something beautiful:
That is the Lyrid meteor shower, from space. Did you catch Florida as it moved by?
Astronaut Don Pettit on the ISS took the shots last month and they were converted into the inspiring quasi-video. The Lyrid meteors, dust trails from the comet Thatcher, have been observed from Earth for thousands of years. I learned all of this from a Huntsville reporter.
Finally: the grading is done. Now on to other things.
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.
