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10
Mar 13

Catching up

The one day of the week when you can count on even less being here. So we make up with it with pretty pictures. More often than not, though, they are very average. They often have reasonably interesting stories though, so let’s stick with that.

From the swimming and diving meet last Thursday. Did I mention The Yankee was a diver? She’s twisting here, and she probably doesn’t like that, but it looked cool:

Ren

Did I mention she won? This guy, meanwhile … As I suggested to the judges, a diving coach and whomever else was standing nearby, if you make a sound, you earned extra points. Have a heart, judges of America:

flop

Those dives were off the one-meter board. And, yes, you can spring high enough to generate enough velocity to land with a resounding smack that catches the attention of everyone in the natatorium. It happened.

Here’s The Yankee swimming:

Ren

She was warming up for her three races. She won one of them, a 4×200 relay:

Ren

And they aren’t just out there for giggles. There were some serious competitors on that pool deck:

Ren

I am disqualified as I can’t swim in a straight line. We all have our burdens in life.

To the baseball! This is a fan from Brown. He’d come all the way down from Rhode Island, avoiding winter and enjoying our beautiful pre-spring weather and walked over to tell the hecklers in Section 111 that he’d enjoyed listening to them all weekend. That was pretty awesome.

fan

Here are a few more crowd shots from Plainsman Park. There’s a story below, too, so keep scrolling.

fan

fan

fan

fan

fan

Auburn claimed a sweep of Brown with today’s 6-3 win behind Rocky McCord’s 6 2/3 innings and eight strikeouts. This is his last pitch of the day:

McCord

Here are the game highlights.

But the man of the hour was Brown head coach Marek Drabinski. He’s also coaching third when Brown is at bat, and that brought him a weekend’s worth of good-natured ribbing from the hecklers.

By late Saturday he was even talking back to that section of the crowd a bit. Hecklers were trying to get him to stand in his box, but he refused:

Marek

Fans were chatting with him and ultimately trying to bribe him. At one point we invited him to sit in the stands. It is hard to imagine Skip Bertman or Jim Wells getting that offer. Appealing to Drabinski’s northeastern tastes the offer became “Dunkin Donuts if you’ll only get in the box!” On Sunday afternoon he asked where his Dunkin was. We had to sadly tell him that our Dunkin Donuts wasn’t running yet. But it would be built by next season, if only he’d bring his team back down.

He teased us all with the box. He’d walk over to the edge, look down and walk away. He’d slink over and put one foot in. He’d come back later and but one foot inside the box and just over the other foot above the box. On Sunday he promised he’d get in the box later.

And at the end of the game, with his team down, but rallying to try and avoid the sweep, Drabinkski walked over to the box in the last at bat.

Marek

He’d disarmed us all with his charm by then. The guy was enjoying himself with the hecklers, and they were enjoying his good spirits.

Marek

Coach of the year? Coach of the year. And a great reminder of what college sports is supposed to be. We all kind of hope he brings his Bears back down this way next year, so we can treat him to Dunkin. And make him get in the box.

That was the most fun we’ve ever had with a coach, easily, including when you can see the hecklers getting into their heads.

Finally, here’s a picture of my friend, Stephen’s, daughter. It was her first Auburn game, but she loves baseball:

Whitney

I took a picture of their family together at the park, four generations. What a great way to wrap up a weekend at the park.

Then I went out for a bike ride. I’ll talk about that tomorrow.


9
Mar 13

Hey, it is Saturday

Slept in, late breakfast. Enjoyed the beautiful day, with the late afternoon spent entirely at the baseball park. There’s the hint of spring into things again now. The pear trees are blooming. The Japanese maples have exploded. We have roses. The mysterious flowering bush we can’t identify has tried twice to impress us with its yellows. The dogwoods will be next, and several of the trees have buds on them.

The days are getting longer, and there’s the overwhelming sense that you’ll make it to another spring. Love that feeling.

Auburn hosted Brown for game two of the weekend series. JUCO transfer Michael O’Neal commanded a complete game shutout as the Tigers beat the Bears 6-0.

Brown’s head coach is a character, and he’s been entertained by the people on the third base side of the field, but perhaps not as much as he’s amused us. I’ll write more about him tomorrow.

I saw this nice lady walking her dogs as we headed home. I snapped a shot just because the disparity of the dogs amused me. And then I got home and realized I caught her in mid-expression:

Dont

I like to think she’s saying “Dude. Not when I have a doggie bag in my hand.”

Later: The officially sanctioned baseball highlights:


7
Mar 13

Swimming and diving

At the intramural swim meet, it was the Auburn Master’s, of which The Yankee is a part of, versus all the various fraternities, sororities and any other group that heard there was pool time available.

The Yankee took part in the diving competition and swam in three events. She was a diver in college, so maybe she’s a ringer. She won on the one-meter board:

Ren

Not everyone’s dive was as nice or innovative as hers. I have a great unfortunate dive to share later in the week. Here’s the tease: I said to the judges “Give that guy extra credit for volume! You heard the smack! He earned those points!”

She also swam in three races, the 50-free, the 100-free and the 4×200 relay.

Ren

She placed fourth in the first two races. She cleaned up in the relay, though, swimming the best time on her team and, perhaps, the entire pool. If she could apply that 50 as an individual race she would have qualified for nationals. Not bad considering she’s been on the swim team for less than a year. She’s pretty fast.

Also, she made faces at me:

Ren

We had dinner with friends at a Mexican restaurant, where the chips flowed with abandon. At home we caught up on a bit of television. It was pretty much the best kind of night.


6
Mar 13

A day in the multimedia life, in pictures

This was my day, in four pictures.

The Samford Crimson launched a new look this week for the last quarter of their academic year’s publication run. Looks pretty sharp:

Crimson

Also there’s a new Target now open just down the street.

Here are two more quick shot of the inside layout. They worked hard, had extra meetings, were excited and it shows. This section is designed by our Society of Professional Journalists award-winner features editor Megan Thomspon:

Crimson

The sports section is designed by SEJC award winner and sports editor Clayton Hurdle

Crimson

I tinkered with that page in InDesign last night after they’d finished it. It is solid.

I left a meeting discussing the Crimson to drive over to a television station. CBS 42’s Bill Payer was giving my class a tour. Here he is showing off their mobile production unit:

WIAT

They built that from the ground up two years ago. They didn’t copy anyone, just built what they thought they needed. They got everything right, except they forgot a kitchen and restroom. Payer tells me that the station could burn down around them and they could go on the air from this truck and cover the news.

Being at CBS meant a chance to see the always welcoming Mark Prater. We sat in the studio and pitched around ideas while, downstairs in the studio, the students were hearing a bit of breaking news. Seems some officers were out serving a warrant on a woman and she sliced them up with a box cutter.

Three officers were taken to the hospital for treatment. Another was treated on the scene. Samford grad Kaitlin McCulley reports:

And so what started out as serving a robbery warrant will now likely become four counts of attempted murder.

There was also a big fire leading the news cast, and as I told the news director, the days I really miss it are the days when I am watching a newsroom buzz. He invited me to join in, but I figured they had it covered. Kaitlin was reporting, after all.


3
Mar 13

Catching up

It is time for another installment of Catching up, the weekly post that allows extra photos to finally go some place. WordPress tells me this is the 100th installment of Catching up. Not sure what to make of that.

The guys in Section 111 that heckle the opposing team gave me a shirt this weekend. I made them laugh with a few witticisms of my own. Didn’t have the heart to tell them we were doing this years, and years before they showed up. But that’s a nice shirt, and I subscribe to their philosophy on how to confuse and amuse the poor players from the other team. The 111 guys definitely have their moments, and now I get to pretend to be like them. Here’s the front and back:

shirt

She appears to be studying the computer screen intently:

Allie

Started a new book tonight. I’ve finished two others recently, and I’ll try to mention them here tomorrow. But this is from Marshall Frady’s Southerners: A Journalist’s Odyssey. Something about this book might make you rethink the South, or journalism, or both. I don’t know for sure yet, but that’s the vibe I got early on. Here’s an early passage on Huey Long and George Wallace.

Frady

Even before that I was making a mental list of who should read this collection of essays. I bought this book, published in 1980, off Amazon in the fall of 2011 for $4.25 (as a library book sale, apparently) and it has been sitting patiently in my To Read bookcase ever since. Now it seems you can’t pick this up anywhere online for less than $76. So I did OK.

Here’s the review on Amazon: “You feel the thing he’s writing about, you understand it, you see it, you want more – this is everything writing can do.”

Well, something to look forward to then.