Tag Archives: st. louis

Spring Can Start Now—Baseball Is Back

Baseball is more to me than simply a game. It is a tradition that I share with my children, that I share with my father, and that he shared with his father. It consists of stories told from one generation to another of who is the best, who you have seen play while sitting in the stands, and the comparisons and discussions that come along with those shared experiences and memories. It is neglecting to study for finals to go to a day game at Wrigley, taking the entire family out for a day at Busch, and staying up late listening to the west coast games. It is a love of a game that connects both halves of our family, and a baseball game is the gift I’m giving my wife for our tenth anniversary.

Baseball gives a shared language, a lore of well over a century of organized play, and a history that follows the contours of the events that shaped this country. It is a profoundly personal thing that you watch along with tens of thousands of people in a stadium or millions of people on television and radio. Grown men wait for the season to start every year to sit in the stands and feel like a child or to own imaginary baseball teams and challenge each other in the field of statistics.

I love baseball. Opening Day is the day of dreams—the day where every team is in first place, if only for a couple of hours. The day where fans’ hopes are refreshed (even the Cubs fans), the future seems bright, and optimism abounds. It’s the day where the heroes of children suit up and take the field of competition, as their fans watch and wait to see what will take place for the next six months.

It is the only major professional sport in the United States where the end of the game is not dictated by a clock—and in more than one way, it is timeless.

Welcome to spring.

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Stupid Smarch Weather

Yesterday’s beautiful, beautiful weather:

The current weather and the forecast for tomorrow:

Snow?

I Didn’t Sign Up for More Snow

What it’s doing outside my door right now:

The five-day forecast, illustrating what’s more normal for this time of year:

Curling League Week Two

Well, this week went better for the team and worse for me. I wasn’t feeling 100% up to playing because I’ve been fighting a nasty cold for the better part of a week, but we made a pretty strong showing and ended up in a 6-6 tie, so that’s one point for our team.

I’m a little sore this week compared to last—I think I warmed up too early, but I also think my body wasn’t completely over the fever, coughing, and sneezing it’s been through. We had the late game as well, so the first draw didn’t happen until close to 9:00.

A sample score sheet from our league. Which happens to be tonight's.

Based on the scoresheet, we did pretty well, stealing a total of four points in back-to-back ends and giving up only one steal of our own. Unfortunately, I didn’t seem able to get the job done when I had the hammer to close things out. The second end was a failed draw into the four-foot, the fifth end (where they took three) was the result of a horribly botched runback that did not clear out the house, but instead cleared out the only scoring rock we had (which was on the opposite side of the house).

And we should have had two in the seventh, but I shorted one draw to the button and on the final stone of the game I fell over onto my stomach and completely lost my line on the shot. I suppose I’m lucky we didn’t end up making things worse with that shot, instead failing to make good on the hammer. Practice makes perfect.

Our second saved the third end with a rather remarkable double take-out. It was really satisfying to call the shot and then watch him whip the stone in there and make it happen.

We have a week off next week, so I might try to get some pick-up gameplay on this weekend. The ice was much better this week compared to last, but because it’s arena ice it’s had some weird peculiarities where the stone will pick on a skate rut and then curl almost 90º. I really wish we had consistent ice—one of my shots actually curled the opposite way from the turn!

It was just shy of a win, but as with many things, it was a great time had by everyone who played and I once again feel like I’m getting better at it.

How to Curl Pictures

There aren’t any of me in here because I couldn’t find a good way to get a picture taken that didn’t make me look like a complete idiot, but these are pictures of the session after mine on the ice.

(And there’s a couple of pictures of the bubble hockey table, too.)