Crying in Baseball

From "A League of Their Own:"

Jimmy Dugan: Are you crying? Are you crying? ARE YOU CRYING? There's no crying! THERE'S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL!

Doris Murphy: Why don't you give her a break, Jimmy...

Jimmy Dugan: Oh, you zip it, Doris! Rogers Hornsby was my manager, and he called me a talking pile of pigsh!+. And that was when my parents drove all the way down from Michigan to see me play the game. And did I cry?

Evelyn Gardner: No, no, no.

Jimmy Dugan: NO. NO. And do you know why?

Evelyn Gardner: No...

Jimmy Dugan: Because there's no crying in baseball. THERE'S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL! No crying!

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm here to tell you that Jimmy Dugan is full of it. From last year's ALCS, the call by radio announcer Dan Dickerson:

"Swing and a fly ball, left field, it's deep, it's way back ... THE TIGERS ARE GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES!! Three-run, walkoff home run! OHHHHH MAN! Ordonez around third, he's into a mob scene at (sob) home! The Tigers have beaten the A's, 6-3, completing a four-game sweep in one of the greatest turnarounds in baseball history! The Tigers, three years after losing 119 games, are going to the World Series! Magglio Ordonez with his second home run of the game. What a sight at home plate!"

I was in the stands that night, sitting in the nosebleeds even higher than the foul pole, but I will never forget that blast. Craig Monroe was on second base and Placido Polanco was on first. There were two outs in the bottom of the ninth in a 3-3 tie. Oakland's closer, Huston Street was pitching his second inning, and was showing signs of fatigue. When Magglio hit the ball, I had the camera ready. I was snapping pictures on every pitch. We all knew something great was about to happen. Maggs was up in the count,1-0, and I had a feeling and it just felt right.

As soon as the ball landed in the stands Comerica Park exploded. People were jumping for joy, and tears were streaming down the faces of thousand, my wife's and mine included.

Last night on ESPN, they showed the greatest home runs of all time, separated by decade. The last one they showed was this one, and the emotion just welled up in me. It struck me as funny how a baseball game can bring out feelings strong enough to overwhelm a person, but that night stands out as one of the greatest of my life. When I think of non-family moments (wedding, adoption day, etc.) this one is #2 on my list behind our high school state championship, which now that I think about it, was also a baseball game.

So what is it about this sport that brings out such emotion? You don't hear about football fans breaking down after a Super Bowl, or NBA fans weeping when their team cuts down the nets. I think baseball is ingrained in all of us as a country. Ratings for baseball games are at an all-time low, yet attendance is at an all-time high. I think that's because there are so many options available for entertainment that there's room for many sports, but baseball is special because it's the oldest American sport, dating back to the 1840s in its earliest incarnation.

I wonder sometimes if it will fade away into obscurity as other sports (and NASCAR*) gain more and more popularity. I don't know. It might fade away, but I just think it's amazing to hear things like Dan Dickerson's radio call of Justin Verlander's no-hitter where he mentioned that it was the "sixth no-hitter in the 107 year history of the Detroit Tigers." Yes, my team has been around for 107 years. Not only did my late grandmother (born in 1914) follow them, but her father did too, from their inception in 1901. That kind of generational continuity makes it special.

I have already begun the brainwashing process with my daughter that I hope will make her a Tigers fan. We watch games together, and she has a Tigers t-shirt, hoodie, and cheerleader outfit. We will be going to her first Tigers game in September and I can hardly wait to have our pictures taken in front of the 20-foot tall tiger statue in front of the ballpark. I want to do that every year until she moves away, and then I want it to be a special trip that she can share with her children. I think it is one of the great things that is truly American to go to the ballpark and have a hot dog while keeping score at a game. As French historian Jacques Barzun once said, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”

I wonder how many more times I will hear that home run call before the emotion is wrung out of it. Since it's the ringtone on my cellpone and I hear it most every day, I think it's going to be a long time.

*I'm sorry, but NASCAR is not a sport. It's driving. You didn't play a sport on your way to work this morning, did you? I agree that NASCAR is highly competitive and requires great skill and stamina, and many people, including some of my best friends love watching it, but it's not what I would classify as a sport. On the other hand, I would pay real money to watch high school NASCAR races, as athletes compete for college scholarships. Driver's education would be better funded, that's for sure!

Back to Work!

Well, my vacation went by too quickly.

Nine days ago I finished the first session of summer school and had a nice break to look forward to. Last night I couldn't go to sleep and couldn't sleep well in anticipation of heading back. I wondered who I would have back in the class and who would be gone. I wondered if I would be able to get my new classroom (we have to change classrooms due to construction projects) set up quickly. I wondered how I would get the 100+ pounds of materials and books up the stairs to my new classroom. Just when you need to get to sleep to get back to getting up to 5:30 AM you find 1,000 things going through your head to prevent you from doing just that. The long and the short of it is that everything went fine. None of the poorly-behaved students came back and most of the well-behaved students did. I was directed to an elevator to get the materials up the stairs and there was time to set up before class because there were still students registering first thing this morning.

It occurs to me that a few people reading this don't know what it's like to get started teaching a session of summer school, so let me go over the finer points:

• You don't know whose classroom you're going to be using, so you have to bring your own textbooks or acquire them from the department chair of the host school.
• Since you don't have access to your own classroom you have to bring everything with you that you think you'll need: Stapler, pencils, sharpener, dry erase boards/markers/erasers, paper, rulers, protractors, reward candy, file folders, etc.
• You may not have a working printer for your computer, so don't count on that. Last session my printer never worked, so I had to save my documents on my jump drive and print them out in the media center or at home. This session, my printer works! Woohoo!
• There is continuity with the students who were with you in the first session but you have to break in new students who don't know you, so you basically have to start your whole spiel over again, despite the fact that more than half of the class has heard it already. That's okay, though, because it's likely that half of them were asleep the first time.
• When you leave, everything should be back the way it was when you got there. Leave the classroom as the teacher expects to find it. It's the least you can do.

The nice thing about the session is that it will go quickly. After 17 days of the second session I get 12 days of vacation, including weekends. I'm really looking forward to that!

The Dark Knight--More than Meets the Eye

While I'm in a ranting mood, let's take a look at the new Batman suit from the upcoming motion picture, "The Dark Knight."

What does he transform into? The Batmobile?

Every live-action Batman suit since 1989 has looked like a life-sized action figure and has just about as much flexibility. This suit is reportedly made of 200 molded pieces.

Why?

Is it that hard to cover a muscle suit up with fabric and imagine that it's bullet-resistant? I mean, if you can suspend your disbelief enough to buy that a guy goes around town dressed as a quasi-batlike Transformer, surely it's not that much farther to go to make that leap. I'm not even going to get into the Heath Ledger picture as the Joker. It may be an early version of the character, and I will give it a chance. But I don't care what the reason is for wearing this new armored suit. It's not my Batman.

Fireworks

At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, I hate fireworks.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good fireworks display put on by professionals over a lake or a ballpark, but here in Indiana fireworks are readily available and I think every darn neighbor in our subdivision is setting them off. They don't just shoot them off on Independence Day; they shoot them off the entire week before and after. They shoot them off from before dark until midnight, keeping me awake and scaring my dog. He's curled up under my desk right now. I don't know what these people do for a living, but I bet they're not teachers who have to get up at 5:30 AM. Thank goodness I'm on vacation this week and I don't have to get up that early, but Sera will be up at 7 AM and I will be up with her.

The Bullpen

Last night I had an interesting experience. Buy Me Toys, our LCS, has a biweekly night of drawing. Local artists bring in projects that they are working on, sit around the outside perimeter of a set of tables arranged in a rectangle, and draw. I sat in for the first time yesterday.

Topics of conversation flew around the room, ranging from movies to comics to music to books to artists and back to comics again. Casual insults bounced to and fro, and at one point the artist sitting next to me said, "Can't you tell we love each other?" What's funny is that I could. In my experience, comic book fans and gamers have to develop a thick skin from all the abuse we take from the general public and I think that it's part of the process of being a geek that we practice taking it by dishing it out on one another. It's a form of affection as long as it doesn't go too far, and last night it didn't. It was just gentle ribbing. I didn't join in because I had just met everyone, but it felt good to sit in a room with other people who share the same interests and to focus on something that I've been struggling with artistically. I imagined that this was what the old Marvel bullpen must have been like in the 60s when many artists shared the same studio space.

It may not be tabletop gaming, but I'll take it.

Summer Nights

We are just having so much fun right now, I can't stand it. We've seen more movies in the past two months than we saw all of last year. Why? It's called a drive-in. We've been going to the Tri-Way Drive-In Theater in Plymouth, Indiana. Last night we saw Live Free or Die Hard and just had a great time. The evening was cool, clear, and we sat outside under the stars in front of the car in lawn chairs watching a fun movie. Sera played for a while on the blanket we put on the ground in front of us, and then went to sleep in her car seat while Mom and Dad watched the movie.

The Tri-Way charges $7.00 for adult admission and Sera gets in free. That's especially reasonable when you consider that they only show double features. Their concessions are of high quality and very reasonably priced. Last night we decided to have dinner at the theater and I had a very good steakburger for just $3.00. Their Chicago style hot dog was out of the world for about the same price. They have a combo that features a huge plastic bucket of popcorn and two 44-oz. drinks for just $8.00. When you stack that up with ordinary movie theater fare, it just doesn't compare.

What I Would Do with One Billion Dollars

One of the activities I have my students work on is an essay entitled, "What I Would Do with One Billion Dollars." It's a fun activity for them and tells me a lot about them. By forcing them to itemize their expenditures, they discover that they really had no concept of how much a billion is. This leads us to discussions about scientific notation to express very large numbers, and they also have to learn about how much things cost. When they are done with the activity, I inevitably get asked, "What would you do with a billion dollars, Mr. McClain?"

I have done this for probably 15 years now, and I have had no shortage of ideas. The imagination literally runs wild with ideas on how to spend this enormous sum of money.

If I were to receive one billion dollars today, I would:

• give one million dollars to each member of my wife's and my families. The children's money would be placed in trust to be used for their education and the remainder disbursed upon their graduation from college: $22,000,000
• provide full four-year scholarships to any student I ever had who gained acceptance to a college: approximately $25,000,000
• give one million dollars to each of my friends: $35,000,000
• buy four season tickets for the Detroit Tigers in section 135 of the Tigers' Den for the next 40 years: $480,000
• buy two homes and an apartment: one house near Gulf Shores, Alabama on the bay near my wife's family's bay houses; one along the Manistee River in Mesick, Michigan, where I grew up. I would also maintain a condo on Woodward Avenue in Detroit, near Comerica Park: $3,000,000

These are things I choose every year, and it totals less than $100,000,000, 10% of the money to spend. Lately, though, I have added things to my list that I would never have done before.

• I would adopt another daughter from China. We can afford one daughter right now, but a second one would stretch our budget uncomfortably. We would both go back tomorrow to get another child.
• I would help other people adopt with interest-free loans. There are literally thousands of children waiting to be adopted and thousands of parents who can't front the money for it that they would get back in tax credits.

But here's the one I've been thinking about lately, and it is something I feel strongly about:

• I would create a comic book line appropriate for all ages with ascending levels of reading difficulty so that children could learn to read along with their heroes.

The heroes in my comics grow into their roles starting at about five years old, akin to the Power Pack books that Marvel produces. As the kids grow older, they learn about their powers and learn how to behave in the world in a civilized and responsible way. Of course they get into trouble like kids do, but how they handle it would be the way they define themselves as heroes.

If a character dies in this comic book universe, they would stay dead. In the current comics world, death has no meaning. There used to be an expression, "Only Bucky stays dead," referring to Captain America's old partner who died during World War II. Well, guess what? Bucky's back. Death's permanence is an important lesson that kids need to learn.

In my comic book line, heroes would act as heroes. There would be no need for replacement heroes. No hero falls from grace. They may be viewed as threats, but they aren't threats. Sidekicks would be encouraged to strike out on their own and fight evil instead of forever remaining in their mentors' shadows.

In my comic book line, heroes don't fight other heroes. In fact, they only fight at all as a last resort, if there's no other way. Conflict resolution is an important lesson that kids need to learn about as well. If you think that's boring, check out Fantastic Four under Waid and Wieringo.

Speaking of writers and artists, those are the first two on my list. Mark Waid knows more about the Silver Age than almost any other living person. The Silver Age is a feeling I'd like to replicate. Mike Wieringo has a cartoony style that I just can't get enough of. I'd also like to get J. Scott Campbell for the art on my teenage books. I loved what he did with Gen13 and Wildsiderz. I just didn't care for the stories in them.

In short, I'd like comic books that my daughter not only could read, but should read. I wonder how much that would cost?

Birthdays at Barnaby's

On New Year's Day 2006, in the wee hours of the morning, the South Bend area gaming community lost a dear friend in Barry Winston. Barry, who was taking a shift as a bouncer to pay some bills off, died of a heart attack at age 36. Since then, many of us have met at a local pizza chain called Barnaby's every four weeks or so to celebrate the birthdays that occurred during the previous month. We won't ever take birthdays for granted again.

Barry and I were friends. We were never really that close, but we were friends. We'd been to each other's homes and had lunch together several times. He built the computer I'm using to write this blog entry. We were also art partners for several years, starting in 1988. I was drawing with pencils a lot, but was never comfortable with inking, while Barry was more than proficient with both media. So, Barry more than made up for my lack of talent. He made my pencils look far better than they were.

Our gaming community is a strange one. It has cliques and subgroups, and some of us don't really know others, but we are all connected through mutual friends. Barry was one of the few who knew absolutely everyone, and we all loved Barry. I brought all of my inked sketches to his wake, and was amazed at how many people there were who had not seen our work.

I think the sketch that I will treasure most, though, is the one from which the headshot in this blog's logo comes. Barry did all the work himself, based on my verbal description of my character Domino, when he was just 21 years old. One of my favorite things about it is the way that Barry spotted blacks and this sketch highlights that talent perfectly. The figure has power, gravity, and grace. I liked it so much that I had a copy of it colored by Lurene Haines a few years later.

He had so much talent, and he died far too young. But I can't help thinking that Barry would have enjoyed knowing that we gather in his memory and that he won't ever be forgotten.

Here's to you, Barry.

My LCS

LCS is an internet-usage abbreviation for Local Comic Shop. My LCS is Buy Me Toys.com and it's located in Mishawaka, Indiana. I've known the owners, Casey and Kelly Heying, since they were quite literally kids. I used to sell Magic: The Gathering and Star Trek: The Customizable Card Game cards as well as action figures at trade shows and in malls on weekends and quite often, I'd see them at some of the same shows. Their business was called "Shadow of the Bat" at the time, and they grew big enough with their mail-order sales of action figures to open their own storefront in Mishawaka's 100 Center. Later, they moved to the late, lamented Scottsdale Mall, where they opened Buy Me Toys. I thought it was funny that their store had the same name as the fictional toy store in Kevin Smith's "Mallrats," but they assure me that it's just coincidence. It would have been funnier had it been deliberate. Despite the store's name, they also sell comic books and a lot of them.

It's nice to have an LCS because it gives me a place to hang out and talk about comic books with people who have similar interests. It serves as a base of operations for local comic book creators and people who generally enjoy the medium as I do. The odd thing about it, though, is that sometimes the place makes me feel...well, old. Casey and Kelly are considerably younger than I am and when I reference some obscure Batman story from the 1970s I sometimes get blank looks. Comic book fans are funny that way; there is an expected knowledge base of comic book history that comes with being a comic book fan, and woe be to anyone who exhibits the slightest ignorance. If you've seen "the Comic Book Guy" on the Simpsons, you get a slightly exaggerated idea of what many comic book fans are like. I have to laughingly forgive some of their knowledge lapses because of their youth, but it does make me feel old.

Our LCS is well-stocked and the service is very good. They are leaders in sales of action figures, and they have a pull-list service for new comics. The pull-list service probably could use some work, but they are just two people operating the store so on the occasion that I miss a comic on my list, I don't get too upset. They also tend to know their customers' reading habits and make good recommendations to enhance their reading pleasure. That's a good move and a big plus in my book.

The most fun thing to do now is to take Sera to the comic book store. Casey and Kelly had their third child while we were in China, so they appreciate little children too. I'm still picking out which titles to get for Sera when it's reading time. I have a few favorites, and they have shared their daughters' personal favorites as well. I hope there are more options soon.

Happy Birthday, Theresa!

I just want to take this opportunity to wish my niece, Theresa, a happy 18th birthday!

I Choked!

Well, as I wrote in my last post I was going for 100% in my Introduction to Computing Class. I blew it. I missed two questions out of 40 on the final exam. They were both Excel questions about absolute and relative cell references. Since none of the class assignments dealt with those, I missed them. Oh well, I still got my A and I get to renew my teaching license for five more years.

And now that the class is over, I can enjoy the rest of my summer in relative peace. The class only lasted six weeks, so it was compressed and the assignments were labor-intensive. Now I can concentrate on getting back to another project, a secret project, that I've been working on since winter. I'm creating a workbook for middle school math. Its exact nature must remain a secret until it's finished. Everyone who has looked at it says that it's a sure thing and it would be wonderful if that is true. We'll have to see.

Stream-of-Consciousness

I have nothing specific to say today, so I'm going to play stream-of-consciousness. I'm going to write random thoughts and follow where they lead. Some will be connected, some won't. That way you can see just how messed up my brain is.

• I love my wife and daughter more than anything in the world.
• I need to get my teaching license renewed as soon as my class is over so I can keep my job and continue to help support them.
• My final exam for Introduction to Computing is tonight. I have a 100% average, so I'm not worried. I'm going to try to get another 100 on the final because I've never finished a college course with 100% before. I don't care if I wreck the curve for everyone else.
• Teaching summer school is fun. Because you have to give the kids time to do their work, there's lots of downtime during which you can work on other things...like your blog!
• I hate arguing about politics. You'll never change anyone's mind about anything. At least with baseball you can use statistics to compare players' performances. In politics everyone fails to some extent and there's no World Series to get excited about.
• I'm amazed at the waste that goes on in this country. Do we really need to water our lawns? Is having perfectly green grass more important than having water available to fight fires? There was a fire at a recycling plant near our house the other day and the city actually had to ask people not to water their lawns so there would be enough to put the fire out.
• People in our neighborhood are having garage sales. They've been working for days to make a few hundred dollars. Most if not all of them earn more money than that in their jobs. Why don't they just give the stuff away and deduct it as a charitable contribution?
• Why aren't MP3 players allowed in school? If the students use them to help them focus on their work, what's the harm in that? Teachers can make students put them away when they need full attention. It would be no more difficult to enforce that than to enforce the "no MP3 player" rule in the first place.
• A friend of mine recently had a house fire and lost all of his gaming materials. We're talking about thousands of pages of quality material that he created. I think it's time to make backups of mine, not that they even compare in quality, but I would hate to lose them all. The artwork that I would lose would be a tragedy all by itself. Some of it can't be replaced as the artists are deceased. That includes a Justice League of America page drawn by Dick Dillin.
• Superman is an illegal immigrant.
• I wish I had time to explore all of my interests. I love to draw, to write, to take photographs, to read, and I have never had enough time to do them all. Retirement for me means having the time and means to explore all the things I have always wanted to do. I should be able to retire when I'm 55.
• Batman is guilty of tax fraud. The government doesn't have a proper assessment of his property since he has one of the most valuable finished basements in America. It's called the Batcave. Think the Joker is deadly? Wait until he faces the IRS.
• I want a finished basement. And I'll call it the Batcave.
• Every big project we have is measured in terms of summer school sessions. Fence around the yard? One summer school session. New living room furniture? One summer school session. Finished basement/Batcave? Two summer school sessions. Adding a giant dinosaur and penny will be extra.

That's all for now. I'm sure my brain will misfire more later.

Father's Day Reflections

I'm sure being a father has changed me in so many ways that I am probably not even aware of them all, but the one that I am most definitely aware of is that I am happy.

Whether it comes from being abused by parent-figures or burned by contemporaries, I am often suspicious when people show any kind of affection toward me. Somewhere in my brain, suspicions arise because if someone likes me, there must be something wrong with them. Many of my friends don't know why, but having read this I'm sure it makes sense. But with my daughter, there can be no doubt. She loves me with a white-hot, supernova love. When I walk into the house each day, she lights up and giggles so hard that she can't stand still. You can't fake that, and even if you could, she's not old enough to know how.


I'm still amazed at the things she learns. From the very first night of singing her to sleep I used Beethoven's Fifth: Da-da-da-daaaaaaaah; da-da-da-daaaaaaaaaaah. Now she sings it whenever she thinks it's appropriate, along with "ee-i-ee-i," which concludes with the unsung "oh." She has picked up sign language at an amazing rate. She learns a new word every two or three days. Yesterday was milk. She's like a sponge, this one. I have to be careful about what I say or do because she's likely to pick it up too quickly. Thank goodness for Battlestar Galactica, because I have weened myself off certain words that begin with "f" by saying "frak" instead.

I dream about Sera every night. I imagine what she'll be like when she's older, and I can see us taking her places like Disney World or Six Flags. In my dreams we do all the things I never got to do as a child. We'll be going to Mackinac Island this summer, something I didn't get to do until I was 16. I know she won't remember it, but we will.

I have spent entirely too much time in my life worring about the past. The best part of being a dad is focusing on the future. Maybe that's why I'm so happy!

RiffTrax

If you were a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) as I was, then do yourself a favor and try out RiffTrax. Rifftrax offers supplemental soundtracks to popular movies using the voices of Michael Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett, three veterans of MST3K. The trio simply rip movies apart while you watch them, and believe me, some of these movies deserve it. RiffTrax works by basically downloading an MP3 file and playing it on your computer while you play the DVD on a DVD player. You synch up the two tracks and off you go. There is an occasional mechanical voice called Disembaudio reading a line of dialogue along with the movie so you can make sure that they are still running concurrently.

The main differences between MST3K and RiffTrax is that you don't see Mike and the Robots in silhouette, and they riff on recent movies. Over winter recess I listened to their impressions of Star Wars Episode I and I just about fell off my chair laughing. Tonight I'm watching Episode II with their comments:

Padme: "You are a Jedi and I am a senator. If this follows to its natural conclusion we'll end up in a place where we cannot go."

Mike from RiffTrax: "Cuba?"

If you like that kind of humor, then try RiffTrax.

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I'd wish my father a happy Father's Day here, but he doesn't have a computer!

Cities of Heroes

It's fun to get together with your friends and sit around a table to play role-playing games. For the uninitiated, a role-playing game (RPG) is like playing pretend, but with rules and dice-rolling to arbitrate the actions of the characters you're pretending to be. Instead of running around the yard like when you were a child you sit around a table, using a map and metal miniatures to show the relative position of your characters and the environment in which they interact. Most of the general public knows this as "Dungeons & Dragons," although there are hundreds of different games spanning dozens of genres that perform the same function: allowing one to express creativity and tell stories cooperatively. The bottom line is that it's fun. Don't knock it until you try it!

I had played RPGs informally in college, simply because time was at a premium and it was tough to match schedules with so much activity. I tried various games, like DC Heroes, Marvel Super Heroes, and even D&D. But after graduation, I joined a group that changed my life. My friend Scott had told me about the group he played with in South Bend, Indiana, and how they had been playing in a campaign (an episodic series of gaming sessions)together for a few years. I sat in with them once, but again, was too busy during college to dedicate the time for it. But after I graduated from college in 1987, Scott had a serious car accident and he needed someone to drive him to the game. And since I suddenly had the time, I jumped at the chance to join. And the rest, for me, is history.

We played at my friend Doug's house, in his dining room. The game was called Champions, a popular superhero game that uses a point-based system to create your very own original superhero. I have always loved the superhero genre, and had made up my own superheroes for years. It was amazing how each player's character came to life. Week after week, we met on Sunday, shared pizza and pop, and developed complex characters that would put the best author to shame. Hundreds of game sessions flew by. We went to dinner and movies together, played disc golf, and cultivated true friendships. A few players left here and there, but the core group stayed intact for the next six years and we all stayed in touch. Finally, we found ourselves distracted by real life as players got married, began careers and moved away. The game ended in 1994.

Well, here we are in 2007 and thanks to the internet I still play with my friends. We now play on online game called City of Heroes. We play on Wednesday nights and the more things change, the more they stay the same. Instead of sitting around a table in South Bend, we sit at our computers in our own homes, whether they are in Virginia, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Michigan, or Indiana. We still talk to each other, too. We use a computer program called Skype which provides voice communication over the internet. So, we play with headsets on, and carry on conversations covering just about every topic that we used to discuss, ranging from movies and music to politics and religion. It's just that now we also talk about children and taxes too. The computer resolves the action for us, which is more fair, but I sometimes miss rolling 12 or more dice and watching them scatter over the table.

Those of us who still live in the area remain good friends. Doug and I were each best man for each other's weddings. We both have kids now, which makes it tougher in some ways to go to movies together, but Doug's son Sean is a born gamer. I'm just trying to figure out the best age for the kids to all get around a table together so they can start rolling dice and becoming real friends. And if they move away as adults, I'm sure technology will provide the means for them to remain close, as it has worked for my friends and me.

No-No!

Justin Verlander is an outstanding young pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. What he did tonight left me speechless. He threw a no-hitter. He didn't throw it against a terrible offense. He didn't throw it against a last place team. He threw a no-hitter against the Milwaukee Brewers, the first place team in the National League Central Division. He struck out twelve batters. He struck out Tony Graffanino four times. This is the first no-hitter by a Tiger since Jack Morris threw one against the Chicago White Sox in 1984. I saw that one, too.

In my life, I played in two no-nos in high school and have seen one in person against the South Bend Silverhawks. But this one is special. I made a special trip to Comerica Park last year just to see Justin pitch during his rookie season. I took the above photograph at that game. And since he was the American League Rookie of the Year last year, I sure am glad I made the trip.

In the ninth inning, with the whole crowd standing, the cheers had to have been deafening. Having been in Comerica during the playoffs, it brought memories flooding back to me and tears to my eyes.

I love this game.

"I Think That I Shall Never See..."

...a billboard lethal as a tree." With apologies to Ogden Nash, I think I'd have preferred billboards this week.

Thursday was interesting. I got home at noon, had a little lunch, got Sera ready to go out to run errands, and a tree fell down in our front yard. It split at the juncture of two branches and the part that broke fell into the street. I went outside to look at it and it had dark marks on it as if it had been struck by lightning. I looked up into the remaining part of the tree and saw a split further up. I called a few tree removal places before I found one that could come out right away, and when the "arborialist" got there, he took a quick look at the situation and gave me some options. First, he could cut off the part that had fallen and haul it away for $125, or he could cut down the whole tree for $850. I think the second price might have been exaggerated to persuade me to take the first option. He looked up at the split and said that it looked like it could heal. He said it had been carpenter ants and the split had probably been there for months. The wind was pretty stiff that day, and after gust he said, "See? If that part was going to come down it would have already." So, I took him at his word and he and his crew of three got to work. 15 minutes later I paid him the $125 and they left me with an immaculate yard.

An hour later the rest of the tree fell on our house.

It would be amusing if it weren't for the fact that the tree fell on the house. It didn't hurt anything, but it was pretty annoying. I went to class, and Magi took care of the rest of it when the guy arrived later in the evening. He only ended up charging us a total of $550, so I guess I feel lucky. They did a good job cleaning up the tree. You can't even tell there was one there.

On Friday, we packed up Sera and went to Rhapsody in Green, an annual summer celebration in Elkhart. It seems like all the midwest towns have these all summer long. There's no good reason. They must like carnival food. While we were walking around Island Park, where the celebration occurs, a branch fell out of an overhead tree from about 60 feet up. I don't know why I stopped in my tracks, but I did, and it hit the ground and exploded right in front of me. I think the trees are out to get me.

Fighting Crime

I'm not a superhero but I used to play them in role-playing games.

This weekend, while we were driving in Elkhart, we saw a moped tipped over in the middle of the street. A car was backing away from it onto a side street. It paused for a moment, and then turned around and took off in the opposite direction. The driver of the moped was getting up off the ground. As we pulled up, I rolled the window down and asked him if that car had hit him. He said it had. So, I turned down the side street and followed the escaping vehicle. After a couple of twists and turns, the car accelerated well past the speed limit toward the direction from which we had come. We caught up with it at a traffic light and took down its license plate number. Whereas some of my superhero characters would have lifted the car and flown it to police headquarters, we simply pulled into the nearest parking lot and called the police. When they arrived, we gave them our information and went home. I felt good that we had done the right thing, despite the lack of super powers.

Setting an example for Sera is becoming very important to me, but it is hard work. It has made me think twice about my actions many, many times since we came back from China. For the most part I'm satisfied that I do well, but this process has really opened my eyes about some of my behavior and I'm working to change it.

Convergence

What an incredible evening!

On a day when we drove to Kalamazoo just to get Sera some Tigers wear, I caught a foul ball at a baseball game. No big deal, you're probably saying. Many of you have caught foul balls at games. Well, here's why it's a big deal. My friend and colleague Dave and I went to the South Bend Silverhawks game tonight, and a near-miracle happened. I never sit behind the plate because I want to catch a foul ball. I've been waiting years to catch one. I usually sit on the third base line where I can at least have a good chance. Well, tonight of all nights I finally caught one. The ball was fouled straight back and rolled down the safety net over section 109 and fell through a hole directly above me. I caught it even though I had my scorecard in my hands. This is coincidence enough, but here's where it gets really cool: As a Tigers fan I experienced something of a convergence, because the foul ball that I caught was hit by Great Lakes Loons outfielder Scott Van Slyke. Who's he? Why, none other than the son of Tigers first base coach Andy Van Slyke. Who did I get to sign the ball after the game? The manager of the Great Lakes Loons, none other than former Detroit Tiger Lance Parrish. How's that for a night for a Tigers fan?

"Simplify, simplify."

That's what Calvin's dad said in the greatest comic strip ever devised (in my opinion), "Calvin and Hobbes," when faced with the dilemma of having "accumulated more than we need" and having "accepted too many demands." Yes, I know it's a quote from Henry David Thoreau, but I prefer to get my wisdom from comics. They filter out all the noise for me because, let's face it, some of these philosophers and poets were windbags of immense proportion.

Speaking of windbags...As I prepare to abandon my own classroom for the summer (I teach summer school at Memorial High School this year) I find that my room is cluttered with too many things. I scarcely have cabinet space for all of it. I can fit everything I need to teach my course in a container no larger than 1.5 cubic feet, and I have done so in preparation for Wednesday, when we meet at the summer school site. So why do I have all this stuff in my room?

I could fill a truck with all the Detroit Tigers and Major League Baseball stuff I bought last year. I tried to use baseball as a theme this year. What better application of percents, proportions, ratios, and geometry is there? The answer is none, but it fell flat on its face. I shouldn't have been surprised, because kids don't much watch baseball anymore. It's not fast enough for them and some of my kids have the attention span of small insects. That's right, small insects. Even some large insects have longer spans. To sound like an old grump, it's the video game generation. Flashing lights and floor-shaking sounds can occupy them for hours, but something that requires more thought than reflexes, and they tune out. I'm afraid that America's Pastime is past its prime. I will always love it, but the hard fact of the matter is that it has gone by the wayside in mainstream culture.

The reason I switched the decor to baseball to begin with was the crisis of faith I had in my other childhood love, comic books. A few years ago, a storyline in DC Comics' "Identity Crisis" miniseries just turned my stomach. Heroes that I loved as a kid, members of the Justice League of America, acted in a very much unheroic...no, that word is not strong enough...violently criminal way; they forcefully changed a villain's personality by violating his very mind and warping it to their own wants. And when Batman, another of my childhood heroes, learned of it, they turned their mind-warping attentions to one of their own. Then, a few months later, in the "Infinite Crisis" storyline, writers had an alternate-earth version of Superboy decapitate a heroine named Pantha on panel, and then rip another hero's arm from its socket, complete with gore. These scenes are not for the faint of heart:

Are you kidding me?? We were in the process of adoption then, and I tried to imagine teaching my daughter to read with this material. I almost literally got sick to my stomach. I wouldn't let her read this as a teenager, let alone a toddler. The comic book that inspired me to learn to read was Superboy. The comic that taught me the meaning of heroism was Justice League of America. And what was I to do with all of the superhero posters that I had laminated and hung in my room? I took them down the next day. I could not in good conscience promote the adventures of these characters as they were going to be written.

Simpler Times

Fortunately, reprints of the classic appearances of these characters are easily and readily available. DC's Showcase series and Marvel's Essentials series have made black and white reprints available at very reasonable prices. There are about 500 pages of comics in each edition of these 1960s and 1970s comics and at Amazon, you can get them for around $10-$11 each. I am going to fill my bookshelves with them next year and get my superhero posters back out. My kids will know what being a hero is all about, and I really don't mind if they laugh at "Mumbling mantas!" as an expression. Looking back on it, I think it's pretty funny too. They may have been simpler times but it sure beats looking at Pantha getting her head knocked off.

Wounded Tigers

The Detroit Tigers are just plain getting chewed up this season!

Carlos Guillen just left tonight's game with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays with a groin strain. Nate Robertson hurt his back pitching tonight as well. Brandon Inge broke his toe last night and Placido Polanco has an oblique strain, missing a few days this past weekend. All of this is following Kenny Rogers' shoulder surgery, Vance Wilson's elbow surgery, Joel Zumaya's ruptured tendon in his middle finger, and Fernando Rodney's shoulder issues. What's next??

I guess I should be grateful that they are only 1.5 games behind Cleveland, as beat up as they are. The Tigers have already had more games missed from injury this year than they had all of last year and we're only 52 games into the 162-game season.

Introduction to Computing

I'm taking a class at Indiana University South Bend called Introduction to Computing. For someone whose first computer was a TRS-80 Model IV, it's really interesting. I've always enjoyed computing, and my first major in college was computer systems engineering. But when my first lab in EE 250 (electrical engineering) bored me nearly to sleep, I changed majors to something easier: Math.

As it turns out, I would have been well-served changing majors to computer science, which dealt more with the programming side than the hardware side. In our class we have discussed wide-ranging topics such as how a CD player (and a CD itself) actually works, and how one can use powerful computers to map the interior of the human body. I've never been one to worry about the inner workings of the computer but I do use them an awful lot as tools, for digital photography, art, spreadsheets to analyze school data, PowerPoint presentations for instruction, and maintaining a web presence, such as updating this blog. So when we learn how a dot matrix printer works I get really interested, especially when it makes sense as to why my DMP-107 always made such a horrendous racket.

Isn't it ironic, by the way, that my computer, the TRS-80, with its powerful 64 KB of RAM was often called the "TRaSh-80?" It caused me to call my printer the "DuMP-107." They seemed to go so well together, trash and dump.

Last night in class our professor, Dr. James Wolfer, had us make a basic web page, and one of the characteristics it needed to have was an external link. I linked to this site. So, Dr. Wolfer, if you're reading this, the link works!

Take My Love, Take My Land...

...Take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care, I'm still free.
You can't take the sky from me.

For the uninitiated, these are the opening lyrics for the title theme of the 2001 television series, "Firefly." Every night before Sera goes to bed, we watch a video together. Right now we're watching this great space western on DVD.


Never heard of "Firefly?" Not surprising, since Fox canceled it before the 13 existing episodes even finished airing. Not only did they not show all the episodes, but the ones that they did show were shown out of order. That means the full-length two-hour pilot wasn't shown until several episodes into the run. It's kind of helpful knowing who all the characters are and where they came from before the show gets too far into its season, right?

I didn't learn about "Firefly" until I read a friend's blog, where he described going to the premiere of "Serenity," the motion picture made from the series. Now, you probably wouldn't think that anyone would invest in a movie made from a short-lived TV series, especially one that didn't even get a full season, but apparently the DVD sales were so high that Universal decided to gamble on it.

I went to the store and picked up the DVD set two years ago, and I've probably watched the series a dozen times. In the commentary, series creator Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel) described his inspiration for Firefly as coming from his reading of The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. The Killer Angels is historical fiction set around the battle of Gettysburg, and Joss Whedon combined that idea with Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon. How could he miss with that?

The series revolves around the crew of Serenity, a Firefly-class spaceship used to do salvage and hauling operations throughout a solar system terraformed and inhabited by new pioneers from Earth. The government of this new solar system is called the Alliance and it is essentially an amalgam of the US and Chinese governments. The Alliance's interference with the settlers of these new planets brought about an uprising by the Independents, and allegory for the Confederacy but without the slavery. After the Independents lost the war following the battle of Serenity Valley, Sgt. Malcolm Reynolds bought a ship and began working for those who could pay. Along with his first officer Zoe, Reynolds' crew is rounded out by the pilot, Wash, who is Zoe's Hawaiian-shirt clad husband; Kaylee, the 20-something mechanic who has an affinity for engines; and my favorite, Jayne Cobb, a mercenary whose lack of wit is only matched by his greed. Jayne's lines are almost always the funniest, even though the character is not trying to be funny. The rest of the crew come aboard in the pilot. I don't want to give away their particulars, since they are integral to the plot.

The setting is one of the most interesting parts of the series. The planets and moons that the people inhabit are frontier-like, with evidence of high technology, but with livestock and farms as well. These people have a way of speaking that is just charming. There is a mix of good old fashioned country talk right alongside Mandarin phrases, which are used when swearing would be appropriate. They have their cute science fiction euphemisms as well. "Ain't no ruttin' way" is an example, as is "Did a piece just fall off my gorram ship?"

There are so many memorable moments in this show that I would love to list them all. But I don't want to spoil them for you. Just trust in what I say by this example: When was the last time you saw cattle being smuggled in a space ship?

We bought DVD sets of the show two years ago for Christmas presents and gave them to our entire family. They all loved the show too.

It's late now and I have to work in the morning. I'll be in my bunk.

A Long Time Ago...

I am what you might call a Star Wars purist. When I say that, I want you to know exactly what I mean. When I saw Star Wars for the first time at the impressionable age of 12, it was not Episode IV of anything and it most certainly was not subtitled, “A New Hope.”

My aunt told me in the summer of 1977 that there was a great new movie out that she thought I would be interested to see, so I went along. My father and I had just completed our move to Mesick, Michigan and I was about to start 7th grade in a school I had left when I was in elementary. Little League was over, and it was a few weeks before school was to start, and I had spent the better part of a week (or a year, adjusted for 12-year old inflation) just sitting around. So, we went. I didn’t know that the movie was Star Wars.

I was one of those kids who always read books of movies, so I could replay it in my head. You have to remember that back then there were no VCRs or DVD players. If you were going to relive a movie, you had to go to the theater and see it again. I had bought the novelization of Star Wars before the movie had even come out. I tried not to read it before I saw the movie, but I just couldn’t resist. I didn’t think much of the writing; “Servomotors whined in protest” was a phrase that appeared no less than three times in Alan Dean Foster’s book, credited to George Lucas. The story, though, sounded too good to be true. It was like a fairy tale told in space.

I had seen the movie trailer; I had seen a clip from the movie on the Today Show. You know, back when Tom Brokaw was the host along with Jane Pauley. Those were the days.

When we got to the theater, and I stopped shaking in anticipation, we found out that the movie had already started and was about an hour in. My aunt asked me what I wanted to do, and I suggested that we just go in. She had already seen it and I had already read the book. I knew what was going to happen, or so I thought. As we sat down with our popcorn I was hypnotized. It was during the trash compactor scene, when Han fires his blaster, only to watch it ricochet inside the magnetically sealed walls. I had never seen an effect like that! I was used to slow-moving animated phaser beams from Star Trek reruns. I think my jaw dropped into my popcorn.

The movie just got better and better as it went, and the space battle and lightsaber duel really got my attention. When it was over, we stayed and watched it again. I would have watched it a third time, but we had to get home. I spent an hour trying to describe the movie and its effects to my grandparents, who humored me by watching me try to mime the lightsaber duel. When my dad got home, I told him we had to go see it right away. We saw it at the nearby drive-in the next weekend. When I started school, I wore a blue t-shirt that read, “May the Force Be With You.”

All of that said, I thought the sequels got weaker as they went. I know where I was 26 years ago today. I was at the theater seeing ‘The Empire Strikes Back” at age 15. When we walked out of the theater, I was still in shock, not believing that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father. I couldn’t believe that Obi-Wan Kenobi had lied to Luke. Yes, I know it’s true “from a certain point of view.” Poodoo, I say. From that certain point of view, Darth Vader was a title and a name, not a name and a name. That’s why Obi-Wan called him “Darth” in Star Wars, and not Vader, right? Remember the line, “Only a master of evil, Darth.” It was his first name, for crying out loud!! I saw Return of the Jedi the week after I graduated from high school. It was literally the first movie that I attended myself. I was working nights, so I went to a matinee. I saw it twice more the same week, just for the lightsaber fights. By that time, I was starting to see the weakness of the plots, but I didn’t care.

There are so many contradictions in the sequels and prequels that followed Star Wars that I can hardly watch the first one anymore without catching them in a continuity error in one of the subsequently made movies. I’m sure you can scour a message board somewhere and find a list longer than my arm. That’s not what I’m about.

I still recall the effect that the movie had on me at that time. I still have a movie magazine that covered Star Wars, 2001, and Forbidden Planet, arguably the best sci-fi (or SF, as Starlog magazine insisted it be called) movies of the past three decades. I became a regular reader of Starlog, and scanned the newspapers every day for hints of a sequel or a TV series. Logan’s Run had just been picked up as a series, so why not Star Wars, right? Well, Logan’s Run didn’t turn out to be very good as a series, so it’s probably just as well. I bought the MAD magazine and Cracked parodies. I bought trading cards and put them in story order. I would play Meco’s Star Wars disco record whenever I saw it in a jukebox. I may have become the slightest bit obsessive. Those who know me are not shocked to read this, I’m sure. The next year, when Alan Dean Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye came out, I was all over it. Same thing with Han Solo at Star’s End, by Brian Daley. I could not resist anything that had the Star Wars logo on it. I still remember getting the four Star Wars glasses at Burger King. I can still see my dad and myself drinking Coke at the Burger King in front of Cherryland Mall in Traverse City, just so I could get more glasses.

That Christmas, I received a puzzle of this image, which I put together at least five times:

The magic of Star Wars wasn’t the merchandising or the endless inferior sequels and prequels. Star Wars made me interested in film, one of my key interests even today. It introduced me to classical music, with John Williams’s amazing score. You couldn’t avoid hearing a marching band playing it for the next two years whenever and wherever there was a parade. Williams won the Academy Award the next year, when he was up against himself for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” I guess it increases your odds when you are two of the five nominees. I joined band, playing baritone and then tuba, the very next year. I discovered radio drama because NPR played the radio serial once a week, complete with the Williams soundtrack and Ben Burtt’s Oscar-winning sound effects.

Star Wars ignited my imagination, leading me to fill page after page of drawings about Luke Skywalker and his friends. I even started doing woodwork in my grandfather’s garage. I built a two-foot long Star Destroyer out of plywood so that my die-cast X-Wing fighter would have something to fight besides TIE fighters. I made lightsabers so that my dad and I could duel. His was red, because evidently red was the color for bad guys. I made a Han Solo blaster, learning how to use the power sander to round the edges of the magazine. I used the belt clip from a tape measure to attach it to my pocket because I didn’t have the low-slung holster rig yet. When I got too old for the toys, I gave them all to my brother and bought him more besides, whenever I got the chance. Even if I was too old for them, I could still buy them for others!

As an adult, I can still appreciate what the film has done not only for me, but for generations of others. My brother-in-law works for Industrial Light and Magic, the company formed to create the special effects for Star Wars, and a few years ago Magi and I got to actually visit Skywalker Ranch in the hills outside San Francisco. It was really a great experience, and Jeremy didn’t stop there. Last year for Christmas he got me a coffee table book about the prequels and had anyone at ILM who was willing, to sign it for me over the parts of the movie that they had worked on. Now that is a cool gift!

Although as a middle school teacher, I am faced every day with kids who are so jaded that they think that Star Wars is lame or too “old school” to be entertaining, I have to explain to them the history of filmmaking and how things changed when Star Wars hit the screens. I just sit back and wonder, though, at what will inspire them because in their world of entertainment, I just don’t see them getting as excited about anything as I got from one simple movie in the lazy summer of 1977.

Mother's Day

I got up early this morning and prepared French Toast for my family for Mother's Day. It's my wife's first Mother's Day and she's been waiting an awfully long time for it, so I wanted it to be special. I usually make breakfast on the weekends, but French Toast with powdered sugar and real maple syrup just seemed like the right thing to do for a special day. Sera loves French Toast, by the way. But then again, she likes pretty much everything!

When my wife suggested that we go to a baseball game today for her first Mother's Day I thought I was having audible hallucinations. When I asked her why, she said that it was a nice way to spend the afternoon outside where we could all be together. Not being a fool, I quickly agreed.

What a nice afternoon it was. The South Bend Silverhawks are our local low-A minor league team. They are affiliated with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Several of the current Diamondbacks are former Silverhawks, as are many other players around the major leagues. Diamondback players include Brandon Webb, Miguel Montero, Chad Tracy, and Scott Hairston. Other teams' former Silverhawks include David Dellucci (Cleveland), Brad Penny (LA Dodgers), Chris Capuano (Milwaukee), Dan Uggla (Florida) and Lyle Overbay (Toronto) just to name a few.

The weather was very nice, with sunshine to make up for slightly brisk temperatures, and the Silverhawks pounded the Lansing Lugnuts 7-1. Sera made it through all nine innings this time, having the time of her life being passed back and forth between us. Magi received a pink Silverhawks cap just for being there.

Sera also received a little gift as the Silverhawks' mascot Swoop tossed her a stuffed Aflac duck.

Swoop was probably trying to make up for Sera's last encounter with him when the big, mangy bird terrified her. But then if you looked like this, wouldn't you scare a one-year old? Heck, I'm 42 and he frightens me!

Well, I just wanted to take this opportunity to wish my wife a very special first Mother's Day. I can't imagine a better mother for Sera than she has been already in this very short time!

The Best Year of My Life (So Far), Part I

My new year doesn’t begin on January 1. As a teacher my year begins in August, when we teachers stroll in to school wearing shorts and sandals for our new year activities. We get a new list of students, we meet our new staff members and we catch up with each other, many of us having been apart for nine weeks. The new hires bring their youth and enthusiasm in, infecting us all, and we dive headlong into another cycle of teaching and learning. And we have a cookout in the courtyard of our school. That part doesn’t hurt, either.

With the school year winding down, I have to look back and say that it’s been pretty good for me. In fact, I’d say it’s been the best year of my life.

Comerica Park in Detroit is one of my favorite places on the planet.

In fact, it’s in the top five. I have been a Tigers fan my whole life, but for the 13 years previous to 2006 there wasn’t a whole lot to cheer about. During that period the Tigers never finished above .500. In 2006 they started out on an absolute tear, taking everyone by surprise. So in the fall, with school just starting I was taking the opportunity to go to Detroit whenever I got the chance to see the Tigers at home. I went once in August, once in mid-September, and then got tickets for the last two home games of the season against the Kansas City Royals. All the Tigers had to do was beat Kansas City one of the two remaining games and they would have won the American League Central Division title. I was disappointed when the Tigers got swept at home, giving up the title to Minnesota, but what I didn’t realize at the time was that it was the best possible thing that could have happened for me.

We were lucky in the first place to have a friend looking out for us who didn’t work for our school system. You see, our school system has a strict internet usage policy which doesn’t allow teachers to purchase things online. So when the playoff tickets went on sale, we thought we were completely out of the running. But our friend Ann, who is a retired teacher, got tickets for us we were at first ecstatic, then disappointed as we realized that we probably wouldn’t be able to go to the playoffs since they would have started on Wednesday night. With our international adoption upcoming in the same school year, I couldn’t take personal days off to see the Tigers in the playoffs. If the Tigers had won that last game in Kansas City, they would have begun the playoffs at home during midweek and I would have missed them. As it was, because the Tigers lost the division title and entered the playoffs as the Wild Card, they started their home games on Friday night. I was able to go!

I can only begin to describe the excitement of these games and the emotional moments as the Tigers beat the power lineup of the Yankees in the ALDS. My wife and I were moved to tears by the swell of 43,000 fans behind the Tigers in the games. There was a palpable feeling that we were all in the games together. After Craig Monroe hit a home run in game four, he returned to his position in left field in the top of the next inning to an ovation he couldn’t help but respond to. We let him know how much he meant to us, and he let us know that he felt the same way.

Craig's Home Run

His reaction to the ovation.

Placido Polanco throws to Sean Casey for the final out.

When the final out came, the stadium exploded in cheers. It was probably the most special night of the playoffs, because something nearly unprecedented happened. After the initial celebration on the field, the Tigers went into the clubhouse, but no one in the crowd moved. They just cheered more and more loudly. In just a few minutes, the team came back out and celebrated on the field with us fans, spraying champagne into the crowd and circling Comerica Park. Those who saw it on TV thought it was great; those of us who were there were forever touched by the emotion of the players and the fans around us.

From left to right: Curtis Granderson, Joel Zumaya, Alexis Gomez, Neifi Perez, and Marcus Thames.

When the next weekend rolled around, the Tigers were returning home with a 2-0 lead over the A’s in the best of four series. More on that next time!

She Called Me "Dada!"

The most touching moment for a new father has to be when his daughter calls him by name for the very first time. Yesterday after I got home from work I picked up Sera, who had been sleeping, and sat in the recliner in the living room. As the grogginess slowly left her she started to come out of her post-nap trance. She finally realized who was holding her and she yelled, "Dada!" and then head-butted me in the lower lip. I didn't even feel the head-butt; I was in shock. I asked Magi if she had heard it too, and she had. My daughter had addressed me by name! As if she could understand my uncertainty, she said it again and tapped my chest, just like we have been teaching her. How can this be possible? Each day with her is better than the last and each day is just about the happiest day of my life.

Twenty-Five Years

Twenty-five years used to seem like a long time to me but recently, I was invited to attend a 25th anniversary celebration of my high school baseball team’s 1982 state championship in Mesick, Michigan. Suddenly 25 years doesn’t seem to be that long ago.

I still remember that Monday in June, after we had been rained out on the weekend, warming up at Central Michigan University with standing water in the outfield. You could still smell the rain in the air. The infield grass was wet and a few loose blades of grass stuck to my shoes when I ran through it to get from the dugout to left field. The diamond dust between third base and shortstop crunched with each step as my spikes penetrated the surface of the dirt. The sun was out, and it felt warm on the black part of my jersey that read “Bulldogs” in white across the front...

In my junior year in high school, 1981-1982, our school was an athletic powerhouse. What you have to remember is that we were a class D school. In Michigan in the 1980s that was as small as you could get. Mesick Consolidated High School had around 250 students. Those students were brought in from as far as 15 miles away. When we were younger we had exactly one little league team in our town.

Mesick had never been known as a football town, since one of our athletes had broken his neck in a football game several years before, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. My freshman year we were 0-9, the next year we went 1-8. So no one expected it when in the fall of 1981 we went 6-3, defeating some state-ranked teams. Moving right into basketball, all 12 of us varsity basketball players had been on that football team. We did even better in basketball, going 24-2 and making it all the way to the state semifinals.

Eleven of the 12 basketball players played baseball that year. The one who didn't was a track star. John Chandler was the state champion that year in both shot put and discus, setting class D state records in both events. The rest of us made our way to Detroit that year for our annual trip to Tiger Stadium. There was a buzz in the air because people actually knew who we were. We had been state runners-up the year before and we wanted more. It was like nothing we'd ever felt before.

The season started out as usual, playing a few non-conference games. Now for those of you who didn't play high school ball in northern Michigan, conference games were started at 4:00 and were always 7-inning doubleheaders. That means we got to leave school early at least twice a week because time was tight. The games had to be finished before dark.

After a few games, we hadn't lost. I was the fourth pitcher on the team with a 2-3 man rotation. I got to pitch the third non-conference game of the season, throwing a four-hitter. When the conference season started, we still hadn't lost. As the season progressed, we were simply mowing down every team we faced. Our fiercest rival, Frankfort, was on the same path. We were 10-0 and the head-to-head confrontation was coming. Our left-handed pitcher, Eric McNitt had already thrown one no-hitter that season, and he was primed to hand Frankfort their first loss. Both pitchers threw outstanding games. Eric threw his second no-hitter of the season; their pitcher scattered six hits over the whole game. I had hit a long fly to right field that broke off the top of the fence (we used a wooden snow fence) for a ground rule double. When I tried to score from second on the only other hit in the inning, a bloop single, I was thrown out at the plate. It was closer than I thought it was going to be and I didn't slide. The game ended a 0-0 tie. That's right, no extra innings allowed. We had two seven-inning games to get in.

In the second game we were down 3-0 going into the bottom of the fourth inning when we exploded for four runs. I knocked the winning run in, which sort of made up for my baserunning mistake. We ended up taking the conference that day, thanks to some great pitching by my friend Steve Coger. We didn't lose a single game for the rest of the regular season. I still feel bad to this day that we had the tie.

As the state tournaments started, we cruised through to the semifinals, where we faced Frankfort again, this time handling them fairly easily. This set us up for the state championship.

When we met Colon High School (insert your own joke here), we played at Central Michigan University after several days of rain. As I mentioned, there was standing water in the outfield. We had already been rained out for two days, so we were playing on a Monday. Still, I think our whole town was there. The game was tight, incredibly tight all the way through. In the top of the 6th inning, I got my moment to shine.

It wasn't a happy day for me up to that point, since I had gone into a major slump. I had gone 3-for-7 in the district tournament, but was hitless in the next two games. My coach put in a designated hitter for me in the state championship. I stewed about it, but at least I was still starting in left field. In the top of the 6th we were down 2-1 with two outs, and Colon had loaded the bases. When Jeff Thrams came up, he blasted a liner that I thought was going to fall in front of me. I charged it, not wanting to give up the runs, when I realized it was carrying over my head. I turned, sprinted for all I was worth, and somehow caught the ball over my shoulder. The crowd went crazy. We scored in the bottom half of the inning and tied the game. In the bottom of the 7th, we scored the winning run when my friend Ken LaFountain scampered home from third base on a weak grounder to short, and won the state championship, 3-2.

We finished 30-0-1 that season, undefeated class D state champions, to cap off a great year for our small school and town. I still have the glove I used that day. I've had it relaced, but I still use it. There's a baseball in it right now, keeping its shape.

You’ve seen movies like “Mr. Destiny,” where a defining moment changes the way a person’s life goes. That was one of mine. It’s still a big part of who I am that I know I contributed to our team reaching the pinnacle of success to which a high school sports team can aspire.

I just can’t believe it was 25 years ago.

Lobots

Okay, what is the deal with these people who can't walk the earth without their Bluetooth devices in their ears? Do they really receive so many calls that they can't put their phones up to their ears?

I can see the usefulness of the earpieces if you are working or driving and require your hands to be free. In fact, I wish people who talk on their phones while driving were required to have them. But half the people I see with these things aren't even using them most of the time and they just look pretentious to me. I am starting a small movement to call these people, "Lobots."

Lobot was a character in "The Empire Strikes Back" who had a computer link from his brain to the cloud city of Bespin. He walked around all the time with a device just like the Bluetooth, except that it wrapped around his entire head. He was continuously connected, which came in handy when Lando Calrissian decided to be a good guy and remotely commanded Lobot to have his security forces confront the Imperial Stormtroopers who were occupying the city.

Lobot and friends.

Whenever I see someone walking down the street or in the mall with one of these things on while not using it, I'm tempted to ask them, "How's Lando?"

It's gotten to the point where sales assistants are wearing them in stores now too. I can't quite bring myself to call them clerks because I can't picture Dante and Randal using Bluetooths. There were a few instances for me recently where an associate was speaking while looking directly at me and when I started to answer, they turned away while still talking. It turned out they were responding to someone over their wireless communication system. Couldn't they have just excused themselves from our conversation before they cut me off to deal with a telephone customer, or worse in the last instance, a personal call?

I digress.

What really amuses me about these Lobots is the fact that they usually have only one ear covered, and when that ear is away from my view it appears that they are talking to themselves, which makes them look slightly crazy. The thing is, they appear only a little less so when I see what they're really doing.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game!

Tonight was Sera's first baseball game! We went to see the South Bend Silverhawks play the Cedar Rapids Kernels in South Bend, and it was just a beautiful night. The air was warm, the sun felt nice, and we saw friends at the game, some old and some new. After taking her to my middle school's track meet yesterday and watching her eyes light up with all the activity, I thought she might do okay at a baseball game. Boy, did she ever!


Sera was engaged from the moment we passed through the turnstyles. She laughed, watched the players, flirted with fans, and generally had fun. She made it all the way through the seventh inning stretch before she started to tire and that was just about 8:00, her bedtime. The only real problem she had was with Swoop, the Silverhawks' mascot. But that's okay, he looks like a big mangy pigeon to me, too. Here we are at the game:

My wife is wearing her Silverhawks cap because she lost her Tigers cap in China!

Seranade

My one-year old daughter Sera likes music. That doesn't set her apart from other people, but what does is the fact that she likes for me to sing. I have a decent singing voice. It's nothing to write home about, but I can carry a tune. When we were in China trying to get her to sleep at night, I would sing anything to her from "Hotel California" to "Hey Jude" and she would sing along with me in the sweetest monotone you ever heard. I learned quickly, though, that I need to bone up on my lyrics, since the only song I can do from beginning to end is "Hotel California."

Since returning home from China, Sera has had trouble going to sleep at night, which is understandable given the 12-hour time difference. We have been jet lagged for a few days now; I would say indirectly because my wife and I didn't sleep on the way home and Sera did. So one of us is still on China time and she makes sure that the rest of us know about it.

The other night I was rocking with her, hoping that she would take less than an hour to go out. Nothing was working. No position change would make her comfortable. We don't yet have a glider in the nursery, so we are using a simple stackable chair. About 45 minutes into severe back pain for me, she started humming in that monotone. I had forgotten! So, shortly after a lovely rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle," she went to sleep. It may not be American Idol, but my audience of one would vote for me every time, and that's all that matters.

My little American Idol.