Yankee Notes (Continued)

Just curious here and armed with what probably appears to be a smart ass question but is actually sincere .... What is the explanation for the Designated Hitter rule. Is the DH required to hit for the pitcher? Could a team let their pitcher hit and use the designated hitter to bat for the second baseman or shortstop? If you happen to be following the New York Yankees season to this point, then you'd know why I'm asking.

With the strike zone graphic box that's now employed in baseball telecasts to enhance our viewing pleasure, the technology must exist to position a robot behind the plate to call balls and strikes. If nothing else, it would end all the arguing and dirty looks. Who's going to give a robot a dirty look or question its decision making? What would that accomplish? I'm thinking that the average robot is immune to intimidation tactics.

If You Would Have Attempted A "Hack-a-Wilt-Chamberlain" He Likely Would Have Broken Your Face

The NBA needs to come up with a solution. The tactic originally known as "Hack-a-Shaq", has this season, devolved into multiple alternate versions. "Hack-a-Dwight," "hack-a-DeAndre," "hack-a-Bogut," "hack-a-JoshSmith" just to name a few of the more prominent playoff strategies. Intentionally foul the poor free throw shooters in hopes that they'll miss two free throws and you'll get the ball back. It's apparently thought to be a better defensive tactic than actually playing defense.

Dear NBA .... You must have noticed by now that when employed repeatedly, as it has been this post season, it's making your game highly unwatchable. It's rivaling the TV-timeout situation / fiasco in college basketball.

Don't those guys get even semi-embarrassed while they are bricking one free throw after another? Or does money in fact .... buy happiness? Or at least contentment in job performance?

The solution that would make to most sense ..... having the players spend more time working on their free throws ..... well we can't expect that from the players can we? Maybe the league can put a incentive bonus clause in all contracts. Convert better than 65% and have the option to skip out on the mandatory post game press conferences. Or shoot less than 50% for a month and you are allowed five personal fouils instead of six before fouling out. Shoot 75%, you get seven fouls. And an extra foul for every five percentage points of improvement. I wouldn't think the players union would have reason to object to that. Hell they have to also be taking notes how this tactic is uglying up their game.

Or maybe for each foul ruled to be intentional via the hack-a-poor-shooter strategy, give the shooters team one (or both) inside rebounding positions on the free throw lane.

And I'm tired of hearing how so-and-so (insert name of any poor free throw shooter) is a 95% shooter in practice. OK that's great but now how about lets attempt 95% more free throws before you exit practice if you make less than 70% in the games.

Wrong Once Again!!!

To those who predicted a huge west coast earthquake today and all those who assign specific dates for various catastrophic events since I've been alive ..... WRONG AGAIN!! Quick statistical analysis: Percentage of times that you yahoos have been wrong .... 100%. But feel free to keep trying because you all seem to have legions of loyal simple minded followers who are enthusiastically looking forward to any hint of the end of the world. The odds are that you might luck into getting one right sometime before the year 2525.

Oh wait .... Perhaps I should sweat out another 64 minutes before posting. It's not midnight yet on the west coast.

Life Lessons 101

• Four days away from work sure passes by a lot quicker than four days spent at work. I think someone is messing with the ticking seconds. I wonder how four days of retirement plays out in this scenario?
• How my life has changed ..... These days I get as excited about the purchase of a new piece of cookware as I do about a new vinyl record.
• If the instructions state to use a potholder to grasp the handle, then do so!!
• Just because some guy who only identifies himself as "Frank" puts a semi-slick video on youtube claiming that the beginning of the end is going to occur the day after tomorrow, it doesn't mean that I have to believe him. Hell, his actual name probably isn't even Frank. I wish I had started keeping a notebook forty years ago with all these various doomsday claims so I could assign huge check marks to each as they have failed to take place.
• In keeping with the conspiracy theme .... I wonder if that armed division of Russian troops that I read about twenty or thirty years ago, waiting beneath the streets of Indianapolis, is still down there? I wonder if they ever got the word that Stalin is no longer in power?
• A personal belief with no basis other than years of living .... God prefers that we don't get tattoos on our body.
• I've had problems understanding whenever I'd hear of people from my age group, falling down for no apparent reason .... Until it almost happened to me. Suddenly it's not such a mystery.

Relief And Loss

They cut down the grove of poplar trees at work. My eyes and nose greatly appreciate the gesture as those trees could set off my seasonal allergies in an instant after drawing near to them. But they were also the source of several favorite iamges recorded by my camera and one of those spots where I felt like I had yet to capture what I was really seeing. There was great potential present in those trees, still waiting to be revealed.

Everyone who tinkers with a canera (or a paint brush) likely has a few favorite spots that they've felt drawn to and that they are constantly keeping an eye of anticipation on in case the image that's being visualized, suddenly presents itself. You just pray that you are present and not looking in the opposite direction when it happens. There's one less spot now. Maybe there's something in the pile of logs?

Yankee Gameday Notes

Yankees on TV this morning. A few thoughts .....

• How long do you go with a second baseman and shortstop hitting .189 and .200 before trying something different? When does a "slow start" become the norm? This sure ain't the Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano days.
• I keep thinking that maybe this is the day that the team slump ends but it's not looking good. Giving up seven runs in the third inning two consecutive days doesn't help ...... Ummmm make that ten runs in today's third inning.
• Line score after three innings .... Texas: 10 Runs, 10 Hits / Yankees: 0 Runs, 0 Hits. Why am I still watching? Is Brian Cashman watching?
• 15-2 when they bring in rarely used Outfielder/First Baseman, Garret Jones to pitch. I've been hoping for something different but that's not what I had in mind.
• Bottom on the ninth inning, two outs and the Yankees down 15-4 .... and a group of people in the stands can be heard on TV chanting, "Lets go Yankees!" The definition of an optimist. 
• The Yankees called up their minor league phenom relief pitcher after the game. Wish they had a couple middle infield and starting pitching phenoms as well. They have an outfielder. Just the matter of releasing or benching a supposedly reliable, consistent and established veteran that's standing in his path.

I Heart Heart!!!

Don't you just hate it when you trek through three different grocery stores in search of a particular part of the chicken which you are feeling like it's the only thing that you feel like eating on this particular evening. And each meat section is well stocked with every fresh chicken part, except for the specific one that you are on a special mission to seek out ..... in this case, (don't laugh .... OK go ahead and laugh) chicken hearts. And then just to add another little bit of angst to the matter, your car is making an odd noise that you're uncomfortable with and the dealership couldn't locate the problem today when you were in for an oil change and a few other things and that will be $193 please and everything looks great but you may have to come back in soon if the noise continues and some kid almost runs you over on his bicycle while pedaling recklessly and out of control through the parking lot of one of your grocery stops and some other old dude (like yourself) is cursing out the driver of the car that's apparently in hot pursuit of the kid on the bike, for driving through the pedestrian loading lane that he is walking through and nearly clipping the old dude on foot ..... and then as you emerge from said store, resigned to a chicken heartless evening, the car alarm on the automobile parked next to you is blaring away with it's annoying, headache rendering tones and you wonder if people are looking at you suspiciously thinking that maybe you're the one that set it off while trying to break into the uber hip Prius, which probably isn't making that semi-worrisome noise that your car is making.

And on top of that, the Yankees blew a four run lead tonight and lost in the tenth inning on a walk-off, opposite field home run that hit the foul pole. (Or is it the fair pole?)

Not Sure What To Title This

I'm pretty sure that I've found the ex on facebook. The profile photo resembles what she might look like thirty years later. She's under a different name which I guess I'm not too surprised about. She was into astrology and expressed interest back then in the new age movement and a local influential personality in the scene. With what I knew at the time, it doesn't seem a stretch that she might have dived in deeply and decided to advance in her commitment hence possibly the funky name change. Maybe she's advanced to the level of some sort of guru these days? There are other little hints as well as to her former identity.

Then I guess it's quite possible that I could be totally wrong about all this. Though I'm thinking that I'm not. Why it matters? I'm not sure. I suppose there's always an interest in how old friends ..... and ex-wifes, are doing. Especially when you've heard the equivalent of nothing for thirty-plus years.

Is that how it is with most ex's? Seems like the majority have some measure of contact or source of information. Even the ones without children. But for me it's been like she never existed. Like the time together was just all a dream.

For years, I would go nowhere near her hometown. Even when I had heard that she was living three thousand miles away. I had issues with anything that I associated with the hurt that the break-up caused. The only way I knew to deal with it was through avoidance. I had tried the professional advice route but could see that there was little they could do but listen (for $40 an hour if I recall the rate correctly). Eventually I conquered that fear and others. Made peace with the ghosts. I had to find my way out sometime though it was far from a quick process. That sort of shit changes your heart. It's caused many of the memories from those years to be a blur. I chuckle now when I think that I could probably write a best selling self help paperback book on what I went through and learned. 

The Big Transition

Apparently there's no magic marker. I suppose that I had always assumed that there might be one. A line between young and old. You just realize one day that you've silently crossed over. There's no trumpets or celebrations to signify the moment. Though a sandwich or some ice cream in observance might be nice.

I fear that I've made the transition.

Maybe it's when you find yourself arriving home on many days from work .... and staying there!! With no intent of going back out into the world until the morning comes. Your content with just putting on a movie and slipping off into dreamland, as bizarre as that place often is.

Or maybe it's when you're on foot, crossing the street in traffic and find yourself going on faith that the oncoming cars will slow down or stop for you ..... because you ain't running across no more streets ever again!!

Or maybe it's those moments when you have to demand of yourself to stop walking around home and other various places, seemingly for no apparent reason, like an old man?

Is it when you recognize that several of your long held attitudes towards life, people, work, etc., have updated themselves and changed to a snarly, "I don't care" status? And you seem to be growing more irritated at daily situations by the moment. Like specifically for myself, traffic noise and all the stop, slow down and starting while images of your past life flashes by in front of you.

You start thinking: How can I reverse this trend? Maybe I need a change in diet and more exercise? Or maybe I need to drink more water? Should I sign up for a yoga class?

You begin looking at the time remaining in your life as a short term prospect instead of being far into the future. Like there's a damn good chance that you have less than twenty years remaining, where the previous thinking was in terms of infinity .... or longer! (That's the one that I struggle most with these days as I have issues dealing with my once assumed mortality.)