baseball
Gotta love minor league ball. Right behind the dugout for twelve bucks. (Taken with Instagram)
I wanted to personally thank Baton Rouge, LSU, Coach Paul Mainieri and the amazing LSU fans for the tremendous support they showed the cadets and fans from the United States Air Force Academy this past weekend. I had heard that LSU supporters were some of the best in the country, and they certainly did not disappoint.
I can honestly say that our team will never forget the unparalleled hospitality they received while visiting your great city and institution. Giving our team the opportunity to play and compete against such talent as Paul Mainieri and the LSU baseball team, in such an unbelievable facility was an experience our players, coaches and fans won’t soon forget.
Those of us wearing Air Force blue this weekend, in a sea of purple and gold might typically feel a little bit uneasy. However, your fans seemed genuinely appreciative of the cadets at the Air Force Academy and their future service to our great nation. To receive standing ovations during the middle of a Division 1 collegiate baseball game is an experience that is difficult to put into words. Nothing in my 20-year military and coaching career could have prepared me for that response and outpouring of support.
While we would have liked to walk out of Alex Box Stadium with a few more W’s this weekend, what we did walk away with simply cannot be matched.
You all should be very proud to be a part of such a great city and institution. Best of luck to all of you this season, and I think you may find you have a few more fans, who when not rooting for AFA will be pulling for LSU! It was Priceless! Thank You!
Michael “Kaz” Kazlausky, head baseball coach
United States Air Force Academy
USAF Academy, Col.
How long until pitchers and catchers report? on Flickr.
Season ticket holders unfurl the flag on Flickr.
This is my favorite photo of the entire 2011 ALCS Game 1 set. I just love how the sky looks, the way the Ballpark’s lit, the Texas-sized flag in the outfield. Baseball, mom, and apple pie. Darn tootin’.
And thanks to @brentmckinney, this has already happened. (Taken with picplz.)
Our ballplayer
This spring, Davis started playing baseball. At the six and under level (6U), it's coach-pitch. He did pretty well, and we saw improvements in his fielding from that first practice to the last game this past Saturday (May 22d). Hitting wise, he did awesome, going seven for eight in the first half of the season. He hit a slump, but rebounded for the last two games.
To see more photos, including a couple from the game, check out the rest of the set.
AirHogs Press Conference
The Grand Prairie AirHogs are a new minor league team in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, and we have some footage from a recent press conference:
The AirHogs season begins in May, and I'm looking forward to taking in a game or two this year.
Texas Rangers 2008 Calendar
I was a little miffed to learn the Rangers offer a downloadable calendar for the season, only as a comma-separated .csv file. This is fine and dandy if you're running Outlook, as apparently the Rangers front office does, but it's not so good if you're one of the millions of people--and trust me, there are millions--not running Outlook.
The .ics calendars I found online weren't quite up to my expectations, either. I ended up taking one and heavily modifying it, notably adding all of the away dates, since this particular one focused only on home games. You can download the calendar by clicking on the link below:
Simply unzip (decompress) the downloaded file, and follow your calendar of choice's method for importing a calendar. The .ics format is an open standard, so pretty much any modern calendar app--yes, including Outlook--will read it.
Frisco RoughRiders, 28 July 2007
So my "last hurrah" before foot surgery was an outing to the ballpark in Frisco, home of the AA RoughRiders. It's a nice park, and there's not really a bad seat in the house.
Fortunately for us, we had really great seats, thanks to a church member who passed on six Founders' tickets to Nathan, who kindly invited my wife and I to attend. Also along for the outing was Nathan's wife Kim, perennial pal Brent, and Brent's baseball-loving daughter, Kelsey.
We had a great time taking advantage of the all-you-can eat and drink benefit that came with Founders' tickets, so much so that we missed the first inning, and the only scoring the game would see! The game may have been "boring" from the lack-of-scoring perspective, but I had a great time being out at a baseball game with my wife and great friends, and took some photos to boot.
Happy days are here again
Ameriquest Field is no more. Long live Rangers Ballpark in Arlington! Personally, I could have done without the addition of "Rangers" to the original name for the park, but I can live with it. I never cared for the corporatization of The Ballpark's name; why would you rush to rename your ball field when it has such a classic name as "The Ballpark at Arlington"? I pretty much refused to dignify the corporate name by speaking it, and have continued, lo these many years, to simply refer to it as "The Ballpark". And now it's "The Ballpark"--only with "Rangers" in there, too--once again. Best of all, that stupid bell in the left field mid deck is gone, gone, gone!
Yeah, what he said
Tom's thoughts on the National Anthem mirror my own.
The missus can regale you with many a tale of Super Bowl, college bowl, NASCAR, baseball, hockey, and other sports viewing wherein I severely critique the anthem singing because they fail in one of the ways Tom speaks of.
Look, we know you're a good singer. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been chosen in the first place. And if it's a major sporting event, we know you're a great singer.
(Or you're just the flavor of the month, since we all know popularity doesn't necessarily reflect impressive skill.) (We do know that, right?)
Marcus Varsity Baseball Home Schedule
The missus and I have been talking about taking the little phisch to some baseball games this season over at our local high school. It's within walking distance, and right now, as the season's beginning, the temperatures are still cool.
I pulled up the varsity schedule, and entered all of the home dates in to a new calendar in iCal. I then exported the calendar, in .ics format, and am making it available for anyone in Flower Mound who wishes to follow the Marauders at home in 2007.
Again, this is the home schedule only, and your calendar program should support the .ics format (which pretty much any modern calendar app does).