Our Boys: 17-0-1

Last Saturday my little league team the Dodgers (8-10 year old West-side boys), played in their championship game against the vaunted Rangers.  I wanted to blog this before it got away, not because I think it will be of QD interest, but mainly because I had such a good time being there and I wanted to document it for myself.  (Again, my role has been minimal, I just keep score, play catch, and give rides home.)  Mike is the headcoach, and he's assisted by "Surge", "Willie", and myself.

I can't descrbe well enough the feeling of being at a little league championship game on a fresh summer saturday morning.  The Chicago park district came out and manicured the field in the early morning hours and chalked the lines for us.  Soon after kids began showing up and started playing catch and taking batting practice.  Someone handed me a Starbucks with cream and sugar, and I was in heaven.  Being the championship, lots of parents and friends showed up and filled the bleachers.  The park, on the near west side close to University of Illinois medical district, is a little baseball gem with excellent turf, infield, dugouts, scoreboard, bleachers and trees for shade.  It sits in a nice neighborhood with typical Chicago-style town homes lining one side, the Sears tower and downtown skyline visible in the other direction.  Before the game started the colors were presented and Rod sang the national anthem.  The kids from both teams huddled up on the pitcher's mound, said a prayer, and shook hands. The game was on.

Both teams were undefeated going into the game,  the Rangers making it by narrowly beating out the Angels in the semi-final game the previous Monday.  Trouble is, they used up their ace pitching doing it, and as a result the Dodgers were able to hit at will against the rest of their staff.  But it was an exciting game (Dodgers won 10-4) and was a lot closer than it looks on paper.  Jackson, the Dodger's pitcher, lasted all six innings and had more than 10 strikeouts.  After the game the kids received trophies (I got one too!) posed for a team photo (dammit, I didn't have my camera working).  Mike gave all the boys personalized bats as gifts for a well played season and told them to practice in the off-season.  There will be a team celebration at Mike's summer beach house in Indiana.

It's been a long time since I've been involved in anything like this.  One thing about graduate school, postdoc, and junior faculty jobs in physics is that they are pretty demanding and often times take up huge amounts of one's life to do them right. (That was my experience, others have done much better at giving back.)  As a result, involvement with the community tends to suffer.  When I was a post doc at Urbana-Champaign, I don't think I read the local paper once, or joined anything. I was too busy submitting jobs, writing Monte Carlo and analysis code, making plots, analyzing data, writing talks and papers, and... drinking beer, literally.  Thats how life was for 5 straight years.  I left Champaign having never joined anything, contributed nothing to the town.  Sorry, Champaign.  Sorry Urbana.

I've decided its not going to be like that anymore, regardless of the crisis du jour.

Comments

[claire]

From Claire B to anybody who wants to be in this feuilleton : If i translate Suis je claire by i hope i have been clear, if i believe my Harrap's you will understand something about freedom! I wanted to correct. To talk about freedom answering to say stop to peoples "fascinated" by Al'capone!
So i am perfectly in confidence with myself. In all senses of this world in European languages i am clear and Claire.
Could you say to me why insuffler and socle are words not translated in Harrap's and Larousse Dictionnary?

[claire]

From Claire B to anybody who wants to be in this feuilleton : If i translate Suis je claire by i hope i have been clear, if i believe my Harrap's you will understand something about freedom! I wanted to correct. To talk about freedom answering to say stop to peoples "fascinated" by Al'capone!
So i am perfectly in confidence with myself. In all senses of this world in European languages i am clear and Claire.
Could you say to me why insuffler and socle are words not translated in Harrap's and Larousse Dictionnary?

[claire]

i forget: to complexify the story: to day was the ancient day of my first'name day. One changed it, it will be to morrow.