In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Motion.”
It’s ironic that the first Word Press blog challenge that I choose to do is one that asks me to share a photo about “Motion.”
Because, the people who wish to speed up baseball – shaving off a few seconds here or there to make the game a few minutes speedier – are also, I think, the same people who gulp their food, chug their wine, push aside slow pokes on escalators, and angrily honk their horns at me on the highway when I’m just trying to get into the left lane because, you idiot, there is a left turn there that I need to slow down to get into because my house is over there, okay???!!
So, when I’m taking photos at a ballgame it’s not because I’m trying to catch the action – although there is plenty there, with home runs, and 100 mph pitches, and diving outfield catches, slides into home, and, be still my heart, those beautiful, beautiful around-the-horn double plays.
I’m more about capturing the stillness.
This photo is about stillness … and yet, I don’t think you need to know much about baseball to see the motion in it.
“The real key to fielding is anticipation and concentration. … Expect the bad hop and be ready for the worst. It’s all concentration.” ~ Legendary Orioles Manager Earl Weaver
Yesterday, Kassie, a massage client, walked into my office here in Virginia carrying a Mason jar of blooms.
(It’s one of the great joys of being a massage therapist and yoga teacher – clients and students take such good care of me … bringing fresh vegetables from their gardens in summer, handfuls of flowers, and countless other kindnesses. They are wonderful.)
But, back to baseball …
I asked Kassie about each bloom that she had just picked on her farm that morning.
There were full-blooming white dogwoods, yellow forsythia (a bush I never knew until I moved to Virginia, where it is as ubiquitous here as grits for breakfast) tiny juddi verbernum flowers which made our porch fragrant like cinnamon this morning, a twig of Japanese maple leaves heavy with seeds, and a feather that a resident peacock had dropped in their farmyard.
She explained why the Japanese maple was so special.
Kassie grew up in Baltimore. Specifically, I knew from past conversations, she grew up on 33rd Street. If you know your Orioles baseball history, you know that before there was Camden Yards, the Orioles played for nearly 40 years in Memorial Stadium. On 33rd Street.
Public Domain by Jmj1000 via WikiCommons
I’ve often teased Kassie about not being a baseball fan when the Orioles were playing just up the street from her. Instead, she and her siblings would sit on their stoop and wave to the fans walking to and from the games.
The Dogwood & Japanese Maple twigs.
The maple twig in the jar, she said, came from a tree that once stood in her front yard on 33rd Street when she was growing up.
When her family left Baltimore and moved to a farm in central Virginia in the mid-1970s, her father decided the Japanese maple would move, too. It wasn’t huge, but it already stood a few feet high, and he carefully dug out the enormous root ball beneath. It made the transition from Maryland to Virginia and has been growing here ever since.
“So, you’re saying that this twig is from a tree that watched people walk to Orioles games in the 1960s and 1970s?” Yup.
Those years included amazing seasons when the Orioles were more dominant than the Yankees and in which the O’s played in four, and won two, World Series. As soon as the tree moved, the Orioles faded. Well, for a few seasons anyway.
This twig is a lucky Orioles twig.
Kassie thinks I’m a little crazy, but I love these flowers in their Mason jar, especially the Japanese maple twig.
Her family tree was a seedling that came from their Baltimore neighbor who had a koi pond and formal Japanese garden in his back yard. I like to think that the original “mother” maple is still there on 33rd Street, even though the Orioles moved downtown 23 years ago.
Kassie has promised to bring me a seedling that is bound to sprout up underneath her family maple tree this season.
And, I will plant it and have my own 33rd Street Japanese maple in my yard.
This could be just the boost the O’s need to take them through October.
Thank you to Kassie for being a friend and for allowing me to tell this story, even though I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m loopy.
Submarine pitcher Ben Rowan, traded from the Dodgers organization a couple days ago, making his Orioles organization debut. (A former Virginia Tech Hokie.)
All around America, there’s college baseball today. It’s a perfectly fine way to spend an Easter afternoon, if you ask me.
Although it’s brisk outside.
We were at yesterday’s game. The University of Virginia took on Louisville in Charlottesville.
Weathermen insisted the temperature in Virginia was in the 60s on Saturday, but with the breeze blowing with some purpose out to right-center and then to right and mostly out in the bleachers where we were, I estimate yesterday’s wind chill at five degrees. (I could be off a bit. As I said yesterday, math … not my strong suit.)
It’s April but I was dressed for winter – long underwear, an extra sweater, gloves, and, most important, polartec socks. That I was surrounded by people in flip-flops only made me colder.
(What is wrong with you people? Are your feet made of lava?)
Fun Fact: It is possible to score a ballgame, take photos, and check Twitter with gloves on. It’s not easy, but it is possible.
Still, it’s warmer than Easter Sunday in North Dakota. Here’s a photo from this morning’s Main Street Cam in Devils Lake, North Dakota, the town where I spent my high school years.
Yup, as usual, one look at the Devils Lake Street Cam has warmed me up like a hot cup of coffee.
Saturday was not a good day for the #9 UVa Cavaliers. Grand-slamming, strong pitching #7 Louisville took game one from the Hoos 8-1.
UVa third-baseman Senior Kenny Towns sums up Saturday’s game:
I don’t know how long .013 seconds is, except that it’s probably the fastest thing my brain can do. (My brain can take hours — hours — to decide what it wants for dinner. Thank you, Editor/Husband for bringing home carryout.)
In comparison, it takes .4 seconds for a 91 MPH fastball to go from pitcher to catcher (assuming it actually makes it to the catcher and doesn’t end up in the bleachers … but you get the point).
In the time it takes a young college pitcher to wing his fastball over the plate, my brain will process some 30 images.
Including this one from the University of Virginia during the Cavalier’s “Fall Ball” season last October.
Here’s your test. Look at it for just .013 seconds. Then answer the question below. (No cheating, although it’s ok to click on it to enlarge it on your screen.)
So, how many major league scouts with radar guns did your brain see?
The correct answer is …
Six.
(Or, seven if you counted that one in the lower right corner, which, I believe belongs to UVa and not a scout. But, if you counted it, good for you — I’m giving you credit.)
These photos were taken on October 5, 2014 in Charlottesville, Virginia at UVa’s Davenport Field. The pitchers the scouts had come to watch and clock — Juniors Nathan Kirby and Brandon Waddell.
For that first decade, we pretty much settled into the Two-Thousand model.
But, for the past few years, it’s back to the back-and-forth. Here it is the dawn of 2015, shouldn’t this be cleared up by now?
Is it nearly Twenty-Fifteen? Or, Two-Thousand-Fifteen?
Did they have this problem 100 years ago? Or, was Nineteen-Whatever always the unassailable, easy winner?
Will we ever decide?
So Happy Twenty-Fifteen.
If that’s what you call it.
Here’s some of what I learned in 2014.
(Twenty-Fourteen? Two-Thousand-Fourteen? Your choice.)
** Things Change.
I don’t like change … just to change. It should serve a purpose.
Strangely though, things often have a way of changing on their own without asking my approval.
Like this year.
Nick Markakis, the Ever-Oriole, goes to the Atlanta Braves.
I’m forced to find a new home for my Yoga studio.
I didn’t approve either change. But, I’m stuck with them.
But, my new Yoga studio is now twice as large so people won’t have to press themselves together like ship stowaways anymore, huddled and smacking into each other whenever they twist.
But, if Orioles GM Dan Duquette has an amazing January Surprise in store that will fill the outfield corners and bullpen, I might forgive him.
** Some Things Aren’t What They Seem.
I really like this photo I took in Charlottesville during the NCAA Super Regionals last June. It was the deciding Game 3, University of Maryland vs. University of Virginia.
That’s UVa closer Nick Howard (currently on the fast track with the Cincinnati Reds) on the mound looking a little harried. And, in the dugout, is a Maryland Terp, not troubled at all.
Which is funny, because it was the ninth inning and the score was 11-2, UVa.
Nick had it in the bag. And, that Terp’s season was two outs away from over.
But, you don’t get that from the picture.
In any event, I mostly like it because both players appear to be tipping their caps. Even though, that’s also not what it seems.
Other things that aren’t quite what they seem that I’ve written about this year?
And, Buttercup Dickerson, who’s credited with being the first Italian American to play major league baseball – except that I discovered he wasn’t Italian American at all.
Public Domain
** Be Prepared.
A photographer friend reminds me that a good photographer must anticipate where and when the spontaneous moment – and perfect picture – will occur.
I have yet to get my anticipation right at a game. Stolen base, breathtaking play in the outfield, close play at the plate? I’ve seen ‘em all and every single photo is just a little late. Never in the nick of time.
Except one.
It was right after that Nick Howard photo. One out, ninth inning, UVa is up 11-2.
What happens when a bunch of college boys are about to advance to the College World Series?
I knew.
So, with one out, I pointed my camera at the mound, fussed with the shutter, held it there, and waited.
True, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.
Maryland singles. Man on first. Pop out. Two out. I kept checking the camera to make sure I still had it right. More waiting. And, then, strike three. Three out. Game Over.
Unlike baseball games which are not nearly as long as you think they are, War & Peaceis long. First there’s peace, then there’s war, then more peace, then back to war.
Look, I’m halfway through …
Stevie wishes she could read.
And, there is a central character named Nick. (Nikolai Rostov for you Tolstoy purists.)
Jeremy Brett as Nikolai in the 1956 film.
He’s an ordinary sort of fellow. Some pages ago he lost a bunch of money gambling. It was quite stupid of him and his ordinariness annoys me. When he shows up for a chapter or two, I find myself wondering what the more interesting characters are doing.
To be fair, Nikolai would agree with me. At one point, he tells his sister how tiresome and boring his life is.
But, there’s still a long way to go.
And, if there’s one thing I learned this year, things change and you gotta roll with it. Maybe things will change for Nikolai.
_______
That’s my 2014 wrap-up.
Done, just in the nick of time …
Now, I’m off to teach my first classes in my new Yoga studio.
The Baseball Bloggess: “Stevie wants you to know that the camera adds five pounds.”‘
Editor/Husband: “How many did she eat?”
May you have much to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. I’m grateful for all the people who swing by this blog from time to time … who pepper my posts with witty comments … and who love baseball (and cats) as much as me.
Eleven cats and one dog have lived with us here over the past 15 years or so.
They just keep showing up.
Living on a farm – even if it is a farm in name only – attracts all sorts of creatures.
I have loved each of the 11 cats and the one dog who showed up, moved in, and stayed.
(Sure, there have been others who have stopped by for a day or a week or a month and just moved on. I don’t count them.)
I do not like the groundhogs who dig bowling ball-sized burrows in our yard and waddle all smug and nasty and fearless when I yell at them to stop eating the tomatoes. (You can call them woodchucks or whistle pigs and I still will not like them.)
Over time the numbers of animals who live with us has dwindled. The cats and the dog came, grew old or ill, and then passed on.
I hate that part.
Because it breaks my heart every time I have to say “goodbye.”
Now there are only three.
This week the “goodbye” was for Lamar. He was only eight or so.
He was the most feral of the feral cats we’ve taken in. And, because there was so much wild in him to begin with, it was easy to grow very attached to the sweetness that seeped out around the feral edges.
I like that a cat’s love for a person is not unconditional. I like that there’s some wild independence in there. I like that we humans are always on probation with cats, and they can and will withdraw their affection at any moment.
I’ve always had an issue with dogs. I don’t like the unconditional love thing with dogs. I want to earn your friendship.
Groucho and Bingo. (1999-2000-ish)
Bingo, the Border Collie, loved me, but she also loved Tim, the UPS driver, and our neighbors, and the vet, and complete strangers, and anyone with food.
I’m also not a big fan of that dog-breath slobbery thing and I don’t understand why, if they’re so much smarter than cats, they can’t learn to use the litter box and cover up after themselves. Using the cat’s litter box like a salad bar really doesn’t make the case for “We’re smarter than cats.”
(I loved Bingo and she would want me to add that she never bothered the litter boxes.)
I’m pretty much a cat person.
When Lamar showed up seven years ago, he was so feral that it took me many months of sweet talk and food to soften him up enough just to touch him, and a few months more before he would let me lift him off the ground.
He was tough and built of muscle, but one day when he came out on the wrong side of a cat fight, his front paw was injured and he was hobbling just enough that we were able to catch him and get him into a pet carrier. Antibiotics and neutering followed.
Lamar became our farm protector. He protected Oscar, a very old cat that had left our neighbor’s house to live in our barn.
Oscar
Oscar was too old to fight or protect himself, but refused to come inside. It seems odd to say Lamar tended to him, but that’s what he did.
In the same way that cats will sometimes bring their people mice and moles and other “gifts”, Lamar brought a cat to us a couple years ago and let her eat out of his food bowl.
“Look. I brought you a cat.”
She followed him like a shadow.
She became Stevie and, when she discovered the warmth and creature comforts of being inside, she moved in.
Not long after, Lamar started losing more cat scuffles than he won, and then, much to his initial dismay, we decided that, feral or not, it was time for him to come in the house. And, feral or not, he quickly settled in, and he was the one cat in the house that every other cat in the house got along with.
We enclosed our front porch this year just so Lamar could enjoy the outdoors safely.
Lamar was fine on Thursday morning, he slept with us on the bed the night before. (He always slept wideways on the bed, taking up a lot of space and forcing me to curl my legs up tight so he could stretch out.) He was fine when we left for work.
His heart gave out that day – as cat hearts often do, quickly and without warning. And, that night we said goodbye.
“America’s game: has the snap, go fling, of the American atmosphere — belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws, [and] is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.” ~ Walt Whitman on baseball, 1889
The Baseball Bloggess 