Home now, and watching Wave 3 to catch up on storm damage and stuff. But tonight was weird.

We have a good start on a bad loss, down 10-1 in the 4th inning. The first time the sirens went off the umpires did nothing. We stayed on the field. Stupid. I asked the home plate umpire why we were still playing. No good answer.
I didn't really mind. The weather looked nasty, but it looked nastiest in the direction of my home, so I didn't really plan on leaving anyway.
Finally, when the sirens sounded again, they stopped play. I stayed, still because the weather looked nastier at home than it did at the ballfield, and also I live on the 2nd floor and have no basement. I figured I might as well eat a fish sandwich and drink a beer.
Mom and Dad left, and drove straight into the reported tornado path. Good for you, folks! I'm glad you arrived home safely but I'm disappointed you don't have a sensational youtube video to post.

A good crowd of us stayed and watched the clouds gathering and swirling off in the direction of Churchill Downs, which apparently had some definite damage. Many left, but those who remained constantly discussed where it was and what it looked like, and we all have lived here long enough that we could all watch the sky and make very good guesses at where the worst of it was, and was going to be. Those of us who remained at the ballpark all lived in what we thought was the storm path, and we all decided we were safer staying out in the open elsewhere. Not particularly safe, but safer.
So we played cornhole.
It really was incredibly nasty looking. I don't believe I've ever seen a nastier looking sky. The sirens sounded about six different times. Only six or seven of us waited out the worst looking bits of the storm, but I think we all made the right decision. Nobody stayed just for the heck of it- we followed weather reports and watched the sky and all felt safer where we were than where we were going.
Looking out toward the west we could see all the storm clouds gathering together. I've never seen anything quite like that. One small section of the sky just seemed to be sucking up the clouds from every other area and we could see it swirling together. Our best consensus guess was around U of L's campus, so if it was Churchill Downs we weren't far off.
Plus, for me at least, it wasn't exactly a vague, take-a-guess sort of situation. At one point I was trying to decide whether to leave or not and I heard "tornado heading toward Bowman Field." The ballpark is only a couple of miles from there, but as my home is only a couple of hundred yards from there, staying put seemed smarter.

But I'm home now. And my home is not scattered from here to St. Matthews, there is no damage in the area, so everything is fine. I'll be curious to see how much damage is around the county in the morning.

One or Two or Three Things (won't know how many until I finish)

1) Happy birthday to my wonderful sister-in-law. Kim, you are one of my favorite people on this planet. Mark is an amazinginly fantastic guy and deserves nothing but the best, and I'm very happy that you two found each other because I feel exactly the same way about you.
I'd have posted that on your Facebook wall where you are more likely to see it, but I haven't been on Facebook in a couple of weeks and see no reason to mess with the streak. Besides, putting it on the blog makes it official in Kevindom, whereas everything on Facebook- while permanent- is still unofficial.

2) Happy half-birthday Jillian! You are a rascally sweetie and I love you dearly.

3) And I love Erin dearly, too, and/or though she is not as rascally as her little sister.

4) All the most important stuff is out of the way. Here is the unimportant stuff.
A) I learned to make outlines, with numbered headings and lettered subheadings, way, way back in 7th or 8th or 9th grade, so I'm doing it now. Subheading 'A,' which, doesn't really fit in anywhere but is instead only devoted to this notion I had about outlining my notes, and which is extremely prolonged and not brief and concise as notes should be, and thus is not at all a good illustration of the art of good note-taking and which is in fact an example of very poor performance in this area, should be ignored.
B) I hit a few golf balls today. I did so yesterday, too. I'm still lousy, but my extended time away has given me hope that I may improve again. I strike the ball much better than I did a year or two ago. That doesn't surprise me, really. I went from decent to lousy very quickly, and then I couldn't find anything close to a decent swing again. I thought some time away might help, and it seems it has.
C) We won tonight, putting the Yogis back over .500. That's our Monday/Wednesday team. What's amazing to me is that we are now 4 and 0 without our starting shortstop. He is arguably our best player. He's a great guy, hits well, fields well, does everything right. And individually he is having a fantastic season. 1 error maximum and he's batting about .600. So I have no idea how we are 4-o without him and 2 and 5 with him. Makes no sense to me. But that won't prevent me from reminding him of it.

I played 3 innings tonight and benched myself to get playing time for someone else. Too much of that this year. I keep saying it's going to stop, because I want (and deserve) to be in the lineup, but I keep doing it. I also batted leadoff. We've not hit at all, needed to shake things up, and so when Chris suggested it I said sure. I walked to start the game, then lined out. So, good enough. And I played good defense.

But we were down 12-3 after 5 and a half innings(all 3 of our runs in my leadoff first inning, thank you) and I had removed myself from the game. I was coaching 3rd, we were lifeless and seemed destined for defeat. I shouted everything I'm supposed to- encouragement, instruction, etc., and acted like we were in the game, but we really weren't, I thought. Then we got a few hits, I waved a few runners around, held a few, and after the inning I glanced at the scoreboard and it was 12-9. Not so bad.
Then we scored 3 in the 7th- timely hitting, an error, and some smart, agressive baserunning, and it was 12-12, but we left the winning run on 3rd.
They again didn't score in the 8th, and we won it with a couple of huge hits.
It was nice. We needed a couple of innings like that. Snuck up on me, though. We started hitting great just when I least expected it.

I started a 2nd blog a couple months ago. There's absolutely nothing on it, so providing a link to it is unimportant. If I ever put anything on there I'll let you know.

I only mention it for one reason. I logged in and provided a long mid-June softball update (entry titled, imaginatively "Mid-June Softball Update"). I'd guess it was about 300 words. I finished it, hit "publish" and then looked at it, and saw that it was on my unused blog.
No problem, i thought. I just copied everything, deleted the post, and then signed in to this blog to paste it. When I pasted this was the sum total of the paste:

Mid

Doesn't seem like much, does it?

I'm not retyping the whole thing, so I'll provide only the very barest highlights.
Yogis Monday/Wednesday: so far we've alternated between very good and very bad, with nothing in between. I expect we'll be okay this year but not great.
I'm personally having my best year ever, but I attribute it partially to luck. I can keep it up, but I'll need to play better the rest of the year just to get the same results.

Sunday: we aren't very good, but it seems like a fairly fun team.
I'm not sure how Ron and I got so stupid. We played for free on a good team, had no worries, just showed up and played. But this year we decided to enter our own team, we have to pay, we spend weekends trying to scrounge up enough players, and the team is not as good.
But it is fun. And I get to play with my brother. I've never played on any team with Brian before, and I really enjoy it. Plus he's done a darned good job pitching so far.

NC 17, Graphic violence. No adult language, but it would have been justified.

We'll start the story slowly, with some background info...

Last Wednesday night we were filling out our lineup and realized we were short a shortstop. We had plenty of bodies, the other nine spots were covered fine, but we really had no true shortstop. It looked like the job might be mine. I had already heard opinions to that effect, and I didn't like it. I'm a capable fielder, but I'm not a shortstop. I don't have the requisite lateral mobility.

So what to do? I looked around, saw Chad, who was penciled in as our left center fielder and who, as far as I know, had never played shortstop. I said "Chad, will you play short?"
He was reluctant, but willing. Especially after I reasoned with him. I did so by telling him it was either him or me, and that it wasn't going to be me. Chad understood the sound reasoning behind that argument.

He had one objection. He wasn't wearing a cup. A valid point, you may say.

I had a ready response. I don't wear one. None of our other infielders wear one. I asked around. It's true. Chad, I said, I've been playing infield for Yogis since the mid 90's and I've never taken a ball in the 'sweet spot,' so to speak. Never. (FORESHADOWING, for those of you scoring this story at home)

Cut to Sunday, second game of doubleheader...

Our hero (me) takes a solid ground ball squarely to Mr. Right Nut. He gamely scoops it (the ball, not Mr. Right Nut) back up and gets a force out at 2nd base. Then he starts sweating, and moaning quietly to himself, and noticing he's got cold chills and the temperature seems to have dropped 30 degrees in seconds. He (me, I'm still talking about, just in case you're confused) grits it out and, thankfully, the third out arrives quickly and our injured hero can return to the bench.

What an ache!!! Goodness, I've never felt anything so painful. I've been hit there before. Who hasn't? But that was a solid shot, no holds barred. Playing ball I've had a broken nose, broken fingers, dislocated thumb, and all sorts of assorted pulled muscles and bloodied body parts. But if given a choice, I don't hesitate for a second to say I'd rather suffer all of those at once than another direct hit like that.

Thank you for listening. Just talking about it helps a lot. Is there a co-pay?