Bill Roper's Journal

It was time to count down to the end of the softball season. After two days of rain, it was time for our first playoff game.

We had 11 players on our team. One was a travel player who we knew would miss a lot of games and she had a out of town tournament this weekend. That made 10.

One of our two best pitchers (not counting our travel player) had a family reunion this weekend, which brought us down to 9 players. Also, since a pitcher is limited to four innings in a game, we would now need to hand the ball to some of our pitchers who hadn't gotten as much work this season as they might have found useful.

One of our players ended up being unable to make it to the game, which brought us down to 8 players, leaving one outfield position vacant.

One of our players felt unwell after the second inning and needed to leave the game, which brought us down to 7 players, leaving two outfield positions vacant.

And then one of our players took a bad hop ground ball just below the eye -- she's doing well, happily! -- which brought us down to 6 players. And by league rules, with 6 players we can't continue.

So we had to forfeit in the bottom of the third inning. The kids gave it a great try, but it just wasn't going to be their day.

The season is over. But it was a *good* season and the kids learned a lot.

I'll take that.

The softball playoffs start tomorrow, assuming that the rain tomorrow morning doesn't leave the fields too wet to play. Wish us luck!

The windshield of Gretchen's minivan was a casualty of an errant foul ball at Saturday's softball game. The windshield repair service has been booked and a replacement windshield will be installed tomorrow morning.

Because of this, I will be taking a trip off to Home Depot to acquire some more of the mounting strips for the I-Pass transponder so that it can go back onto the new windshield just as soon as possible. I note that our transponder was scheduled to expire in 11/20, but -- since we've received no notification from the Tollway that it needs to be replaced -- I'm going to assume that expiration date has become obsolete post-COVID. Since I'm going to Home Depot, Gretchen has asked me to hunt down marigolds in the garden section to join the rest of the cavalcade of flowers on the back patio, so I'll take care of that in a few minutes.

Earlier today, we went to Sam's Club and I found a couple of nice steaks that I'll be grilling for Father's Day dinner, along with a steak that we've rescued from the freezer for K. Hmm. I still need other bits for dinner, so I guess I'll stop at the grocery store on the way home from Home Depot. :)

Grilling is going to become marginally more complex in the future, as we use newspaper as fire starter in the chimney, as well as to line Ruby's kennel. While I have over a hundred unread copies of the Chicago Tribune in my garage, we are going to eventually deplete the supply, as I canceled my subscription to the Trib this morning in the wake of the Alden buyouts. I felt a little sorry for the fellow on the end of the phone line this morning when I called to cancel (which appears to be the only way to do it), as he sounded like he had taken a *lot* of phone calls. He asked why I was canceling and I explained that I had a hundred unread copies of the Trib in my garage and that, honestly, you would have to pay *me* to read their remaining columnists. He said he would pass along the feedback.

Gretchen and I had lunch today over at City Barbeque in Park Ridge, where I tried the Chipotle BBQ sandwich, which was quite tasty. I like City BBQ, but I still miss Ted's.

In other news, in and around laundry last night, I downloaded the latest Cubase point update, which seems to have cleared up a lot of stability issues with the point-zero release. The big demo that they sent ran well. Then I pulled up the tracks from the Thieving Magpies concert at Capricon last year. That sounded good too and wasn't trying to crash the machine.

So, having pulled that up and listened to it, a rapid mixdown copy went off to my cohorts in crime today. :)

Ok, off to Home Depot and the grocery store...

We didn't have our field for practice today (it was occupied by an actual game for one of the other local teams), so we headed out to the batting cages for a bit of work. I took a turn in the high-arc softball cage, that being the only one I was allowed in without a helmet, and demonstrated that I can still put a bat on a ball, which made me feel better about things. :)

But a good time was had by all.

Last regular season game is early Saturday morning. We'll see how it goes!

Here are a couple of questions about the infield fly rule for a lazy Saturday morning. Let's see who knows the answers. Tell me what you do and why. Parents do not get to play. :)

Runners on first and second. There is one out. The batter hits a pop fly on the infield and the umpire raises his hand straight up and shouts "Infield fly".

1) You are the batter. What do you do?

2) The second baseman catches the ball on the fly. You are the runner who was on first. Where should you be?

3) The ball is popped to the third baseman. You are the runner on second. For some mysterious reason, you are halfway between second and third when the third baseman drops the ball. She casually picks up the ball, steps on the third base bag, and throws the ball back to the pitcher. What should you do?

It was back to both work and softball today after the three-day weekend. The kids gave it a good run, but the game got away from them and they ended up losing 15-11. Given that the other team was 50% travel players, it was a good try.

It's Friday and the weekend is here and things were supposed to be slowing down. However, once again time is failing at its basic purpose and everything is happening at once.

The kids played well today (good pitching and defense are two of my favorite things; they combined it with sufficient hitting to power out a 17-8 win in five innings). There is another game early tomorrow afternoon where it will be unseasonably warm. And then we'll have a fourth game in six days on Monday.

Sunday is K's confirmation, so we'll be up early for that.

I am sure there will be sleep again. I am greatly looking forward to it.

Gretchen has told me that when school is out, I should take a week off to play guitar and read comic books. I am considering this...

The kids finished up their Opening Day softball game that got suspended due to time. They came back twice to win in the regulation seven innings, 18-17. It was an impressive game. :)

Today is Julie's 13th birthday. It's also opening day of the softball season for K. And Gretchen had a hair appointment scheduled for this morning.

I have a great many balls in the air right now.

Let's see if they get caught.

I got up early today, as we had another scrimmage game for K's softball team this morning. It went pretty well. Everyone's still learning the new rules and having a chance to actually *play* under them is a good thing.

The cabinet installers came back today and moved the cabinets to the correct position and installed the crown molding, so that's taken care of. They'll be back on Monday to install the handles and fix the outlet on the island. And then on Tuesday, the countertops should arrive.

I continue to keep my fingers crossed. :)