Future poster material
Toolbox
Jim Higgins - Published: September 4, 2007
Who knows, David Ball may be a man of many flaws, but his "needs improvement" list will certainly not include the schoolmarm's favorite ding: lacks focus.
Ball made a How-Is-That-Humanly-Possible? end zone catch for the Chicago Bears in their final pre-season game Friday and a frame-by-frame blow-up of that flying one-handed grab should be made into a classroom poster.
However, under the poster headline, "Focus," I would add, "… when every miss is a nail in your unsigned free agent coffin." Mr. Ball, you showed some serious focus under pressure in catching that ball.
(The catch, unfortunately, wasn't official. Four feet off the ground, Ball's momentum and a nudge by the Cleveland Browns defender landed him out of bounds by a whisker.)
Although the Spaulding grad caught all four passes thrown at him, including that third-quarter circus catch, his overall pre-season performance was apparently just shy of earning him a spot on the 53-man roster, but it did earn him a spot on the seven-man practice squad. So Dave Ball is a Bear, earning, according to Chicago papers, a minimum of $80,000, and maybe just a sprained finger away from the Big Top.
(To see video footage of Ball's catch, which nailed him a No. 2 spot on the NFL Network's "Top Ten Plays" of the week, go to YouTube.com and punch in "2 Ridiculous Chicago Bears Catches.")
Young legs trump
young at heart
Last week's championship game of the Montpelier Men's League play-offs was an odd duck. Two of the highest-scoring teams in the league, Total Destruction/Clark's Collision from Williamstown and TDS Telecom from Northfield, managed just five runs total in a game that took only 45 minutes to complete.
Both teams typically score 15 or more runs a game, but both choked at the plate simultaneously. Total Destruction's young legs squeezed out three runs against two for the older TDS guys, with all the runs scoring in the third inning.
Sure, there was some superb defense and excellent pitching, but mostly it was a night of lazy fly balls and soft grounders. Neither team could sustain a hitting binge beyond two in a row. Weird. Remember folks, this is slo-pitch, the ball usually comes in almost as if you tossed it to yourself.
The last time these two teams faced off was earlier in the play-offs. The scoring was what one would expect from two such talented teams, with TDS losing, 13-11.
But on this cool, clear, odd night, the parting words of TDS player-coach Steve Dukette, (.700 regular season average) rang true for both teams, "We just didn't hit."
Barre softball flexes
serious muscle
Two teams from the Barre Men's Softball League – newly energized via a merger with the Waterbury league — won state championships this past season.
Casella Waste Management, one of those Waterbury teams, won the state "C" title, and Gross Trucking, out of Northfield, won the state "D" title.
Gross Trucking sailed through the 34-team field undefeated, but began the tourney in Newport bizarrely. It's the first inning of their first game. Gross Trucking loads the bases with no outs.
Their clean-up batter steps up and smacks one over the fence. But instead of a grand slam, the inning is over via a "triple play," of sorts.
The "D" division rules were clear this year: you hit one out, the inning is immediately over. That's to nudge the muscled up teams into higher division state tourneys.
Obviously, the Gross boys recovered from that jarring start.
Langdon Street Café
hangs in there
I began this summer with a little piece about the rookie softball team in the Montpelier Men's League, Langdon Street Café.
Allow me to end the summer with a parting word on the performance of players from that team.
"No one should go undefeated," is often heard in sports. Such perfection is a curse and the wise coach of a good team knows the sour taste of defeat will usually work better than a six-pack of Red Bull to rev up each player for the next game.
The Langdon Street Café team achieved perfection of a different kind — the 0-24 kind. But they do not feel cursed, nor are they down on themselves. Rather, they are revved up and excited about next season.
I watched about eight of their games this year and played against them twice. I sniffed around looking for signs of quit. NADA.
They ended their winless season feeling pretty darn good about themselves. And they should.
They were spirited gamers at all times, they improved every game, and they were sometimes just a few outs away from some W's.
I heard their pitcher, Ed Dufresne, and their co-coach Wes Hamilton, lament about a dozen times: "It was just one bad inning that did us in."
Four of their players, Collin Gunn, Jim Malloy, Hamilton, and Dean Zorn, batted over .550, and Zorn, who led the pack at .579, played every inning of every game, as did Jake Feldman.
Old timers in the league, a few of whom remember clearly their own 0-fer inaugural year, asked me quietly at the tail end of the season, "You think they'll be back?" I answered, "I don't know, I think so, maybe it's time I just asked them."
Which I did.
They'll be back.
SoccerShoot is pure,
simple, and great fun
If you're like me, you'd much rather run into an old high school buddy than some airhead celebrity.
Maybe we're provincial, but it's "living local" and most of us like it just fine.
That funky, friendly, no-glitter spirit drips from an event next Sunday at the Dog River Fields. It's the annual Elks "SoccerShoot" and girls and boys between 5-13 move from station to station and kick soccer balls at various targets. That's it! Not a video game or a celeb poster for miles.
Last year my 11-year-old daughter had a blast and was just a few inches on a few shots away from her first soccer trophy.
Montpelier Elks Lodge #924 also throws in free food and staffs a drug awareness booth. Show up around 12 noon for a whoppin' good time.
(More info, call Montpelier Rec at 225-8699, or the Elks at 223-2600.)
Puzzler No. 53
Last week I asked: Who was the only major league player to ever pinch hit for both Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski? It was Carroll Hardy. He hit for Williams in 1960 and Yaz in 1961, his rookie year.
Congrats to Karen Andresen, Jeff Cook, Al Fraser, Sean Bradley, Bill Fraser, and Jim Slotter.
Cook noted that Hardy was the ONLY person to ever pinch hit for Ted Williams in the major leagues, although many players pinch hit for Yaz.
Bradley added that Hardy played for the NFL's 49ers for one season in the 1950s and that he also pinch hit for Roger Maris when they both played in Cleveland.
My bonus question asked readers to ID the source of two quotes:
1. "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?" (Carl Yastrzemski from my list, although several respondents pointed out that Satchel Paige, in fact, said it first.)
2. "With every success of a friend, a little piece of me dies." (Gore Vidal) Congrats to Jan Gantzhorn and all the above respondents except Al Fraser, who took a pass on the bonus question.
Puzzler No. 54
In honor of the aforementioned Langdon Street Café softball team, which ended its rookie season winless but with great spirit, I ask the following:
Who were the first two modern-era baseball teams to finish last one year and first the next?
BONUS: I am looking at a New York Times front page for the day of my birth, Sept. 15, but not the year. An historic event occurred on that day at some point between 1900 and the present time.
What was it? Here are some clues.
The many-decked headline announces, in part: "90,000 inside, 25,000 riot outside"; "Crowd is sportsmanlike"; "XXXX receives striking tribute of cheers and prolonged handclapping"; "Receipts are $1,250,000."
Send your Puzzler answer and sporting news to jimhiggins@pshift.com.
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