Softball Season Finale

Well I'm only a week late in blogging about this, but last Sunday we got together with our softball friends (I can no longer call them our softball team since I didn't actually play on the team this year) and enjoyed an end of year picnic/BBQ/party. It was also our friend Faith's birthday, so we had two good reasons to celebrate! Our friends Matt and Adrianne opened their beautiful backyard for the fun and games, Chad fired up the grill, and everyone brought tons of food. The weather was absolutely perfect!

Since I can no longer play softball I've designated myself as the official team photographer. As usual, I went a little crazy with the camera!


As you can see, it was a beautiful day, we had a great time, and I had a terrific time taking pictures!

The End

My dad called yesterday and pointed out that I hadn't been blogging much lately, which is definitely true. With the longer and longer training walks on the weekends, it's been more and more difficult to find time to sit down at the computer on Saturdays and Sundays. Thankfully, I'll have a little more time starting this weekend, because our softball season has finally come to an end. We played a double header on Sunday night with our co-ed team and my women's team did the same on Monday. Although I'll be very glad to have the extra hours on Sunday/Monday/Tuesday (when Chad's men's team played), it was kind of a bittersweet ending to the season. Not only did I personally play pretty poorly in the last couple of months, but both of my teams had a hard time winning games down the stretch. It was a big bummer. I managed to get hit in the head by a throw a week ago Sunday, then hit in the shin this last Sunday, then hit by a one-hopper in my face on Monday night. Clearly, my skills are diminishing, and I'm starting to feel like I'm hurting my teams more than helping them. It was a very depressing realization, and it definitely put me into quite a funk the last few days, which is another reason I've been a little quieter than normal. I'm sure next year I'll miss playing, but I think between my advancing age and my aching back, it's time to hang up the old glove and cleats. :(

It's So Wicked Hot

I can't believe how hot it's been here the last couple of weeks. Tonight when I came home at about 6:30 the bank clock said 103 degrees. Last night when I went out to watched Chad's softball game around 7:00 it was over 100 degrees. The absolute worst was Sunday, when we had a softball game at 6 p.m. and it was 97 degrees, but the humidity was super high and there was absolutely no wind. I honestly can't remember ever being that hot! Somehow it felt so much worse than the subsequent days of 100+ temps, and when I checked the "past observations" on Intellicast.com, I understood why. This is what I found:

If you plug that into this handy dandy heat index calculator that I found on the web you come up with a heat index 111-112 degrees. That's with 0 mph wind with 0 mph gusts, on a ridiculously dry ball field. It was so miserable, I thought my skin was going to burst into flames at any second. Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating just a tad, but it was still awful!

Chad missed out on this miserable experience because he was baking in some miserable Midwest heat of his own. He was in Tulsa watching Tiger win the PGA Championship on Saturday and Sunday. While it was super duper hot in Tulsa as well, Intellicast tells me that on Sunday in Tulsa, the heat index was only 105-106, and there was a breeze of 7 m.p.h. While Chad couldn't have been quite as hot as we were on the ball field, he certainly had to endure this weather for a much longer period as he walked all over the Southern Hills golf course for two days. By drinking about 15 bottles of water each day, Chad and his friend Dante survived the hottest PGA major on record:

HOT TIMES

Sunday's high temperature in Tulsa, Okla., reached 102 degrees, officially making the 2007 PGA Championship the hottest Grand Slam event on record.

The four-day average maximum stood at 101.0, with every day registering triple digits.

Sunday appeared even hotter at Southern Hills. Shortly after Tiger Woods teed off Sunday, TV cameras showed a thermometer on the course pointing just shy of 110.

Not that Tulsa wasn't already atop the charts. According to a study commissioned by Golf World magazine, the previous hottest major was the 1970 PGA at Southern Hills, where the average high was 100.3.

In fact, four of the seven hottest majors in history now have been held at Southern Hills. The 1982 PGA ranks fifth (97.0 degrees), with the 1958 U.S. Open tied for sixth (96.6).

While that's not really a record they enjoyed being a part of, since Chad is such a big Tiger fan, I think it was all worth it for him to see Tiger win!

Softball Saturday

The other day when I started to blog about last Saturday's softball tournament, I got so caught up in talking about the little boy who is the tourney's namesake, I didn't even get around to talking about any softball! We started our first game at 10 a.m., and unfortunately it wasn't much of a game at all. The first team we played seemed as though they'd just gotten together the hour before, so needless to say we run-ruled them in the first few innings. Our second game an hour or so later was a little bit more challenging, but we still ended up winning pretty easily. Probably the biggest challenge of that game was playing on the super tiny kid's field. Our guys (and even some of our girls) really struggle not to hit the ball over the fence on this field, which can only happen twice before it counts as an out. Thankfully, we didn't have to play on the tiny field again for the rest of the day!

We played our third game sometime around 1:00, and unfortunately, we didn't play so hot this game. I think it was a combination of several factors: no good warm-up game, the heat, our overconfidence that we were going to sweep the tournament like we had the previous year. Regardless, we ended up losing to a pretty good team. Chad hit really well, but most of the rest of our team didn't. Not only that, but the other team's cocky shortstop plowed into our first baseman, Hope, causing a major collision which actually chipped her teeth! He was taking it way too seriously considering it was a benefit tourney with only about 8 teams! It most certainly didn't make the rest of our team very happy, that's for sure!

We had a break of a couple hours before our fourth game, so we were able to eat some snacks and recharge our batteries a little. We won that game pretty easily, and although I hadn't been hitting well all day, I did manage to hit a line drive to score the winning run in this one. Unfortunately, it wasn't much of a competition since we run-ruled the other team again!

After the fourth game we had a short break for the candlelight vigil in memory of Trevor, and then we went back to play the only undefeated team in the tournament, which was of course the team that had beaten us earlier. They had some really young players (like under 20) who were clearly skilled ball players, but I'm still pretty sure we could have beaten them had we been playing our best softball. Unfortunately, we most certainly weren't playing our best ball, and we also lost one of our best girl players along with one of our best guy players. Our friend Faith had to leave after the second game for a bachelorette party, and then our friend Dan started feeling sick, so he ended up leaving before the last game as well. Those losses obviously hurt us, but what hurt even more was knowing that we would have to beat this team twice in order to win the tournament, since it was double-elimination. None of us really felt like we had the energy or the drive to do so!

Although it was a reasonably close game, we certainly didn't play well enough to win, and the other team certainly wanted it more--to the point that the same cocky shortstop who'd trucked Hope earlier slid right into Nolan's legs trying to break up a double play (which Nolan made anyway, by the way). When our friend Robyn got hit in the foot with a ground ball, which was extraordinarily painful since she had a pin placed in each foot during surgery a few years ago, the other team joked happily about knocking one of our players out of the game. Overall, the other team's players were just kind of jerks to play against, which made it not so fun to play against them, let alone lose to them twice!

The good thing was that the tournament didn't last nearly as late into the night as it normally does, which I appreciated since I was still working on one hour of sleep from the night before. Although we would have rather been going home winners, we were very glad to be going home while it was still light out!

Overall it was a fairly fun day (click here for pictures of the fun), but it would have been much more fun had we been winning! Hopefully next year we'll win back that trophy!

Trevor's Tournament

Over the weekend, our coed softball team played in a small tournament in Baldwin called Trevor's Tournament. The tournament is in memory of a little boy named Trevor Leeker, who passed away in 2001 at 21 months of age. Trevor died of a hereditary disease of the nervous system called Krabbe Leukodystrophy. This genetic defect disables the production of a particular enzyme in the body which is supposed to break down a particular type of fat. When that fat begins to build up, it begins to destroy the myelin sheath that protects the nerves, which then begin to deteriorate. The affected infant begins to lose motor skills and mental functioning at 3-6 months of age.

Krabbe disease is extremely rare, occurring in only 1 of every 100,000 U.S. births, so not many people have even heard of it. The disease started receiving a little more attention in 1997 when Jim Kelly's son Hunter was diagnosed, and Hunter's Hope was created to spread awareness and raise money for research. Still, even many people in the health care field have never heard of it, which is why the early signs of the disease are often ignored or misdiagnosed. The sad thing is, there is a relatively new treatment for the disease where donor umbilical cord blood is transplanted into the bone marrow of the affected infant, halting or even reversing the nerve damage. This procedure has saved the lives of many children, but the transplant has to be done before the disease manifests itself or when the symptoms are extremely mild. The only way to detect the disease before the symptoms begin to show is through genetic testing, but since doctors don't screen for the mutation except in families with a known history, it usually goes undetected.

So along with building awareness, Hunter's Hope and all the families of "Krabbe's Kids" are pushing for universal newborn screening, in which all infants would automatically be checked for Krabbe disease and other similar genetic defects through a blood test within their first few days of life. Currently, every U.S. state practices newborn screening, but only 2 states have started screening specifically for Krabbe disease. Some states screen for as many as 50 diseases, but our state screens for less than 10!

The great thing about Trevor's Tournament is not only does it promote awareness, but it also raises money for a scholarship fund in Trevor's name, which will be awarded to students in the medical or educational field. As Trevor's dad says, each student who receives this scholarship makes one more doctor, nurse or teacher who is familiar with Krabbes!

I've talked so long about Krabbes, I haven't really talked much about the tournament itself. That will have to wait for another day. Today, the important story is Trevor's.

40:1

Let's just say I'm a little tired. For the last 41 hours, my ratio of waking hours to sleeping hours is 40:1. I've slept a total of 1 hour since 6 a.m. Friday morning. I dozed about 15 minutes at Friday night's Relay for Life, then slept 45 minutes before leaving for our softball tournament in Baldwin, where we played five games. I'm pretty sure this is a new record for me, so I had to record it before I crash. Within minutes I'm sure I'll be sleeping like the dead, but unfortunately my slumber won't last long! I have to be up before 6 to take Chad to the airport!!! ACK!

Rain Out

Usually a rain out sounds like a bad thing, but I have to admit that today I'm kind of enjoying it. We had planned to get up and go to Equip (Sunday School) and the late service at church, but the thunderstorm was so severe at the time I was supposed to be getting into the shower, I decided it might be wise to refrain from getting clean, just in case the urban legends are correct and you can get struck by lightning while showering (actually, I've since read that because most houses use PVC instead of metal for plumbing, this isn't nearly as likely as it used to be). Instead of showering, I surrendered to my heathen instincts and crawled back in to bed, where we slept WAY in. While I definitely missed the worship. teaching, and fellowship at church, I have to admit that the extra sleep was really nice!

So the continuing thunderstorm has completely changed the schedule of our day. After church, I was supposed to take a shelter dog to the LHS booth at Lawrence's 46th annual Art in the Park, an event the shelter refers to as Bark in the Park. Unfortunately, Art in the Park has been canceled, which is a bummer because it's always a fun event (kind of like a mini-Smoky Hill River Festival) where the dogs get tons of exposure.

This evening we were supposed to have a co-ed softball game at 7:00, but considering that our backyard looks like a small pond and it still hasn't stopped raining, I'm guessing that all softball games will be canceled today as well. This means that I'll likely lay around in bed most of the day, reading and blogging and working on uploading the dog pictures that I took yesterday at the shelter. Listening to Hope snoring on the floor below is actually very relaxing, and combine that with the darkness filling our bedroom at the moment, I'm thinking maybe an afternoon nap might be in order as well! Hooray for rain outs! :)

Centerfield

It wasn't exactly center field, but actually somewhere around left center. The point is, I hit my first ever home run tonight in softball! I'm really not trying to be boastful, but because it might be the only one I ever hit, I want to make sure I remember when and where it happened! I don't have a memory for sporting events like my husband does!

The entire game was really just quite amazing. This was a team we lost to multiple times last year in our women's league! Granted, we've swapped out a few players since that season, but tonight we hit like champs, scoring 20 runs in one inning! My friend Robyn hit two home runs in the game and our friend Hope hit another. The other team's pitcher kind of struggled, and their infield wasn't so strong, but mostly we just hit a lot of line drives. My home run was actually a line drive that went over the left center fielder's head and rolled almost to the fence!

It felt so great to hit well after being 0-4 in our co-ed game yesterday. Yesterday afternoon I wasn't such a happy camper after getting the 3rd out of the last inning, especially since we only lost by two runs. It was a total bummer, so please indulge me as I celebrate this win a little more than I normally would! :)

Play Ball!!

Because I'm sure you're all dying to know, I just got back from my first softball games of the season, and our women's team is 2-0 for the first time in our 2 season history! Hooray!!! We all batted really well--our team had at least 3 home runs, 3 triples and 3 doubles, along with tons of base hits. We won the first game like 21-5 and the second about 14-5 (those are rough estimates, by the way). I was a little worried about playing again this season, partially because of my bulging disc and partially because I thought my skills were starting to diminish with my increasing age. However, I'm breathing a sigh of relief tonight because two of those triples were mine! :) I think I may have hit one triple all of last season, so I'm really excited, to say the least!

Starting the season off with a double header is always a challenge. Playing two games in a row (in the cold, no less) after not sprinting, throwing and batting for more than six months really exhausts the old muscles. I'll be lucky if I can walk tomorrow! As a precautionary measure, I'm going to go soak in a hot bath before bed!