Winding Down

Well, baseball season is winding down. This is really the only negative that there is about the advent of fall that I can think of. Of course, lately, fall seems light years away as we have been afflicted with temperatures lingering between 95 and 110 degrees over the past 3 weeks. There isn't much relief in sight either. We're awful dry and terribly hot.

I really feel for those guys that are out having to play in this heat. My brother-in-law is a minor league umpire in the International League. I think that the umpires get the rawest deal of all in baseball. Players and umpires have the same number of games every year, but players know that they will be home for about half of those games. (I realize that not every player calls his team's hometown home.) Since umpires don't have a home field this doesn't hold true for them. It makes it really hard on families.

The other hard part is that those umpires have to stand for the entire game whereas players get to come in and rest for half of each inning. Think about that when you're bellering at old blue over some call that you couldn't have made if you were in his shoes.

Finally, it is alot easier for highly skilled players to make it to the majors than for equally qualified umpires to. I have heard that it is statistically easier to become an astronaut than to become a Major League umpire. I have known excellent umpires who have been cast aside with no explanation - and especially no severance package!

Anyway, these observations aside, I have been able to watch some pretty good baseball over the past few weeks. I saw one of the best games of the season Sunday night at Durham. Durham fell behind 4-1 early in the game. I thought that they were done for because their pitcher was getting beat up pretty bad. But he hung in there and ended up leaving the game after 6 innings. The Bulls came back to tie that next inning, but fell behind one run in the 9th inning. The Bulls' first batter of the ninth got on base and was brought home by the next batter with a towering home run over the blue monster. It was a well-pitched, cleanly played, very exciting game to watch. I hope to go back up to see the Bulls again this season during the playoffs.

I've been keeping up with a the playoff race in the majors too. I'm a little frustrated with my Braves, but hopefully they can be consistent enough in the home stretch to pull ahead in the wildcard race. I'd love for them to catch the Mets for the Division title, but the Mets are playing awfully good baseball right now. I'll also be interested to see if the Yankees can catch Boston. I think that they will at least make a wild card slot.

It looks like it's heating up in baseball even though things are winding down. But hopefully the weather WILL cool off by October.