🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Vindicated 🎶
Jesus Burns 🔥
Base on Balls ⚾
THE DAILY UPDATE
Three Things I’m Grateful For Today:
- Winning our first baseball game of the season and competing damn hard in the second one in a hard-fought loss. At least one more game today, and the boys have come so far in a week. It’s rewarding to see.
- Water. It was balls hot yesterday.
- My sister-in-law Dyan. I don’t think she ever reads these things, but if she ever does, I am so grateful for her. Beyond words.
Pursuit of Wordle Godhood: Today’s result: Four. This went from nothin’ to somethin’ real fast.
Wordle 1,030 4/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Pursuit of Connections Godhood: Today’s result: PERFECTION. Does two days in a row count as a streak? Sure it does.
Connections
Puzzle #308
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪
The song in my head when I woke up: “Vindicated” by Dashboard Confessional
Favorite line from the song in my head when I woke up: I am seeing in me now/The things you swore you saw yourself (There is one person out there who this lyric goes out to, and if you ever read this, please know … I thank you for believing in me before I ever believed in myself.)
Commute Tunes: No commute today. But music on the way to and from the ballpark was to my Nu Rock playlist, which you can check out here.
- Show Me How To Live, Audioslave
- Devil, Shinedown
- I Hate Everything About You, Three Days Grace
- Blurry, Puddle of Mudd
- Diamond Eyes, Shinedown
- Take The Power Back, Rage Against The Machine
- So Cold, Breaking Benjamin
Something I’m looking forward to today: We have to win three straight games today to win our baseball tournament. Let’s win one and go from there.
Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: Hopefully the next step in a big change coming Tuesday.
Something I’m grateful for from yesterday: Getting a dub in baseball and the boys doing it by doing all the little things we worked on in practiced.
What I’m writing: Yesterday’s Two Crappy Pages involved writing a story for a Johnny Boy Marketing client about a woman who teaches a course to master’s students regarding turning data into visual stories.
What I’ve written: The Time God Burned Up His Son — And They Rebuilt It
Today’s Stoic Though of the Day: “It is better to produce the balance-sheet of your own life than that of the grain market.” — Seneca
John’s translation of Today’s STD: “So you’re great at your knowledge of politics or how to market stuff or the 1927 Yankees. Wonderful. In the end, that don’t mean jack shit compared to what you can pass on to the next generation about how to live a life worth living. Put more attention on the shit that matters than your own hobbies and work and bullshit pursuits.”
I hate walks. No, I’m not talking about leisurely strolls or brisk I-look-really-funny-doing-this-but-I’m-not-really-running-and-certainly-not-walking fast-walks. I’m talking about the base on balls.
BB is the baseball scoring mark for a walk. Four balls before three strikes or a ball put in play awards a batter first base, and my pitchers on the team I coach are giving up far too many of them.
Walks might seem innocent. It “just” gives the batter first base. But walks have a nasty habit of turning into runs and runs through walks have a worse habit of turning into losses. So now my focus has to turn to how to teach pitchers how to not walk so many batters.
“Throw strikes,” doesn’t seem like a good motivational tool, nor very instructive. I’m quite sure none of my pitchers are on the mound thinking, “Ya know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna put this guy on base without giving myself nor my fielders any chance to get him out.”
Some walks are the fault of umpires who need an ophthalmologist. But most of ours walks are coming because my pitchers can’t seem to throw a high enough percentage of balls in and around the strike zone to generate swings or strike calls. My fear? That’s gonna come back to bite us in the butt as we go into the final day of our tournament today.
So let’s see what we can do about that, shall we?
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