Tag Archives: baseball

Batter Up!

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It seems that anytime we travel, we spend the longest days on the road on the first day of departure and the final day of our return home, and that was indeed the case this time as well.

After logging more than 680 miles on Saturday, Oct. 6, the agenda for our second day was to make a couple of tour stops in Louisville, Ky., and then start driving east once again toward our final destination, the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

We’d stayed in South Indianapolis, Ind., Saturday night, just a short, two-hour drive – and one major bridge crossing at the Indiana-Kentucky line – to Louisville. The massive steel bridge had me gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white (I really dislike large bridges over wide expanses of water, and the Ohio River was, well, just a little too wide in my opinion!)

The “Welcome to Kentucky” sign was attached to the overhead span of bridge, and Greta Garmin instructed me to take the first exit off the bridge to reach our first “tourist attraction” – the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory in downtown Louisville.

We made it! Downtown Louisville, Ky., and the Louisville Slugger Factory and Museum.

A few blocks later, Miss Greta failed me for the first time on our journey – telling me I’d reached my destination when all I could see was some big warehouse with no entrance. (As it turns out, she directed us to the back side of the building – a discovery made when I went half-way around the block and found a gigantic bat extending from the ground to beyond the roof lines of adjacent buildings.

“Aha! We’re here!” I exclaimed to my folks as I pulled into a parking spot just across the street from the entrance.

The visit to the Louisville Slugger Factory was made on the suggestion of a co-worker and it truly is a tour worth your time if you’re in the Louisville area. In fact, Trip Advisor ranks it as the No. 1 thing to see in the city.

Clad in my Minnesota Twins shirt, I was the first in line to buy our tickets for the factory tour. This building in the heart of Louisville is the only site in the world to manufacture the wooden Louisville Slugger bats used by most Major Leaguers, minor leaguers and recreational ball players in the country.

While the process of bat making is now automated, the tour provides guests with a look at how bats were made in the “good ole days,” turned by hand with the use of precise measuring tools.

This museum display shows how billets (the cuts from which baseball bats are made) are manufactured from a chunk of northern white ash.

On the tour, we learned that bats, made primarily of Northern White Ash trees of at least 80 years of age, are carved out of billets (the French word for the trunk of a tree). The billets, which arrive in batches of 5,000 to 8,000, are kiln-dried at the factory for about five weeks until they reach a moisture level suitable for being turned into a bat.

The Louisville Slugger Factory makes 1.8 million baseball bats a year, but more than half of them are the Little Slugger mini bats you can buy at baseball stadiums across the country. Major League baseball players account for another large share, each one ordering an average of 100 to 120 bats per season. (We saw billets pre-selected for Minnesota Twins player Ben Revere waiting in a holding area.)

Equally as impressive as the factory tour (which, by the way, ended with a free souvenir Little Slugger bat – awesome!) was the museum tour. There, we could view the bat used by Babe Ruth during the 1927 season when he hit 60 home runs in 154 games. He carved a notch in the hickory bat for every home run he hit with it.

Another area of the museum featured game-used bats that visitors could hold (only if wearing white gloves) – bats once used by Mickey Mantel, Babe Ruth and Derek Jeter, among others.

There were activities for kids, including an area where you learned how to find the sweet spot of the bat, could take a swing in the batting cage or have your photo taken with the latest bats used by each team who competed in the World Series. The life-size figures of Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Derek Jeter and Ken GriffeyJr. were also cool.

A 120-foot-tall steel bat towers above the entrance to the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory in downtown Louisville, Ky. (Notice the giant baseball smashing into an adjacent building.)

Perhaps the coolest of all, though, was seeing the big bat at the entrance to the museum. An exact scale replica of a 34-inch wooden bat designed for Babe Ruth in the 1920s, the bat stands 120 feet tall, stretches 9 feet in diameter, is made of carbon steel and weighs 68,000 pounds. The signature on the side of the bat pays homage to the founder of the Louisville Slugger company, Bud Hillerich. Hillerich turned the company’s first bat in 1884. The bat has been a towering feature on Louisville’s West Main Street since late 1995.

Return for a visit to my blog tomorrow for details on our next stop on this 10-day journey through 10 states.

High five, low five, take five

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Awards on a wall or trophies in a case really don’t mean a whole lot in life, but the admiration of a nephew, well, now that’s something.

If I accomplish one thing in this life, it’s the "cool" auntie I want to be. I think I added another notch toward that goal Thursday night.

I left work a couple of hours early and headed to the Fairmont Buntjers to watch nephews Blake and Reece play baseball. There was a bit of a dilemma though – they both played at the same time – at opposite ends of an extra long city block.

My Godson Reece, he’s four, was already pouting before we got to the ball field, mostly because big brother Blake took the lucky batting glove, but also because he wanted his Auntie Juwee to stay and watch his entire game. In other words, Blake’s game didn’t matter.

Well, with the ball playing days winding down, and this my one Thursday night off of work, I had to make the most of it. I sat in the shade and watched Reece hit five balls off the tee during batting practice, then packed up my chair and joined Mom in a walk across the parking lot and down the street to watch Blake’s pee-wee game. Three innings later, Blake was finally up to bat. Pitch one – Blake connects and sends the ball straight above his head, and back down into the catcher’s mitt.

Blake headed back to the bench with a smile on his face, and Mom and I packed up our chairs and walked back to the T-ball game in time to see Reece knock a pitch toward a group of kids. He made it around all of the bases and, after he stomped across home plate, he made a bee-line for me with a mile-wide grin and a bouncing hard hat of a helmet.

I thought I was going to get whacked in the nose by the hard plastic, but as it turned out, Reece just wanted to give me a bear hug, a kiss and a high-five. That’s my little slugger!

A few more runs were scored by his teammates, and suddenly the game was over. Our second trip to the pee-wee field was timed perfectly with the end of that game. We missed Blake’s big hit (a single, but he made it around second, third and home plate on another kid’s hit to the outfield.)

It wasn’t watching both of the boys play baseball, however, that made me the "cool" aunt for the night.

Nope, it all came down to Wii.

I’ve never played the Wii before. My extent of video games these days are my Plug-N-Plays of Pac-Man and Centipede, favorite 1980′s Atari games that I purchased thinking they would be de-stressers from those long days at the office. It turns out, however, that those darn games stress me out even more!

Anyway, Blake started up the Wii and showed me his selection of games. Let’s see, I could go bear hunting, play a game of baseball or tennis, or … wait a minute, there’s a Wii archery game? Now that’s more like it.

When I told Blake I took a semester of archery in college, he looked at me with big eyes and asked an incredulous, "You did?"

"Of course! It was my favorite class that semester," I told him.

Let the competition begin!

It took a bit of coordination to get the wand thingamajig coordinating with the nunchuk contraption, but I didn’t do too bad. By the second game, I managed to get three bulls-eyes. Of course, that was also the game that I hit the wrong button and sent two of my arrows sailing over the target. In the end, Blake and I tied at 75 points.

After the round of archery, it was on to cycling around an island with Reece. This particular contest required me to move the nunchuk in one hand and the wand thingamajig in the other hand in furious motion, and then "steer like I’m driving a car" at the same time (Blake’s directions). Well, I finished the race, even after stopping my "bicycle" to enjoy the ocean view and a pretty lighthouse!

Next, it was on to Wii bowling with Reece. I don’t recall the final score, but I won’t soon forget the slapping high fives each time we threw a strike. By the end of 10 frames, my arm was tired and my shoulder hurt.

That’s when Blake said, "Julie, Wii is good because it can help you lose weight. It gives you a good workout."

I didn’t bother to tell him I’d walked around Lake Okabena the night before, which I consider to be better for my health than throwing my shoulder out playing Wii bowling. But hey, if playing Wii adds to my "cool" auntie points, well then, let the games continue!

The final match-up of the night pitted me against Blake in a game of baseball. I pitched a bunch of screwballs (I never did learn how to throw a fastball or a curveball because it apparently involves pushing more buttons than A and B and, well, I’m just not that coordinated!)

The pitching went OK, but the batting, well, not so much. I think I heard something pop in my shoulder.

I figure I’ll probably be feeling the pain of a pulled muscle in the morning. Then again, to have been the "cool" auntie in the eyes of my boys for a night, well, I’m pretty sure the pain will be worth it.

A newspaper reporter’s Top 10

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Each year, during the first full week of October, reporters and editors around the country celebrate National Newspaper Week.

I use the word celebrate rather loosely. There is no party in the newsroom, no high-fives between co-workers and no gifts or extra perks handed out to those of us who work hard each day to bring you the news.

After all these years (15½ for me), it has become oh-so apparent to me that National Newspaper Week is about celebrating our First Amendment rights … particularly the one that addresses freedom of speech, and about promoting our product — bringing you, our readers, the news in our communities.

We can’t bring you the news without the reader tips and resources that come to our e-mail in-boxes and through our phone lines on a daily basis.

As reporters, we do not work an 8-to-5 schedule. We are here mornings, afternoons, evenings, weekends and holidays because news never takes a rest.

While our work day never really seems to end, I tend to think I work in a rather exciting career.

So, in honor of National Newspaper Week, I’d like to share with you my list of Top 10 experiences as a reporter. Perhaps it will encourage you or someone you know to pursue a career in journalism.

10. Covering Seaforth’s Polka Fest as the editor of the Wabasso Standard. Wabasso barber Bean Bernardy tried to pull me out on the dance floor to dance a polka. I emphatically refused! I still don’t like the polka … just ask my mom. When she turns to the polka show on Sunday afternoon, that’s when it’s time for me to head home.

9. Following Mark Guetter through his beef cattle lot near Wabasso and seeing one of his Black Angus cows start to paw the ground as we walked through a pen filled with cows and calves. I was so scared that my hands were shaking, making it difficult for me to take notes!

8. Interviewing Century Farm families … all of them.

7. Covering a farm crisis rally in Worthington while I was working as the farm reporter in Redwood Falls in the late 1990s. The rally was in the grandstand at the Nobles County Fairgrounds, and Sen. Paul Wellstone was the featured speaker. I had never seen a politician more passionate about a cause before, and I haven’t since.

6. Interviewing farmers in the field. I used to do this a lot more before I came to the Daily Globe. Now, we send our photographer out to get photos and I talk to farmers on their cell phones as they work from their combines.

5. Looking for skinks in a wooded area along the Minnesota River Scenic Byway, north of Belview. There was a group of researchers out near Gold Mine (that’s what the place was called), and a Redwood Gazette photographer and I spent an afternoon walking through weeds looking for the researchers and the skinks. Fortunately, we never saw a skink!

4. Going to the Nobles County Fair every day and saying it’s for work! (By the way, it’s National 4-H Week this week as well.)

3. Taking a ride in John Bowron’s pick-up truck through a bison pasture near the Blue Mounds at Luverne. John was driving and Daily Globe photoguy Brian Korthals was on the passenger side to capture totally awesome bison pictures. I sat between the two as we travelled over bumps and dips and dodged a bison that started to charge at the truck.

2. Traveling the back roads near Brewster in the middle of the night with our photoguy Brian Korthals and Sports Editor Aaron Hagen (he just went along for the experience), as we tried to cover the fire at Minnesota Soybean Processors in late May. It was such an adrenaline rush at the time, and I felt guilty (I still do) for putting my co-workers in danger.

1. My interview with Twins legend Kirby Puckett. I am forever indebted to Cookie (aka Wayne Cook, then-sports editor of the Redwood Gazette) for handing me the assignment!

Go-Go Gomez and the Gang

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My cell phone rang within a minute after Carlos Gomez slid across home plate and clinched the Central Division title for the Minnesota Twins after 12 back-and-forth, stressful innings of play Tuesday night.

On the other end of the line was my 8-year-old nephew Blake.

His words: "I changed my mind … I want the Gomez shirt!"

Of course there’s a story behind this.

Sunday morning outside the Metrodome, I was standing in front of a rack of size small Twins T-shirts on clearance … aha, Christmas presents! Blake’s choices were Francisco Liriano or Carlos Gomez. I had the Gomez shirt in my hand because it was the only one, and because I just like Go-Go Gomez … he’s fun to watch!

But when I called Blake, he said he wanted Liriano. I tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted.

Something (perhaps a foreshadowing of what was to come) told me to get the Gomez shirt anyway … for the price, I could afford to get both. I also snagged a Gomez shirt for my Godson Reece, thinking the boys could be twin Twins!

As I mentioned, the shirts were to be Christmas presents, but now the cat is out of the bag. If there is one thing my family knows, it’s that I cannot keep any kind of secret … whatsoever … when it comes to Christmas presents.

By the time I was off the phone with Blake, he knew that he was not only getting both Gomez and Liriano shirts for Christmas, he knew that his little brother was getting a Gomez shirt too! Gee whiz … sometimes I just can’t keep a secret!

In my defense, Blake caught me at a very exciting time … the Twins had just extended their season.

He caught me at home, alone, without anyone to cheer with (well, except for all of my Facebook friends who were posting messages continually throughout the game). Thank goodness they couldn’t hear my screams and cheers when Alexi Casilla slapped the ball into right field.

Gee, I wonder what my neighbors thought! Then again, maybe they were screaming and cheering too. I was being too loud myself that I couldn’t hear them!

A weekend at the Homer Dome

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Ah, home sweet home … and Dome sweet Dome!

Brother Kevin and I were both thankful to be under the big tarp of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome Saturday and Sunday for what was to be the final two games in the indoor baseball stadium. It was to be the farewell to the Dome, until our Minnesota Twins captured a clean sweep of Kansas City and the Detroit Tigers lost two of three to the Chicago White Sox. The Twins and Tigers will now face off at 4 p.m. Tuesday for the AL’s Central Division title … I think I’ll have to leave work a little early that day!

On Sunday, my brother and I were among more than 51,100 fans to cram inside the Metrodome to cheer on our team and reunite with some of our old favorites. I was especially excited to see the most handsome Twins hunks of all time! Former first basemen Kent Hrbek and Marty Cordova were part of Sunday’s farewell celebration, and current first baseman Michael Cuddyer (Cuddy) … homered Saturday to put the Twins on top, 5-4, and again on Sunday to score the last run in the Twins’ 13-4 victory.

We chanted "Cuddy" and "Koob" (for Jason Kubel), and "MVP" each time Minnesota native Joe Mauer came up to the plate. On Sunday, many even rooted on the White Sox as the score flashed up on the screen.

While our view of the game may have been better on television, our view from Section 105 was so much more exciting. We watched the wave, we did the wave and waved our Homer Hankies (leftovers from past seasons were handed out to all who entered on Sunday), we cheered, we laughed (loved those reruns of Hrby’s "Memorable Moment" with Ron Gant on first base!), and some of us even shed a tear (for our Kirby … he was a part of so many Metrodome memories.)

So many emotions, so many memories … and so much hope for another Twins win on Tuesday!