1. Debbie and I put a rug underneath the packed full of books bookshelf that sat in the living room and slid it into the Vizio room. I then removed almost all the cookbooks from these shelves and put them on top of the refrigerator. This opened the way for me to do other rearranging in the Vizio room and made it so that we have more walking space in the living room. All of this makes me happy.
2. Several years ago, Mom had a sprinkler system installed in the front and back yards of her house (now our house) and she used to talk a lot about the owner of the company who did the work -- Jayson Frank of Artscape Landscaping. Until today, I'd never met Jayson, but he and the young son of a friend of his came by, as scheduled, and blew out the sprinklers. I have a small problem with one sprinkler. Jayson and I talked about that. He also told me how much he enjoyed Mom's stories and her wealth of local knowledge when he worked for her and they talked about things. It was heartwarming to hear him speak so fondly of working for Mom.
3. Before this evening, I hadn't seen Nathan Eovaldi pitch for the Red Sox since his epic six inning appearance against the Dodgers in the 18 inning Game 3 of the 2018 World Series, the longest World Series game in history. He was tonight's starter in Boston's wild card game against the Yankees and watching him mow down the Yankees over the course of 5.1 innings was a great pleasure. When Eovaldi is on, the way he was tonight, I really enjoy how he mixes his pitches, keeps batters off balance, and varies the pace of how long he takes between pitches.
Boston's 6-2 victory also featured a play that doesn't happen too often and one that I love every time it does.
After Eovaldi surrendered a home run to Anthony Rizzo with one out in the sixth inning, Aaron Judge legged out an infield single.
Then the mighty Giancarlo Stanton came to the plate and faced Boston reliever, Ryan Brasier. Stanton, who nearly homered to left field in the first inning, launched a howitzer to the deep regions of Fenway's center field. It didn't leave the park and Kike Hernandez played the carom perfectly and threw a strike to relay man, Xavier Bogaerts. By now, Judge was chugging around third and third base coach Phil Nevins waved him to head home and try to score. Bogaerts pirouetted and fired a strike to Boston catcher Kevin Plawecki who then laid a tag on the head first sliding Judge before he could stretch a fingertip to the plate. The umpire closed his fist and signaled that Judge was out.
I've been a fan of baseball for over sixty years and I love to see a perfectly executed relay from the outfield to the infield and on to home plate more than any other play. When Dad coached IOOF, the Little League team I played on, he taught us the mechanics and the logic of how a ball thrown on a line by an outfielder to a cutoff man and then relayed by that player home would reach its target more efficiently than if the outfielder tried to make a single throw all the way to the plate by himself.
I wanted Dad to see last night's Hernandez to Bogaerts to Plawecki relay to nail Judge, not so much because it helped kill what could have been a huge rally for the Yanks, but because it was precisely the kind of baseball poetry in motion he and I enjoyed watching and exulting over whenever it happened.
By the way, I watched an hour of this game on mute while I was under the headphones listening to, and watching, Bill Davie's latest Tree House Concert. He gave a powerhouse performance with songs ranging between the anger of "King of the Art", the surreality of "Learn to Say Goodbye", and the deeply touching "Safe in the Sound". Bill went for some pretty raw poetry during the poetry break by reading selections from Jim Harrison's last collection before he died, Dead Man's Float.
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