600

Posted on September 8, 2010 by Carson

Last night I was fortunate enough to witness a significant moment in sports history firsthand.

For the last two years, we’ve bought a 9-pack of Brewers tickets. Last night’s game against the Cardinals was our eighth of the season, but unfortunately Amber wasn’t able to go. She had to leave early this morning on a trip for work and decided it would be best not to be up past midnight the night before. Instead, I invited a friend. I now feel very guilty that I helped convince her not to go to the game.

The game itself was pretty crazy, and the craziness doesn’t even include the best part. The Brewers scored two runs early, and the Cardinals managed two runs in the fourth on four straight hits. Other than that, Chris Narveson had a strong start and pitched seven complete innings, giving up just the two runs. Along the way, four people were ejected from the game: the Brewers manager for arguing an interference call that negated a run, the Cardinals pitching coach for arguing balls and strikes, the Brewers center fielder for slamming down his bat and helmet after a called third strike, and a fan sitting behind home plate near the Brewers dugout heckling the Cardinals catcher. On top of that, there were at least two calls reversed during the course of the game which almost never happens. All of this brings us to the eighth inning with the Brewers leading 4-2. The bullpen went to work with the first reliever getting the first man out but then walking the second. To understand the significance of the game from here, you need a little background.

Trevor Hoffman is the all time leader in saves. He spent most of his career as the closer for the San Diego Padres, but about two years ago it became clear that they would not resign him. Instead, he agreed to a two-year deal with the Brewers. Hoffman is a bit of a finesse pitcher with a fastball in the mid-80s who relies on good location and the reduced speed of his changeup to keep hitters off balance. He was fantastic last season for the Brewers, playing in the All Star game, recording 37 saves in 41 opportunities with an ERA under 2.0. He was pretty much unstoppable. The 2010 season started out complete opposite his 2009 showing. He struggled right out of the gate, blowing 5 of his first 10 save opportunities and giving up more earned runs and more home runs than he did in all of 2009. Despite having 595 saves, more than anyone (ever), he was pulled from the closer’s role.

After a few games, a new closer began to emerge in rookie John Axford. In contrast to Hoffman, Axford is a power pitcher throwing a mid-90s fastball and a big overhand curve. He’d never closed a game before (at any level), but after a few chances it seemed he had a knack for it. Since he took over the majority of the closing duties, he has a 7-1 record with a 2.34 ERA, has recorded 20 saves in 22 opportunities, and has 62 strikes in 50 innings pitched.

While Axford was racking up saves, Trevor Hoffman got some stuff worked out and starting putting together some excellent performances as well. He reduced his ERA from something over 13 back into the single digits (now cut by more than 50%), no small feat for a reliever who usually pitches just one inning at a time. Now the Brewers had a dilemma. Everyone wanted to see Hoffman get the opportunities he would need to reach the milestone of 600 saves (he only needed 5 more) and he had proven he could still be effective. But how could they allow him to close games over Axford who was doing such a bang up job? Rather than making a tough decision, I think they did an admirable thing and opted for a middle of the road approach. Axford would get his shots when the game was tight and Hoffman would come in when the Brewers had a more comfortable three run lead. After almost three months sitting at 595, the banner showing Hoffman’s save total finally started creeping upward again.

That brings us back to last night’s game. There was one out with a man on first in the top of the eighth inning, Brewers leading 4-2, when John Axford entered the game. Keep in mind that he as several multi-inning saves this year. When we arrived at the game, I couldn’t help but notice that Hoffman’s banner sat at 599; it’s about 20 feet tall in left center field so it was hard to miss. I had a fleeting thought that it would be pretty cool to witness his 600th save, but once Axford entered the game, I figured there was no chance it would happen. The Ax-Man would record the last five outs and he’d have save number 21. Axford did strike out two batters to end the top of the eighth inning, but then something awesome happened.

Trevor Hoffman started to get loose in the bullpen. The crowd noticed and started cheering. I decided I shouldn’t get too excited yet because bullpen pitchers often start warming up without ever coming into a game. The Brewers didn’t do much in the bottom of the eighth, so it didn’t take long to find out what which pitcher would head to the mound for the top of the ninth. I saw Hoffman start walking toward the bullpen gate and I knew it was Trevor Time. Hells Bells. The fans left in the stands (almost all Brewers fans by now) went absolutely nuts. The buzz was quelled quickly when the first batter singled, but the runner was quickly wiped out by a double play and the excitement grew once again. The last pinch hitter worked into a full count before he grounded out to short.

Then the celebration started. The Brewers all stormed the field and mobbed Hoffman in congratulations. Fireworks. Banner rolled from 599 to 600. Trevor’s wife and three sons came out to congratulate him. The Brewers manager came back out of the clubhouse to congratulate him (remember he had been ejected early in the game). We stayed for a little while, but didn’t want to linger too long with a big drive ahead of us.

600 career saves. Not only is this a huge milestone, there is a very real possibility that no one else will ever reach that number, at least not for a long time. The closer with the second most saves ever is Mariano Rivera with the Yankees; he has 555. He’s 40 years old. Even if Rivera stays healthy, continues to be effective, and does pass Hoffman in the next year or two, he was the first to 600 saves. No one will forget that.

600. And I was there to see it.

Roughing It In Style

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Carson

We went camping over the weekend, but not in the traditional sense. Amber’s parents have been trying to sell their old house in Peoria while living in Kansas City. They were going to be in Peoria just to check in, so we met them there for the weekend. However, most of their day-to-day stuff is in KC. So while the house still has some of their furniture and looks livable, it was mostly devoid of the usual touches like food, cable, and internet access.

I was concerned that I’d be bored out of my mind, but I was pleasantly surprised. I was able to use my phone to satisfy my internet addiction (for the most part). I was even able to find an audio stream of the K-State football game. We brought down some food and so did they, so we were able to have some tasty meals overall. It was a nice relaxing long weekend and it was good to see them. My only regret was not spending more time finalizing details for out trip. More on that later.

I Love This Weather

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Carson

For 1:20 in the afternoon, it’s incredibly dark outside. I just decided to open my window to enjoy the sound of the rain. I love this weather for a few reasons. First, it waited until the day after softball practice to rain. Second, I’m stuck inside working and not trying to do something fun outside. Third, it’s relaxing.

Now, here’s the real reason for my first addition to this blog in 10 months. We have a great topic to get us posting again – sabbatical! Check back soon for some changes and more frequent updates.

Trick or Treat

Posted on October 31, 2009 by Carson

Well, it’s 6:30 and we’ve had less than 10 trick-or-treaters come by. I’m a little disappointed. However, we do have some awesome pumpkins out there. Amber saw a picture of an E.T. pumpkin online and wanted to do it. We couldn’t find a real pattern, so I took a picture and manipulated it until it would work. I think it came out really great.

On second thought, we just had a group of 7. Maybe things are picking up.

Landscaping

Posted on October 24, 2009 by Carson

Since we haven’t posted in 5 months, let’s continue with the theme of the last post. Prior to recent events, we burned a lot of money and time working outside. I think it’s paid off quite nicely; see for yourself.

After getting screwed over by her previous employer, Amber now has a temp job working for Fiskars. She’s updating a massive internal PowerPoint totalling 1700 slides. Her boss actually printed the thing off and it was about 3 inches thick (two slides per page). She’s also started as a Page at the Verona library. It’s incredibly exciting work – sorting and shelving books.

I don’t have anything too exciting to report. I’ve got a new customer at work and will be traveling to Seattle in about a week to help with a Go-Live. I haven’t traveled much for work, but every single time has been to Seattle. Sometime in December my team will finally get to move to a new building in Verona. My bowling average is up to 184. More next time…

Retaining Wall

Posted on May 25, 2009 by Carson

We had all intentions of getting an early start on our retaining wall Saturday morning, but I woke up around 4:15 to the sound of pouring rain outside the open window. After it rained for 4 more hours, there was no chance we could work out there on Saturday. We made sure to start early Sunday morning and we were almost finished when we ran out of light and sand (or so we thought). This morning I made yet another trip for sand, but in the end we didn’t need it. We got the last blocks in place and fixed up all caps including some that needed some persuasion to lay flat.

The project grew quite a bit from start to finish. We used almost 130 blocks and about 35 caps (which we weren’t sure we’d do initially). In the end, the wall ended up being about twice as long as I had initially anticipated because we decided to go all the way from the sidewalk to the window well.

I think it turned out great and our neighbors seem to agree. See the construction progress below and click for larger versions.

Removing grass was a pain, but the real work was yet to come.

Making progress...

This is about the point we decided to go end to end and made the project a lot larger.

The finished product; we debated about what to do on the left side.

Ready for planting.

Summer is Here

Posted on May 21, 2009 by Carson

Unfortunately, it’s felt like summer at my desk for the last three days. I swear the temperature in my section of the building has been at least 85 degrees and there’s no way to get comfortable. To make matters worse, I haven’t had any real excuses to get up and spend time in a cooler area (which is pretty much anywhere else). They were tinkering with stuff all day with no relief, so it would seem there are serious issues with the A/C in the building. My geuss, Epic would rather limp along trying to make small tweaks than spring to fix it. I’m sure the fact the building lease runs out at the end of the year has something to do with it.

In other news, we’ve started our first big landscaping project – a retaining wall in the front yard. We’re a little over halfway through with most of the hard part (the foundation) already finished. It’s looking nice, but I’m afraid it may eliminate our first choice of tree to put in that bed. We’ll have pictures soon.

The best part of summer, though, is definitely softball. Even though our team is not that great, we’re starting to come around. Tonight’s game actually felt like we were an organized team for the first time. Everyone was there early, we were all lined up playing catch for warm-up, we had our lineup in place ahead of time, everyone knew where they were playing. And then there’s the best part – our first win! We were playing a team that we beat in a walk off last year after we moved down a league. This time we kept it close with good defense and we finally found our bats for a late comeback and a 14-12 victory.

Assuming the weather holds, the long weekend ahead should bring BBQ, landscaping, some geocaching, and maybe our first Brat Fest. I’m looking forward to the extra day off.

Memory Lane

Posted on April 1, 2009 by Carson

My parents are moving out of the house we lived in when I was in high school. To cut down on what they’re moving, my mom went through the house and priced a bunch of stuff for sale, but she also went through my old stuff trying to decide what I might want to keep. I got a package a week or two ago with some stuff from scouting and some cool art from middle school and early high school. If I get a chance, I might scan or photograph some of it and post it here.

Today I received the second package with some items from high school. I haven’t even gotten past the first stack of papers and I can’t believe some of the stuff that’s in here. On top of the stack is some English assignments. Knowing the person I am now, it’s hard to believe this stuff came out of my head. Here’s a sample of a poem I wrote with a partner in Senior AP English:

There once was a knight, a most distinguished ladies’ man,
When it came to the ladies, he always had a plan.
But it wasn’t always this way,
He used to be shy, back in the day.
He had once lived in Seattle,
And fought in many a ghetto battle.
His legend of victory spread far and wide,
Mention his name, grown men run and hide.

It goes on for a page and a half! This one is supposed to be cheesy and funny, but I can’t imagine writing four lines like this now let alone a page and a half. I particularly enjoyed these tidbits of truth about a fellow classmate we snuck into the paper under the guise of a squire who followed the knight around:

His phrases of “Sega” and “MACK-10” rang through the hall,
If it were up to the knight he wouldn’t say it at all.
….
At the age of thirteen, he proposed to his teacher,
He told her he set it all up, even the preacher.
She laughed at his proposal and gave him an A,
You see it was April Fools’ Day.*

Then there’s the “Polonius Parody” for which I received 15/15 points.

I wish you good fortune on your journey.
Remember this advice:
Be all that you can be (in the Army).
Keep your mouth shut if you’re about to say something dumb.
Have fun with your friends but don’t overdo the partying.
Try to avoid pissing people off, but if it can’t be helped, make sure you kick their tail.
Be a good listener, but there’s no doubt–don’t speak.
Listen to advice, but make your own decisions.
Don’t go overboard on your wardrobe, but it’s ok to show off that sterling silver Ruff Ryders pendant every once in a while.
Be a tightwad with money. If you let people borrow they’ll make you regret it. And if you borrow money, they’ll make you regret it.
Most importantly: Eat Wheaties for breakfast every day. Oh, and sleep a lot.
Good luck. Peace.

After a few more pages – my senior AP Calculus Final. In big bold letters on the front page:

Think.
Ask yourself questions.
Listen to what you’re saying.

That is still excellent advice. I looked over the test where I filled the pages with line after line of my work on each problem and noticed a distinct lack of red marks. I have to say that I have never felt smarter in my entire life than the two years I spent in Mr. Boast’s classroom learning pre-Calc and Calculus. I seriously considered majoring in math for a while because I enjoyed it so much. The final was curved to a max score of 105 and I got a 100.

If I could change one thing about the path I took through college it would have been to take more math classes. I was so good at this stuff in high school, but I practically threw that knowledge away. The business degrees all required calculus, but since I got full AP credit based on my AP Calc test score from high school, I never needed more math. The closest I came to it at K-State was a few statistics classes that were more about data than math. Along with the test was a full page of notes covered with hyperbolic identities, derivatives, integrals, and inverse trig functions. It makes me sad that I can’t decipher more than a few lines anymore, but I’m still proud of what I was able to do with it in high school.

Well, I’ve barely scratched the surface of this box. If I find any other interesting goodies, maybe I will also share them here. One other thing – I had really tiny handwriting in high school.

*Note today’s date. This is what you call irony.

Thank You, BSG

Posted on March 21, 2009 by Carson

I could probably write a few pages on Battlestar Galactica like I did for The Shield a while back, but it’s late and I’m tired. This review in Time (spoilers) does a pretty good job of summing up my thoughts. Of course they couldn’t answer every question, but on the whole I was impressed. I’m sad the series is over.

Windows as a Hobby

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Carson

Outside of work, I’ve almost completely stopped using Windows. Unfortunately there seems to be nothing worthwhile in the way of personal finance software for Mac, so I’m stuck running Microsoft Money in Parallels. I’ve been trying to get some financial data in order to use for our 2008 taxes, which gave me a good excuse to finally upgrade Money and go to Parallels 4.0. The new version of Parallels prompted me to try something new.

I got it installed on the laptop and setup a new virtual machine using the Windows 7 Beta. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but most of the reaction has been pretty positive. I have to say, I would agree. I haven’t done a lot of tinkering or complex tasks, but I’m impressed so far. A few more days should give me a better idea of the whole package. I don’t know that I would actually buy Windows 7 if it were available now; I’d probably only pay for it it if we were getting a new computer (yes, Amber, I know this isn’t happening anytime soon). Still, the beta is a unique chance to play around with it for free, so I figured I’d take advantage.

Now for some Daily Show inspired thoughts….How do you rebrand stupid? Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) actually said that by closing Guantanomo Bay it would be possible for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to be tried in a U.S. court, get off on a technicality, receive asylum, and get “on a path to citizenship.” I think Jon Stewart had the only appropriate response to such ridiculous speculation:

Then, let’s say Khalid Sheikh Mohammed runs for congress. He wins because he’s an expert on terror. Then a couple of years later, a crazy governor makes him a Senator. Then as Senator, he hypnotizes everyone and takes over the Army. Now he has access to Area 51, and here’s where it gets weird…He uses alien technology to seduce Scarlett Johansson and only Will Smith can stop him! Bruckheimer, are you listening?!

You know, sometimes crazy politicians actually lose their jobs. Farewell, Blago.

Update: This was too good not to share. If you don’t see the image, try turning off AdBlock.

Madison Monroes

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Author Archives: Carson

600