The Heat Is On!

3:30PM

Summer begins to reappear....not that it's been that cool, but what little rain we received greened up the grass, but not enough to mow.....maybe tomorrow I'll do it. Highs in the low to mid 90s with no rain in sight for the next few days.

First round baseball draft pick, Cory Luebke, from Marion Local(Hal coached him for awhile one summer)and Ohio State, moves up to Class A Fort Wayne from the Rookie League, Eugene team of the San Diego Farm System.....Cory will start in Fort Wayne tomorrow night, too bad Patricia and I have tickets for Thursday noon...when the heat will really be on. The plan for me then is to head out Friday for the Twin Cities.

Hal working in DC today, then New Jersey before driving back with the Celina Moving truck.....Sam meanwhile took an RV run to "Beautiful Downtown" Burbank, California, and is heading across Indiana as I type....he'll drop that off Friday if all goes as planned, then fly back to Chicago and head for home.

Not much going on in my world...worked in Greenville this morning, haircut, and took Hal's car up for a look-see at his stuck door latch, I do not have the patience for that minor pain in the neck stuff....either that or I'm just lazy.

Last day of July, 10 days until my first football scrimmage.....ankle is healing, but I have other pains.....and the lack of working out probably doesn't help....old or not, I will press on.

8 Years ago today

________________Heading out to Mt Vernon(Miller), Missouri...Sam is finishing up his week at Mickey Owens Baseball School....we will watch his last games, motel, then head for Florida. The past 2 years(97 & 98) we have split time between my childhood hometown of Venice and Key West(the freak show)....this year Venice and the Inn at the Beach gets the main part of the Vacation.

On a lucky hunch, I decided to get tickets to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays game with Cleveland....Wade Boggs was pressing for 3000 hits when I ordered tickets, as we left Venice for St Pete, he needed 3 hits and our game was up.

V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N in a nutshell......

Sam batted over .300 but really didn't love the place(unlike Hal would the next year, he loved it)....Florida was hot(hey, it's July-August) and rather wet....but we got our pool and beach time in. Boggs got his 3 hits, and we had our video camera there to record it....Hit #3000 was a rare Boggs home run.....we were indeed lucky to catch this right, just on a whim. Got back to Celina on August 7th...had to get the dogs out of the kennel, pay $1100 for a new Central Air unit.....and was pretty much broke the rest of the summer...Hal returned just in time to start his final football season at Celina....at that time he was 5' 6" and about 145, a Sophomore.....he concentrated on baseball the rest of his high school days...even though growing by 100 lbs and 9 or 10 inches, as he finished off his senior year.( he has settled in at 6' 3 1/2" and about 250 at Wright State) Sam meanwhile gave up High School baseball as he entered his senior year.....why? You would have to ask him.....but he stayed close to the game and enters his 7 year as a High School umpire(working with me on many occasions during the season), after graduation from Harry Wendelstadt Umpire School in Daytona Beach in 2001.

Picking up the Airedales from the Pet Center....Reagan was just a year old(7/6/98) and her dad Jack was not yet 3(8/16/96)....now they are getting up there in the twilight of their dog lives...but still kicking.

prh