Passing of a fellow Umpire

Sam and I headed for Bascom, Ohio, about 2:30 yesterday afternoon...getting to the Hopewell-Loudon baseball diamond in plenty of time for the 5PM Sectional Final between Fremont St. Joe and Tiffin Calvert. It was Sam's turn to do the plate and the well played, especially pitching, game went only about 1 hour and 25 minutes without incident, and we headed back the 98 miles to Celina.....Fremont won 6-0 to move on to the district, getting a no hit effort from their left handed starter until the final inning when he gave up an infield hit to deep short.

Getting home at the start of the 2nd peroid, for the Flyers-Pittsburgh game, I settled back hopeful of seeing Philly come from behind in both the game and the series...but that was not to be, the Pens take the game 4-1 and lead the best of 7 by 3 games to none, rendering it all but over...well the Flyers did make great leaps from the worst record in the NHL last season to the Eastern Finals this year....now they will play out the string, whether it's one game or more.

After the game...............

I walked over to the computer and flipped on the local website for the MAC(Midwest Athletic Conference), the area high school league, made up of multiple state champions, and probably the best small school conference in the U.S.....anyway, the "forum" section usually has some pretty good conversations...but last night one in particular caught my eye...the passing of a poster with the name "Gonemad"...I could have thrown up....Gonemad is the site name of a guy from Delphos named Dave....Dave was only 45 years old, had just joined our Van Wert Umpire association, and was a new grandpa about 2 weeks ago....Dave's wife found him dead in bed when he failed to wake up yesterday morning....I was just talking to him after a game last week, and had "talked" to him via E-mail on Monday....it appears to be heart related but they will do an autopsy to find out. Just another reminder, nobody knows when their number is going to be called...God rest your soul and be with your family Dave...I will miss our conversations...Dave was a sports nut and was going to be a good umpire, he was a good family man.

Despite the foul weather, our Mesick, Michigan, mushroom hunt remains on schedule...I topped off the Jeep's tank(now unleaded at $3.89 a gallon) and will begin packing for our, what looks to be wet and cool, weekend.

more later>>>>>>>>>>>

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photos-You gotta wonder where the Hell this nation is heading? The more I hear and see the 3 Amigos that we have running for President, the more I lean towards voting 3rd party...done it before. What we need is a new Sheriff, or better yet, an old Sheriff like RR.