In like a Lion/Dartball Finals/Paul Harvey RIP

March has roared in like the proverbial Lion. This morning was 8 above with a chill factor of about 5 below...22 for a high today, a little better tomorrow, and cloudy with rain and 40s by Wednesday. Could be worse, New York and New England are being buried by a early March snow storm/blizzard.

Yesterday Sam and I traveled north to Schumm and participated in the Wabash Dartball League Tournament Semi Finals and Finals. During the regular season out team, St. John Lutheran of Celina, finished second in the South Division in both halves. Taking on Mount Tabor in the Semis, a team we had split with in the regular season 3 games each, we remained HOT...taking the first game 9-1 and completing the sweep in game #2 by a 7-2 count...Sam and our lead off hitter Edison lead the way with 6 and 7 hits in 8 at bats respectively. I was 4 for 8 with 3 RBIs. We waited around as the host team and perennial power Schumm Zion Lutheran battled Bethany UM in 3 games...Schumm finally pulled it out in 3 games. Now the host team are a good bunch of guys and we enjoy playing them...for the most part however, they have owned us. The last 2 times we won the Tournament Championship...1999 and 2000 we defeated them en route to the Championship....this time things reverted to normal. We jumped out front in the opener, they came back taking us to 13 innings, despite 19 hits we didn't combine them well enough. After taking leads in the top of the 12th and 13th, they scored a run to tie us in the 12th inning, and 2 more with 2 outs in the 13th to defeat us 7-6. We didn't recover and they jumped out 6-0 in game #2...holding us off and a 8-4 win to take the Tournament Championship.

We had a great run, and come home with a nice 2nd place trophy to put in the Church Sports Case....Schumm takes on Mount Carmel tonight for the overall Championship during the Regular Season. Our youngest player is 9, our oldest is 90....and we meshed together well late in the season to make it a good one overall.

During the tournament run which saw us defeat 2 of the top 3 teams in the league we averaged 7.5 runs a game after only scoring 3.5 during the season...hitting wise we were at 14.3 hits a game. after only averaging 8.9 during the regular season....Oldest son Sam and I both played well...I was 15 or 32 batting .469 with 8 RBIs, while Sam was 12 for 29(.414) and led the team in RBIs with 10....we both will play in next Monday's All Star game at Schumm. The league banquet is there on March 23rd, as we put the Widdy Darts away for another year. The new season begins in October 2009.

I would be remiss if I didn't finish off today's post giving an RIP to radio legend Paul Harvey....I began listening to "Paul Harvey News" in 1958 or there abouts, when just a kid in Florida...he was carried by WFLA Radio in Tampa, and I would catch him whenever I could. Even at 9 years old I was a fan of radio, news, and politics, and Paul was the master of all 3....plus the guy did his own commercials. During my years in Radio I never tried to emulate Harvey, he was one of a kind, but with many or the stations I worked at carrying his news, plus "The Rest of the Story", I continued to admire him and still do to this day. Paul Harvey dead at 90.

"Good Day" Mr Harvey.....

back later with more "Road to Nowhere" tales.