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Trifecta

Jun 28, 2007
Last night, the greatest pitching treo of all time (Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz) all picked up a victory on the same day.

It was the first time that this has ever happened for all three of them.

What is even more impressive is that they threw a combined 18 innings, gave up a combined 1 run and have a combined age of 122. It has to be humbling for major league batters to get dominated by three guys who's fastballs clock in at the speed that others throw their change-ups.
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Slow Down Barry (or Barry, Slow Down)

Jun 27, 2007
The Wife™ and I found out that we both have Labor Day off, so we're going to spend a nice 2 or 3 day weekend in Denver. One of the main reasons for picking Denver, is simply for the fact that neither one of us has ever been to Coors Field.

After scouting out the Rockies schedule for the rest of the year, I was amazed to see that the Giants (a team in their division) only comes to Denver one more time this season. I figured it would be pretty cool to tell people that I've seen the player with the most home runs in baseball history (*note how I didn't say the greatest home run hitter of all time).

Doing a little stat breakdown, I'm going to need some help if we want a chance to see some baseball history:

As of this post, the Giants have played 76 games and Barry has appeared in 70 of them (92%). Out of those 70 games, he's managed to hit 15 balls over the yellow line that tops the outfield fences (21% of games he's played in, he's homered).

There are 62 more games until they play at Coors on Labor Day, meaning that Bonds, on average, will play in 57 of these games. Out of these 57 games, he's on pace to hit 12 more home runs.

Here in lies the problem. Bonds is currently sitting on 749 career home runs. That's just 6 behind The Hammer.

With this, I'm going to need the home run/games played percentage to be cut in half if we would want the slightest chance of watching history of either 755 or 756 flying out at Coors.

If somehow the pace can get cut, the percentages will definitely jump playing at altitude, even with those damn humidifier balls.

So here's a message to all of you opposing pitchers: Keep the ball down in the zone, don't worry about walking him (he's got so many I don't think baseball is keeping track any more), and if you're going to hit him, plunk him in a spot that will keep him off the DL (at least in early September).
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Evacuation

Jun 19, 2007


We had an amazing lightning storm on Sunday night, which Christi and I went out to watch for a while, that had major repercussions on Monday afternoon. 275 acres, 1.5 miles from our house, burned down yesterday throughout most of the day.

The middle school which is 100 yards from our house was evacuated today because of potential that the fire may come up over the mountain more into New Castle. However, our community was not evacuated at all.

Hopefully when we return from work today, we'll still have a house to go home to.

*The picture above is from the corner of our street. It's a good depiction of how close the fire was to our house.

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Whoops

Jun 17, 2007
Christi, Lisa and I were playing Scene-It last night. I only write this because I screwed up pretty badly and wanted to post the question/answer.

What movie slogan used the tagline, "Yesterday they were businessmen, today they're cowboys, tomorrow they'll walk funny?"


Brian's Answer: Brokeback Mountain
Real Answer: City Slickers

Yeah. Whoops.
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Eat your heart out, Genesis

Jun 15, 2007
Once again, this post is in thanks to Christi. This time for the combination of her passion of dance and her love of reality TV shows. Obviously, she's always been a big fan of So You Think You Can Dance, and our DVR is slowly filling up with each episode of the 3rd season because of it.

Usually I'd get mad at this and start clearing them off because I know we'll she'll never watch them from the beginning again, but I was wrong. In the third episode, they went to Atlanta and met Bryan Gaynor, one of the coolest dancers in the world:



This got me thinking to one of the coolest things that VanKat ever showed me. The dorky white kid in the orange shirt who does the best strobe light effect that I've ever seen:

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Jumping the Shark

Jun 7, 2007
Some pretty cool things have happened (or are going to happen) lately.

Last night, I had games three and four as a head coach. I still haven't had a full roster because the football coach is stealing half of my good players for football camp (*shakes fist in the air), but we're getting by with what we have. And last night, we had 5 of our players and then 6 of the 6th-8th grade all-stars playing with us.

We dropped our double header by a combined 4 runs, but did something remarkable: We turned a triple play in the last inning we were in the field. That's something I'll probably never see again as a coach. For those interested (and baseball savvy), it was a 9-3-6 triple play. Two throws, three outs.

So in four games as a head coach, I've had a no-hitter, a triple play and my right/center fielder threw out a runner at first (this is when we were playing with 8 players and 2 outfielders).

What else is going on? Well, Erica is finishing up her thesis sometime this morning. That's just awesome and unbelievable. Congrats sis.

Also, today is one month away (06.07.07) from the unveiling of the New 7 Wonders of the World (07.07.07 - fittingly). I'm hoping that these places win (partly because I've been to a few):

• Colosseum
• Statue of Liberty (go USA, right?)
• Stonehenge
• Sydney Opera House
• Taj Mahal
• Machu Picchu
• Easter Island Moais

I'm really not holding my breath for the Statue or the Opera House, but I still think it's cool that they are voting on new wonders.
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First games as a head coach

Jun 4, 2007
On Saturday, I had my first official games as a head coach of a baseball team. Up until this summer, I've always been an assistant and never the actual head coach. Now I have a bunch of 15 and 16 year olds that officially call me Coach Helge.

Living where we do out in the mountains, we have to take some long drives to go play our games. We had to travel over 2 hours to get in our first doubleheader of the season, but it was well worth it when we got there.

Everyone usually remembers big "firsts" in the sport that they love. I'll never forget my first home run, first walk-off hit, and now, I'll never forget the first game as a head coach.

In the first game of the double dip, my pitcher threw a no-hitter. That sounds amazing and all (which it certainly was), but it gets better. My pitcher threw a no-hitter with only 8 people on the field. We also did it with our second baseman doing the one hand glove flip like Jim Abbott. He actually had a ball hit to him, gloved it, gloved flipped, and threw the runner out at first. It's really fun to watch someone compete like that.

Besides the ball hit to 2nd, we only had two other put outs in the infield (one to first and one to the pitcher) and the rest were strikeouts. A beautiful performance to watch.

We ended up splitting the doubleheader as we had 3 of our 4 infielders playing a position they've never played before.

Well, with that, I'm pumped up for the rest of our season this summer now.
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