Mulling things on my morning ramble with Storm, the family’s mixed Lab.
One of the cooler things I did in my writing life was cover the Mariners a couple times in September when they played the White Sox.
Let’s leave aside why MLB would schedule a non-divisional series in September.
Speaking of September, signs of fall color change began in the past week on a number of plants and vines.
If Seattle was out of it, the Seattle Times would save a few bucks and not send the beat writer for the series. So I covered for them. It was something different for me and a few extra bucks.
Baseball beat writers bust their asses. And the years when I covered those series were even before tweeting.
Something new or different this morning. Actually had some rain. Some other areas had rain here and there in recent weeks, but not us. So it was strange to have enough this morning for the puddle below.
But I happened to cover the Seattle series where Mark Buehrle, then in his prime, finally gave up trying to get Ichiro out the regular way and threw him an eephus pitch on Sept. 5, 2004, one of those days when Ichiro went 5-for-5.
The pitch only registered 66 mph on the radar gun.
Of course, smart-ass readers might make cracks that there is not much difference in speed between Buehrle’s fast ball and an eephus pitch.
If you care about that memory of Ichiro, apt because he hit his 4,000th hit last night when you combine his career in Japan and here, click here for my take on Buehrle’s eephus and Ichiro from nearly nine years ago.
No Canada geese this morning. But two great blue herons lifted off the north old clay pit. A belted kingfisher squawked on the south pit, but I could not find it. A rabbit, apparently not caring for being wet, bolted and stopped four times on the south side of the south pit, before finally cutting into the brush.
One other thing. It is hard to explain how much of a rock star Ichiro was and is. A massive contingent of Japanese media covered him, almost worshipfully. Or at least far differently than we are used to media treating our superstars.
He was up there with Jordan, Ali and Pele. That level.
A pile of mourning doves exploded from under the bird feeder as the meathead and I came back up the front steps.
