Infield Fly Rule

Saturday morning.

"That's not the infield fly rule," I said to my teammate, a Korean doctoral student in Baoding's Hebei University. "If just man on first, no...this. If man first, second, or man first, second, third," I said pointing to the now-empty bases, "then, yes. Otherwise, 'ma yo' (not have)."

My teammate looked at me, shaking his head, '.Okay.' He had been on first base with no one else on base when there was a pop up on the infield. No one caught it, but still he stood there, not trying to run, just pointing to the sky that there should have been an infield fly rule called. He was wrong, which I explained. Well, which I tried to explain.

A moment later, after talking with the umpire, he ran back to first base and took over the poisition of the batter who hit the pop fly, who rightly should have occupied first now. With that, I stood behind home plate and realized the great folly of my explanation:

1.) I'm an American in China and my teammates (Korean and japanese students) speak little to no English.

2.) No one can really understand the infield fly rule to begin with...

At one point, I started realizing the weight of this truth and cheered for my teammates in English:

"Hey, baby, no one can understand me anyway so I'm just gonna yell a lot!" I said while being the third base coach. There was a runner on second who simply shook his head 'Yes' and tapped the brim of his helmet.

It's cold. We're playing hard, and not just baseball and soccer, either. Battle onward, dear brothers.

Advent Study: "The Willard House Special"

I wanted to write y'all to let you know that I'm starting a study on Tuesday, something I'm calling "The Willard House Special." Remember with me the basement of the Willard House which, among other "charming amenities," housed a collection of several books. One of these books, for reasons perhaps some of you know better than I, was Max Lucado's God Came Near, which had a radical number of copies (maybe 30) that I never thought much of except that I wondered what they were there for.

Long story short, I stole a copy last Summer from the House and am going to read it as preparation for Christmas/ celebration of the Advent season (there's 31 chapters, so that will go from nov 24- dec 24). Please keep this pursuit in your thoughts, that it would expose me to Truth and the Greatness that He is in my life.

Feel free to join in the reading if you're looking for something to focus studies, thoughts, the like...let me know if you do. It would be a shame to buy it, considering the likelihood that there's still a bounty in Blacksburg, but as many of us are no longer there, so it may be.

jerry knows some whoppas

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/f80f01f1dd/jerry-seinfeld-on-men-and-women-from-standupfan

Stalwart of the Faith

This has been challenging me in my reason, thinking, and heart toward people/ the nature of friendship:

"The First [Friend] is the alter ego, the man who first reveals to you that you are not alone in the world by turning out (beyond hope) to share all your most secret delights. There is nothing to be overcome in making him your friend; he and you join like raindrops on a window. But the Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything... Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. he has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one... How can he be so nearly right, and yet, invariably, just not right? He is as fascinating (and infuriating) as a woman." C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

american boys

started reading some thoreau

They mistake who assert that the Yankee has few amusements, because he has not so many public holidays, and men and boys do not play so many games as they do in England, for here the more primitive but solitary amusements of hunting, fishing, and the like have not yet given place to the former. Almost every New England boy among my contemporaries shouldered a fowling-piece between the ages of ten and fourteen; and his hunting and fishing grounds were not limited, like the preserves of an English nobleman, but were more boundless even than those of a savage. No wonder, then, that he did not oftener stay to play on the common. But already a change is taking place, owing, not to an increased humanity, but to an increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatest friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the Humane Society.

Housing market

I saw this article on Yahoo today and it reminded me a lot of what we were talking about the other day with health insurance, tax system/ incentive system, ect. It's an article about Detroit's housing market (or lack thereof):

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091025/us_nm/us_usa_housing_detroit

I hope that these things press us toward Life, Peace, and justice.

Stalwart of the Faith

"My experience of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them, or indisposed me to serve them; nor in spite of failures, which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge; or of the present aspect of affairs; do I despair of the future.
The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope."

-Robert E. Lee, 1870 (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_E_Lee)