Things you hear in Wichita...

Here at the NBC World Series, I've heard all kinds of interesting tidbits and such that I'd love to pass along. Here are some highlights...

From generally oversized coaches who seem to have their positions due to some sort of nepotism:
Meaningless blabber. Stuff like: "Okay, now big spot here." Like the batter needs to be reminded of that. Or, another favorite comes when the count is 3 balls and 2 strikes on the hitter: "C'mon now, base hit or ball four." Since the only other option left to that batter is to make an out, that would seem to go without saying.

From the rather rotund man whose belly made it seem as though Jeff Gordon was driving a limo across his NASCAR shirt:
"Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? Not me, I've only seen it on TV. It was built a long time ago." One of my favorites! This guy was good for a couple of quotes about Arizona; how he'd never been there, but seen it on TV (repeated at least twice), how he loved westerns, how Tombstone was set in Arizona, how Tombstone was about gun fighters who fought with guns. Good stuff.

From the mother who is far too interested in a free t-shirt to pay attention to trivialities like family harmony:
"Hey, quit complaining! Just go back to sleep and share the pillow with your sister!" As part of the tournament, they're doing a contest-type thing called "Baseball Around the Clock." As the title denotes, there is, literally, baseball all day and night. These people in the contest are trying to attend 17 straight games over the course of 56 hours. During each game a cuckoo-clock sound plays over the PA system, and the participants have something like 5 or 10 minutes to check in. Rumor has it that there's a t-shirt waiting for those who stay the course. 3 crazy things about this: first, at any given time, during any given game, there are people sprawled out sleeping throughout the stadium. On the bleachers, on blankets on the ground, wherever they can catch some shut eye and be within range of the cuckoo sound. Secondly, I'm thinking that if these people spent some of those 56 hours working instead of trapped at a minor-league baseball stadium, they could buy their own t-shirt. Thirdly, 56 hours of ballpark food. 'Nough said.

From the public adress announcer laboring on a hot Sunday morning in the Bible Belt:
"Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. In just a few minutes the nondenominational church service will begin in the Budweiser Pavilion." Good times! The best part was crowd reaction, which ranged from, "Did he say church service was in the Budweiser Pavilion?" to "That's my kind of church!" While I admire their attempts to provide a legitimate worship-going experience for the Sunday morning contingent, it does raise some interesting questions about how they celebrate communion. Somehow, beer nuts and Bud Light don't seem to parallel the body and the blood.

I'm having a blast here. The games are being played at the Royals' AA minor-league team's field. My brother and I went to a game this morning. The game was scheduled to start at 8am, but when we arrived, we found out that the 3am game (literally, around the clock) hadn't started until 5:30am, so everything had been delayed. We watched the Alaska Goldpanners of Fairbanks, Alaska, 49th State of the Union, Land of the Midnight Sun soundly defeat the Las Vegas Desert Devils. (Okay, so their name is really only the Alaska Goldpanners of Fairbanks, but even that is a bit much.) My brother's team, the Havasu Heat, plays tonight at "7:30." We'll see about that.

That's all for now. He's taking a nap and I should be reading. Pictures from tonight's game should be here soon. Maybe post-game tonight or first thing tomorrow.

P.S. It's hot here.