Thursday, August 26, 2004

Times they are a changin...

Made a big mistake the other night and I can't get the images out of my head. You see Victoria, Rachel and I were watching Olympic diving. Rachel likes this Canadian diver from Montreal. Alexander something. Anyways, my mind rolled back to that fateful day in 1988 when Greg Louganis struck a diving board during a dive. So in doing that search for the video I ran across a morning show website. I don't know where the show is broadcast but that doesn't matter.

On their site is a list of their most memorable sports injuries. Of course there's Owen Hart, Joe Theisman, Greg Louganis, Sid Vicious, and a few others (though they missed Dave Dravecky or Tony Saunders). Among this list was the incident of March 22, 1989. Any hockey fan and some who don't care for hockey may remember this date.

You see 1989 was the year of the earthquake in San Francisco during the World Series. It's the year a world class female surfer had her arm bitten off by a shark. It wasn't a good year for sports injuries and March 22nd was no different. For those who know I'll say the words Clint Malarchuk. For those that don't know...feel grateful you don't.

While thinking of all the horrific and terrible injuries that could ever conceivably happen in hockey I've seen just about all of them come true just during the last 15 years. This incident for me is the worst of all. It was televised. ESPN did a piece on it a while back when talking about freak injuries. Now this incident was a complete accident but the video will haunt me for years. Malarchuk is fine. In fact he returned to the rink after 3 weeks and played four more years before retiring. 1/8th of an inch. He came that close. Anyways it's been haunting me the last couple days so I thought I'd bring it up.

I'll return with more happy things later. For those sensitive to this sort of topic, please accept my apologies.

Sunday, August 22, 2004

So many problems with High Heat

Scott came over last night. High Heat started acting up about 3 hours into gameplay so we called it a night and he took off. See, we're playing a Cooperstown Roster. It's the 26 teams from before Florida, Colorado, Arizona, and Tampa Bay came in. Those four teams are replaced by four Negro League All-Time teams. They tried to include the 50 best players all-time for every team but some teams the players are playing for odd teams. For example, the Dodgers are stacked with pitching so Hideo Nomo plays for the Brewers. So too with Willie Randolph. The Yanks and Dodgers have their second base slots taken with better players so Randolph is with Brewers. McGwire is on the Cardinals so he can get playing time because Foxx is an Athletic. You're thinking, where is Jack Clark and Keith Hernandez? Well Keith is a Met and Jack...well I've got no idea where Jack is. They seem to have forgotten Dave Stewart, Steve Garvey, Eric Gagne, and a few others as well. Also, Eckersley is an Indian because the A's have Fingers and the Cardinals have Sutter. Weird. Anyways.

So last night we're playing along. Few really good games including a 14 inning nail biter between the Dodgers and Angels. Eric Davis (talk about weird huh) hit the GW-HR for the Dodgers. Duke Snider's 67-game hitting streak came to an end against Carl Mays and the Red Sox. I had some great middle infield defense all night. Then all of a sudden the Padres roster causes an error so everytime I try to play a game in that season file with the Padres, High Heat crashes. So we come back, sim those games and play the LA-MON series. First two games are fine but when we try to start the third game, all of a sudden Gary Sheffield is gone from the Dodgers. We try to find him on the roster...he's there. Lineup? He's there. Once we come to the game and the screen to switch around our lineup the Dodgers lineup has EMPTY at 3B. We look for Sheffield and he's gone. So back to the Main Menu...Roster...he's there...lineup...he's there...game...GONE. What is going on here?! At this point we're both thoroughly frustrated and call it an evening. I know, earlier I said we called it a night but we changed it's name ok?

Anyways this morning I've been trying to change the stadium files to add retired numbers to Candlestick's outfield fence, and darken Olympic Stadium's turf so we can see the ball. Both with no luck. I'm doing something wrong I just can't think of what. I'll figure it out. With help I hope.

Until then today is Sunday I know but chores really need to get done that didn't get done yesterday. So we'll spend the day cleaning the kitchen, dining room, living room, bathroom, bedroom, etc. Laundry, trash, vacuuming, dusting, all that fun stuff. Scott said he'd call and maybe we'll try getting more High Heat in before he leaves. We'll see. Till then...toodles.