Acuna: Unpopular Opinion

Showing my age, but in the past Acuna had mistakenly not run out deep balls he thought were homers. Wednesday night he almost did it again, in the ninth inning of a tie game. Had he been wrong, he would’ve been held to a long single instead of a lead-off double or triple. But these days it’s terribly un-kosher to express such a viewpoint. I do have to admit his performance was incredibly entertaining, even to an old guy like me. Perhaps I'll wear my Acuna jersey to the game tomorrow.

I’ll admit: the Braves bullpen may be a bunch of rag-arm throwers as opposed to pitchers, but it seems like every day the Braves GM AA is working trying to improve the bullpen. Rome wasn’t built in a day. He can’t just snap his fingers and solve the problem.

Young outfielder Drew Waters is tearing it up at Gwinnett. Batting over .500 with several home runs. Maybe he’ll get called up in early June. So many players are hitting well out there, I wonder if the minor league ball is juiced.

By the time I came along it seemed like few high school, college, or just out of college aged guys taught children’s Sunday School or other activities. I taught 5th grade Sunday School boys. I’m forgetting who was in there – Tripp Mullen, Howe Whitman, etc. maybe. Also ECS and Mighty Mites.  Teaching and coaching really isn’t my forte, but I can get by for a season. Of course I loved coaching Mighty Mites, which wasn’t too technical. I’m more of the scorekeeper type.

One year in mighty mites our motto was “The Backboard is my friend.” After the season the kids had a t-shirt made up with that slogan. I’d wear it to Camp SPdL, and saved it over the years. As a teenager Will found the shirt in the attic, and started wearing it. Pretty sure I still have it, almost 40 years later.

I did coach Will for one season, and his teammates seemed to like me. Whoever wanted to play a position got to, including pitching. I was proud of the improvement some of the more marginal players had. One guy started out the season way down in the batting order, but he hit so well each game I kept moving him up, until he was the cleanup hitter. Monday night at the Braves game Will and I talked about that team. Both Freeman and the Mets Alonso hit second in the order. Back on that team I had Will batting second, because there was a guy I batted leadoff that was so fast he would never slow Will down. That gave Will the opportunity to knock in some runs, and still have two good hitters behind him to knock him in. Will said he liked batting leadoff.

Wednesday: worked past seven. Several super tough problems. With God’s help I am making progress. Still working through the problems two days later. But working on problems means I’m not doing my real job, making sure everything’s set up so we don’t have issues in the future.

C cooked meatloaf and mashed some potatoes. Usually she likes English peas with that meal, but we had tossed salad.

Thursday C and the pup drove to SC for a long weekend. Hopefully Winny won’t get in the way. She is getting better at sleeping through the night.

Worked until almost six. Stopped by two thrift stores, then my friend’s house.

Gonna be a full busy weekend.

GEORGE BRETT  [SABR Bio] BLTR gap-tooth legend was the first post-expansion player to collect more RBI than the number of games he played that season (minimum 100) – in 117 games he had 118 RBI in 1980. See smile here. He is the only player to hit three home runs in a post-season game his team lost, on 06-Oct-1978 in the ALCS A pop star was inspired write her debut #1 Billboard hit after seeing a photo of him surrounded by his fans. Grammy-winning New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde actually had a picture of Brett from an article appearing in National Geographic magazine. She wrote the song entitled “Royals”. She and Brett had a well-publicized meeting in Las Vegas.

Bobby Cox turned 80 today.