Nows, with a side order of Thens

[captainsblog]

* Eleanor got some very sweet comments the other day about the picture of Tasha she just took and uploaded.  We've never gotten that many pictures of her,  partly because of how skittish she's been for most of her life, but also because her dark coat is rather a black hole (okay, more brown) of pixels.  It is pretty amazing, though, how much of her girlish-good-lookiness she still retains from the time she came home to us, over a decade ago:

    

v. 2001                                                                                 v. 2011

Not bad for an old girl:)

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* I've been enjoying a non-fiction piece for a change; it's called Baseball in the Garden of Eden, and it's about the origins of the sport in early 19th century America. It confirms something everyone's always pretty much known- that Abner Doubleday and the quaint village of Cooperstown, New York had about as much to do with baseball's true origin story as my own great-great grandmother did. This extensive work of research, though, also rejects the competing theory about it being a Noo Yawk Citian invention, and traces it to, of all places,.... Western Massachusetts?!?:

PITTSFIELD, Mass., Tuesday, March 15, 2011: The oldest reference to baseball currently known was found in 2004 in the city's bylaws and triggered civic pride among residents. The city will soon find out where it stands in the record books while an all-star cast of historians study the sport's origins.

...John Thorn, who discovered the oldest reference to baseball currently known in the city's bylaws, is leading an all-star team of historians to uncover the truth of baseball's origins and development.

The baseball origins committee, announced by Major League Baseball on Tuesday, will compile and evaluate information of the sport's origins and development both in a broad scale and in local communities to tell the true story. The investigation could secure the city's position as the birth of the game or bestow the honor to another.

"Pittsfield has an enduring place in any telling of baseball history," Thorn said in an e-mail Tuesday.

"The 1791 Pittsfield bylaw is significant, of course, but I think its meaning has been understood by many residents of Pittsfield to mean that baseball began in their fair city, and there is as yet no evidence of that. The distinction that the city may claim, however, is that of providing modern-day fans with concrete evidence that a game called baseball, by precisely that name and not round ball or baste ball, was played there prior to 1791."

The city may soon know for sure what role it played in the game's development as it comes under the microscope of George Will, Ken Burns, Doris Kearns Goodwin, David Block, James Edward Brunson III, Adrian Burgos Jr., Len Coleman, Steve Hirdt, Jane Leavy, Larry McCray and the MLB Commissioner Bud Selig.

Unmentioned in that pantheon of baseball poobahs is longtime Berkshire resident Jim Bouton, who was one of the formative influences on my baseball brain with his seminal (and sacreligious) early 70s book Ball Four. The author of the 2011 history sent Jim the info about the Berkshire connection as soon as he found it in ancient clippings, and Jim, in turn, got confirmation from the current Mayor of Pittsfield that the record was indeed accurate. There's something blissfully ironic in the history of the game being verified, in part, by the author of one of the most controversial and establishment-hated books about baseball ever written.

Of course, both this book's author, and even Bouton, would readily admit that the true roots of our national pastime go back way beyond our shores, and even England's- to "the banks of the Nile nearly 4,500 years ago in the game seker-hamat, or 'batting the ball.' In a wall relief at the shrine of Hathor, the goddess of love and joy, in Hatsheput's temple at Deir-el-Bahari, Thutmose III is seen holding a ball in one hand and a stick in the other."

No runs, no Ho-teps, no errors, and none left. Back with the happy recap in just an ERA.

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* Summer arrived today, barely 12 hours after winter's apparent eviction. Eleanor and I both worked up sweats in clearing various shrubberies from the front. Tomorrow, for me, includes a somewhat unexpected dental visit for a cavity (I hope) gone bad (I hope not too much); an insurance adjustment from last week's disaster; and the completion of the piles of work I didn't entirely get to over this weekend.

Comments

[firynze.livejournal.com]

Man, she looks just as gorgeous or even more so now. Such a pretty pup!

Pittsfield is VERY insistent on being the first documented home of baseball. They did a whole "fiberglass painted cows on parade" thing with baseball gloves back when I was living there.

[bluesilverkdg.livejournal.com]

She looks fantastic! What a pretty and sweet-looking girl. I have much the same issue photographing Misty. She runs and hides whenever I pull out the camera, because she evidently believes it will eat her, but her coat is also very dark and does not photograph well.

We still haven't gotten a firm grasp on summer, and we sure as heck didn't have warm weather at the beach this weekend. My legs were so numb, they were aching by the time we got to the wedding reception, but I have high hopes that Mother Nature will resume hot flashes one of these days.