Over the Scorekeeping Moon!
October 29, 2025
You know what I learned tonight? How much I love scorekeeping. I knew I loved it for all the years I did it, but I’d forgotten how much. I’m sad there are only two more (if the Dodgers get lucky) games in the World Series and then baseball season is over for the year.
Scorekeeping checks all my ocd boxes: counting things, documenting every little thing, totaling things, making columns and rows match.
Plus? Baseball.
Found a scorebook with some blank pages (this one was from July 2015.. ten years ago) at the top of a stack of scorebooks, stats, rosters, tournament programs, newspaper clippings, certificates, and a couple of varsity letters. The stack was on top of a file box that was also filled to the brim with baseball documentation and memorabilia dating back to T-Ball days. Well organized and labeled, I might add.
(Just to underscore the depth of my documentation fetish.)
From tonight’s game (the 5th of a, hopefully, seven game series) between the LA Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays. The Jays won and now lead 3-2 in the series. The teams travel to Toronto and resume play on Friday the 31st (Halloween, I just realized!).
Things of beauty, no?
Bottom 18
October 27, 2025
Thank goodness for that Freddie Freeman fella, who whacked (finally) a walk-off solo home run to end a game that had started nearly 7 hours earlier, and give the Dodgers a win … as well as a 2-1 lead over the Toronto Blue Jays in the World Series. As fantastic as the game was — and it truly was a stunning game for the ages (glad I saw it!) — I was losing patience. I mean, a 9-inning game is long enough, but this was two full nine inning games in one.. an 18 inning game! And nobody had scored a run since about the 7th inning, so this spectator was starting to get frustrated. But … I couldn’t look away. I was there for every pitch, every hit, every blown opportunity, every new pitcher (there may have been twenty pitchers in this game!).. all of it.
Anyway, look it up, it will surely be record setting in so many categories and my description will not do it any justice at all. I did listen to the post game analysis (A-Rod, Derek Jeter, Big Poppy (wow), and that one other guy named Kevin, I think) and know for a fact this game will be going down in history as one of the greats.
As happens every year during the World Series, Jim and I become overnight fans, rooting like nutcases for Our Team! We typically know not a single player, but we get to know them fast and have the nerve to get angry with them when they don’t perform to our liking. It’s shameless. (Hilarious, really.)
Anyway.. now we love Ohtani, and Freddie, and Mookie and that cute Will Smith.
Isn’t this a sweet pic? It’s Freddie hugging Dave Roberts, the Dodger manager. He looks more exhausted and relieved than happy, but sure he’s all three.
Happy About…
October 24, 2025
:: Happy that it’s the end of another growing season. Funny, isn’t it? It’s so wonderful to have a robust crop of tomatoes, squash, eqgplant, basil, strawberries, chard, rosemary, chives, lemons, figs… AND it’s nice when the season’s over, too. Raising food can be oddly stressful.
This guy is likely my final garden face for the season. Everything’s looking a little long in the tooth. I was not aware that we’d planted parsnips.. but I do believe that’s what the nose is. What a .. surprise.
:: Also happy that tonight is the first night of the World Series (starts in 11 mins, so I gotta hurry here). Go Dodgers… unless they are crushing the Blue Jays, in which case we’ll have to become Toronto fans to even things out. Go Blue in Game #7. We’ll see how all this plays out.
:: Happy to be going to see Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen tonight (after the baseball game). I really like that guy. Eager to see him in a non-moody chef role.
:: Happy about the conversation — long overdue — that we had with Peter yesterday afternoon. Holy cow I love that guy.
:: Happy that I finally cleared out all my unread emails and have only 700+ emails in my inbox (champ!) and only 300+ tabs open in my Chrome browser (double champ!). Been a productive couple of days in that regard.
I had intended to list many more HAPPY things, and to accompany the happy list with a NOT HAPPY list, but I don’t want to miss the first pitch.
Peter and Ray Baseball Throwback
October 16, 2025
In honor of two things… the baseball playoffs going on right now (go Dodgers!), and Peter’s former baseball teammate and dear friend Ray who’s getting married this weekend.. I post the following baseball throwback photos (I believe all of these are taken by Ray’s dad Wes.. thanks Wes!):
Dugout shot.. Peter sitting and Ray standing over him to to his left:
Peter, Ray (just behind him) watching a high fly ball:
A Crush team shot, Ray and Peter in front row:
End of the game.. Peter and Ray (in front of #2):
The last game of the season (not sure which season.. they still look young):
This could be Raley Field.. looks like a JV year… Peter and Ray jogging out
Ray and Peter.. a long baseball career together.
They started playing together on a travel team — Crush — and then played Freshman ball, JV and two years of Varsity. They’ll go on to play at UC San Diego (Peter for just one year of club ball).
And now.. Ray’s getting married!
Take Me Out to the Ballgame
August 26, 2025
Jim and I went to the old Raley Field (now something about Sutter Health) last night to see the A’s play the Tigers. The A’s — no longer an Oakland team — are playing in Sacramento as they wait for their new stadium to get built in Las Vegas. This makes sense because their AAA team is the Sac Rivercats. So the Rivercats and A’s are sharing the stadium for the time being.
Our motivation for attending this particular game — besides the fact it’d been too long since we’d been to a darn baseball game — was to see Ryan Kreidler play. Ryan, of course, was Peter’s teammate on the varsity baseball team at Davis High (an exceptional talent we knew would go places). He first played college ball at UCLA, then got drafted 4-5 years ago by the Tigers organization. While he made the 40-man roster this year (fantastic!), his chronic injuries have meant he’s played most of his games as a Mudhen (Detroit’s AAA team). However…. as it turns out, just a few days ago, he was let go by the Tigers and was picked up by the Pittsburgh Pirates. So, sadly, he did not play last night.
We still rooted for the Tigers. Partly because with Peter living in Ann Arbor, we’ve seen the Tigers play a few times, and felt a bit of allegiance. For most of this time, the Tigers have had one of the worst records in the MLB.
But now, the Tigers are the best team in the American League, amazingly (too bad Ryan’s leaving them now). The A’s are at the bottom of their American League bracket. But on this night, the A’s came out on top. It was a 20-hit game, including a grand slam.. so lots of excitement.
I think the final score was 8-3.
A few pics of a perfect night of baseball.. did I mention it was in the 80s for most of this night game?
One of the main attractions… dogs and beer (and peanuts and redvines)…
A sweet father son group was in front of us… this is them singing and swaying to Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the 7th inning stretch..
Opening Day
March 28, 2025
Yesterday was the opening day of the 2025 Baseball season. And check out the opening day roster for the Detroit Tigers!
For the non Davis High School Varsity baseball team fans out there, I’ll point out that the roster includes infielder/outfielder Ryan Kreidler, a former teammate of Peter’s (not to mention a kindergarten classmate!). This is not the first year Ryan’s made the opening day roster, but it was still exciting to see his name, as he’s been plagued with injuries for a good percentage of his MLB career and I believe it was touch and go whether he’d make the cut this year.
Ryan’s a great player to watch and a good guy. I hope he has a solid season.
Life of Wry 