The beginning of the season

Well, we are considerably past the beginning of the season, and I am considerably behind in the posts that I wanted to put here, but I will try to catch up.

Here's a bullet-point list of items that I will be posting more about:

• A potato garden now exists with some 1,800 row feet of potatoes.
• New bees have arrived and new hives have been started.
• Topbar hives are beginning to appear around the place. How did that happen? (Much more later.)
• House additions and renovations are complete, including a garage that changes the look of the place entirely.
• Everything (except the bees) seemed to survive the winter, including the 17 semi-dwarf apple trees that we set out in November.
• I am becoming anti-apiary. I'll explain later.
• I read most of Gene Logsdon's The Contrary Farmer over the winter and feel well on my way to becoming a contrary farmer.
• Tractor-shopping is in my near future.
• Corn, beans, cucumbers, potatoes -- all up.
• Cardinals are off to an excellent start. Summer should be fun.
• Lots of unread books in the stack.

Pictures of a couple of weeks ago are below:



As I said, more later.

World Series begins tonight

• The World Series begins tonight. Let's hope for the best.

The World Series:

• two vaunted teams with rich baseball histories,
  
  
• a couple of well-known and wiley managers,
  
  
• big stars on both sides set to make each inning a drama-filled delight,
  
  
• a bit of controversy or personal animus thrown in just to spice things up.

Well, maybe next year.

The Tampa Bay Rays host the Philadelphia Phillies in the first game of the World Series tonight in what could very well be an excellent seven-game set of baseball dramas.

That's the hope.

The Phillies have Ryan Howard, a young who slugger hasn't done much yet in the postseason. They also boast of several other better-than-average players who have had good years.

The Rays have David Price, a huge left-handed pitcher on the mound tonight, to match fastballs and wits with these guys. The Rays have a pretty good manager and a team of young potentials who put together an amazing year after a truly awful year in 2007.

But the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies?

Neither team has a history worthy of baseball's last act of the year.

The Tampa Bay Rays were once known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. But that was a long time ago -- like, last year. So much for tradition.

The Philadelphia Phillies have been around for quite a while, but who knew? For a good part of their history, they were the second team in Philadelphia, always second fiddle to Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics. The Phillies have never shown up much in post-season play, and you don't need one hand full of fingers to count their World Series appearances, much less championships.

I was in Philadelphia several years ago when the Phillies were playing in the old Veterans Stadium. It wasn't a great trip. It included an encounter with an usher who thought he was Idi Amin and who looked like he would eat me if I didn't follow his unreasonable commands.

The game was less than compelling so I wandered around the interior of the stadium and came upon a plaque that named the All-Time Phillies team, or something of that nature.

This should be good, I told myself, and it was.

Mike Schmidt, of course, was listed as the third baseman, and Robin Roberts headed the Phillies pitching history. Both legit stars, Hall of Famers.

But at shortstop, there was Larry Bowa. Larry Bowa? The Phillies have been around for a century or so, and the best they could do at that position was Larry Bowa? To me, that spoke volumes about the Phillies.

But, I should stop my unfair riffs agains the Phillies and enjoy the games, right? Right.

So who will win? (Now starts the riff against sports journalists.)

I think one of the silliest things in sports journalism is for writers to make predictions. They don't know what's going to happen. Neither do I. Neither do the players.

That, as they say, is why they play the games.

Baseball playoffs - where's the drama?

• The final question of the baseball season: Which team will collapse in the World Series?

The biggest disappointment of the fall season has been the lack of drama in the Major League Baseball playoffs.

The Cubs bit the dust after only three games (surprise, surprise), and the Angels, White Sox and Brewers were gone from the division series after four.

Now we have the league championship series, and despite a few heroics from Manny Ramirez, the Dodgers collapsed in front of the Philadelphia Phillies. Now it looks like the same fate awaits the Boston Red Sox tonight, even though they will be playing in Fenway and throwing Dice K at the Tampa Bay Rays.

Since none of my favorite teams (the Cards and, well, . . . the Cards) are involved, I'm not caught up too much in who actually wins any of these games. What I do look forward to, however, is great baseball, lots of back and forth inning by inning, and some fireworks here and there. Unfortunately, there has been too much of what we saw last night with the Dodgers not only losing but kicking the ball around the field as they did it. I understand there was more excitement and more sharp exchanges between Barak Obama and John McCain last night than there were good curveballs from the Bums' pitching staff.

And the outlook isn't good.

The Red Sox don't look like they're in the mood for a comeback, and the Rays don't look like they're in the mood to let them.

The only real question ahead for us -- and I hope I'm wrong about this -- is "Which team will collapse in the Series?"

(Illustration above: Left-handed batters, First Inning Artworks.)

Yankee Stadium: OK, NOW you can tear it down

• The House that Ruth Built will soon be dust and memories. We had to see it before that happened.

Jeff, my son, and I hopped a Metroliner in Washington, D.C., and traveled to New York City to see a game at Yankee Stadium. It was the first time to be there for both of us, and it will be the last. The stadium will be torn down at the end of the season.

Here are a few thoughts on the experience:

The day was sunny and extremely hot -- record-breaking even.

Within three weeks of this hot day, the last regular season game will be played in Yankee Stadium, and the 85-year run of this cathedral of baseball will end.

As a ballpark, today's Yankee Stadium is nothing special, although it certainly was when it was erected in 1923. Today, the fading structure is outclassed by a number of parks, the best in my experience being Camden Yards in Baltimore. The new Yankee Stadium, gleaming just a few yards from the old one, will undoubtedly measure up to modern standards. Its skyboxes are designed to rake in as much corporate cash as American companies are willing to spend. Not much has been written about how the new Yankee Stadium will benefit the individual fan. Maybe that part will be a surprise.

But while the old graystone lady is showing its age, the sacredness of its grounds to baseball history cannot be questioned. Consider:

• the mighty blasts of the Babe;
  
  
• the distinctive facade around the outfield;
  
  
• the short porch in right field;
  
  
• the silent grace of Joltin' Joe (where have you gone?);
  
  
• the raw talent of Mickey Mantle and the raw grit of Yogi and his many teammates;
  
  
• the Larsen perfection;
  
  
• Billy, Reggie (REG-GIE), Thurman, Ron, Don, Derek, Alex an a host of others with whom America was on a first name basis.

Yankee Stadium holds them all and more. Millions of memories.

That's why I had to go -- to see the place where all these things happened. And what's my memory. The unseasonable heat certainly.

But then there was that first inning grand slam by Alex Rodriguez.

So long, Yankee Stadium.

State of the hives (Easter), and other matters

The bees are flying, anxious for the blooms to open. My friend Jim Brown and I opened the hives yesterday (Sunday, March 23) and found some problems and some good news.

The problems were in the small hive where there were almost no brood cells. That means there is no queen or that she has stopped laying, and that means she has to be replaced. The good news is that there are still a fair number of bees in the hive, and if I can get a new queen in soon, the hive has a chance of being productive this year. I called Coley O'Dell, a premier Blount County beekeeper, and ordered a queen last night. He said he hoped the queens he was ordering would be available April 5.

The good news is that the other hive is strong and ready to go. We found plenty of brood cells in the bottom three boxes of that hive, and the bees were feisty and full of life. They are ready to get to work. With any luck at all, they should be fairly productive this year. The only thing that will slow them down is that they will have to draw out some comb in order to store the honey, which takes extra time and energy away from their honey production. Beekeepers refer to drawn comb as "pure gold," and this is why. Still, there are plenty of bees in the hive, so we should be getting some honey by midsummer.

The farm. Easter cam extraordinarily early this year (the earliest in nearly 100 years, I'm told), and the farm is not yet in full bloom. The day yesterday was a bit chilly and windy, but by noon the air was crisp and the sky clear. All in all, a beautiful day, as the pictures above will validate.

I had the tiller out yesterday, and after we had finished with the bees, I couldn't resist breaking the group. I had marked off a 10 x 25-foot plot just east of the hives where Sally and I will put some day lilies. Those flowers thrive on full sun and neglect, and in that spot they are likely to get both. We bought some lilies during our visit to the Biltmore in Asheville last week, and I picked up some more at a local shop this weekend. We'll see what happens.

Our friend Sam Love promised to show up this week with his plow to give the garden a going over. I have plotted out a space more than twice the size of what we did last year, so the plans are ambitious. But spring is here, and all things are possible.


Opening day. And speaking of spring and all things possible -- life begins again this Sunday, less than one week and counting. My calendar and body clock tell me that the official start of the baseball season is upon us. The beloved Cardinals made changes during the off-season that are exciting and unsettling, and that will be fun to watch. The Yankees have a new manager, and the Red Sox have essentially the same strong team. The Mets are everybody's favorites, as they usually are this time of year, and it will be fun to watch them fail, or not.

My friend George Rable is a Reds fan and as such refuses to speculate or get his hopes up. He is rational and wise.

Spring training

Things have slowed on the beekeeping front for a few days until I can get some more hive parts to assemble, so thoughts turn to spring training. Ah, spring. Ah, spring training.

Winter hasn't blown especially harsh around here this year. In fact, it was so mild in January that we were actually complaining about it.

But now just past mid-February, it seems like it has been a long winter. The length of the winter is measured not by the weather but by how much we want the Season to start and how long it feels that we have been without baseball.

It's getting closer. Pitchers and catchers for almost all of the teams have reported to their spring training sites, and the other players will begin to show up in another couple of weeks. The games will begin in March. (College baseball has already started, and that will be some comfort.)

I'm not sure why the longing for baseball has been so intense this winter. Plenty of other things have been around to distract me -- including the beekeeping preparations. Duties at work have been plentiful and pleasurable, particularly seeing the TennesseeJournalist.com develop into an excellent student-run news web site. Still, the sooner baseball gets here, the happier I'll be.

Part of it may have to do with the fact that the St. Louis Cardinals (my team) won the World Series last year, the first series championship in 24 years. The Cards need to get back out onto the field and let Albert hit and Scott field and Jimmy E. dive for a few balls in centerfield. They need to answer some questions, too, especially about the pitching.

And we need to note the passing of Lew Burdette (among several other greats taken from us over the winter). Burdette pitched the Milwaukee Braves into the World Series in 1957, and then about as single-handedly as anyone has ever done it, he won the World Series from the vaunted Yankees. He pitched the Braves to victory in three of their four wins, and you just could not be any better than he was in that series.

But there were some oddities about Burdette's career that are fun to note:

• He was the opposing and winning pitcher of the game when Pirate pitcher Harvey Haddix pitched 12 perfect innings against the Braves. Haddix lost in the 13th when he gave up a home run to Joe Adcock. Burdette scattered 12 hits over 13 innings that night and won the game -- coming out ahead at one of baseball's most ironic moments.
  
  
• Burdette hit a dozen homers in his career, including two off of Sandy Kofax.
  
  
• Burdette was a fidgety sort on the mound, so much so that Braves manager Fred Haney said, "Burdette would make coffee nervous."

Unlike his pitching buddy Warren Spahn (whom we lost a few years ago), Burdette wasn't good enough for long enough to make the Hall of Fame.

But when he was good, it was awfully thrilling for a young kid like me to know he was pitching.

Note: The illustration above is a watercolor on Bristol board. More of that can be found at First Inning Artworks.