Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts

Friday, October 2, 2015

* YIKES - IT'S OCTOBER! *

Wasn't it just five or six days ago that I wrote about it being September 1st ?? As I've said before, sometimes I wish I could lasso the earth and slow it down...a lot! But, since I'm not Superman or Superwoman, I guess I'll have to skip along the treadmill of life with everyone else! (I don't jog...I skip! It's much more fun.)

So if life must rush along, then I'm glad it's autumn again...my favorite time of the year, and October is my favorite month for various reasons: birthdays, football season, the St. Louis Cardinals in the playoffs! J  Go Cards!



I just love this comic strip. I think it came out in 2012 because that's when I first posted it.
Thank you, Patrick McDonnell, creator of Mutts!



Below are some of my favorite quotes about autumn:


"Listen! the wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves, we have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!" - Humbert Wolfe


"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." - George Eliot

 
"Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind. Their leaves are telling secrets...." -- Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration 
 
 
 

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

* YOGI BERRA IS 90 YEARS OLD! *

Yesterday was Yogi Berra's 90th birthday! What an amazing man he was and still is. Although I never really saw him play baseball, (partly because of the years he played, but mostly because my family always watched the St. Louis Cardinals' games), I know he was extremely talented. And he IS from St. Louis, ya know! The Hill.

 
Below are some of the "Yogi-isms" I came across that aren't all that well known...at least to me, and you know what's the funniest thing about them? They all make absolute sense to me!
 
“Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours.”  
 
“I usually take a two hour nap from one to four”
 
“Cut my pie into four pieces, I don’t think I could eat eight.”  
 
“Never answer an anonymous letter”
 
“We made too many wrong mistakes”
 
“The future ain’t what it used to be”
 
“If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be”
 
“If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them”
 
“If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else.”  
 
“You can observe a lot just by watching.” 
 
“Nobody comes here anymore, its too crowded”  
 
“90% of the game is half mental.”  
 
“I wish I had an answer to that because I'm tired of answering that question.”  
 
“Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.”  
 
“I never said most of the things I said.”  
 
“Okay you guys, pair up in threes!”  
 
“I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.”
 
“You wouldn't have won if we'd beaten you.”
 
“We're lost, but we're making good time.”  
 
“A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore.”  
 
“It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”  
 
“I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.”
 
“If you ask me anything I don't know, I'm not going to answer.”  
 
“You have to give 100 percent in the first half of the game. If that isn't enough, in the second half, you have to give what's left.”
  
“It ain't the heat, it's the humility.”
 
~~~~~
 
And I'll end with the following:  “If you can't imitate him, don't copy him.”
 
AIN'T THAT THE TRUTH!  
 
 
Thanks for all the memories, Yogi. You're a class act. Always have been. Always will be.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

* GUEST * MARGO DILL * AUTHOR * FRIEND * BOOKS * PRIZES *

* It's Major League Baseball's All-Star Week *

I'm happy to have Margo Dill as my guest blogger today. Margo and I met when I attended my first writers conference in 2007. She was the Missouri Writers Guild conference chair that year and in charge of a huge production. She was so kind and helpful to a very green, unpolished, untrained, in-awe-of-the-entire-experience, writer -- yours truly! We became fast friends, partly because we're authors, but also because we have the same sense of humor, and in my book..... that's everything! Margo also helped edit my memoir and she didn't just fix grammatical errors; she suggested different things that I mostly agreed with! If you saw us standing next to each other, we're quite a unique sight. Anyone who remembers an old cartoon strip named Mutt & Jeff will know what I mean. J 
(I'd be the short one!)


Margo is here today to share some thoughts on books, and writing, and fictional characters, and she also brought along some fabulous PRIZES! So, without further ado, Margo, take it away.....

~~~~~
 
The other night, I couldn’t sleep. There was a storm; my daughter crawled into our bed; then our power went out, which made me worry. So I grabbed a flashlight and a book I had been mildly interested in, Beautiful Oblivion by bestselling author Jamie McGuire, thinking it would put me right to sleep.

WRONG!

Turns out, McGuire drew me in with her hero and heroine, both twenty-something flawed, delightful people trying to figure out love and life, and I couldn’t put the book down. I stayed up past 5:00 am, trying to finish it. I couldn’t figure out why I had been so drawn in.

My mom (I know it’s my mom, but just bear with me) said the same thing about my second novel, Caught Between Two Curses, which is a young adult novel with love, magic, and baseball. She read the whole thing in one day, and the only reason this makes me a bit happy is because it took her weeks to finish my first middle-grade novel, Finding My Place (if she ever really did finish it!). So what was it about my YA novel that made her stay up all night? Why did I stay up reading about people 20 years younger than me?

 
My mom’s theory is these books take us back to our youth, something about the characters makes us connect with them and reminds us about ourselves. I think she’s on to something here. Most readers have connected with Julie, my 17-year-old main character trying to figure out love and what sex has to do with that while also breaking a curse that’s been on her family for decades. But a couple haven’t, and those reviews have read something like: “Margo Dill is a good writer, but I didn’t like Julie and wished she wouldn’t be so stupid.” OUCH! But these readers didn’t connect with her, so that’s okay.

I checked reviews on Beautiful Oblivion—most were 4 and 5 stars, but she got a few bad ones and most people just didn’t get the characters.

So is that what draws us in? Characters that remind us of ourselves in some way? I think this is probably true for 95 percent of readers—think about books that are a series—most of the time a book is part of a series because a good writer has created a remarkable character, and readers want to know MORE about this character. I can name a hundred (I won’t, Becky would kill me), but think about it: Harry Potter, Alex Cross, Mma Ramotswe, Katniss Everdeen, and so on.
 
So here’s to the characters we love—whether we write them or we read them. And hopefully if you have a chance to check out Caught Between Two Curses this week during the All-Star Sale and Contest (details below), you’ll connect with Julie, just like my mom did.



Margo Dill
 
Thank you, Margo! And now bloggers, please continue to read all about Margo's very generous sale prices and FREEBIES!

 
DETAILS: Margo’s book, Caught Between Two Curses, is on sale this week thanks to baseball’s All-Star Game!

You can find out all the details about the sale here (http://margodill.com/blog/2014/07/10/all-star-week/),

but basically, the e-book for KINDLE is on sale for $1.99 (July 16-17) and $2.99 (July 18-19).

An autographed copy of the print book is available for $5.00 off the cover price--$6.95. 

Thanks to All-Star week, she is also having a contest with a prize of one $25 gift card to one of 5 restaurants (Olive Garden, Starbucks, Panera Bread, Applebee’s, TGI Friday’s) (U.S. mailing addresses only please)

And a 3000-word free edit (anywhere in the world, English-language only).

Enter to win those prizes on the Rafflecopter form below—no purchase necessary!

Check out more about Margo and her books at: http://margodill.com/blog/




 

Friday, October 28, 2011

Cards Win! Cards Win! Cards Win!

Congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals. What an incredible team! If Game 6 and Game 7 were part of a baseball movie, it would be so unbelievable, movie goers would say, "That's just crazy. That would never happen!" Ahhh, but it did. I'll never forget this particular World Series -- 2011.

(both photos courtesy internet)

"Baseball is an allegorical play about America, a poetic, complex, and subtle play of courage, fear, good luck, mistakes, patience about fate, and sober self-esteem." ~Saul Steinberg


ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!

I'm exhausted.


The St. Louis Cardinals are amazing.



I don't have any other words to say, except.....
Yay, Rally Squirrel!!


And, tonight same "bat" time, same "bat" channel!


I don't think I've ever blogged about baseball, but I'm a huge fan of my hometown Cardinals!


"A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings. " ~Earl Wilson

(except in the Thursday evening game...it was eleven (11) innings!)

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

* Contest & Cardinals *


Don't forget my contest ends at midnight (CDT) Friday, April 1st. You have until then to leave a comment on the post about the DVDs of "Joan of Arcadia". No other rules! You don't have to be a follower or link me to your blog, etc. Just leave a comment!

Also: If you live in the St. Louis area, you can listen to JC Corcoran's annual program for the St. Louis Baseball Cardinals Opening Day on the radio at 550 AM, or if you live anywhere in the world....other than Outer Space, you can listen online at KTRS. Just click on "Live Listen Now." Why am I telling you this?? Because JC e-mailed me the other day, saying he's going to open his show with the bit about ME winning 2 tickets to a Play Off game....in.....the fall of.....1996!! FIFTEEN YEARS AGO! I happened to call in to the radio show, and talked about Mark, who was only nine years old at the time, and how we watched the games on TV together.The Ronald always kidded me about how I kept stretching my Fifteen Minutes of Fame.....but neither one of us every dreamed it would last for 15 YEARS! JC and I have stayed in touch all these years, too. Be listening by about 8:50 am, CDT, because it's supposed to be played at 9:05 am.


"I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game." -- Walt Whitman