Number of the 7th of August: 142

I just posted 142 pictures from my vacation to Denmark last month (yes, I could have done that sooner). If you want to have some of them in high resolution for printing, follow the link at the bottom of the album page to place your order.

Number of the 30th of July: 3

Lots of baseball in my life today. Three games, to be precise. Let me put them in chronological order.

Game one (11am) had me as plate umpire for my club’s second senior team (I’m in the first team myself), who faced a team they had a bit of a fight with last year. Everyone was expecting trouble again, so the club arranged a base umpire, which is something of a rarity at this level. Fortunately, nothing out of the ordinary happened. The visitors cruised to an easy 18-3 victory. The problems last year occurred in a much closer game, where these guys got upset with their own bad playing and took it out on the umpire, the home team and the spectators. Not so this time, I’m happy to say.

There were only two somewhat tense situation, but nothing too weird. The first time, one of the visitors had two strikes and a ball. He checked his swing on a pitch low and outside, which got by the catcher. The batter took off for first as if it was an uncaught third strike, and he made it there safely. I ordered him back to the plate, because in both my and the base ump’s opinion, it hadn’t been a real swing. Several of his team mates came out to argue, but they accepted my call in the end. The second moment of tension arose when the home team’s starting pitcher hit a batter for the third time, and the visitors were clearly getting irritated. The home manager was wise enough to bring in a reliever there.

Game two (1 pm) had nothing to do with me personally. It was the final of the Haarlemse Honkbalweek (Haarlem Baseball Week), a biannual international tournament. This year it featured the national teams from the Netherlands, China and Chinese Taipei, a team from Japan’s Industrial League, a junior college team from the US (from the NWAACC, to be exact), and a sort-of national team from Cuba. (Cuba’s real national team was involved in another tournament, but the Haarlem team can’t have been much weaker. It contained nine players from their World Baseball Classic team, plus a couple who participated in recent World Cups and Olympics.)

The final was between defending champions Team Netherlands and Team Cuba, who have won many times in the past. Cuba won Friday’s exciting group-stage game 11-10, after initially leading 4-1 and later coming back from a 10-7 deficit. Two years ago, these two teams also played the final, with the Netherlands winning 3-1. Cuba was eager not to loose again, and for a while, it seemed like they weren’t going to. Dutch starting pitcher Rob Cordemans gave up six hits to the first eight Cuban batters and he was pulled after only two thirds of an inning. Reliever Nick Stuifbergen limited further damage by getting the ninth batter to ground into an inning-ending force-out, but at that point Cuba already had a 4-0 lead.

Two innings later, the score board read 6-0 in Cuba’s favour. In the bottom of the third, the Dutch side finally got going, producing five runs on a pair of doubles, three singles and a walk. Another two singles, two walks and a sacrifice bunt brought the Dutch on top, 7-6, and they never surrendered the lead. In fact, they increased it to 9-6 with runs in the sixth and seventh frames. Not bad… down 6-0 after two and a half innings, and coming back to win by three runs against a strong Cuban team. Did I mention that Cuba’s starting pitcher, Ormani Romero, also pitched in the final of the World Baseball Classic?

Game three (3 pm) did involve me again, this time as starting pitcher in my own team, facing a team that beat as 11-5 earlier this year. (Our league consists of ten teams, and we face every team twice.) I pretty much cruised through the first three innings, facing only ten batters, allowing no hits and only two men on base (both on walks). We did much better, sending more than twenty guys to the plate in those three innings, and taking a 7-0 lead.

My no-hitter came to a grinding halt in the fourth inning, and so came my time on the mound. After surrendering two hits and two walks and retiring only one batter, our manager thought it better to bring in a reliever. (Can’t blame him!) With a 7-1 score and the bases loaded, we did some shuffling and I ended up playing first base. One or two batters later, it started pouring down heavily and we had to stop playing for half an hour. The visitors got another few runs when we resumed play, and we got one in our turn at bat, ending the inning 8-4. The next half-inning would be the last one (we have a two-hour time limit and rarely get in more than five innings), with another reliever on the mound for us. He gave everyone a bit of a scare as he let the score run up to 8-7, but he did hold on to the lead for our sixth win this year.

At bat, I struck out three times, brining my average for the year down to 1-for-18. I wish I knew how to get out of this horrendous slump.

At least I can pitch reasonably well.

Number of the 26th of July: 27

After 27 years, the peaceful days of a fountain in the Belgian town of Maasmechelen are coming to an end. A visitor of the Wereld in Oorlog (World at War) forum pointed his Google Earth program at Maasmechelen and discovered, much to his horror, that the fountain looks like a swastika from the sky. Sure enough, it does. A fellow forum goer, equally horrified to find the nazi symbol, informed the “relevant authorities”. Today, it was announced by the mayor of Maasmechelen that the 1979 fountain will be rebuilt to get a less controversial shape.

Supposedly, no one had noticed the swastika design before, because it can’t be seen from the ground. Eh… say what? How can you _not_ recognize the shape of a fountain? And even if it is difficult to see from the ground, the thing is located right in front of the three-story town hall! Oh, wait… I’ve got it. The architect and the mayor from 1979 (who approved the design) had the upper two floors locked off, so nobody could peek out of the windows and see what they had built. It’s a good thing they hadn’t counted on the eventual invention of Google Earth, or their horrendous act would have gone unnoticed for many years to come!

Seriously, some people read waaaaay too much into a simple geometrical design.

[Update (December 12th, 2006): If you go and look for this foutnain now, you will find that it has apparently been removed. Some people pay waaaaay too much attention to people who read waaaaay too much into a simple geometrical design.]

Number of the 11th of July: 3

From In the Bleachers at goComics.com:

Number of the 8th of July: 36

… that one went entirely the other way. The Netherlands got a two-run lead in the second inning on a double down the third-base line by rookie Kalian Sams, but they fell behind in the next frame and never got back. Thanks mostly to a three-run homer in the third, a double and three singles in the fifth, a two-run homer in the sixth and a solo homer in the ninth, the Italians led 11-3 going into the final Dutch at-bat. Italian closer William Lucena retired the first two batters, then proceeded to give up a walk, a single, a double and another single to reduce the lead to 11-6. However, the next batter struck out to end the rally and the game.

Unsurprisingly, the Man of the Match came from the Italian side this time. Left fielder Maximiliano de Biase, jersey number 36 (must be a lucky number), earned the honours for his 3-for-5 day (a three-run homer, an RBI double and a single).

Game three has also been played by now, resulting in a 4-0 victory for the Dutch squad. I wasn’t there in person, so I’ll forgo further details. Both teams are flying to Italy tonight for the second three-game subseries. Let’s see if we can establish our European baseball supremacy by winning that one as well.

Number of the 7th of July: 36

This weekend saw the first edition of the European Baseball Series, which is supposed to become an annual six-game series between the national teams of Europe’s top two baseball countries: Italy and the Netherlands. Three games are played here, the other three in Italy.

My brother and I were two of about a thousand people attending the first game last Friday. It was a pretty classic pitcher’s duel, with the Dutch Diegomar Markwell (jersey number 36) leading his team to a 2-0 victory. Third baseman Ivanon Coffie opened the score with a solo homerun in the fourth inning. The funny thing was, he first worked through seven pitches and then asked time to get another bat. I joked that he’d brought the wrong bat, because he was only hitting foul balls so far. My brother added that he was going to get his homerun bat now. Sure thing, he steps up again and slams pitch number eight out of the park.

Markwell, who would be named Man of the Match, was replaced after six innings of very solid work. His successor, Robin van Doornspeek, retired the side in order in the seventh inning, but Italy came close to tying the score in the next frame. Van Doornspeek allowed a pair of singles to get runners on first and second. He was replaced by veteran closer Dave Drayer, who hit the next batter to load the bases. He did better from there, retiring five Italians in a row to finish the game. By then, the Netherlands had gotten a second run on a single by left fielder Johnny Balentina and an RBI double by catcher Sydney de Jong.

As for game two…

Number of the 6th of July: 79,000,000,000

The world’s richest countries spent about 79 billion dollars in development aid for the poorest countries in 2004. That’s good. What’s not so good is that only about half of that money ended up with the people that needed it, according to a recent ActionAid report. The rest went to overpaid Western consultants or was lost on the wrong projects.

In Cambodia, for example, consultants fees were $17,000 a month while government salaries were only $40. In Ghana, even relatively inexperienced consultants earned per day what government officials earned in a month. In Sierra Leone, according to one former UK-funded consultant, daily take-home pay was the same as the Auditor General’s monthly salary.

In Tanzania, Japanese consultants on an irrigation project introduced the use of diesel pumps that, after a massive increase in fuel costs, have become too expensive for local farmers. The pumps now lie idle and farmers are worse off than before.

Can’t we do better than that?

Number of the 4th of July: 5

The city of Leiden houses the world’s oldest operating university-associated observatory. It was founded in 1633 and has been a renowned astronomical institute pretty much ever since. The modern astronomy department is located at the edge of the city, but closer to the centre, the so-called Old Observatory still stands. It houses a couple of antique telescopes, including one from 1838. All of them continue to be operational, although they are no longer used for real science. (Much more powerful telescopes are available at locations with much better weather and no urban light pollution.)

I attended an instruction class a couple of months ago to learn how to operate these telescopes, and I’ve used them a couple of times since. They are well suited for looking at objects like the moon, Jupiter, Saturn, various double stars and, with clear conditions, fainter stuff such as the Orion Nebula or the Andromeda Galaxy. Yesterday I was there again to help out with a tour of the Old Observatory for a group of optical mechanics.

I pointed the 1945 45-cm (18-in) telescope at two objects that always do well with these tours. The first one was the rather famous double star in the Big Dipper, called Mizar and Alcor. With good eyesight and under good conditions, one doesn’t need a telescope to distinguish the two stars, but the telescope does make it much easier. Furthermore, Mizar (the brighter of the two) turns out to be a double star itself. With even more advanced equipment, both components are in turn found to be double stars as well. So, we have two stars (revolving around each other) revolving around two other stars (also revolving around each other), together revolving around a single star, for a total of five stars.

When everyone was done looking at this, I moved the telescope over to Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and one of the brightest objects in the night sky. Some of the characteristic atmospheric bands were visible, as were five of Jupiter’s moons. Up to now I’d never seen more than four, so that was a nice surprise.

The group had to get back to their bus at that point, so we couldn’t watch anything else. Still, everyone seemed to be really excited, which always helps for me to also enjoy myself.

(Alright, so I’m cheating a bit with this NotD, because all of this happened yesterday. Then again, I’m writing this now, so it counts. Besides, this is my weblog, so I can do what I want anyway!)

Number of the 3rd of July: 118

The Tour de France 2006 is three days underway and Norwegian rider Thor Hushovd, jersey number 118, managed to get into the spotlights on each of them. He won Saturday’s prologue, which is quite a feat considering this guy usually is better at sprints than at individual time trials.

Sunday’s stage ended, predictably, in a mass sprint. Hushovd was trying to come forward down the right side of the road. With some 300 metres (330 yards) to go and cycling at some 70 kph (43 mph), he hit a cardboard sign held up by a spectator. This not only cut his chances for the day’s victory, it also cut a deep gash just above his right elbow. He was brought to hospital to have the injury mended.

Today Hushovd started with a bandage around his arm, but that really was the only reminder of yesterday’s events. He participated in each of the three intermediate sprints to gather bonus seconds for the overall standings. He was also on track to win the sprint at the end of the stage, but due to some bad luck (or mechanical failure in his left toe clip) he had to settle for third place. Still, that was enough to put him back in the overall lead. Few people would have believed that possible when he got out of bed this morning!

Number of the 2nd of July: 2

I suspect this number will feature rather frequently if I’m able to keep up with these NotD entries, but as long as it fits the day, that’s fine. It certainly does today. The number 2 applies to several points in this morning’s baseball game.

It started already before the first pitch. Two of our better players had other responsibilities, so they couldn’t join us. Two other players simply didn’t show up, despite assuring our coach yesterday they would be there. Fortunately we still managed to field a full team, thanks to two outsiders stepping in to help.

Two was also the number of runs we should have had at the end. However, the umpire came up with some weird rule interpretation that gave us a third run. It didn’t matter, because the other team had seven, so we lost either way. The loss was, I regret to say, entirely deserved. We played sloppy defense and didn’t come through at bat. Both were partly due to the different lineup, but even the regulars seemed to have an off day. The high temperature and humidity didn’t help either, but that was the same for the opponents.

Myself, I got to play first base, because the normal first baseman was absent. With two mistakes, I definitely could have done better. I failed to catch a high throw from our third baseman, which I could have had with some smarter positioning. The other mistake was on a soft popup landing right between me and the second baseman. We both hesitated just a second in going for it, resulting in it falling untouched. I should have gotten that one as well. I bobbled a soft grounder for almost another error, but I recovered in time and got the out with a headfirst dive into the base, getting my glove against it half a step before the runner got there.

At bat, I was unable to carry last week’s momentum into this game. I struck out the first two times on almost identical pitches (high and outside). They may or may not have been real strikes, but with the experience from the first K, the second one really was avoidable. The third time up I grounded out to the third baseman, which incidentally also ended the game.

We’re heading into a three-week summer break now, which is probably not a bad idea. Hopefully it will help me get back on track for the last six or so games later this year.