Spanning the Twitterverse to bring you the constant variety of tweets/ The thrill of the retweet and the agony of the unfollow/ The human drama of the twitter timeline/ This is CadChica’s Wide World of Tworts
What’s this? A home run derby on an aircraft carrier?
Reporter skills (aka=YouTube) kicking in…
Eureka!
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In all seriousness, this is a fantastic idea! Minor league baseball is its own experience. $1 hot dog nights. Firework nights. Dash for cash nights. It’s small-town America meets future big-league stars. The variety of promotional nights can be endless.
For the South Atlantic League, a 14-team league spanning from New Jersey to Georgia, this year’s “MidSummer Classic” is perhaps the first of its kind in terms of promotions. Their annual All-Star game being held tonight in Charleston, South Carolina is hosting the home run derby on the USS Yorktown. The Yorktown is currently stationed at Patriots Point. Ten players participated in the derby yesterday with two heading to the finals before tonight’s All-Star game. It could be the first-ever home run derby held on a battleship. A memorable experience for players and fans.
DILEMMA:A Friday night in June. No football. No soccer. Mariners baseball? No thanks. What to do?
SOLUTION:Drag racing.
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The sports fan that I am has limitations. No every sport fits on my enjoyment meter. Cricket? While entertaining to millions around the world, not quite my cup of tea. NBA? You gasp! The NBA & I parted ways a long time ago. Something about some guy named Jordan disillusioned me with a game I loved. But that’s a story for another day.
Then there’s racing.
NASCAR. Indy.
Meh. Take it or leave it…usually leave it for me.
But along came Friday night.
Two offerings on the night out at the Raceway Park: ovals & street/drag racing. Being the “journalist” that I am, I took in both events.
One, however, may have just created a new fan.
See if you can guess which one in this slide show:
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Admittedly, it was loud. A bit pedestrian at times with several slow cars; one car topped out at 154 mph. To be expected, however, with the night focused on high-school street car racing. A Ford Focus revved its way up to 75+ MPH. Be still my heart. But it was driven by a young teenage gal so can’t insult the effort. Pink cars, big trucks, beat-up old cars, motorcycles, lots of Camaros and Mustangs, and then a few dragsters (which, while cool to look at, didn’t live up to MY standards).
Everyone’s favorite of the night though, was this little orange thing:
The saying good things come in small packages? The little orange racer had it. Every race I saw, it blew away the competition. It didn’t look like much but that’s what made it special. “Whoa!” “Cool!” “WTH!” rustled through the crowd.
Part of the charm of sports is the unexpected. On looks alone, the crowd paid attention but inside each probably expected a loss.
On the outside, it didn’t look like a winner. But in sports and in life, it’s what is on the inside that counts. And in this little electric car’s inside, it had some giddy-up.
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A fan for life? Not yet.
Enticement is the name of the game for me. Entice me.
In football, there simply is nothing more wondrous and beautiful to watch than this:
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Lionel Messi is the best player in the world.
In any sport.
No bias in me. True, he is my favorite player. But it is more than that. The quality of play that Messi brings to a game is gratifying, to a fan, to watch.
Gratifying is the key word. How many times, as a fan, can you say you were gratified to watch someone play. Satisfied, maybe but gratified? Hard to say that in sports. It takes a transcendent athlete or moment to make us pause and consume what we witness. Pause and reflect on the swirl of emotions they evoke in us. Joy, exhilaration, awe, wonder, excitement, respectfulness, disbelief, amazement and yes, gratefulness.
It is such with Lionel Messi.
What Messi can do on the pitch, with the ball at his feet is unmatched. His movement without the ball, to find a space where there is no space, whittles away at team/country alliances. Quite simply, he is
Brilliance with a ball.
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Reaction from the Twitterverse:
I JUST WITNESSED A HAT TRICK LIVE BY LIONEL MESSI MY LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL.
