Month: September 2021 (Page 1 of 2)

Reader’s Notebook, 9/30/21

After a six-week-ish lull, my pace of knocking out books has picked back up. I’ll likely finish another book later today, but wanted to go ahead and get this out.


Missionaries – Phil Klay
Klay’s second work about modern warfare is his first true novel; Redeployment was a series of short stories based loosely on his service as a Marine public affairs officer in Iraq.

Here he takes a broader view of war. He works with a wide swath of characters to show both the ridiculousness of war and how integral it has become to our modern society. In his cast are a few Americans, both soldiers and a reporter who begin the story in Afghanistan. And a group of Colombians of various backgrounds on various sides of that country’s endless civil conflicts.

This is one of those books that, while telling a story that is a bit meandering and confusing, it is building towards making grand statements rather than furnishing a satisfying series of plot points. While all those characters come together in Colombia just as a peace agreement is up for a national vote, Klay is far more interested in showing how confusing the conflict is to the people on the ground.

In the north east part of the country, Colombians have been facing a continuously fluctuating series of interactions with various armed group. There are paramilitaries, the narcos, communist guerrillas, Federal forces attempting to crush any/all of those groups, and lately armed militias who creep over from Venezuela. The ideology and mission of each of those groups means little to the locals. Other than if they are too friendly to one, they know that probably means when the next group comes along, it will mean reprisals and death for the townspeople who just want to carry on with their lives.

Meanwhile, at a higher level, the Colombian government and American military liaisons are working to find ways to extend the American mission and assistance to the national forces. For the Colombians, that means they get Americans weapons and training. For the Americans, it means they have what amounts to a practice facility to test weapons, techniques, and strategy before using them in Afghanistan or other places.

I don’t usually write down quotes from books as I read them. But I wrote down two from Missionaries that struck me as good summations of the high level points Klay is making.

The first comes from an American who served, and was wounded, in Afghanistan and moves on to Colombia as an advisor. He has some misgivings about the American mission. But, he justifies it by arguing with himself that the mission is, at its core, a good one.

His country was a force for good here. His was a good country. His service to it was a way of being a good man. That was the faith, anyway.

That’s the same justification that has been used, at a larger scale, to justify many of our military efforts this century. And to tamp down any domestic opposition to those efforts. We, as Americans, are a good people. Whatever are arguments with each other, we are on the side of democracy and freedom. And while the conflicts we get involved in may be messy, because we are good, that necessarily makes our policies in other countries good.

The second quote gets at the larger importance of war in modern society. War, and the machine that fuels it, is how we move forward as humans.

What mattered was the global, interconnected system that generated the wealth and technology that ultimately would determine the fate of this war, and the wars to come. That system was civilization. It was progress.

I wish I could argue that Klay was wrong.


The Ugly Cry – Danielle Henderson
I shared an excerpt from this memoir a month or so ago, in which Henderson ruminated on what summer days were like for latchkey kids back in the ‘80s. As soon as I read that I put this book on hold at the library. The book was wonderful.

The first half reminded me very much of a Jean Shepherd story. Henderson relates her childhood in upstate New York with her single, teen mother and brother. Their life is tough, but they get by. There all kinds of wonderful little details in her stories, and she exaggerates just enough to make them funny while keeping them believable. (Note: I think she exaggerates the dialog of the people in her stories, and her judgements of them, not the stories themselves.) I kept thinking of the Shepherd essays A Christmas Story was based on as I read it.

However, the book takes a huge turn midway through, when her mother’s new boyfriend moves in with them. He is an addict, doesn’t work, spends all her mother’s money, and abuses Henderson and her brother in various ways. If that wasn’t bad enough, Henderson’s mother eventually chooses the boyfriend over her kids and sends them to live with their grandmother.

The final third is Henderson trying to live through her high school years. She is deeply wounded by the experience with her mother, often dangerously depressed, and prone to bouts when her stress causes her muscles to lock up so she can’t move. But she finds a few like-minded friends, discovers punk and metal in New York City, and finds that she has some talents for art.

Her grandmother is the true star of the book. She is a profane chainsmoker who takes absolutely zero shit. She is more likely to be found sitting on the couch playing Nintendo than baking cookies and cakes. But in the moments when Henderson needs her most, she is always there, showing tenderness that she normally hides.

The book doesn’t have a proper happy ending, but rather an ambiguous one when Henderson goes off to college. We briefly learn that her first college choice was a disaster and it took years on multiple campuses to earn her first degree. It also took years of therapy to come to terms with her childhood. Eventually she became a successful print writer and blogger and is now a TV writer. She may not have overcome all the pain from her youth, but being able to still find the happy and hilarious moments in it is some measure of triumph over that past.

Some Sports From the Weekend

My sports weekend was a little more compressed than normal. We hosted several of M’s friends and their families Sunday evening, so we spent a lot of time prepping for them and then enjoying their company.


Friday night was CHS’ homecoming. We went to dinner with a couple other families and by the time we walked in, the Irish were already up 16–0 midway through the first quarter. It didn’t get any better. The coaches had agreed ahead of time to go to a running clock in the first half if needed. When CHS went up 37–0 with 8:30 left before the half the clock mercifully ran without pause. The final was 51–0, the final touchdown coming when CHS went for it on fourth down in the fourth quarter. The dads I was sitting with all gave each other confused looks. We decided it must be ok to go for it up 44 when you are playing freshmen.


Saturday was the most boring day of the young college season. Only two interesting games, and I didn’t have much time to devote to either Notre Dame – Wisconsin or Texas A&M – Arkansas.

KU played well on offense for about 40 minutes but then fell apart to get waxed by Duke. Fortunately, once again, the game was not on a station I have so I didn’t have to devote any energy to it.


Sunday was opening day for CYO basketball.[1] L’s team was playing St S, who is always really good. Their A team had a bunch of tall, athletic girls that play basketball year-round. We have a bunch of athletic but equally goofy girls, none of whom are very tall.

Our girls hung in for awhile. They made a nice run to start the second quarter and were only down 11–9. But they gave up a 10–0 run never recovered. They fought hard in the second half but could not overcome that first-half spurt, and lost 35–26.

St S was a much better team. They played like they knew what they were doing, where our girls were all scrambling around like lunatics and sometimes got a lucky shot that went in. We went 4–19 from the free throw line. We had roughly 75% of our shots in the paint partially or fully blocked. We let St S get at least 10 run outs for uncontested layups. Fortunately, even good teams in 7th–8th grade CYO ball miss open layups.

I told L after the game that was all something they could build on. Hit some free throws, don’t let girls get behind you on D, and be smarter on offense and they could have kept it competitive until the very end.

She only scored two. She missed one open layup and then a series of short jumpers or running shots near the rim. She went 0–2 from the line. She did make a couple nice passes, but there really wasn’t much chance for anyone to do anything on offense.

Her team has a super tough schedule. I think St S will be one of the three best teams they play, but don’t know if they are one, two, or three and what the gap between those teams are.


I watched almost no NFL Sunday. When I could get an eye on the Colts game they played well. But I obviously didn’t watch enough.


What I did watch a ton of, especially Friday and Saturday, was the Ryder Cup. The US team running away from Europe to win back the Cup was great to watch.

In my mind, there are two good outcomes at a Ryder Cup: the US winning in dominating fashion, and Europe winning a close one.

The first is cool because it means the US team is firing on all cylinders, which was the case this weekend.

The second is cool because US players always start throwing each other or their coaches under the bus and acting like petty teenagers. Since I have complicated fan relationships with so many golfers, I kind of enjoy having the reason to hate/mock them that comes with them losing.

This weekend, though, the US played their asses off. There was never a doubt about the result from the time the first four matches ended on Friday. They just kept cranking out wins, with almost every US player having a signature moment at some point.

The golf media gets all worked up when the US loses by suggesting that the US team members don’t have the same love for the competition, or ability to set aside their personal interests for the team’s, that teams of yore had. I always think that’s kind of bullshit. But even if it is true, I appreciate how much pressure the US plays under. Every Ryder Cup we hear about how much more talented the US team is. It has to kind of suck, no matter how much self confidence you have, to know that if your team loses you will be labeled as massive underachievers and have your motivation questioned.

All of that ignores golf is flukey as fuck, and any pro can beat any other pro in any given round. It also demeans the European team, acting like a squad with a lower average ranking is filled with chumps that were selected from a municipal driving range.


  1. For the hundredth time, CYO sports schedules are idiotic.  ↩

Friday Playlist

No long essays about how old music makes me feel this week. I do write a little more about most of these songs than I usually do, though.

“Waste Your Time” – Jackson+Sellers
Jade Jackson says this song is about those final moments of a toxic relationship, when you are reevaluating everything you’ve been through and realize it wasn’t worth it. Me? When I hear the phrase “waste your time,” I think of the conversation S and I had in May 2002. We had been dating nearly two years and had not had a discussion about where we were headed. I had thought about the subject plenty, but was worried about bringing it up. So I figured I’d just avoid it as long as things were going well. But S is not one to avoid things and was fed up with waiting. So she asked me what my thoughts were: did we have a future together, or were we just wasting each other’s time? Two weeks later we were engaged and 19 years later we’re still married. So I guess we did have a future together.

“Sharp” – Livingmore
Lead singer Alex Moore describes this as a “dance your problems away” song. That’s a great description, and fits the song’s feel perfectly.

“Queens” – Aeon Station
In 2003 The Wrens released their cult classic album Meadowlands. I’d almost guarantee most of you have never heard of it. People who fell in love with it really fell in love with it, and it took on a reputation within the music world greater than its sales or airplay would suggest. I’m not going to go into the whole history of the band and their efforts to make a follow-up. It’s been an exceptionally long, frustrating wait for fans, with a couple teases of an imminent album that fell through. There have been health battles within the band, disagreements about if the music was ready, arguments with multiple record labels, fights about money and credit, and other assorted issues that have us still waiting after 19 years. Wrens member Kevin Whelan is apparently fed up and is set to release a solo album under the name Aeon Station. He says that half the album will be songs he wrote and recorded for the Meadowlands follow-up. Apparently this is one of them. Charles Bissell, the Wrens member who has been the main hold up to releasing a new Wrens album, responded by saying new Wrens music will be out soon. We shall see…

“The Spirit of the Radio” – The Polyphonic Spree
Earlier this week I read a piece on Consequence of Sound about whatever happened to the Polyphonic Spree. I had pretty much forgotten about that band, who had a brief moment in the early 2000s. I had also forgotten that the band was started by former Tripping Daisy lead singer Tim DeLaughter. The article mentioned that the Spress is still putting out music, so I scrolled through their most recent albums and found Afflatus from earlier this year, which features a bunch of covers. This cover of the Rush classic honestly made me laugh out loud. I’m not entirely sure why. That’s enough to throw it in this week’s playlist.

“If Not For You” – George Harrison
Isn’t it weird how great songs used to be immediately covered by other artists? Look at the Motown era and songs would be passed from group-to-group, with each taking their own stab at them until someone had a monster hit with it. I still think of this as an Olivia Newton-John song. She hit #25 in the US with it in 1971 and it got airplay throughout her ’70s prime. Technically her version was a cover of this, George Harrison’s arrangement which he included on his 1970 masterpiece All Things Must Pass. But it was Harrison’s buddy Bob Dylan who wrote the original, also in 1970. I can’t imagine three big artists all recording the same song inside 18 months these days.


“Give It Up” – 8MM
A semi-forgotten track I always thought could have been absolutely huge under different circumstances. It might be the sexiest song of the 2000s.

Thursday Links

Finally worked through my Instapaper account to find some things I’ve saved to share with you.


Dave Holmes Visits 1988 to Pay Respect to Casey Kasem’s Last True American Top 40 Countdown

Someone posted this piece to the AT40 Facebook group I’m a member of. It comes from right after Casey Kasem died back in 2014, but I still enjoyed reading it. Maybe some week I should do a commentary for all 40 tracks in a countdown. Actually, I’m shocked that I’ve never done that before.[1]


The Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books
I try not to check out too many E-books from the library, defaulting to “normal” books as much as possible, because of articles like this.


How Do You Tell John Walker Lindh’s Story?
I didn’t read very many 9/11 retrospectives. I have a very long one saved that I never got around to, and because of that avoided a lot of shorter pieces.

This one was fascinating, though, detailing how filmmaker Greg Barker is attempting to tell the story of “American Taliban” member John Walker Lindh. What’s most fascinating is how pretty much everyone involved in his case has zero interest in talking about it. It’s almost as if his case was more complex than the media and government told us back in 2001.


Kenny Mayne’s Second Act
I don’t watch much SportsCenter or other non-event programming on ESPN these days. So while Kenny Mayne being forced out last summer was a bummer to the Gen Xer in me, I don’t think I had seen him on a show in years.

It was cool to read about how he carved out his own little niche at the network during a time when it was loaded with massive personalities. And very interesting to see how leaving ESPN has allowed him to speak more freely about things that are not directly related to sports. Of course, he and I have similar views. Not sure I would be as excited if he was calling for an overturn of election results or protesting against masks.


“This Is Going to Change the World”
9/11. Kenny Mayne. Let’s go for the New Millennium trifecta by looking back at the unveiling of the Segway. People old enough to remember will surely recall getting one of those emails forwarded to you about the mysterious new invention that was going to completely change our lives.

Journalist Dan Kois details that weird little moment in time. It seems like the project was destined to fail. But he wonders if a young, inexperienced book agent – himself – torpedoed any chance the Segway had to be truly revolutionary through a careless, administrative mistake.

If a 26-year-old dumbass hadn’t accidentally leaked the proposal, who knows what would have happened? Because after all this time, I do think the leak had a lot to do with how little I truly understood about book publishing … and how little we all understood about what the internet was about to become.


  1. I actually kind of did with the special Top New Artists of the Decade countdown from 1988. But I A) didn’t hear the entire countdown and B) didn’t really comment on every song included.  ↩

When It Is Hard To Watch

There are constant reminders that we live in crazy-ass times. Times where simple differences of opinion aren’t allowed and every debate has to be A Whole Thing. Times where civility has disappeared from discourse and it rapidly transitions into vitriol.

Some of you know my wife has a second job, taken to support my blogging career. Not really. Taken, truthfully, because she’s good at making decisions and would rather help to form and implement policy than be told what the new policies are going to be.

As part of her second job she’s been asked to speak with the media at various times. Which she hates. H-A-T-E-S. Four years ago she appeared in a recurring segment on a noontime news program which caused her so much stress she bailed after four attempts.

Her requests have gone up a lot in the past few months. She does her best to duck them. Often the requests go out to a small pool of similarly qualified physicians and someone else is usually willing to take them. But in the past two weeks she’s been unable to avoid two requests: one from the local paper, another from TV.

In each case the subject of discussion was kids and Covid. The newspaper request was providing a physician’s perspective on mask policies at schools. She did a ten-or-so minute call with a reporter and then it was something like four or five days before her words appeared in a story.

This week she was asked to get on a Zoom call to talk to a TV reporter for a feature about the latest vaccine news for kids. This was a little more stressful because our internet crashed about five minutes before she had to join the call. She does not do well with technology hiccups, less well when she’s already stressing about something else she dreads. Fortunately it happened here at home while I was available and I helped her scramble to join the call on time.

The call went well and a few hours later we tuned into the late local news to see the segment. It was pretty good. She critiqued herself for over-using a particular phrase, but otherwise she came across as coherent and knowledgable. When she preps for these interviews I always tell her to relax and speak to the reporter like she would speak to a parent in an exam room. But I know if I had to be on TV I would probably trip over every-other-word and totally lose my train of thought at least once. She does really well for someone who is crazy nervous about these conversations.

What does any of that have to do with the lack of civil discourse I mentioned at the beginning of this piece?

Well, I refused to find the archived story on the TV station’s website to share with family and friends because I did not want to see any negative comments from the Covid Crazies. Or open up either S’s or my Facebook pages for the Crazies to directly connect with us.

She didn’t say anything super controversial or that you haven’t probably heard in countless other mediums already. She expressed sympathy for parents who are having a hard time deciding whether or not to get their kids vaccinated. She politely shot down some myths about the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. We had found an op-ed from the Washington Times written by a pediatric hospitalist about how she attempts to remain calm and empathetic to vaccine-resistant families, and I think that helped S model her statements.

But I know that didn’t matter to the Crazies, and there were likely dozens of people with no medical education or training; who haven’t sat on countless calls discussing the development, testing, and effectiveness of the vaccines; and who haven’t sent Covid positive kids to the emergency department poised to chime in with their dissenting opinions and call S’s training and motives into question.

I don’t have thick enough skin to laugh those comments off. It was easier for me to just avoid them.

Maybe I would have been pleasantly surprised. Perhaps a huge majority of comments would have been in support of S and any attacks would have either been filtered out by the station or beaten down by her supporters. It wasn’t a battle I was interested in getting into the details of, though.

So, anyway, S was on TV Monday night. If you know her name you can probably find it. If you watch, I have no interest in hearing about the mood in the comment section, good or bad.

Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 62

Well piss. I swear that I’ve posted this about three different times over the past two days. Obviously I’m losing it.

Chart Week: August 25, 1984
Song: “Breakin’…There’s No Stopping Us” – Ollie and Jerry
Chart Position: #34, 13th week on the chart. Peaked at #9 the week of August 4.

I love musical origin stories. Especially ones where a lucky break launched an otherwise anonymous performer towards success. For every artist like Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Houston, or Mariah Carey, who each possessed talent that made stardom seem inevitable, the charts are loaded with dozens of artists and bands that required a perfect combination of factors to have their moment. Ollie Brown is one of those artists.

In the late 1960s Brown carved out a reputation as a top-notch studio drummer, even though he was not yet 20. He seemed destined to remain a part of the Los Angeles scene until one night when the music gods gave him a monumental break.

Marvin Gaye was in LA preparing to perform on a telethon. As he rehearsed with the studio’s house band, he grew frustrated with the drummer, who just could not grasp the rhythms that Gaye wanted. Casey Kasem described the drummer as a member of “the local musicians union.” I take that to mean old white guy. This dude could probably lay down any rhythm that came from the pop standards world, maybe even hack through some jazzy beats. But he was decidedly not connected to what was coming out of Motown in the late ‘60s.

Sensing Gaye’s irritation, a member of the telethon staff pointed out a local drummer that was hanging out backstage, and suggested he get a chance to sit in. That young man, of course, was Ollie Brown. Brown slipped into the drum kit and immediately supplied the beats Marvin needed.

Also backstage was one of Brown’s childhood friends, Ray Parker Jr. Ray was not yet a star, but he just happened to be standing with Stevie Wonder, with whom he had worked previously. Parker was proud of his friend for performing so well, and made a mental note when Wonder also expressed his approval.

Fast forward a couple years. Stevie Wonder was looking for a new drummer to join him on his tour and asked friends for suggestions. Ray Parker Jr. reminded him of Ollie Brown’s performance in support of Marvin Gaye.

That was all Wonder needed. He hired Brown to play drums while he opened for The Rolling Stones, and then kept him on as his studio drummer for recordings he made after that tour.[1] A few years after that, Brown joined the Stones for most of their late ‘70s tours.

Thank goodness Ollie Brown got that break from Marvin Gaye. Otherwise he may have remained an anonymous studio drummer in LA, and we would never have gotten this wonderful song, which makes me happy every time I hear it. Although generally a pretty straight-forward pop/R&B track, those little scratches and computer voices made it one of the first songs with a strong hip hop influence to crack the Top 40. Breakin’ was an awesome movie, by the way.

(Below the video, check out the wonderful clip I found from American Bandstand where Ollie and Jerry talk about their careers and how this song was written.)


  1. Stevie Wonder opening for The Rolling Stones?!?! I found this site that lists many of the artists who have opened for the Stones over the years. They made sure you got your money’s worth!  ↩

Friday Playlist

“I Don’t Live Here Anymore” – The War on Drugs with Lucius
The title track from the upcoming TWOD LP. It is the brightest, shiniest, poppiest track the band has ever done. Naturally I love it. Lucius provides a very nice vocal assist.

“This Enchanted” – Hatchie
Harriet Pilbeam recently signed with Indiana label Secretly Canadian, and this is her first single on that imprint. Like just about everything else she’s done, it’s pure magic.

“Tell Me” – Spectres
I’m not sure what generation of post punk we are on now – at least the fourth, right? – but as long as people keep making music that sounds like this, I’ll keep listening to it.

“Around Again” – Hovvdy
Technically it is still summer, at least from an astronomical point of view. So this song, which sounds like late summer distilled into audio form, is still relevant.

“Fear and Trembling” – Gang of Youths
GoY lead singer David Le’aupepe gave a lengthy interview to Steven Hyden at Uproxx about the state of the band and where they are in the process of recording their next album. Apparently the EP they released earlier this year was a very early teaser, and a full-length release is not imminent. Reading this piece made me go back and listen to their 2017 album Go Farther In Lightness, and reminded me how great this, the opening track, is.

“Escapade” – Janet Jackson
You all know how I can A) remember all kinds of stupid facts surrounding songs that are decades old and B) occasionally get fixated on those old memories. Well, that happened to me over the past few days.

I mentioned last week how “Black Velvet” was the trigger. Normally, when I have these old memory bursts, I can live with them for a bit and then move on quickly. But something about that song and the priming of my brain for memories from that same time got me stuck in a memory loop that lasted five or six days. It was really weird. No matter what I did to distract myself, memories of my freshman year of college kept overwhelming me.

That happens from time-to-time. But it is usually a short-term thing. This just kept going on-and-on. Monday morning, for example, I thought I had turned the page. Then I went to the gym, fired up my Spotify gym playlist, and three of the first four songs were from the spring semester of my freshman year. I was starting to get freaked out; the music algorithms were now part of whatever was forcing me to remain fixated on these memories.

I tried to figure out why this kept happening. Obviously, some of it came from reading The Number Ones, which has been working up those memories for several weeks. I wondered, too, if it was just because I haven’t thought of my first year of college in great detail in years. So perhaps some of it was just revisiting some unfamiliar memories?

I wondered if there was someone I knew back then who was in some kind of distress and sending out psychic messages to anyone they knew at the time asking for help that I was picking up on.

I also wondered if maybe this was my brain’s way of telling me it was getting ready to purge these memories, and wanted to give me one, last intense experience reviewing them by flooding me with them over several days.

The first explanation is the best, the second two don’t really make sense. I’m being honest, though, when I say it was very unnerving that this experience was so powerful and lasted so long.

Anyway, I listened to Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 the other day because 1) it was a great, great album and 2) if I’m going to be stuck in that memory loop, I might as well have some control over it. It is still a great, great album filled with terrific tracks. This one is the greatest. I’m not sure it’s possible to hear it and not be happy instantly.

Fall Kickball Wrap Up

Another kickball season is complete.

L’s team was supposed to make up three games that had been rained out. One school never responded to multiple messages from our coach about a reschedule date. It’s the team L kicked six homers in one game against a year ago, and we’ve generally beaten them like rented mules since third grade. So I don’t blame them for avoiding the game.

Monday we played on a crazy field that has a fence in short left field. C’s team played there three times and that stupid fence always got in their heads. Her team had at least four girls who should have been able to kick it over the fence. While we had multiple balls bounce over for ground-rule doubles, no one on her team ever flew the fence for a home run.

In the top of the first Monday, our second kicker put one over the fence. She did it again in the third inning. And another girl kicked two over. L was super excited to get her shot, but kept kicking line drives that bounced off the fence for Green Monster-style singles. We were up by 40-some runs in the fifth and L knew it was her last shot before the mercy rule kicked in. A new pitcher gave her a fast pitch that she neatly deposited over the fence.[1] She raced around the bases with a satisfied look on her face.

L made sure to let C know that her team kicked five over the fence in one game while C’s team couldn’t put one over the fence in 21 innings. Sisterly love!

L also made a crazy play in the outfield where she cut off a screaming line drive and threw a perfect strike to second to hold the kicker to a single. After the play she stood in center and flexed. I laughed out loud.

Wednesday night was supposed to be our final makeup game, against a team we knew we would hammer. As we left home L said she was going to try to break her record of six homers in a single game. This is another weird field – the church is awfully close in left field but if you kick to center or right the ball can roll for days – plus she hasn’t kicked as well this year. But I told her to go for it.

When we arrived the opposing coach came over and asked, since it was their last game and they had five 8th graders playing their final game ever, if we would mind if they forfeited the official contest and the teams just played for fun so she could move girls around to different positions.

Our coach said sure, although there was some grumbling from our girls. It ended up being a good time. Both teams played girls in new spots. It was fun to see some of our girls who are often in the outfield get to pitch or play first base. There was zero stress because no one was keeping score. Both teams were laughing and having fun. You know, how youth sports should be.

Since I wasn’t keeping score I lost track of L kicking a few times. She did not kick seven home runs. I think she went something like 4–6 with one homer. Since this was officially a forfeit I’ll not add those numbers into her season totals.

She ended up going 26–31 with seven home runs in five games. She slightly raised her kicking average to .839 from last spring’s .825. But the seven homers were way down from 22, although she did play two more games last spring.

We are already putting together a strength program so she can get those power numbers back up next spring.

The team went 3–2 plus the forfeit, crushing the bad teams but not getting closer than 14 runs to the two top teams. Kind of a bummer year after playing for the City championship last spring.

Now we will be all about basketball for sixthish months.


  1. CYO kickball pitching philosophy is that you pitch slow to good kickers, fast to poor kickers. The idea is to make the good kickers provide their own power and try to overwhelm the weak kickers with speed.  ↩

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