A Slammin' Good Time

First off, you have to recognize David Eckstein's walk-off grand slam that sent the Cardinals to victory yesterday afternoon. That's why baseball is so great. If it was football, basketball, even that sport they call hockey (or did--market groups may force them into a new name to compensate for the lockout!), the star players would be involved at that moment. You think the third-string QB will be in a game when Payton Manning's perfectly healthy? That anyone would get the ball besides Shaq with time winding down?

Baseball, though, requires all to make a contribution. You have to make do with what you have. The Cards probably would have preferred someone like Pujols or Edmonds up in that situation, but they weren't allowed to do so. All the players have to make contributions. When it's your turn, there's no getting out of it (save for pinch-hitters or relievers, but often those are of lesser quality than your starter, and they can only be used once).

Which means that baseball, more than any other sport, I think, has the "defy the odds" moments so regularly. A guy with the limited power of Eckstein hits a home run to win the game. A pitcher with a 7 ERA shuts down a powerful lineup. In baseball, you never know what you are going to get. Which is why we watch.

And, if you want to get theological, it's a good representation of how God is with us. He picks the least likely to make the biggest splash, and expects us all to take our turn at bat. But that's another blog (assuming we can get it started up!)

Good weekend all the way around, though still had a "joy in every situation" moment. We had gone over to our friends Jon and Jennifer's after church for a potluck meal. Apparently the group of friends we hang out with from church had started this idea of rotating houses the first Sunday of every month. They did it first in June when we were gone and didn't do it in July, so we didn't know about it 'til they called and invited us Saturday.

As we got there and were taking Benjamin out of the car, one side of the bolster (or overhead shield) of the car seat popped off. It had done this earlier in the weekend so I didn't worry too much about it, and when we got back to the car, I tried to fix it. Thought I had it, but then it popped off again.

When I tried again, part of the plastic tore off, which rendered the car seat unusable. Thankfully we were only three blocks away from our house and we had a stroller in the car, so I just walked Benjamin back home, albeit in the 95+ heat. Meron then went out and got a new car seat, which my parents paid for since they were thinking about getting one for their car anyway.

(Postscript: Meron was on the phone with the company this morning, of course. Turns out they'll send us the parts to fix it, but we have to do the fixing. That should be a lot of fun.)

Saturday's party went fairly well. Had about 12 people show up, not counting Robert. We took all the orders and everything and were doing fine until the women left at the end of the party started talking about having their husbands fixed and the procedure for that. Needless to say we didn't care too much for the turn in conversation.

After the party our friend Andy came over and the three of us hung out, watched TV, talked about the rotisserie league and made some trades. Hadn't seen either of them in a while so we had a good time. I've already started making plans for our friends to get together over Thanksgiving, mainly because it's like pulling teeth to get anyone to respond and commit. I figure I need the 3+ months of lead time!

Should have PK tonight. Didn't last night since one person had already said he wouldn't make it and another came down with some back problems. But we should be good to go tonight!