It’s been all over the news. A Prince will be in Harlem today! According to several online reports, Prince Harry will be in East Harlem to visit Harlem RBI for some baseball and to promote the program. That’s so wonderful for them! Way to go Harlem RBI! That’s a home run!

“For more than 20 years Harlem RBI has been serving the neighborhood.  The organization started by reclaiming an abandoned garbage filled lot and turning it into 2 baseball diamonds that would become true fields of dreams for disadvantaged kids in East Harlem.”

If you’re not familiar with Harlem RBI, visit prior posts here to learn more.

Professional writer and journalist Chris Arnot was back in Coventry Conversations, this Friday at the Herbert. The author of “Lost Cricket Grounds”, which was the main topic of the conversation with him last term, focused now on football and his memories from Highfield Road stadium during Coventry City’s successful years.

With the approach of the summer Olympics, football is becoming an even bigger obsession than generally is, especially as Coventry City stadium will be hosting the Olympic football competition.

Yet, Sky Blues fans remember the time when CCFC was in a far better state. Although the team goes through difficult times at the moment, the supporters are still behind it.

“Most people support the club where they grew up; it’s part of their identity” said Chris.

He admitted, however, that football is now “moving away from its roots”.

“We get better football nowadays in terms of choreography for example, but it doesn’t engage you that much.”

Arnot also talked about Coventry’s “two great seasons” – 1967 and 1987, when football used to be “a working class game”. However, “because of the collapse of industry, football meant much more to people”, added Chris.

His already successful book ‘Lost Cricket Grounds’ has been reprinted for the second time and according to the author it helped him go “far as an author and journalist”. A review on Amazon describes it as “a major contribution to cricket’s never ending tide of literature”. Furthermore, it has been listed for Sports Book of the Year Award.

Also, Chris Arnot has another book on the way to the printing press, this time focusing on football as a sport, but also as a business. Entitled ‘Fields of Dreams’, the book is expected to be a great Christmas present for the fervent fans who enjoy a valuable reading. The publishing date is set to be late October and will cost just under £20.

]]> http://budapestbaseballblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/plagiarism-at-its-finest/ Thu, 29 Sep 2011 06:49:13 +0000 budapestballplayer12 http://budapestbaseballblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/plagiarism-at-its-finest/ The following is a blog from Joey Kamide–another American over here in Hungary helping out.  I was going to write a similar post at some point, but I figured, why re-invent the wheel when I have the copy & paste option?  I only wrote the post script at the bottom (the rest is in quotation marks)… I tried this in high school–turning in a paper of a quote(s)–and the teacher said it was still plagiarism… Go figure:

“In more ways than I’d ever be able to describe to you, baseball is a unique sport from others played around the world.

Obuda's Field (one of the worst in the country)

The equipment needed, the strategy involved, the hand-eye coordination required to play the game, these are all facets that makes baseball stand out from other sports. Another aspect is the venue needed to play the game. Most sports can share their field or court with another sport, making it more cost-friendly and easier to find space to hold practices and games.

Baseball, on the other hand, requires a very specific playing surface that requires about 90,000 square feet set up as a diamond with three bases, a pitcher’s mound, fencing around the outfield and down the baselines, a backstop behind home plate, which is surrounded by a batter’s box and home plate circle. Once you add amenities such as dugouts, bullpens, lights, a press box and bleachers, and you have facility that’s hardly a set-up to co-host soccer matches or American football games on.

These requirements have made it hard to build enough fields in America, nevertheless in cash-strapped and soccer-mad Hungary. If there’s land available, the local municipalities or governments are going to favor a soccer pitch over a baseball diamond 99 times out of a 100 here. This has left the country and it’s 500 or so baseball players in a predicament.

Heck, the capital city of Budapest, which boasts two million residents, has only one field, and that field’s playing surface resembles more coblestone road than putting green. The backstop is simply a hill that climbs about 80 degrees up to a road, and passed balls roll up and down the hill like a pinball machine. The home field to the Obuda Brickhouse, one of the first-division teams here, the field does not have an outfield fence and benches are brought into dugouts prior to games and then taken away afterward for fear that local gypsies will steal them.

In my near-four months here, I’ve been able to see four of the half-dozen or so top fields in the country. The fields, in Obuda, Szentendre, Erd and Debrecen each have their own unique quality.

Szentendre's Field--Guessing will be the enventual Hungarian Champs

In Szentendre, which is home to the Sleepwalkers, the top club team in Hungary, the Pilis Mountains serve as a backdrop to what many regard as the top field (pictured above) in the country. Located about 20 minutes outside of Budapest in a town of 20,000, the field has trees running along the right-field fence, which has ivy covering it much like at Wrigley Field. Dugouts covered with tin roofs (I wouldn’t hang around in a lightning storm) overlook what I feel is the best actual playing surface I’ve seen here, something the baseball and softball players that use the field take a lot of pride in.

Hours before games and on off-days, players can be found mowing, watering and dragging the field, working on the mound and plate and working in the batting cage, which unlike the field, has lights. They even don’t seem to mind hauling their batting practice cage, a cast-iron device dubbed “The Monster” that weighs about as much as a Honda Civic and has about six different worn nets tied together on it, from the field to behind the first base dugout.

Erd... Love the short-porch in right directly into the corn!

The field in Erd, which is another small town less than 30 minutes outside of Budapest and home to the first-division Aeros, is a hybrid 60-foot and 90-foot diamond that was built by an American missionary, Terry Lingenhoel, some 4 or 5 years ago and now is home to a club of 120 players ranging in age from 8 to 48. Dugouts and a batting cage are located on the big field, and a temporary fence is rotated between the big field and the small field, which has a home plate in deep right field on the big field.

To get power to the field so the pitching machine can be operated, some 200 yards of extension cords running from the home of a player who participates in the club has to be run down the street, over a creek and across the field to the cage or the mound. To get the full-perspective of this, check out Garret’s videos here (Video #1) and here (Video #2). Now THAT, my friends, is dedication.

Out in Debrecen, where I spent a couple days last week, is the top overall facility that I have seen thus far. Debrecen is the second-largest city in Hungary with about 200,000 residents, and its lone baseball field comes equipped with a locker room for its players, an indoor batting facility, lights on the infield and in-ground dugouts. Built behind the business offices of János Szilágyi, who finances the club, is a band-box of a field that would make drop-and-drive rotational hitters produced by Mike Epstein and his crazy disciples salivate. The deepest part of the park is less than 320 feet from home plate, and towering above what’s got to be a 225-foot left field fence is a 40-foot net that the ball has to clear for a home run. Think Fenway Park on Slim Fast. Fast fact: both parks were home to zero World Series champions from 1918 to 2003 (had to get the jab in, Red Sox fans). :Garret approves this message:

Debercen also has some nicer indoor facilities

Debrecen’s facility is best set-up to produce a top-notch program in Hungary. What young player wouldn’t want to have his own locker or a place to hit or throw a bullpen no matter what the weather conditions are? The playing surface isn’t bad, though not quite as nice as in Szentendre, though they said they were working on improving it and had new infield dirt on its way later this fall. Not to mention, Bruno, the Szilágyi family’s loveable labrador, keeps his home right next to the field and keeps his eye on the development of Debrecen’s young players.

I haven’t yet seen the fields in Nagykanizsa or Jánossomorja, home to the other two top-division club teams in the country, but plan to at some point this fall. My early conclusions, however, are that ballplayers and coaches back in the states should never complain about their yards. I know I will have a great appreciation for what we are able to play our National Pastime on back in the states after seeing what they make due with playing on over here.

For some more pictures of fields in Hungary, check out the link here.”

~The Joey Kamide

: Post Script : I have been to Nagykanizsa’s field recently and it was a great facility.  Years ago they had a lot of money (enough to even pay their players to play for them).  But, it didn’t look like any upkeep or field maintenance had been done in a long time.  They had the best clay I had seen in the country–the same they make tennis courts out of–very smooth and perfect for baseball.  The problem was that they had allowed it to become weed-infested.  It many spots you couldn’t tell where the infield began and ended.  It was disappointing to see, what could be a fantastic facility, go to waste.

I will leave Hungary with an appreciation of how hard the people here work to play the game of baseball.  It will be difficult for me to take the game for granted once I return to the states.

What fake trailer wouldn’t be complete without a hilarious cameo from Kevin Costner?

Enjoy.

http://player.ordienetworks.com/flash/fodplayer.swf

Exit Question: Was Ray Lewis channeling Terry Tate?

I have not talked to many people that are excited about the start of the beijing olympics.  The olympics have always been an exciting time in my house. Two weeks that history is made. two weeks that may never return to the host city or take many many years to return again. i do not think Los Angeles will see the return of the Olympics in my lifetime.

I was only a pup of 15 but i remember it like it was yesterday. The way the whole city shut down except for the Olympics.  All most no traffic. the way the events brought everyone together no matter what country you were from. everyone was on their best behavior like if it was Christmas and peter ueberoth had brought us the best present ever.

Every event had drama every athlete like a actor on the stage of his dreams. i witnessed the end of the first ever women’s marathon in the Olympics. Of course joan benoit won the gold.  But my lasting impression is of that swiss lady Gabriela Andersen-Schiess  stumbling into and around the track heroically finishing the race in 37th.  as she made her way around the track each section would rise and cheer so mightily cheering her on the world stage. i look forward to moments like that. Moments that take time and patience and at once make history.

i for one do not care for the ways of the chinese government but it only makes it easier for me to root against them against the new olympic superpower.

I sit up and rub my eyes. I blink. I try to re-focus. But it’s still there.

I stand, bend, stretch, stand again. I turn slowly through a 360, looking for a door, a gate, a window.

Nothing.

It’s a monochrome wall, compact, featureless. No cracks, no edges. No way to scale it. No way around it. Nothing in here but me.

I dress inside My Wall, drink some coffee, grab my camera and hit The Road. Perhaps I’ll find an archway, a link to the outside.

Or perhaps not.

Maybe I’ll just drive around taking pictures of The World Outside. Maybe I’ll see some measure of beauty which will heal my soul. Maybe I’ll find a way to understand The Beautiful Hell in which we live.

For some time now, words have failed me. I have the sense that I know something which no one should have to know. It’s like I’m writing an Important Message in the low-tide sands with the side of my foot, trying to communicate with a distant future which will never even know I tried.

For what it’s worth, here are a few images of what I saw today.

I’m sorry. I know there’s work to be done, but sometimes I just can’t do it.

I guess this is just one of those times.