he did what?

Minute Maid park in Houston, TX has been home to some great defensive plays around the unique Tal's Hill in center field. But yesterday, a great base running play made me sit up and take notice while watching sports center. Michael Born, the Astros' center fielder who has to navigate Tal's Hill when playing in the field, was on second base when Lance Berkman hit a long fly ball to center. Born with great speed tags up from second and SCORES! Scoring from second on a sacrifice fly has happened before, but it's often because the fielder had to dive to make the catch and wasn't able to get up quickly to make a throw back to the infield. This was not the case with Born. The catch was made at around the base of Tal's hill and the throw was made back toward the infield right away. Born flew around third base and scored well ahead of the cutoff throw. I've never seen anything like it.

news headlines

With the presidential election 39 days away, and with the current economic crisis, I've been paying more attention to the news in the past week than I usually do. The past month and the next two months feel historic to me. So I was on some news websites today finding out that the presidential debate will take place tonight with both candidates and the stock market is holding up a little better than I feared after word came in last night that the bailout deal was getting blown up. I came across a few headlines and stories that makes real life feel like the movies.

The action movie:

Pirates seize ship carrying 33 Russian tanks

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26901780/

Yup, this is 2008 and we still have to worry about pirates. (Pittsburgh fans have known this for the past 16 years).

The Comedies:

Charge dropped for man who farted at cops

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26877682/
The man still is being charged with drunk driving, but the prosecutor decided that directional farting wasn't egregious enough to punish him for.

Hot dogs cause Philly bomb scare

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/baseball/mlb/09/25/hotdogs.ap/index.html

Yup, some duct taped hot dogs got mistaken for a bomb and the bomb squad actually blew them up before realizing it.


Then there was another headline that made very grateful for good law enforcement around the world:

German police seize terrorist suspects on plane

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26899493/

Lord, keep us safe, and filled with hope, love, and peace in these turbulent times.