Who's gonna make a play today!

Yard work

Practice today went well. The work we put in on rundowns, 1st and 3rds and picks will surely payoff at game time. We did some boring stuff and took hundreds of ground balls, but also got to play a little whiffle ball game at the end. Tomorrow our catchers will get in some grunt work, while others will get more ground balls and fly balls. At least half of practice will be in the cage. I will also be giving out our cheat sheet for signs and plays... No matter how hot or cold it is, always be sure to bring water and a jacket. See you at 1:45 tomorrow.

levels of difficulty

Awesome. If 1500 filipino prison inmates can get it together to pull off this dance, we should be able to complete a rundown... Right? I am taking suggestions on which dance our boys should learn this year. (Last year we all learned the Soulja Boy) If by chance we do thriller, I hope the girl we use is a littler prettier than the one in this video...

You may want to scroll down to the music player and hit "pause" before playing this video, otherwise two songs will be playing at once...

The Pyramid

You may have seen the "Pyramid of success" by coach John Wooden somewhere before. Heck you may already have it on your wall. If you have not seen it, please check it out. Coach Wooden was arguably the best coach in the history of sports. Although a basketball coach, he taught the game of life. His lessons were (are) meant to be taken into life well after the game is over. Read it. Print it. Live it.

The Reed family

I was hanging out at Kaiser in Fremont the other day and came across a paper I had not seen in a while and decided to pick it up... Glad I did. Who else did I see, but the Romans! If I have not said it before, I will tell you here- I am so proud of this guy and this family. Big Rome and I have been friends for a number of years now and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. There have been many days when I have had a tough time getting up in the morning or even when I am just having a bad day and I have thought about Roman. What he goes through on an average day puts me to shame. Not only that, but when you think about what goes on behind the scenes and how much his wife Terri goes through on the average day, it has got to blow your mind and make you think twice about complaining. I sure do.

Here is part of the article from the Tri-City voice from December 17, 2008...

Local Heroes

By Justine Yan
On December 11, Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico recognized contributions of citizens in the Assembly District who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and generosity in their service to the community.

"Local heroes" include the Reed family of Fremont, Paddy Iyer of Union City, Harold Colon of Newark, Cossette Sun of Castro Valley, Ed Mullins of Hayward, Ray Maglalang of Milpitas, and John McWilliams of Pleasanton.

In addition to the local heroes awardees, Centro de Servicios was named the Community Partner Local Hero, Eden Housing was named the Non-profit of the Year, and Dr. Bhupinder Bhandari was given the Unity Award.

In our first of a series of profiles of these illustrious people and organizations, TCV interviewed Fremont Local Hero, Roman Reed, and Milpitas Local Hero, Ray Maglalang, to learn more about their accomplishments.


The Reed Family

In 1994, Roman Reed sustained a major spinal cord injury while playing football for Chabot College. Soon, however, Reed "turned a negative into a positive." In 1999, the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Act, authored by then-Assemblyman John Dutra, was signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since then, the "Roman Reed Law" has led to the allocation of 14 million dollars in funds to the UC Irvine Roman Reed Core Laboratory, for the purposes of supporting researchers in stem cell research and neural regeneration, in hopes of finding cures for paralysis and neurological disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. This is the first state funding for embryonic stem cell research in the nation.

Reed is proud of this great milestone, and looks forward to the expansion of stem cell research in the near future. "I promised my son that I would walk again, and I promised my wife that I'd do everything I can," said Reed.

To Roman Reed, he and his family are "a package deal." While he spoke at the state capitol to promote the law, his father, Don Reed, worked closely with him, taking care of the influx of emails they would receive.

Besides advancing stem cell research, Roman Reed also played a major role in initiating Fremont's most recent park project, the Family Water Play Facility, or "Water Park." As chairman of the Fremont Parks and Recreation Commission, he worked to push the project through, gaining sufficient funds to "do things in an economically responsible way." Reed believes that the Water Park will not only provide a wonderful recreational opportunity for families to enjoy, but also serve as an economic lifeline for other parks and recreation services.

Currently coaching his son's football team, which won the Fremont Football League Championships, Reed insists that he could not have achieved so much without the support of his family.


You can read the full article at this link:

http://www.tricityvoice.com/articlefiledisplay.php?issue=2008-12-17&file=story3.txt

I must say we got lucky.

Tom Bischofberger has come through in a serious way for us. "Bisch", or "Coach Tom" as he is known around these parts, has allowed us to have use of the Varsity facilities at American this year. Awesome. We have the mounds (5), the field, the screens (too many), batting tees, 3 hitting tunnels, 3 pitching machines, throw down and secure bases... What else is needed? Oh yeah, and he has also said he would even help instruct. Who does this? Bisch does. All he wants is for our boys to get better and learn some baseball. The guy just loves this game and believes in the values learned from it. He also may remember when we, at one time, years ago coached against each other and had to use whatever equipment and fields we could get our hands on... I can't thank him enough.

Please keep in mind how generous both Tom and American high school is to us whenever they might need something. It might be trash that you see that could be picked up or even a hand with field maintenance... I am sure they would appreciate it.

Practice is ON for the weekend. To be sure, call my cel before practice and I will either answer, or have a "hotline" style message on it. We will not be practicing in bad weather, but really... we live in California. Is it really BAD weather?

Call me in the morning for an update. I will be at the field early.


Ron

Weekend update (updated! @10pm)

I just saw that American High school will be used for a tourney this weekend. There are games all day long. I can't blame them as it is money in their pocket and we get the facility for free. I will keep you posted on changes. We may end up keeping the practice there and using the tunnels and/or move to the softball fields... I will keep you posted. 

We need those tunnels and mounds!

Practice at 10a on Saturday.

Practice at 2p on Sunday.

To tell the truth... I don't care if we are in a parking lot somewhere. We're on a mission.

(Update) We WILL be at American at our slotted times: 10a on Sat, 2pm on Sunday. Meet me at the batting cage on the Varsity field. There will be a 16 year old tourney, but we will work around them. Time to be resourceful. As always, I will be there early.

Soon to be posted: Team/player/parent rules, fund-raiser updates and team expectations...

Send me pictures!!!

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And on the 7th day...

As you see, our site (BLOG) is up and running. There will be many changes as we go forward, so be sure to keep coming back to check for new info. 

I put our calendar up as a link on the right. When I did this, I also mentioned that some of our  times may change... I think we need to find a better time for Sunday's practices. First of all, I am not a fan of practice on Sunday but we have to work with what we have. We only have the weekend for practice right now and we must use it. I put Sunday's practices 10am going forward but in conversations with a few parents, it looks as though another time might be best. This looks like a perfect time for a poll! I will add the poll to the blog within the next few hours and take it down Wednesday. This is just an experiment, so stay with me. 

Pictures! I need pictures. Any pictures of your boy and your family. If you have any baseball pics, that would be perfect. I will post them on this site...

More to come.

Orange Crush

Once again, We will have practice tomorrow at 2:30 at Marshall Park. We will go until dark (around 5).  

After practice Fraida, Tuesday, Joanna and I will have a fund-raising and treasury meeting at Chili's. Anyone is welcome as we will be discussing funds needed for the season, how it breaks down per family and most importantly, when and how we are going to raise the funds to soften the blow.

Once the meeting is over, our plan is to have a clear idea of monies due and when, a schedule of fund-raisers and all the details that go with it...

One more thing... we will also be discussing team and parent/family gear for the season. I have already ordered a bunch of these orange wigs for all the Dads. They will go well with the tiny biker shorts that are mandatory for all tournaments. Go Hurricanes!

Hmmm. These guys look familiar...

We're getting the band back together... Some of you may notice that a few of our boys have played together before. A few years back we had an All-Star team out of Fremont that featured a few of these players. These guys played well, and played well together. I can't tell you how excited I am to have these players back and in the same uniform once again. That team (as I remember) was untouchable. If there is anything I know about these boys, it is that I know they can win. They get along and they are truly willing to learn. It is by no mistake that I wanted these boys to be with us this season. It is my hope that these guys get a few more championships together...