27. May 2014 · Comments Off on Colorado Discoveries 34: Colorado Springs Sky Sox with Timmy’s Little League Team · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , ,
Timmy is #2.

Timmy is #2.

The first weekend of May, Timmy’s Little League baseball team did the Little League fan experience thing** with the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, the AAA Minor League Baseball team that plays right up the street from us. They’re the Colorado Rockies AAA affiliate team.

**It took me a second to sleuth around for the name of the program that Timmy participated in. It’s called the “Junior Sky Sox“.

This is very similar to what Timmy’s team did in Florida last summer with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos “Field of Dreams” experience.

This was also one the Sky Sox’s multiple Military Appreciation Nights, along with Timmy’s free ticket, the rest of us got discounted box seat tickets with our military IDs. That was nice.

Timmy’s team got to run out on the field with the Sky Sox players. It was very cute and I’m proud of how well the boys did. Alas, the Sky Sox didn’t win that night. More »

18. April 2014 · Comments Off on Spring 2014 Baseball · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,
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Jacob watching a strike go by. The pitcher throwing in this picture was very good and had VERY fast pitches.

We are armpit-deep in baseball here at the Vollmer house. Our boys joined the Academy Little League (ALL) baseball club here in the Springs, and we have been busy with the boys’ respective schedules. More »

18. March 2014 · Comments Off on Chugging Right Along: Baseball, Skiing, and Scouts · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , ,
Timmy the catcher...again.

Timmy the catcher…again. His new coach’s son is also a catcher and his coach works hard on training them on techniques.

Yep, I’ve been scarce. I’ve been spending more time on my Facebook fan page than here, because I can pop up quick discussion items and engage with friends and fans that way.

That’s because baseball has started at the Vollmer house. And as the boys get older, their practice schedules become more intense. And as the practice becomes more intense, we are making more investments of time and protective equipment for them: new slider pants for Jacob, impact-resistant sports goggles for Timmy, a new catcher’s mitt for Timmy, a wheeled baseball bag for Jacob… More »

15. July 2013 · Comments Off on Pensacola Blue Wahoos “Field of Dreams” Experience · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,
A fine finish to a great baseball season. Our youngest son's baseball team celebrated with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos.

A fine finish to a great baseball season. Our youngest son’s baseball team celebrated with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos.

Just before the boys left Florida for good, T’s baseball team enjoyed an evening with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos. I had written about the Blue Wahoos games in a previous post in 2012.

The kids got to take part in the team’s “Field of Dreams” experience, which was a block of seats together, dinner, getting introduced as a “featured guest” at the game, and a chance to hang out with the Blue Wahoos players before the game, either by singing the national anthem with them, or else running out to the field with the players as the players’ names are called.

More »

28. April 2013 · Comments Off on My Baseball Boys · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,
Timmy is on the Phillies.

Timmy is on the Phillies.

Jacob is on the Cardinals.

Jacob is on the Cardinals.

This year the boys are both on very good, very hard working teams. It’s nice to see their hard work and tons of practice pay off in good records. Since it’s become apparent that the boys are serious about their baseball, we made the investment in some better-than-beginner equipment for the two of them.

I took our good camera out to the fields earlier this month, but didn’t get the best pictures because I had to deal with the chain link fence. I was able to use the manual focus on most of them, and all things considered, I’m pretty impressed. Enjoy! More »

Pensacola went without a minor league baseball team for a season while this ballpark was under construction. This the Blue Wahoos' inaugural season.

After a day of the boys playing baseball, we headed out to downtown Pensacola for an evening with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos — the city’s brand new AA Minor League baseball team. They had a team called the Pelicans until 2010, but for summer 2011, there was no professional baseball in the area. We’re excited to have a team to watch locally now.

About a month ago, the local Boy Scout Council announced that May 5th was “Scout Night” with the Blue Wahoos. Unfortunately, the first two months of games was were nearly sold out and even within an hour of receiving the announcement about Scout Night, I couldn’t get 4 tickets together for the family. So I went ahead and got two sets of two tickets.

There was a Scout parade at 6pm but we didn’t get to the park in time. Instead, we chose to stop for dinner.

The park isn’t that big, it seats 5,000 people, so there weren’t really poor seats anywhere. We were at the very end of the first base line…which still gave us a good view of the game itself, but we could barely see the scoreboard. Jacob, our statistics boy, was trying to track the speeds of the pitches. More »

06. May 2012 · Comments Off on Florida Discoveries 22: NYSA Baseball · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , ,

Yesterday was one of the baseball-iest days I’d ever experienced.  Each of the boys had their own baseball games during the day, then we headed out to Pensacola and enjoyed seeing our new local AA minor league baseball team, the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, in their brand new stadium right on Pensacola Bay!  More on the Blue Wahoos later.

Our boys here play for Navarre Youth Sports Association’s baseball league.  As is typical in Florida, they’re serious about sports here.  And they start those boys EARLY!  Our own sons had never played baseball until we moved here, and it turns out there are several hundred boys playing baseball here, and several hundred more playing soccer in the same club.  And come this fall, ALL those boys (except my two) are playing football.

In this particular club (and I’m not sure who the national level organization is that this club now follows — last year it was Dizzy Dean, but this year it isn’t) the boys’ teams are simply named after the coach’s favorite major league team.  Last year Jacob was on the White Sox, this year he’s on the Tigers.  His current coach is indeed from eastern Michigan.  Timmy is on the Braves and he couldn’t be more excited about that.

I captured some pretty good pictures of the boys at their games yesterday.  They’re both respectfully among the youngest on their teams, and this is Timmy’s first year playing baseball.  It’s remarkable seeing their skills develop over the course of the season!

When my boys' teams are the "visitors" here, I'm sitting on the side that gives me a good view of the batter. Here's Timmy hitting a foul ball. He's become a VERY good hitter this season...

Two hours later, we were at Jacob's game. I haven't taken many pictures this season because I always fear I'm going to miss something while looking at the screen on the back of the camera. And in this case, I took this picture right before he hit this ball for a single! Do you see the ball in motion? It's hovering between the third baseman and the shortstop.

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I now have LiveFyre itself on board to help me troubleshoot things.  I have flipped an additional switch in the LiveFyre settings and if you could continue to leave FB and blog comments I can see what is working and what isn’t.

I’m now about to try some Twitter testing…so hopefully you’ll see comments from Twitter come in on this post, thanks!

In the meantime, here’s another picture for you to enjoy!  Jacob’s team won their baseball game today.  Timmy’s team didn’t win, but they only lost by 3 runs, and Timmy scored a run!  We’re so proud of our guys!  This was taken on the way home from baseball today.

Timmy was happy about (a) doing well at baseball and (b) riding in a convertible on this beautiful day!

26. March 2012 · Comments Off on It’s Baseball Season!!! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

It’s baseball season here — the boys are both in Navarre Youth baseball this year, and they got their uniforms and had their first games this past weekend.

Enjoy some pictures!!!!

At practice, Timmy is got some time as a catcher.
More »
09. March 2012 · Comments Off on iPhone Photo Phun: The Boys at Baseball Practice · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Just a quickie this evening.

Thursdays this month (and much of last month) have been very busy, between the boys each having baseball practice one after another. First Timmy has practice from 5:30-7:30pm, then Jacob’s is one field over from 7:30-8:30pm.

It’s become a tradition — about 8-10 “little siblings” get together to play catch, tag, hide and seek, or some other classic game while the older brothers are practicing.  It’s really cute.

After about a half hour of hide and seek, I looked over and saw a scene that seemed fitting for my Hipstamatic iPhone app

The Hipstamatic app is like Instagram — it filters your digital pictures to look old-school 🙂  It seemed to work out in this scene, so long as you don’t know what the kids are doing.

So…what are they doing????

The boys are watching the 2nd kid from the left play an iPhone app.  Three of the four of them (including Timmy) are on the same baseball team and they were all hanging out while their big brothers had baseball practice.  I believe Timmy told me he was playing a game called Where’s My Water.

I tried to cram my iPhone lens through a fence link to get pictures of Jacob at bat, but it didn’t work so well.