I worry about how dumb people are today.

Ben_Reilly wrote:Also should mention a great part of that whole thing with the softball player is that we never set out to do that -- we were just doing our jobs, then we found out we'd had this unintended impact. That might be my favorite part of the story

eddie wrote:Ah bless. She has two important things to say!   

Who is she anyway?

veya_victaous wrote:

eddie wrote:Ah bless. She has two important things to say!   

Who is she anyway?

Porn star  ::D:: 
It's from "surprisingly profound quotes from unexpected sources"

http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_909_39-surprisingly-profound-quotes-from-unexpected-sources/

Original Quill wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:Also should mention a great part of that whole thing with the softball player is that we never set out to do that -- we were just doing our jobs, then we found out we'd had this unintended impact. That might be my favorite part of the story

Softball is truly an amazing game.  First, let me state my bias: Yes, for years I taught at the University of Arizona; and yes, I was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Arizona; yes, my daughter graduated from the U of A School of Medicine; and yes, I lived for 19-years in Arizona.  So I'm biased...

Arizona and UCLA are the two top softball programs in the world.  Remember how they smoked the competition and won the gold at the Athens Olympics?  That was Jenny Finch and the University of Arizona, come-a-callin'.



No sport has been as great for young women as softball.  It's truly their own sport.  A lot different than baseball, the sport is a natural for women: speed, quickness of mind, and skill in technique such as pitching and hitting.  That being so, softball is the one sport that women own, and excel at.  

There is no comparison to men such that it must take a backseat to the male equivalent.  It's not the junior sport of some grander game.  Men simply could not play the game as well.  Softball is truly a woman's game.

Moreover, the great college women of the sport are fabulous role models for the 11- and 12-year old's coming up.  As a father of daughters, I love to see the little girls visit the games and crowd around the stars, soaking in the glory of their one, totally-their-own, world.  Long live softball.   

lovedust wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Softball is truly an amazing game.  First, let me state my bias: Yes, for years I taught at the University of Arizona; and yes, I was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Arizona; yes, my daughter graduated from the U of A School of Medicine; and yes, I lived for 19-years in Arizona.  So I'm biased...

Arizona and UCLA are the two top softball programs in the world.  Remember how they smoked the competition and won the gold at the Athens Olympics?  That was Jenny Finch and the University of Arizona, come-a-callin'.



No sport has been as great for young women as softball.  It's truly their own sport.  A lot different than baseball, the sport is a natural for women: speed, quickness of mind, and skill in technique such as pitching and hitting.  That being so, softball is the one sport that women own, and excel at.  

There is no comparison to men such that it must take a backseat to the male equivalent.  It's not the junior sport of some grander game.  Men simply could not play the game as well.  Softball is truly a woman's game.

Moreover, the great college women of the sport are fabulous role models for the 11- and 12-year old's coming up.  As a father of daughters, I love to see the little girls visit the games and crowd around the stars, soaking in the glory of their one, totally-their-own, world.  Long live softball.   

It sounds a bit like the UK 'Rounders' sport.

The Sports Gene wrote:The American League team was in a deep hole, and National League slugger Mike Piazza was up to bat.
So in came the ringer.
Sauntering past a phalanx of the world's best hitters, Jennie Finch reached the sun-drenched infield, her flaxen hair blazing in the clear desert light. For more than two decades, the annual Pepsi All-Star Softball Game had been contested by major league baseball players only. The crowd thrummed with excitement as Finch, the 6' 1" Team USA softball ace, took the pitcher's mound and curled her fingers around the ball.
It was a temperate day in Cathedral City, Calif., 70° in a replica of one of the country's sports cathedrals. The three-quarter-scale version of the Cubs' Wrigley Field was faithful down to its ivy-covered outfield walls. Even Wrigleyville's brick apartment buildings were there, in the desert at the foot of the Santa Rosa Mountains, depicted on near-life-sized vinyl prints created from photographs of Chicago.

Finch, who in a few months would win a gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics, had been invited only as a member of the American League coaching staff. That is, until the American League stars went down 9-1 in the fifth inning.

No sooner did Finch arrive at the mound than the defensive players behind her sat down. Yankees infielder Aaron Boone took off his glove, lay down in the dirt and used second base for a pillow. Rangers All-Star third baseman Hank Blalock took the opportunity to get a drink of water. They had, after all, seen Finch pitch during the batting practice.

As part of the pregame festivities, a raft of major league stars had tested their skill against Finch's underhand rockets. Thrown from a mound 43 feet away and traveling at speeds above 65 mph, Finch's pitches take about the same time to reach home plate as a 95-mph fastball does from the standard baseball mound, 60' 6" away. A 95-mph pitch is fast, certainly, but routine for pro baseball players. Plus, the softball is larger, which should make it easier to hit.

Nonetheless, with each windmill motion of her arm, Finch had blown all her pitches by the bemused men. When Albert Pujols, one of the greatest hitters of his generation, stepped forward to face Finch during that practice, the other major leaguers crowded around to gawk. Finch adjusted her pony-tail nervously. A smile stole across her face. She was exhilarated, but she was also afraid that Pujols would hit a line drive right back at her. A silver chain dangled over his expansive chest; each of his forearms was wider than the barrel of the bat.

"All right," Pujols said softly, indicating he was ready.

Finch rocked back and then forward, whipping her arm in a giant circle. She fired the first pitch just high. Pujols lurched backward, startled by what he saw. Finch giggled.

She unleashed another fastball, this time high and inside. Pujols spun defensively, turning his head away. Behind him, his professional peers guffawed.

Pujols stepped out of the batter's box, composed himself and stepped back in. He twisted his feet into the dirt and stared back at Finch.

The next pitch came right down the middle. Pujols uncoiled a violent swing. The ball sailed past his bat, and the spectators hooted.

The next pitch was way outside, and Pujols let it go. The one after that was another strike, and Pujols whiffed again. With one strike remaining, Pujols moved to the back of the batter's box and dug in, crouching low in his stance.

Finch rocked and fired. Pujols missed badly. He turned and walked away, toward his tittering teammates. Then he stopped, bewildered. He turned back to Finch, doffed his cap and continued on his way.

"I never want to experience that again," he later said.

*****

The fielders behind Finch had good reason to sit down when she entered the 23rd Pepsi All-Star game: They knew there would be no hits. Just as she had during practice, Finch struck out both hitters she faced. Piazza, the Mets' catcher, went down on three straight pitches. Padres outfielder Brian Giles missed so badly on the third strike that his momentum spun him through a pirouette.

Then Finch returned to her role as a ceremonial coach. But she was not nearly finished befuddling major leaguers.

In 2004 and '05, Finch hosted a regular segment on Fox's This Week in Baseball in which she traveled to major league training camps and transformed the world's best baseball hitters into clumsy hacks. "Girls hit this stuff?" asked an incredulous Mike Cameron, the Mariners' outfielder, after he missed a pitch by half a foot.

When seven-time National League MVP Barry Bonds saw Finch at the Major League All-Star Game, he walked through a throng of reporters to talk trash to her. "So, Barry, when do I get to face the best?" Finch asked.

"Whenever you want to," Bonds replied confidently. "You faced all them little chumps.... You gotta face the best.

"You can't be pretty and good and not face another handsome guy who's good," Bonds added, spreading his peacock feathers. He then told Finch to bring a protective net because, he said, "you're going to need it with me.... I'll hit you."

"There's only been one guy who touched it," Finch replied.
"Touch it?" Bonds said, laughing. "If it comes across that plate, believe me, I'ma touch it. I'ma touch it hard."

"I'll have my people call your people, and we'll set it up," Finch said.

"Oh, it's on!" Bonds said. "You can call me direct, girl. I take my challenges direct.... We'll televise it too, on national television. I want the world to see."

So Finch traveled to Arizona to face Bonds in spring training, and after he watched several of her pitches fly by, the raillery stopped. He insisted that the cameras not film him batting against her. Finch shot pitch after pitch past Bonds as his Giants teammates pronounced them strikes. "That's a ball!" Bonds pleaded, to which one of his teammates replied, "Barry, you've got 12 umpires back here."

Bonds watched dozens of strikes go by without so much as swinging. Not until Finch began to tell Bonds what pitches were coming did he tap a meek foul ball a few feet. He taunted her, "Go on, throw the cheese!" She did, and blew it right past him.

Finch visited Alex Rodriguez, who was then starring for the Rangers, at another spring-training park, in 2003, and Rodriguez watched over her shoulder as she threw warmup pitches to a Texas bullpen catcher. The catcher missed three of the first five throws. Before Rodriguez stepped into the batter's box, he made it clear he wouldn't dare swing at any of Finch's pitches. He leaned forward and told her, "No one's going to make a fool out of me."

*****

For four decades, scientists have been constructing a picture of how elite athletes intercept speeding objects. The intuitive explanation is that the Albert Pujolses and Roger Federers of the world simply have the genetic gift of quicker reflexes, which give them more time to react to the ball. Except that isn't true.

When people are tested for their simple reaction time -- how fast they can press a button in response to a light -- most of them, whether they are teachers, lawyers or pro athletes, take around 200 milliseconds, or one fifth of a second. That is about the minimum time it takes for the retina at the back of the human eye to receive information, for that information to be conveyed across synapses -- the gaps between neurons, each of which takes a few milliseconds to cross -- to the primary visual cortex in the back of the brain, and for the brain to send a message to the spinal cord that puts the muscles in motion. All this happens in the blink of an eye. (It takes 150 milliseconds just to execute a blink when a light is shone in your face.) But as quick as 200 milliseconds is, in the realm of 100-mph baseball pitches and 140-mph tennis serves, it is far too slow.

Sassy wrote:Yea, but in softball they are throwing towards you.   In tennis they are serving at different angles and you don't know what angle they are going to serve.  You have also got to get it back within a very constrained space, not just whack it, and it has to have spin etc.

Original Quill wrote:

Sassy wrote:Yea, but in softball they are throwing towards you.   In tennis they are serving at different angles and you don't know what angle they are going to serve.  You have also got to get it back within a very constrained space, not just whack it, and it has to have spin etc.

I think the same thing happens in softball. The pitcher isn't exactly dishing up fat/slow balloons. There's a lot to pitching: fast-ball, off-speed, rise-ball, drop-ball, inside, outside pitches, fast curves, slow curves. In fact, those are the things that I say women excel at.

Anyway, we have hijacked this thread. We should continue this over on sports.

veya_victaous wrote:LOLZ

was just down at the Pub for Lunch and what did they have on the TV?
Softball (American)

Sorry Quill that game is SLOW.
But so is baseball   

groomsy wrote:so what country is getting stupider?

it cant be amurica! we are already there

veya_victaous wrote:LOLZ

was just down at the Pub for Lunch and what did they have on the TV?
Softball (American)

Sorry Quill that game is SLOW.
But so is baseball   

veya_victaous wrote:

groomsy wrote:so what country is getting stupider?

it cant be amurica! we are already there

England!!!!! Apparently a lot of them voted for UKip         

veya_victaous wrote:

groomsy wrote:so what country is getting stupider?

it cant be amurica! we are already there

England!!!!! Apparently a lot of them voted for UKip