A's vs. Blues

From a centrefielder's viewpoint, this was a lousy game. I did not have one ball hit to me. From a pitcher's point of view, it was nearly a perfect game. Denis McNicol pitched a gem on Thursday night against the Blues, a 2-hitter. The A's ended up winning the game 4-1.

After going perfect through 4 innings, McNicol gave up a line shot to right field. With an excellent diving attempt by Martin Desjardins, the ball bounced in and out of his glove. Blad, of the Blues, took advantage of the dropped ball and moved to second on the play. With the scorekeepers still scratching their head as to whether or not an error should be charged on the play, Kelly Burchill hit a bloop single to help score the Blues only run of the game.

The A's had jumped to an early lead. With the bases loaded, I hit a hard grounder to 2nd base. The 2nd baseman had bobbled the ball, and everyone was going to be safe on the bases. Thanks to some heads-up baserunning by McNicol, he was able to score from 2nd on the infield error. The A's were up 2-0 after one.

The A's continued their hot sticks in the 2nd inning. They managed to score 2 more runs on some nice hits. Unfortunately, the A's were playing with only 8 batters, so they had to deal with an automatic out. This out seemed to stall any sort of rally that we would have in the later innings.

Jason Smith, of the Guzzlers, pitched for the Blues. He had struggled early in the game with his control, hitting two batters, but settled down nicely after some encouraging words from Steve Walman, "Keep pitching... don't worry about the hit batters. Just focus on pitching". Steve's words seemed to work as Smith was able to settle down and keep the A's bats quiet for the rest of the game.

The player of the game had to be McNicol. From a centrefield perspective, he was hitting the glove on most occasions. His curveball was working, and he seemed to control the outer half of the plate. It seemed, if he fell behind at all, he could always go back to that pitch on the outside.

The A's look forward to their upcoming game against the Rogues. This will mark the return of Will Mood from his 2 game suspension for throwing a bat.

Downtown is hot!!!

The downtown market is hot! As I usually do, I check the prices on mls.ca regularly and noticed that there was a property listed on Arlington. It was a semi-detached, so it is a direct comparable to the property that I had purchased in February. I contacted Jeff, my real estate man, to possibly scope out the place. I wouldn't mind stealing a couple of ideas to make the home worth that particular listing price. It would give me a good idea on how to budget myself.

Unfortunately, the place has already sold! There is a conditional sale on the place, but given the fact that the property was sold in 5 days, there is a good chance the property went for list price or even higher. The offers were presented only a couple of days ago. I'm hoping this means that I can make a lot of money.

I purchased my place for $200,500. This place was listed at $300,000. I've only been able to see $$$ all day!

A's initiate Ed Taylor's Team

When a rookie joins a team, existing players will often torment their new teammates with some form of hazing. When Ed Taylor's Team joined the BMFL, the A's could think of no better way than to beat EDT. On Sunday night, the A's faced off against EDT and won 8-4.

Much credit needs to be given to EDT. They had the lead late into the game with some good pitching from Mike Goodfellow. They had given the A's a run for their money, and kept the game in their favour for most of the game. Unfortunately, in the top half of the 7th inning, the A's exploded for 6 runs.

Crazy Will led off the inning with a surprising triple. This seemed to motivate the A's hitters as they kept pounding away at cutting the 4-2 lead that EDT had built up. When it was all said and done, the A's proved again that they can never be counted out.

The A's started the game without centre-fielder Will Mood. Will was serving game 1 of his 2 game suspension. As he is usually our clean-up hitter, the A's had a huge offensive hole in their line-up. The slack would have to be picked up by the rest of the roster. In addition, Shelley Howard's recent ankle injury has limited the A's defensive options. Clearly, the A's would have to pull up their socks and grind out a win.

The A's missed many opportunities in the game to score and build a lead. With runners in scoring position, A's batters got stymied and struck out at keys times. They were not capitalizing on their opportunities. Thankfully, they were able to find their touch before the end of the game.

The A's play the Blues on Thursday night at 9pm.

I survived!!!

For those that knew, I survived. For those that didn't, I went skydiving today and made it!

Lowe dominant again

After giving up a first pitch hit, thus ending Lowe's no hit streak, Will settled down nicely to lead Exit Realty to a 4-1?? victory against the Guzzlers. In a game where Exit lost one of their game-breakers, Exit was never quite able to break the game open. With the bases usually pretty full, Exit was never able capitalize with a timely base hit. Their bats have yet to awaken this spring.

Moody Mood

In a game where umpires made us scratch our heads, Will Mood grounded out and, in frustration, threw his bat against the nearby fence. Without hesitation, Mood was tossed from the game and is doubtful for the next game contingent on a review of the league's constitution. Losing Will will be a huge loss for us, so lets hope that the rest of Exit Realty's bats pick up the slack.

In the second inning with one strike, Lowe had thrown a nice strike on the corner of the plate. Surprisingly, from behing the plate we heard, "YOU'RE OUT!!!". Did the umpire just call a strikeout with just 2 strikes??? Clearly, we were going to have a long night with some of the calls from behind the plate.

Equally head-numbing was when Will Mood was at the plate for the first time. The first pitch came in and the ball missed the plate; the umpire announced ball 1. The second pitch was a riseball and went over the catcher's head to the backstop, the count was 1-1. WTF??? Again, it appeared as if something was missed. Mood was getting a little Moody.

At his second plate appearance, there was another call that was unfavorable to Mood. A ball seemed low and away, but it was called a strike. Mood grounded out shortly thereafter, and in frustration threw his bat against the fence.

Most nights, blue does not get a lot of respect. They have a tough job and, naturally, with so many judgement calls, they will be questioned on a regular basis. It's a thankless job, but for the most part, most mistakes can be forgiven. On nights where arithmetic becomes a problem, I begin to have a problem. I can accept a wrong call on a judgement play, but calling a strikeout with only 2 strikes is unfair to both teams in the game. Granted, the call was in our favour, but the attention of the game changes from the game itself to the men wearing blue.

Busy weekend ahead...

2 games tonight - Exit Realty vs. Guzzlers, Eagles vs. Orleans
1 game Friday - Eagles vs. WC Electric
2 games Saturday - Williamburg tourney
1 Skydive Sunday
1 game Sunday - Exit Realty vs. Ed Taylor's Team
1 game Monday - Eagles vs. Manotick Lomor Printers

check this out...

http://www.greelydntweagles.ca

Living room furniture

Ok. I might be getting ahead of myself a little bit. I haven't quite set out a budget for my new place. I had some time before some of my fastball games this week, so I stopped by a couple of furniture stores. These are some of the items that I happend to like.

I will likely be definitely getting a sofa.

I might get the loveseat. I have to check my room dimensions again.

I am hesitant to purchase the chair as I might want to purchase a recliner instead, if not now, in the future. If I don't have room for the loveseat, I will probably go with the chair option.

This is how it can look all together...

No-No for Will Lowe

Will Lowe (buck-rider, not A's pitcher)

Congrats on my teammate Will Lowe for throwing a no hitter last week. Will pitched for the Blues last week and threw up a doughnut against the Rogues. It's nice that he's sharp this early in the season. The trick will be to try to get him to do it when he's pitches for our team. Hopefully, the new jerseys will pump him up.

Howdy Neighbour

OK. I've had another brain wave. I have to thank my real estate agent for this one. Jeff called me the other day to let me know that he has recently sold one of his properties. He had just purchased it, but decided to flip it as he was going to turn a nice little profit.

The downtown market is still hot. There are parts of the city where housing prices are certainly cooling off, but the downtown core is where it is at. This is where the brain wave comes in.

I'm going to visit my neighbour. The home that I purchased is a semi-detached and it yields a nice return on my investment. The rental income is great. I even end up with some positive cash flow on a monthly basis. This is fairly rare in the real estate world. Real estate is very cash hungry. It takes a lot of cash to make any money.

I want to visit my neighbor to see how much he is willing to sell his half of the house for. I'd like to know because having the whole building will be much better than just one half. If I wanted to do some work to the exterior for example, I will not have to consult with my neighbour about performing the repairs.

Now, I know I do not have the money right now. I'd have to sell my house in Stittsville. Although I've had it pretty good with the tenants, I want to maximize my investment by getting deeper in the downtown market. I'd hope that I could sell the house in Stittsville and use the proceeds to purchase the house downtown. There are a lot of steps required for this to happen, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to at least communicate with my neighbour about the possibilities of him selling. I think it is simply another rental property, so hopefully he doesn't mind taking some profits off of the table.

A's lose last game

The shirts have been fitted, the order will be placed, the A's will disappear. Exit Realty will be providing shirts and hats to the fastball club formerly known as the A's.

The A's played against the Knights tonight in a game where both teams did not look very sharp. There were mental errors on both sides, yet the game remained tight between last year's playoff finalists. The final score was 3-2 in favour of the Knights.

Early in the game, the Knights had loaded the bases and threatened to score some runs, but could not break the game open. The A's had struggled against Knights pitcher Ryan Cox for most of the night. Ryan's mix of speed kept the hitters off balance and limited their run production.

The game was 1-0 for most of the game. The Knights made it 2-0 in the top of the 6th, but the A's rallied in the bottom half and tied the game at 2-2. With the bases loaded, the A's looked poised to steal the game away from the Knights. I had made a baserunning error when I had thought the ball crossed the plate for ball 4. In fact, it was only ball 3 and the Knights were able to get out of the inning unscathed.

With the momentum from escaping possible danger, the Knights took full advantage in the top of the 7th and ended up scoring a run. With a man on third, the Knights batter had struck out but there was a passed ball. The A's were fortunate that there was some confusion on the batter's part, and were able to throw out the batter before the run from 3rd had counted. The A's would only be down by one run in the bottom of the 7th. With the strong bats of the A's, this was a real opportunity.

Unfortunately, the A's could only muster one hit in the bottom of the inning. They have not reached their championship form. Hopefully, the A's will be able to shake off the cobwebs in the coming weeks.

Johnny B. Good for Good ol' Boys

Last Thursday, in their season opener, Exit Realty tied their first game of the season 8-8 against the Good Ol' Boys. Exit was solid at the plate as demonstrated by their 8 runs, but ultimately could not prevent GOB from doing the same.

After taking an early lead, Exit was up 8-5 going into the bottom of the 7th. With a comfortable lead for their ace pitcher, Will Lowe, Exit looked like it was going to start the season strong. Unfortunately, Lowe struggled a little bit by given up a couple of base runners. He seemed to have regained his composure after he went up 2 strikes against the always dangerous John Tremblay. Unfortunately, Lowe missed his spot and gave up a solid shot to right-centre field. The ball was hit high and seemed to have just carried beyond the reach of centre-fielder Chad Featherstone. Tremblay had just hit a game-tying 3 run homerun.

Fortunately, Exit avoided complete collapse and managed to shut down the GOB's in the rest of the inning. Team Captain, Terry Jones, seemed particularly upset about the game. "We had that one!", exclaimed Jones. "We're ahead of where we were last year" retorted a positive Will Mood. "We lost our opener against these guys last year".

Exit Realty looks to rebound on Thursday night against the regular season champions, the Knights. Although many of the Knights and members of Exit Realty get along very well off the field, be prepared for a war on the field as the competitiveness between these players is very high. The Knights will be looking forward to avenging their loss in the finals of the BMFL playoffs to the A's.

A's gone, Exit in

It looks like the A's will be no longer. After many years of going under the Wally's A's moniker, the team has benefitted from some tremendous generosity from their 2nd baseman, Albert "AJ" Plant. AJ is the broker of record of Exit Realty. With a strength in the east-end of Ottawa, Exit provides a full range of brokerage services.

The A's were overdue for some new wear. With different players having different green jerseys from over the years, there were some players that had no jersey at all. As defending champs, it will be great to look like defending champions, or, at least, a team.

The jerseys were not available for the first game as there has been some "delays" in the procurement process. (ie. AJ didn't know when the season started). Hopefully, Exit will be able to show their new stuff within the next couple of weeks.

A's return to defend title on Thursday

Wally's A's return to the ball diamond after a long, long snowy winter. After dusting their equipment off, the A's look to return to BMFL supremacy. This year there are 11 returning players. There are only two players that are missing from our championship team, Dave Millette and Noel Hayes. Although these two players were instrumental to our playoff championship, we could not keep them as we had acquired them from the reserve list last year. This meant that they had to return to the BMFL through the draft. From my understanding, injury and a European vacation are to blame for their non-committal to play in the BMFL so far this year.

As a result, the A's have decided to go with a roster of 12 players this year. In order to do this, the A's have drafted Scott Cassidy. The A's felt confident in their selection after calling Scott to tell him the news. "When do we play?" asked an eager Cassidy. Secondly, "what do I do about beer?" was Scott's immediate second question. There is no question that Scott will fit in well with the A's.

The only major question this year is whether or not the team will remain called "Wally's A's". Numerous reports suggest that a mini, mini-Eugene Melnyk is thinking about sponsoring the team. Overdue for a fashion revival, the A's are hoping to go under the moniker of "Exit Realty" and acquiring some new jerseys to look as good as they play.

The A's open the season against the Good Ol' Boys on Thursday. GOB usually provides for a good game as they have some of the best hitters in the league. The key to the game for the A's will be to stay sharp defensively and keep the GOB on the pine and not the bases.

Norm Macdonald

Norm Macdonald is the shit.