Memory lane...

I had to slow down my stride during my run yesterday to traverse a very wet, mushy patch on the soccer field portion of my run. This spot happens to be right next to my childhood baseball field, Centennial Park.

I was just past the midpoint of my approximately 50 minute run up and down the hills of White Rock, so decided I would take a minute to catch my breath, and check out the old field. It's still a well used field during the spring and summer, and the surface is still almost the exact same as it was when I was 9-12 playing all my league and all-star games on it. It's where I hit my first home run, where went out to throw with my dad almost daily for a couple of years to bring me from the "minors" classification to the "majors", from a very so-so, non-driven 9 year old to one of the top pitchers in the province by the age of 12. It's where I began to love baseball.

I walked down onto the field, stepped on the mound, and shamelessly threw about 5 pitches, without a ball or glove, all strikes of course. I couldn't believe how damn close that 46 foot 12 year old mound looks now! I backed up a bit to right behind the mound... well, it's not much of a mound really, more flat with the grass making up the sides now.

This is a park that I still work out at. When I start my throwing program in January, I will likely utilize Centennial as one of the backstops I'll throw numerous beat up baseballs into for my regular off season arm building process.

It was a nice little 3-4 minute stop to allow my sweat to break and catch my breath. I guess you never forget some of those places that changed your life or sent you on a certain path. This is one of those for me. See you in January Centennial.

Life update, December 2010

Our first "family" picture...

Hello people.

I'm not going to apologize anymore for not remaining faithful to a daily or weekly blog routine, because, well, it's my damn blog and I can write when I want to.

Life's moving right along, I can't believe it's already the middle of freaking December. Where in the hell did November go?

Our (Shorty(wife) and I) November went something like this=

- Leon in Taiwan to finish baseball tournament (2nd in the ICC)

- Fly back to Holland for a day

- Fly to Oklahoma the next day

- Chill for a week with Shorty's family

- 40 hour drive in our trusty hybrid across the Rockies, Vancouver bound

- Claim a new dog, and love it to freakin' pieces

- Rekindle old friendships in Colorado

- Cross the border and officially make our car a Canadian

- Upon our return to Canada, freeze our asses off the first week

- Get back to work with pitching and hitting lessons

- Enjoy Canadian beer again

- Spend many hours and meals hanging out with my side of the family tree

- Hear some 'potentially' rediculously fantastic news from great friends

- December...

December = Similar to the last couple weeks of November =

- Lessons a few days a week to get by

- Planning for the new year

- Jam packing myself with 6 days a week of lessons for the new year

- Re-enrolling in University for Shorty, as well as working Softball lessons

- Drinking some more Canadian beer, maybe eggnog soon...

Life's going well. Basically right now we're trying to be there for our family member that need us, and raising a dog (who is freaking awesome by the way) to walk on a leash, interact well with other dogs and that's all going as well as we could hope. Time for a dog walk in the typical Vancouver winter weather, 8C and rain, weird (shaking head).

Well hey there... We are 2-0 in the Intercontinental Cup. A International baseball tournament with 10 teams, about 7 of which that are in the worlds top 13 rankings. Here are a couple pics of our national team at the opening ceremonies...

Like I said in my previous post, we rode into Taichung, Taiwan yesterday via the "High speed train". We got up to 360 km/h or 224 MPH.... crazy.

Anywho, the Intercontinental Cup starts tomorrow, barring any flack from Megi, the Super typhoon that is teasing the coast, about an hour away...

We play Italy tomorrow, and Nicaragua Sunday 6:30pm local time... which is 6:30am Eastern USA time. If you don't know how far you are off that time... google it here. Good news is, other that out first game against the Italians, you can watch the rest of our games live online. You can find them at http://hichannel.hinet.net/intercontinental/live.html .
It's an all Taiwanese website, so even though these games are on very early in Canada and USA, I don't know if I'd trust trying to find any games archived. I am *cough* not sure *cough* if I'll be starting against Nicaragua (read between the lines).
If you want more insight on these pictures, I put them up in a new facebook album too.... check it out!

Taiwan pictures #3

Captions to follow... tomorrow or... the next day.
This is a series of pics, in almost reverse order of us travelling from Taipei to Taichung on the High Speed rail (350 km/h)...

Taiwan pics #3...

The pitchers (all 11 of us) getting bullpens in, indoors because of the rain...

The bench... bags, stuff....

The field here in Taiwan, again soaked...

Same...

My beautiful new 'Emergency' passport. Taiwan has a rule that your passport needs to be valid for at least 6 more months once you enter the coutry (no idea why)... and mine is up in a couple months, so I had to go get a NOODPASSPOORT (dutch). To make my trip legal to Taiwan...

Taiwan Pictures #2

Post-practice in Taipei... L-R Nick Stuifbergen, Me, David Bergman

Me throwing against Japan, working for the first time with new national team catcher Shawn Zarraga...

Me on Taiwanese TV, getting ready to deal...

About to uncoil...

Soaked Tien-Mu stadium, 2 rainouts out of 3 potential games in our warmups for the Intercontinental Cup...

My bag...

Nice little backdrop at this field...

Foul ball...

Inside fastball...

Taiwan pictures... #1

We are in Taipei! Currently preparing for a tournament starting Saturday called the Intercontinental Cup. It's featuring the national teams from 10 countries - Japan, Cuba, Netherlands, Italy, Czech Republic, Nicaragua, Thailand, Hong Kong, Korea and the host, Taiwan.

I brought my little camera, and will try and pop a few more pictures than I have over the other tournaments this summer. These pictures are from our first full day, in which we also played our first game, an exhibition match against Japan. We got no-hit. I think landing 12 hours before the first pitch wasn't the best for our focus during this one...

I went 1 inning, 3 k's. I actually just had a chance to watch the game on TV here, it was a very boring game, specially because I can't understand a thing they're saying. Here's a few shots from out our window here on the 13th floor in downtown Taipei, and then a couple of the dugout pregame.