quite uneventful

that pretty much describes how my life has been going for the last week or so. Other than saying goodbye to numerous personalities and getting ready to say goodbye to more penn state friends when we start classes, my life has been consumed with one thing: win this essay contest. It wasn't so much that it was a normal essay contest, or I wouldn't be so adament about doing well on it. Rather, it was a challenge from an old English teacher who thought that I could benefit from not only reading the encyclopedia of a book called Atlas Shrugged; but also from being tortured on writing what will turn out to be close to a 10 page essay on it. It concerns me that the more I read this book, the more enjoyment I get out of reading it.

Today was, once again, very boring for the most part. Aside from working all day on reading and beginning to write this thing, I went out to hit golf balls, ran a few errands, and watched high stakes poker on GSN(for the first time in a long time). With this little break in the action, I've been able to keep up with sports for the most part. When school starts and I start working again, my sports knowledge will sink into oblivion, and my brother will constantly harass me about how many useless baseball statistics he knows. At the driving range today, I was absolutely killing the ball. As usual, my irons felt very smooth, and I think I fixed the problem with my driver. I was determined to find the lowest tee there and it didn't take me long to find one that looked like I could do some damage with. After the first few flopped swings with the driver, I realized that the key was to stand far enough away and swing furiously at the ball. And guess what? It works! I was slamming the ball 260 yards, right down the middle every time. It felt so good to get away from that stupid book and swinging a club and sending a ball flying 130 MPH will definitely give you a feeling of condescension. On high stakes poker, I was surprised to see that negreanu was still taking a beating. The problem with his play wasn't that people were getting out on him, it was that he was paying them off when he was obviously beat. One hand in particular sticks out in my mind: The flop was 2 4 6 with 2 diamonds, and negreanu had flopped a nut straight with eli elezra flopping a set of sixes. Negreanu bet, eli raised, and negreanu raised one more time and eli called. At this point, the worst hand that you can put your opponent on is two pair, or a huge pkt pair like kings or aces(which was def. feasible because eli was calling everything that day). The turn came a rainbow 5 and danny bet out 30k, which was called by eli. The river came the dread card, the 2. Negreanu checked, and eli bet 60k. Danny called, and eli showed him the winning full boat. How do you call in this spot? Is this a call that says "well, I know that I'm beat, but I just want to see how bad I got sucked out on so that I can mope about it?" Personally, I've made calls like that, but it just shows you how vulnerable even the greatest professionals are.

Tomorrow will be a smorgesbord(sp?) of activities. In under two hours, I have to drive my dad to the airport for his flight to nashville. Then, I have to get my brother to school, and run to about 6 places after that. That, combined with the fact that I'm only 20% done with this book that I need to read. Oh, and they're showing the main event part 2 tomorrow night. For two hours. Oh well, I might be catching late night reruns of that one.

For old time's sake, we'll put a poem in here. I actually found this somewhere and decided to make a few changes of my own to it. Enjoy.

If God had answered all my prayers
Edited by: Matt Hartman

If God had answered all my prayers
I’d be traveling the world in my own private yacht
Involved in several romantic affairs
With women whose beauty I longingly sought

If God had answered all my prayers
I’d have fame, fortune and beautiful weather
I’d sail along the coast of Spain,
And if inclined, stay there forever

But if God had answered all my prayers
There I’d be, a millionaire
Beneath the sun a world away
From where I met you that rainy day

mh

adios, amigo

I would like to start out by saying that the title refers to nayhouse. Many of you know him as "the jew", "moses", or "the only jew in baldwin". I have known the kid for about 15 years now, and tomorrow he is leaving to live down in oakland with another friend of mine, kevin ngo. I still remember the first day that I talked to him. I was just a shaggy haired lad who was more interested in going to baseball games to throw rocks at the fence than learn how to play baseball. I'm not going to give you details of every single thing that we did together, because blogger has a limit on its characters. With south baldwin all star baseball we were perenial losers. The two of us were usually two of the better players on the team, but there was little that we could do to help our lacksadisical squad. As teammates on squirrel hill and baldwin supercolt we had much better results. In 2004 our squirrel hill team was ranked #2 in the city of pittsburgh, yet we were bounced from the city playoffs in the first round. I recall all the vivid details of the game we lost 1-0 and how hard it was to say goodbye to people like phil, teddy, buddy, brandon, and shane. His house has been a second home to me, and sometimes even a first home. Throughout the years, I have lost contact with many of the people that I once considered good friends. Even after being a little more than a year removed from high school, I barely talk to anyone that I graduated with. I doubt that I will lose contact with nayhouse though. There is too much history and brotherhood to. Last year was sort of a test year of how I could do without some of my friends not being here. Now, most of my friends will be living somewhere but the south hills. The few remaining people that I will have to hang out with include bradburn, leigh, kloby, immekus, ben, and a few other underclassmen. Everyone else is going away. Change happens. It's an integral part of life, and I've come to know this. But by no means is change easy. Like the REO Speedwagon song said, roll with the changes. Damn right.

mh

rolling along

That sums up how my days have been going recently. The summer is winding down, and I really cannot complain about how I spent my summer. I hardly wasted any time and enjoyed the people that I spent the summer with. Yesterday, I was watching the history of the nayhouse family on this DVD that his family made, and I realized something. All of those smiling faces in the pictures have passed into the annals of time. I thought about what they would say if they could see those people for one last time. Do times change so much that old friends won't even be able to relate whenever they see each other in the future? How many people will I stop talking to before it is all said and done? Just something to ponder I guess.

Yesterday, I hung out with nayhouse and bradburn for awhile and then my family came over for my brother's birthday party. It is always good to see your family, because you probably only get to see them once a month at most during the year. Later that night, I went over stock's house and had a fun night.

Today, I was pretty lax for the first five hours of my day. I briefly helped sammy's dad in installing our new air conditioner, but he did the brunt of the work. At about 4, I went down ben's to play a slight alteration of baseball. My team lost both games and we decided to play some poker at about 8. The holdem game was frustrating because I couldn't get any cards and the one time I tried to steal the pot, brennan pondered a call for awhile with top pair and finally put it in. In between games, I bs'd with kloby and bradburn for awhile before side gaming started. Side games went something like this: For 2 hours, I dominated the table. In the last 10 minutes, a kid named berg went on one of the most impressive runs that I've seen. The kid played a lot of good poker and took advantage of his good fortune. That's why I love to play poker so much. You can get beat around for 2 hours straight, then come back and have a great run and end up on top for the night. As for me, I ended up dead even for the night. Sometimes getting to even for the night is a victory in itself. The damage could have been much worse, and I was glad that we stopped at midnight. I talked with ben for about an hour, then sprinted 1/2 a mile home in the lightning and pouring rain. Finally, I sat down and decided to do a blog post for the first time in a couple of days.

To end this post, I'd like to address another situation, that being about myself working at ace. Well actually, that would be a lack of myself working there. The relationship ended on terrible terms, and I'm not really going to go into it here, because anyone can read it here. I would just like to say thanks to the one true friend that I made out of the whole year long deal there, and that was mindy. We had a lot of fun there and made it a more lively place, no matter how bad a day either of us was having. People like angie, cara, drew, and larry lattner(who will prob. never read this) also made my long days there bearable. A big thanks to everyone who ever visited me down there in that prison of a work. A special thanks to nayhouse for almost getting kicked out repeatedly.

Until next time,
mh

po

Po: so when are you writing your next entry?
Po: cuz you better say my name in it
Po: just like make it the title

There you go po, you're famous now. Actually, if you're reading this(which you better, i dedicated a f*cking post to you) you're really cool and it's nice whenever we hang out together.

Anyways, the last few days have been not so exciting, hence no update. Sunday, nayhouse, ben, sarah, kathleen, po, and I went to kennywood. It was definitely worth the discounted rate of seven dollars that we had to pay for it. Actually, it was the most fun that I've had at kennywood for at least a few years. Monday, I attempted to fix my lawnmower and bradburn and I watched the lost episodes of dave chapelle. It's kinda sad to see such a great show go down like that, but it was enjoyable while it lasted. Later on, bradburn, po, ben, sarah, and I hung out in front of sarahs house and talked about a variety of topics. Tuesday, nayhouse and I got up early to play golf. I shot a 43 and he got a 52, which were career bests for both of us. Later on, bradburn, nayhouse and I went out to falconi field to watch the riverhounds scrimmage the columbus crew. It ended in a very indecisive draw, although the riverhounds dominated most of the game. On the way home, we stopped at EnP and nayhouse hit on our waitress(with help from me of course) and ended up getting her number. Just thought I should mention that random event and give him some props. Today, I did some work outside, then helped my mom clean and replace all of the screens in our house. At about 530, my brother, my dad, and I went golfing. I ended up shooting 42, which is a record for me on the front nine of the eighteen at SP. Afterwards, I went to west mifflin to hang out with some old friends. All in all, it's been a decent time since I posted last. I'm sad to see the summer unwinding, but also excited to get back to school.

Until next time,
mh

welcome back, welcome back

"There's something I noticed this week. You left the game, but the game didn't leave you."
-TM

The week at Cooperstown was thrilling to say the least. I have long records of what happened up there, but I'm going to briefly condense it. Opening ceremonies were cancelled on Saturday because of inclement weather. The tent at the park where everyone eats and hangs out almost blew over. The ceremonies began at 8:30 on Sunday morning. Lou, the founder of Dreams Park, gave his usual speech about life in general. He may be an ignorant guy that clears 5 million a year from this thing, but he is right about a few things. First, life is a lot like baseball. There are up days and down days and the best we can hope for is to somehow end up over .500 when all is said and done. Also, his remarks about having dreams were much appreciated. Basically, he summed it up as saying something to the effect of this: "Even if you strike out, eight batters later the dream is alive again." How true is that? How many times have you made a mistake and then are given a second, third, or fourth chance to fix things? Enough about Lou though. Our team, the West Jefferson Hills Wildcats, qualified for the final 5 out of 96 teams in a team competition called around the horn. It's one of the four skill competitions and the only one where the whole team has to be involved for the team to win. In the finals, we had the lowest time and we got the trophy. It was a great feeling to beat out 95 other teams to get there. Also, greg lost the race around the bases by 2 hundreths of a second. Our first game was at 4:00 pm against Brookfield. They were a team of 11 year olds that put up a pretty decent fight, but we eventually won the game 3-0. The rest of the first round was ups and downs, and eventually we finished 5-2, losing to mudville(AAU team from washington) and south san francisco(where one kid hit 2 homers to kill us). My brother pitched 2 games and was 2-0. He hit about .333 with a walk off grand slam in the last game. I'm not going to go into the details of every game, but you can find them at cooperstowndreamspark.com

In the playoff round, things got interesting. We got two byes and played at 6:00 pm against the utah eagles. We won that game 15-0 and we were ready for the next game. It was to be at 8:00 pm against the st. petersburg stingers from florida. To sum it up, they were the most obnoxious, second class team that I've ever seen. They swore at our coaches, threw at our players, punched our players, and yelled obscurities at our fans. They were supposed to be the #4 team in all of florida, but we gave them a little taste of pittsburgh baseball. In the first inning, greg hit a grand slam. I've never cheered louder in my life. It was cruise control from there on. Greg schneider threw one of the greatest games I have ever seen in my life. It reminded me of how great baseball is. He had 12 K's and no-hit them to shut them up. It's not the way that the game should be played, but it's incredibly satisfying to beat a team that is pompous.

Thursday morning, our run in the tournament ended. We were outclassed by the #1 team in the country, the central florida sun dogs. They were simply a better team, and they were classy about winning as well. It was a final of 11-5, but my brother did have a solo home run over the scoreboard as a last hoorah of sorts. He hit it so far that it went into some desolate marsh in cooperstown. I guess a part of all of us will always be in that field, or that marsh at least.

The rest of the ceremonies were uneventful, just a lot of picture taking and saying goodbyes. I could only smile as we pulled out of dreams park for perhaps the last time ever. The northern Kaatskill mountains dotted the terrain, but the image of those fields will stay in my memory for the rest of time.

I'll leave you with a song by Kenny Rogers. There's a twist to the song, and maybe you'll pick it up.

The Greatest
By: Kenny Rogers

Little boy in a baseball hat stands in the field with his ball and bat
Says, "I am the greatest player of them all"
Puts his bat on his shoulder and he tosses up his ball.
And the ball goes up and the ball comes down,
Swings his bat all the way around
The world so still you can hear the sound, the baseball falls to the ground.
Now the little boy doesn't say a word, picks up his ball he is undeterred.
Says, "I am the greatest that there has ever been"
And he grits his teeth and he tries again.
And the ball goes up and the ball comes down,
Swings his bat all the way around
The world so still you can hear the sound, the baseball falls to the ground.
He makes no excuses he shows no fear
He just closes his eyes and listens to the cheers.
Little boy he adjusts his hat, picks up his ball, stares at his bat
Says "I am the greatest when the game is on the line"
And he gives his all one last time.
And the ball goes up and the moon so bright
Swings his bat with all his might
The world's as still as still can be, the baseball falls
And that's strike three.
Now it's suppertime and his momma calls, little boy starts home with his bat and ball.
Says, "I am the greatest, that is a fact, But even I didn't know I could pitch like that!"
Says, "I am the greatest, that is understood, But even I didn't know I could pitch that good!"

mh