Speaking of the AAU, here is a clip from last year’s tournament, semi-final game between Team Minnesota and the NY Gremlins. In this clip, Todd Budke triples home Rhys Casley for a run, though Minnesota would come back to win the game and advance to the championship game against the eventual champions, Mac’s Marauders.
Click here to watch this video in high quality.
Here’s a YouTube clip of Anthony Martinez of the Santa Barbara Bucks homering in a SCIFL league game against the So Cal Hustlers, at Little Lake Park in Santa Fe Springs, July 26, 2008.
I got to pinch-hit against Anthony in the game, and reminded him that I had the video. You think he’d lay one in there for me? Not a chance. Good morning, good afternoon and good night. Sit down, Mr. Videoman. I threatened to auction this footage on eBay after that 🙂 . But in the spirit of Christmas, Anthony, here it is.
For bonus points, can anyone i.d. the runners that score ahead of him?
(Young Vin Scully in Brooklyn)
We send along our birthday greetings to Hall of Fame Baseball announcer, Vin Scully, who celebrates his 81st birthday today, with fifty-eight (58) years behind the mike for the Dodgers. His career as the Dodgers announcer started in 1950. Eight seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers, fifty with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He is as reliable as the seasons, a touchstone of life, as time goes by.
One of my favorite Vin Scully quotes underscores baseball’s connection to life:
“Andre Dawson has a bruised knee and is listed as day-to-day (pause). Aren’t we all?”
Click here to listen to Vin’s famous call
of the last inning of Sandy Koufax’s first no-hitter on June 30, 1962
From his National Baseball Hall of Fame biography:
Scully’s remarkable tenure as the “Voice of the Dodgers” began in 1950 when he joined Red Barber as a member of the Brooklyn club’s radio team. Scully followed the Dodgers’ move west in 1958. As Scully recalled: “Red was my teacher … and my father. I don’t know—I might have been the son he never had. It wasn’t so much that he taught me how to broadcast. It was an attitude. Get to the park early. Do your homework. Be prepared. Be accurate. He was a stickler for that. He cared. He was very much a taskmaster, or I might have developed bad habits.”
Many adjectives have been used to describe Scully and his style since his declaration to a teacher at the age of eight of his ambition to become a sports announcer: entertaining, precise, proficient, charming, friendly, outgoing, smooth, relaxed, warm, knowledgeable, intelligent, literate, concise, well-prepared, colorful. Los Angeles Times columnist and J.G. Taylor Spink Award winner Jim Murray once called him “the Fordham Thrush with the .400 larynx.”
Scully has covered many of baseball’s most thrilling moments, including Sandy Koufax’s four no-hitters, Hank Aaron’s 715th home run, Maury Wills’s 104 stolen bases, Don Drysdale’s and Orel Hershiser’s scoreless inning streaks, and Kirk Gibson’s dramatic home run in Game One of the 1988 World Series.
For a bit more on his illustrious career, click here.
(He is an honorary member of the Ballparkradio broadcast crew)
Speaking of radio broadcasts, Ballparkradio will be on the air again in Orlando – 2009 being our sixth consecutive year of bringing you live AAU broadcasts. Back for his third year, and heading things up will be broadcaster Kyle Smith, now a fixture on the ISC II broadcasts during the summer, and featured broadcaster at this past summer’s ISF Jr. Men’s World Championships from Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. Keep an eye out for the Ballparkradio schedule of broadcasts for the 2009, which will be the largest field of teams ever, at forty !
(click logo to visit Ballparkradio.com website)
Here’s a short clip of Kyle Smith, with yours truly, broadcasting at the 2008 ISF Jr. World Championships in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. Remember you can view in high quality by clicking the little YouTube logo in the lower right, after you start playing this video.
YouTube has gone wide screen. The old 4:3 “TV” format has been upgraded to a wide screen version. (16:9)
Want to see what it looks like? Revisit Dean Holoien’s grand slam at this year’s ISC World Tournament. To see the wide screen version, click the YouTube logo in the lower right hand corner of the photo below after starting the video with the the arrow button in the middle.
Dean Holoien, of Aspen Interiors of Saskatoon, Canada hits a grand slam home run against defending champions, The Farm Tavern of Madison Wisconsin at the 2008 ISC World Tournament at Kimberly, Wisconsin, August 15, 2008.
The grand slam came in the bottom of the 5th inning, with Aspen trailing 2-1, and catapulted Aspen into today’s winner’s bracket final against Kitchener. Scoring ahead of Holoien is the pinch runner for Keith Mackintosh, Ron Head, Carl Crawford and Dale Levy.
(Video by Jim Flanagan)Here is a look at the Aspen 5th in that game:
Aspen Interiors 6th – Hale B to lf. Mackintosh K singled. Crawford C walked; Mackintosh K advanced to second. Head R pinch ran for Mackintosh K. Lawton M pinch ran for Crawford C. / for Lawton M. Levy D walked; Lawton M advanced to second; Head R advanced to third. Holoien D homered, 4 RBI; Levy D scored; Lawton M scored; Head R scored. Mackintosh P struck out. Ethier T grounded out to 2b. O’Brien S flied
out to lf. 4 runs, 2 hits, 0 errors, 0 LOB.
Dean Holoien, of Aspen Interiors of Saskatoon, Canada hits a grand slam home run against defending champions, The Farm Tavern of Madison Wisconsin at the 2008 ISC World Tournament at Kimberly, Wisconsin, August 15, 2008.
The grand slam came in the bottom of the 5th inning, with Aspen trailing 2-1, and catapulted Aspen into today’s winner’s bracket final against Kitchener. Scoring ahead of Holoien is the pinch runner for Keith Mackintosh, Ron Head, Carl Crawford and Dale Levy.
(Video by Jim Flanagan)
If that one doesn’t work, try this direct link.
Here is a look at the Aspen 5th in that game:
Aspen Interiors 6th – Hale B to lf. Mackintosh K singled. Crawford C walked; Mackintosh K advanced to second. Head R pinch ran for Mackintosh K. Lawton M pinch ran for Crawford C. / for Lawton M. Levy D walked; Lawton M advanced to second; Head R advanced to third. Holoien D homered, 4 RBI; Levy D scored; Lawton M scored; Head R scored. Mackintosh P struck out. Ethier T grounded out to 2b. O’Brien S flied
out to lf. 4 runs, 2 hits, 0 errors, 0 LOB.
Editor’s note: We’lll be reloading this video and a few others this week, so check back if you’re still having problems viewing this one.
Just a reminder of the live Videocast from Missouri tonight:
Kelso Fastpitch vs. Southern Illinois Pirates from Royalton, Illinois – 8pm EDT Friday the 13th
KFVS-12, a CBS television station in Cape Girardeau, Mo. will webcast the first game of the Kelso Klassic this Friday night. Live. Kelso Fastpitch vs. Southern Illinois Pirates.
The webcast can be found on www.kfvs12.com by clicking on to sports and then webcast. The entire game will be shown and then archived.
For the complete story on the videocast in our earlier post, click here.
I. S. C. Video Archives Now Available
The Streaming and Broadcast Committee of the International Softball Congress is proud to announce that video archives of 37 ISC World Tournament fastball games are now available for on-demand web viewing. Starting with the championship game in the 2004 ISC World Tournament from Fargo, ND, the archival video library includes three games from the final day of the ISC World Tournament in 2005 from Eau Claire, WI., and continues through games from the 2007 World Tournament.
The expanded coverage of World Tournament games began in 2006, made possible by the design and procurement of a live video tele-production system, and by the subsequent launch of ISC-TV. Fifteen games are archived from 2006, and eighteen games are archived from the recently completed 2007 ISC World Tournament in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.
To view the games in the archive, go to the ISC Home Page, http://www.iscfastpitch.com/
and click the Sportsjuice / ISC icon at the bottom of the page.
To select a game from the video archive library, either select the most recent archive listed above the archive window, or click the down arrow in the archive window, and select the game of your choice. Viewers must have the Microsoft Windows Media Player installed on their computer, to play the ball game videos. To change between Full Screen mode, or other selectable video sizes, right click in the video image and then select. Once the game starts, to scroll to any point in the video, just click, hold, and drag the video progress slider button to any desired point in the time line.
The best news of all is that the on-demand archives do not appear to suffer from any of the buffering issues that plagued some fans during the streaming of ISC’s live broadcasts from the annual ISC world tournament.
“This public video archive of elite men’s fastpitch softball games is the largest collection in the history of the sport”, said Dave Blackburn, ISC-TV Producer. “It is the result of the hard work and collaborative effort of numerous dedicated ISC commissioners, specialists, and volunteers.”
“Our dual objectives are to satisfy the interests of fastball’s existing fan base while also exposing the sport to those who have not seen elite men’s fastball games of ISC World Tournament caliber”, Blackburn stated. “Hopefully, this exposure will help inspire a new generation of young male athletes to participate in the great sport of fastball,”
ISC Executive Director Ken Hackmeister was equally delighted. “The ISC is very happy to be able to provide this extensive video access to World Tournament games from 2004 through 2007. We are grateful to Dave Blackburn, and we commend his professionalism and dedication in making these archives a reality. In addition to greatly expanded sport exposure, these archived games could and should be utilized by teams as an outstanding player recruitment tool.”
In a related note, Dave Blackburn has announced that the number of hits for this year’s live broadcasts of I.S.C. World Tournament games totaled 58,963 a substantial increase from the 45,000 such hits during the 2006 World Tournament.
Comments, questions, or suggestions should be sent to isctv@yahoo.com.
Remind me not to have this guy fielding when I’m throwing BP !
A clip of some coverage of the KFC American Challenge, taken in July 2007 in Oklahoma City. Some familiar faces in this one —
Would be nice if it was men’s fastpitch in the lead-in, but plenty about the men’s team in the clip itself.