[Alsfastball] TidBits, Archive Crumbs, News, and other menu items

[Al Doran]

Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 20:24:28 -0400

From: Al Doran <aldoran at pmihrm.com>
Subject: TidBits, Archive Crumbs, News, and other menu items


For those not familiar with tidbits, its ballyard rumours, nothing
more. Maybe no fact here at all, but same kind of stories you hear in the
ballpark. Only those mentioned can confirm or deny these stories,
and traditionally they tell us nada, or hardly ever, but they can
straighten the story out any time.

We should add that there are guidelines for posting to the list and for
submitting TidBits, see them at:
http://www.alsfastball.com/webstart/news1.htm



Subscribers tell me that TidBits is the most read and most popular of all 
the items we send out to our subscriber list.

I am going to take advantage of that fact and ask that all subscribers take 
note that eScribe is still down, has been since about day two of the ISC's 
in Eau Claire, but we never missed a beat, thanks to Saint James of 
FastpitchWest.com, our good friend Jim Flanagan has provided us with an 
excellent back up site with http://fastpitchwest.com/alsfastball

As a bit of an update on eScribe I approached Scott Paterson, the owner of 
eScribe (a web service that hosts hundreds of other Lists in addition to 
Al's Fastball) and Scott declined all suggestions of selling the eScribe 
software and/or the Al's Fastball archive contents to us. This may mean 
that someday he may or may not plan to bring eScribe back. He has done it 
before, most recently in June 2004 when all 3 of his servers had to be 
replaced and he spent tens of thousands of dollars out of his own pocket to 
bring it back. The service was down for weeks while he installed new 
servers and recovered all the archived materials. It has been down for 
shorter periods of times due to other technical problems, but our latest 
loss of service is by far the longest and most frustrating.

As a further update, both Jim Flanagan and I are exploring other options 
for hosting an archive site for Al's Fastball news items. I will have a 
site to test this week and hopefully will soon be able to share with all 
the fans who hunger for news of our sport and also wish to search back in 
time to find articles of interest. What we posted to eScribe may be gone 
forever.

I am still getting daily emails and indeed even phone calls, asking "why is 
your site down", which drives me nuts as MY site has never gone down, and 
in fact if they went to http://www.AlsFastball.com they would see the link 
to the working archive site we have been using since the day eScribe went 
down, so please, bookmark http://fastpitchwest.com/alsfastball
and tell a friend about it.

If I had a dollar for every person who walked up to me in St. Thomas at the 
Canadians and asked "why is your site down" I could have bought an extra 
large order of PRAWNS - ouch, but that leads me to remind everyone to visit 
http://fastpitchwest.com/alsfastball if you want to see the latest feedback 
on the PRAWNS discussion.  A warning, I am NOT going to publish every short 
comment I receive on this topic, but will consider new material as it comes 
in. There are many people one can write to if they wish to express an 
opinion on whether they support or reject the PRAWNS idea or not, like Dean 
Holoien and Todd Martin who started the dialogue, or Ken Hackmeister on 
behalf of the ISC, he is always open to the thoughts and suggestions of the 
people who play and watch the game. Or for that matter your local ISC 
commissioner, especially if you are a ball player, all their email 
addresses are on the "Contact Us" link at the ISC web site - which I 
include in all my posts to the List.

At http://fastpitchwest.com/alsfastball you will find other news that you 
may have missed, including the sad passing of Joanne Welby on Thursday.


And now for the TidBits, which are always welcome here. Remember, pretend 
you are at the ISC's and listening in to a conversation two rows behind 
you. Its almost a year to go before we have that opportunity again, so 
share any reliable news you have with the rest of the fans.


I have this from a very reliable source, You Will see Ward Gosse of 
Newfoundland pitching for an ISC team in 2006!  You remember Ward 
Gosse?  He caught the attention of the Fastball world at the Canadians in 
St. Thomas when he pitched his Newfoundland Impact Signs right down to the 
Championship game on Sunday - winning a Silver for the popular team from 
the Rock. Ward and his team mates gave a large crowd of die hard fastball 
fans a week of pure enjoyment watching these boys play.  Well, in 2006 you 
will see Ward in an ISC uniform, we just do not know which one yet, he is 
still waiting for the phone to ring, and you can expect more than one team 
will call him. He is spending the winter on the Rock keeping in shape for 
spring and working with more future fastball stars in Newfoundland.


On that note, I am remiss in not thanking the host committee in St. Thomas 
Ontario for running a simply fantastic national championship. The softball 
gods are to be thanked for a spectacular week of great fastball weather, 
but a large group of very capable and motivated volunteers made it come off 
without a hitch.  Led by Bill Horne (who also found time to coach the gold 
medal winning host team) and by Scott Kennedy, nothing was left to 
chance.  Well done guys!  While I have never been good at writing down 
names, a couple I absolutely cannot miss out on are Gary Wren and his 
extremely capable assistants Dan, Tim, Debbie and Michelle, they ran the 
Stats trailer which I worked out of and where I received 100% cooperation 
on getting news out as fast as it happened.


More TidBits

The PRAWNS issue has complicated things in Owen Sound where things are very 
serious with the new Owen Sound / Denny Bruckert / Peter P team.

Notably, the price on players like Frank Cox and Mike Taylor probably 
doubled, as for some strange reason, they do not appear on the PRAWN list - 
hard to belive these guys have never won all world award before.

Most bets are on that Cox and Taylor, will end up playing along with 
buddies Rob and Sean O'Brien in either Owen Sound, or that other hotbed of 
fastball New York NY, and no, not with the NYY, but with Patsy's.

I am sure there will be more to come

p.s.


Please note that I have added on a Eulogy to Gord Newman at his tribute 
site, as given by his sons, Ty and Paul last year.
http://www.alsfastball.com/webstart/newman.htm

We miss you old buddy.


Al







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