The first Baseball in Chippewa Falls

Looks like spring is on the way.  And, although I no longer follow it closely, that means baseball.  I've been meaning for some time to write a bit about early baseball in my town of Chippewa Falls, and was pleased to find an Old Timers reminiscence in a 1905 newspaper that basically did my work for me.  It discusses the purported arrival of the game in 1867.  After a few preliminaries it begins:

Some prominent names on that list.  Coleman has a street named after him, Stillson a school.  Taylor ran the ferry across the river and was the fire chief.  

The comment was made that most of these men were former soldiers, and that they played without mitts or masks; with a somewhat larger ball that was thrown underhand.  The playing field was improvised, just an open space between Bridge and Bay streets.

The first game was refereed by a visiting agent for the Chicago Times who supposedly gave it a big write up in his paper and left with a long list of new subscribers.  The Chippewa team played regularly, almost every afternoon in fact.  But of course a challenger was not long in arriving:

We need to read between the lines a bit here.  It seems as if the local boys played a spirited style of baseball in all senses.  Old Mose Hebert has turned up a few times in my historical writings.  He ran one of the first and most patronized saloons in town.

In some fashion the Eau Claire team tried to get their Chippewa rivals drunk past their usual levels.  Alas, to no avail.  And it turned out to be the Eau Claire nine that came up on the short end of the score, and with the bigger headaches the next day!

That seems to have been the high point of the 1867 season.  Soon afterwards:

Baseball has been played every year since then, although these days it has a fair bit of competition from soccer and other sports.  A complete history of it would be a major undertaking and probably of limited interest.  But one final snippet.

I spend some time studying old maps.  On a "Birdseye View" from 1906 - one year after this historical rambling - you can see what I think was the first official ball field in town.  Its on the south side of town and is labeled "Athletic Park"

I can't say how early it went back, but I can report that a ball field was still there in the early 1990's when my son was playing.  It was seldom used, there being newer and better facilities around, and was tucked in behind the City Shops and yard waste dump.   The field is now gone, with the last remnant - a disused concessions stand - finally being removed just a few years ago.

WEEK ZERO

The robotics team has a big tournament coming up. In fact, two weeks from today it will be done.  This is in what is called Week One of the FIRST robotics competition season.  Five more weekends events follow.

If you have your robot working, or more commonly, mostly working, there are opportunities to run it in a pre-season event called a Week Zero.  The field is a bit more plywood than aluminum and polycarbonate, but close enough for a practice event.  

Last year we could not make it.  Our robot was falling apart.  The year before, ditto.  Over the roughly ten seasons of the team's existence we've only managed a Week Zero twice.  As it is an excellent way to see what  works and what does not, its pretty valuable and attending one was not just a goal this year but a Prime Directive.  So off we went.  

Some things worked, some needed work.

Here's the on the field drivers meeting at the start of the day.  40 teams signed up, but a few were kept away by a spate of nasty weather the night before.

And out onto the field.  We managed to "answer the bell" for the first match of the season for anyone!

We knew our software team had not yet had time to get most of the control systems tuned up, or in some cases operational at all.  On the other hand, our mechanical build seems rock solid.  If you are, in effect, a big clumsy oaf crashing into things it helps to be durable! 

Our system for intaking those sections of PVC pipes is particularly twitchy.  Unexpectedly, when teams "miss" - and often as not this was us - and they pile up in front of the station, it gets hard to acquire them.  A short lived and very unsuccessful kludge solution was tried.

A good trip, much was learned.  We have a lot of work to do in the next ten days but we know what it is.  As software did their secret rituals in another corner of the room the 5826 pit crew was able to briefly engage in their traditional idles moments Uno game.

History Underfoot

I'm doing another community ed talk next month.  It's called History Underfoot, and will cover the archaeological record of our town.  If you are local and interested, contact: Cardinal Community Learning Center.  I'm told sign up is such we'll be moving to a bigger space.

Of course a place that was started in the 1840's and was a boom town during the lumbering era will have History, but much less that what I encounter on my annual archaeology jaunts to work Roman sites in England.  But that does not make it less interesting, and it is fascinating to compare early accounts, early images, and what the record of artifacts actually shows you.

Did lumberjacks coming to town really blow their wages on booze?  How early do you start finding evidence of women and children in the community, and what would that consist of?

It's all "underfoot" at least in places where newer buildings and public works have not destroyed it.

In earlier days I spent a fair bit of time excavating trash pits, cisterns, and yes, outhouses to see what had been tossed heedlessly or dropped and regretted.  

In the course of prepping the talk I looked at, for the first time in decades, pictures of my friends and I circa mid 1980's, happily digging away.  It's interesting stuff.  

Ah, good times, good times.  So, could my 68 year old self still grab a shovel and go straight down six or seven feet?  Heck yes.  I in fact still have the short handled shovel seen in the above vintage pics.  It's been repaired a few times, but still sits patiently in the corner of the garage just in case......

Oafs of Middle Earth

J.R.R. Tolkien probably does not follow my writings.  He did after all die in 1973, about when I discovered his work for the first time.  But you never know.  As a devout Christian who did much to promote the faith I'd give him decent odds of being in Heaven where he could probably pick and chose.  Or, eternal justice being a bit opaque, maybe he went to Hell and he's being forced to read this.  You just never know.

So I'll ask, not exactly expecting a reply, J.R.R., why did you decide that the oldest, wisest, most far seeing race in Middle Earth should be called The Oafs?

Well actually, The Elves, but it is the same word.  And Tolkien being a master of etymology would darn well know this.

You have to think of early Germanic cultures as a fairly consistent grouping, whether they were found in Scandinavia, northern England or back home in Germany.  And in such places there were some odd pre-Christian beliefs.  If a child was not turning out as expected it was sometimes assumed that it was a Changeling, a creature left by malicious non human beings who swiped the real baby and swapped in....something else.  It's not a nice concept.  Who knows what was really going on.  Did a previously peaceful child develop severe colic and keep the parents up for months at night?  Did the little bald head sprout red hair?  You could certainly see why both his black haired parents might use this as a go-to answer, although the mother and Sven the red headed guy who lived in the next hut might very well know better.

The beings that pulled off this hoax were variously called yrf, alf, alp, or of course, elf.

Sadly the extension of this concept to children who were not just inconvenient to Frida and Sven, but defective in various ways caused them to be called auf or opf.  Dating to the 1600s it meant 

 "A changeling; a foolish or otherwise defective child left by the fairies in place of another carried off." 

Tolkien's elves were not perfect.  They tended to be a bit smug for instance.  But you could not see them pulling off nasty pranks like this.  A good reminder that while it would be great to live in Middle Earth, living in the Germanic world that inspired it would not be very nice at all.

FIRST Robotics 2025 - Report Five

Robot needs to be operational on some level for a pre-season scrimmage on Saturday.  As of Thursday last week we had the manipulator systems working pretty well.  Here's video proof, albeit with humans pushing the thing around.  We've seen the drive base be capable for a week or so already.

The two halves of the robot were being bolted together at the end of Saturday session.

So, its coming along.  There's a whole bunch of wiring to do over the next few days, and we really hope everything works together as well as it did separately.  With a bit of luck - and of course more hard work - we'll get to the point where at least the adult coaches don't have that much to do.  This is actually a hard skill to master, but some of us are practicing up....

Greenland is not for Sale

It was a surprise to hear from him.  But it always is.  My mail, like everyone's these days, is mostly junk.  But there it was, an actual letter.  It was covered with odd stamps and had as the return address:  Badger Trowelsworthy, Arsuk Greenland.

The old scoundrel makes the occasional appearance here on Detritus of Empire.  A while back he may have even been incautious enough to have a photo taken...

I quote the peculiar missive with the usual caveats....Lord Trowelsworthy lives a life that sounds like poorly written fiction.  The things he clearly fibs about might actually be to make it sound more plausible.

As usual it was assembled from cut up books and magazines.  I've never actually seen a sample of his hand writing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Tim

Hope you remain hearty and hale in that rustic backwater called Wisconsin.  I really should drop in some time, but there is the pesky matter of the Statue of Limitations.  Congrats on the addition of a third grand child.  I've no doubt this one will be as endearing and Promising as the first two.  You've rejected this offer many a time, but as always, if there is ever a need to do something on their behalf - a bribe here, the threat of a broken knee cap there - say the word and it's done.  

As you know, my current residence is in Greenland.  By Jupiter I've not seen the place get so much press in ages.  Hard to believe that Don really wants to buy it.  But fear not.  I've told him its not for sale.

I own it and I'm keeping it.

I suppose this will come as a surprise to you.  How after all does one buy a country?  I mean without (too much) assistance from various organizations known only by their LETTERS?

Greenland is a small place.  I've been coming here since the 1920's.  So the tally of my children, grand children and great grand children is a not inconsequential percentage of the electorate.  Oh, not enough to get a majority in the Inasitsart but still a powerful political force.  But perhaps you've heard of the Voldugur Graelingur Party? (TW note: I had to look it up, it translates to The Mighty Badgers).  They had great success introducing a bill entitled - in translation - "Sod off, Orange Boy" that established a sovereign wealth fund to buy, well, everything.  It's true that the stuff in the footnotes about the entire transaction being financed by a crypto currency called BadgerCoin has been controversial......  And that's part of why I'm writing.  You will almost certainly be getting visits from unhappy and unimaginative officials who wonder why your name is on a whole batch of contracts and legal briefs.  Sorry, I'll make it up to you.

Lets get together soon.  Ideally in some happy place without extradition treaties but in a pinch just drop by our humble abode in Arsuk.  My current wife - and by Hera, I don't believe you've met this one - cooks up a mean Seal Tartar.

Until then;

Deny All

Your friend, mentor and fan,

Trowelsworthy

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You can believe as much of that as you care to.  In the interests of full disclosure I must mention that the letter smelled vaguely of sun screen, and that when I pieced together the cut out magazine bits (because I have learned a few things over our long acquaintance) it seems as if some of them came from the menu of a beach front sea food shack in Barbados.

With a bit of searching I found this image of it in the background.

punctuation-space-space-capital

I learned something recently.  As part of the robotics team's tournament prep we are doing a reference book to keep in the pit.  It's for judges coming around who want to see what we did and how we did it.  We've done something along these lines in the past, but this year we are making it more comprehensive, better illustrated, and hopefully loaded with material that will get the judgey types intrigued and coming back to learn more.

We are a fairly small team this year, so the student power available to do this is limited.  Actually building the robot takes priority after all.  So part of what I'm doing is interviewing the students working on various aspects of the project, taking notes, and hammering them into something readable.  Hey, you try to get busy kids to sit down at a keyboard.  Now try it with software types...

I'm the humble scribe, it is the students doing all the real work, which includes the photos and layout for the "pit book".  And our layout person asked me something interesting the other day.  "Did you know that you put double spaces between sentences?"

I said yes.....and then asked "Doesn't everyone?"  And the answer is no.  No they do not.  In fact in English class they now are taught to use single spaces.   Huh.  Never a good day unless you learn something.  Of course wanting it to be an even better day, I had to learn more.

Evidently using double spaces this way is a relic of the days of manual typewriters and I think, manual type setting for old style printing presses.  Since about 1950 there has been a trend to prefer the single space format.  So how did I miss this?

Well, I'm sure I heard about the new fangled way at some point.  But when?

Not at Lowell Elementary School.  Good grief, the beginning reader texts there were "Dick, Jane and Sally" books.  I even remember a notoriously inappropriate book involving a young person of color and some tigers.  Modern writing?  Nothing of the sort.  They were still trying to teach us elegant cursive.

So how about middle school?  It was called Junior High back then and I remember it being a modern day Bedlam in which I learned very little.  I did, however, spend a little time in Industrial Ed class setting older than old school metal type for printing.....

I did attend a high school that took academics more seriously.  So why didn't any English teacher raise this point?  I think its because we wrote our assignments by hand.  Ah, but I took typing class.  Yes, surely it would have been mentioned then?  Nope.  The teacher was both old and old school.  I remember her having a beehive hairdo.  I might have been a bit of a teacher's pet, being the only guy in the class.  What I learned there has served me well.  The fingers know what to do, and I can generally think and type simultaneously.*

Although the single spaced mandate has gone out, it seems to be inconsistent.  Plenty of books written in recent years still double space.  And since I'm now paying close attention to this, I note several of my colleagues, who are younger and have less excuse, do also.

While I have to concede that the single space rule is considered modern and correct, I also maintain that it is modern and foolish.  It may be part of why reading comprehension is atrocious these days.  Lets go through what writing structure used to be, and why.

Words.  They give you context.  I say "orangutan" and you start thinking of a big ol' orange monkey.

Sentences. They convey an idea.  Hopefully with clarity. "The orangutan threw a bowling ball at me."

Paragraphs.  This is where the actual story begins.  Ideas linked to other ideas.  "I was seriously hung over that Tuesday morning.  So when I stepped out the door into the blistering Moroccan sun I was unwary.  And it happened again.  The orangutan threw a bowling ball at me."

Each sentence is like flipping over another card.  It shows you something new which relates to what came before and what might come after.  Slurring these together even by a single space damages the timing of the entire sequence.  Think of this next time you hear a young person reading anything aloud.

Ah well.  Maybe it matters not.  What written communication I see in the younger generation is largely electronic.  Most texts are a single sentence.  Or a word.  Or a few letters and an emoji.  To actually care about how written narratives work you'd have to be old and eccentric.

Which I remain, and proudly.

* I'm finding that it is getting easier to simultaneously think of what to write and to type it at the same time.  Either my keyboarding abilities are improving with practice or my brain is slowing down with age.