Congratulations to my Softball team, Glen Eira Saints!! Premiers 2011/12

It's not often that we give a blatent plug to particular teams (Apart from the SEMR team) but I have to congratulate my Glen Eira Saints womens team on winning the SEMR competition plate Grand Final today (31/3/12)
A fantastic team effort by all the girls and a well deserved win. Topped off by our pitcher, Keira, winning the best Grand Final players and then during the presentations, Kirby, was awarded the overall MVP for the season!! A brilliant effort!!!!!

Fantastic Effort Girls!! You all did Glen Eira very proud!!!!

Does Softball's Olympic Return Hinge on MLB?

Jennie Finch is a wife, a mother of two and a successful businesswoman. Since retiring from softball she's run the New York City marathon, written a book and launched an online store.
In other words, she's busy. But until her voice no longer resonates on the international stage, she will always make time to campaign to get softball reinstated onto the Olympic program.
Which is why she didn't just accept an award at the recent IOC World Conference on Women and Sport in Los Angeles, she used the opportunity to deliver an impassioned, emotional speech to some of the same IOC members who had voted her sport out of the Olympics in 2005.
"Honestly, I wish there was more I could do," Finch said after delivering the rousing speech. "I didn't really know if this was the right place to do this, but I figured I might not have a better opportunity to be in front of all these IOC members so it was now or never."

Finch's conclusion was a logical one. Softball was dropped from the Olympic program when it failed to garner a majority of the 105 votes cast. The final vote: 52-52 with one abstention was heartbreakingly close. One vote cost softball its spot on the Olympic program. And when you hear many of those IOC members mistakenly thought of softball as women's baseball, it's even sadder.
"A lot of the IOC members, for whatever reasons, kept seeing us as women's baseball," said Don Porter, the head of the International Softball Federation. "We tried to do everything we could to dispel that. Our sport is similar to baseball in a lot of ways, but it's also very different. To people that are not real familiar with it, sometimes they don't see that difference."
Baseball's problems were plentiful: performance-enhancing drug use, the refusal of Major League Baseball owners to allow their players to compete and even the length of the games.
OK, so education has to be the answer, right?
Explain the differences between softball and baseball to the IOC, show them how much passion there is for the sport, use celebrities such as Finch or ESPN commentator Jessica Mendoza to raise the visibility of the cause. That would be the play, right?

Not necessarily. Not at all, actually.
No, the IOC members Finch so eloquently and passionately pleaded with a few weeks ago in Los Angeles are not the people who need convincing.
The only group with enough clout to get softball back on the Olympic program? The 30 owners of major league baseball franchises and baseball commissioner Bud Selig.
Neither softball nor baseball is getting back onto the Olympic program until major league baseball decides it's willing to create a 10-day break in its schedule to allow its players to compete in the Olympics -- as the NHL does with hockey and the NBA and WNBA with basketball.
Softball's fate is tied to baseball, so the two sports need to present a united front in their effort to re-enter the Olympic program.
"The feeling is that it might be good to combine if it's going to be advantageous to both of us," Porter said. "The problem is, if major league baseball doesn't participate, then that's not going to be advantageous."
Why is it so important for major league baseball to allow its players to participate?

We like to think of the Olympics as the last bastion of amateur sports. But that hasn't been true for decades. The leaders of the Olympic movement care about the same things major league baseball owners do: profits, popularity, corporate sponsorships and television rights fees and ratings.
Just look at the two sports that were added to the program for the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro: golf and rugby. In other words, two sports that boast some of the most popular professional athletes on the planet. And those athletes will not only compete but walk in the Opening Ceremonies, boost television ratings and draw in new corporate sponsors.
"I think the IOC was also working towards looking at something different in the program," Porter said, diplomatically. "Different types of sports. Sports that they think would be more popular, for television, more sponsor interest."
Finch and Mendoza are probably the only softball players with any kind of Q-rating, and they have both retired from the national team. So talk of softball "going it alone" is somewhat naive in a world where the IOC has clearly put an emphasis on adding sports that would bring the world's most popular, marketable athletes to the Olympics.

It also doesn't fit with the IOC's guidelines, which recommend that each sport have a male and female competition -- a key reason women's boxing was added to the 2012 games.
"Unless they develop men's softball, they'll have to combine with baseball," said Ching-Kuo Wu, an IOC member from Taiwan who said he voted to retain softball in 2005.
"But baseball doesn't have women's baseball and softball doesn't have men's softball. So that's why the IOC recommended they go together in the first place. Support each other so they can become one sport. But it's not easy when you have two organizations."
No, the only way for softball to get back on the program is to partner with baseball and for the best baseball players in the world -- major league baseball players -- to participate in the summer games.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem like that will happen anytime soon.
"We remain committed to working alongside the International Baseball Federation to get baseball back into the Olympics as it should be," MLB spokesman Pat Courtney wrote in an e-mail.

"While the timing of the MLB schedule and the Summer Olympic program schedule has not been conducive to MLB players participating, MLB organizations have been very cooperative with non-major league roster players (vast pool of minor league and even 40-man players from each of the 30 Clubs) and will make every effort to cooperate in all ways feasible moving forward.
Riccardo Schiroli, a spokesman for the IBAF, also points out that many future major leaguers have competed in the Olympics.
"Team USA won their gold medal with Ben Sheets throwing a complete game in the championship game against Cuba. Team USA had Doug Mientkiewicz at first and at the time of the Games he had already played over 100 games in the big leagues," Schiroli said. "In those games Dave Nilsson was on Australia's roster and Sydney featured a few players who made it to the Majors in a matter of months: Daisuke Matsuzaka played for Japan, [Jose] Contreras was the ace on Cuba pitching staff and Jason Simontacchi represented Italy.
"Also, consider that professional players are not only the ones under contract with MLB organizations. NPB in Japan and KBO in South Korea provide pretty good competition. I would say that the fact these two teams competed for the trophy in the 2009 World Baseball Classic final is something we cannot forget."
All of these are good points. And all of them are especially valid considering the fact that soccer, by far the world's most popular sport, does not have its best players in the Olympics either. The men's Olympic soccer tournament is mostly an under-23 affair, with just three "over-age" players allowed on each roster.
The problem? It's a lot harder to get invited back onto the Olympic program than to stay there once you're in. It takes a simple majority to stay but two-thirds to get back in.

"There's this whole mechanism that you have to follow, but it's not impossible," said Nicole Hoevertsz, an IOC member from Aruba. "But I think we have to fight and continue making the efforts to fight and get softball back on the program."
There are a lot of people willing to take up that fight. Finch is ready and willing. So is Mendoza. Porter has been at it for seven years already. Softball-friendly IOC delegates like Wu and Hoevertsz will continue their support.
But it's time to consider whether the fight is being waged on the wrong battlefield. Or rather, on the wrong ball field.
Softball may have been dropped from the Olympic program because it was unfairly associated with baseball and its problems. But it might not be able to get back in without them.

By Ramona Shelbourne - ESPN March 14 2012

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The World Mourns The Loss Of Jim Stynes!

WONDERFUL. An inspiration. Sorely missed. An icon. A legend. A decent man and a mate.
From the thousands of tributes to Jim Stynes who died yesterday at the age of 45, many reiterated those words above yet each carried the individual impression of a person touched by a true great, not just in football but in life.
Stynes was that kind of person, many said. A man who made a big impact on individuals in private but also someone with a vision so grand that mastering a foreign football code became achievable, as did setting up a youth organisation called the Reach Foundation to help others fulfil their potential.
Kevin Sheedy, who has often described the Stynes story as the best in the indigenous code's 153-year history, stressed his admiration for the 1991 Brownlow medallist who strung together a record 244 consecutive games and later rescued the Melbourne Football Club from the brink of disaster after he became president.
"A superb person who has made an outstanding contribution to Australia and will be sorely missed," Sheedy said.

Yet Stynes, who was awarded an Order of Australia and thrice named Victorian of the Year, would be certain to stress his story was no more extraordinary than the challenges overcome by Liam Jurrah, the young Demon who now faces his own battle.
"I saw him first-hand in Yuendumu when we went up there in the Northern Territory to visit Liam Jurrah's family," former Essendon star Tim Watson said.
"I saw him for a couple of days there and he was struggling with his health and I was just amazed by the bravery and the courage he displayed up there."
Former teammate David Schwarz said it was Stynes's work with disadvantaged youth, more than his football ability, that set him apart.
"It was something that he was passionate about and it probably sums up the whole Jim Stynes story in that it was not about him, it was about all the people he could help," Schwarz said.
"It was amazing the effect that he had on lives that were normally just forgotten about or destroyed. He saved them, he resurrected the lives of many of these young kids who now, some of them we see as just beautiful people who have been given a second opportunity, all thanks to Jim Stynes."
Those street kids are not the only ones hurting. Melbourne's joint captains Jack Grimes and Jack Trengove are barely men and stood shattered yesterday at the MCG.

"He saved the Melbourne Football Club. He's definitely the most inspirational person I have ever met and probably ever will meet," Trengove said.
"You just assume (because of) how much of a fighter he is that he would be around, so you never thought this day would ever come.
"He had an impact on so many people and me personally, being able to speak to him and learn off him and realise how much of an impact he has had."
Julia Gillard expressed her sadness, as did the man she replaced as Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. Don McLardy, who assumed the Melbourne presidency from Stynes when he stepped down last month, penned a heartfelt tribute.
Robert DiPierdimenco, another Brownlow medallist, talked of being introduced to a then 14-year-old Stynes by Ron Barassi on a trip to Ireland and talked of his distress when he hugged him for the last time a week ago.
Sportsmen from around the globe expressed their dismay, Tour de France legend Lance Armstrong and Shane Warne among them.
The despair was also evident in his homeland. Paul Clarke, who captained Stynes in Gaelic football, told the Irish Examiner he would be remembered forever.

"We had heard he wasn't well in recent months but you just thought . . . that he was bulletproof," Clarke said.
Among the beautifully written and voiced tributes, it was AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou who delivered a line that best assesses the life of Stynes.
"It is an incredible story that if you wrote it, you couldn't believe it was anything other than fiction, yet all of it is true," he said.
"We are all the better for knowing Jim Stynes."
Stynes is survived by his wife, Samantha, and children Matisse and Tiernan.

Story by: Courtney Walsh - The Australian March 21, 2012

RIP JIMMY!!! A TRUE LEGEND AS A FOOTBALLER AND AN INSPIRATION AS A MAN!!!

YOU WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN!

Liam Jurrah - A tale of two conflicting cultures

LIAM Jurrah is cause for enormous pride among his people of Yuendumu. Nothing about his recent arrest will change that. It only reinforces that Jurrah’s tribal beliefs remain strong and inviolate.

The Northern Territory has produced many fine footballers. Maurice Rioli and Michael Long, who belong to the Tiwi Islands, just north of Darwin, are the obvious names. And there are many more.
But no central Australian tribal Aborigine from the bush has ever played in the AFL apart from Brisbane’s Daryl White, who was not strictly a bush boy.

Pulling a bush kid to the national game was a breakthrough, not for central Australian Aborigines, who always knew their boys were up to it, but for the AFL.
The AFL always knew that these boys who sometimes played bootless on red-dirt grounds were different. They instinctively knew that tribal matters - which is really just another way of saying “extended family” - ran deep.
It wasn’t just about the homesickness the players felt. It ran deeper. It was about the responsibility and worries an initiated young man such as Jurrah felt about leaving his family unprotected to the jealousies and rivalries of other clans in these small and sometimes vicious towns.   Those jealousies and rivalries are a 60,000-year-old tradition.  

Jurrah's recruitment to Melbourne became the source of great celebration to the people of Yuendumu - whether or not they supported the Melbourne Football Club. Whether or not they were part of Jurrah’s clan.
This community, some 300km north-west of Alice Springs, has been wracked with issues, from governance problems to the petrol sniffing which caused such terrible problems from the 1980s on.
Yuendumu is dirt poor. There is no private land ownership. Many of the citizens live in real hovels. There is no alcohol allowed, but it still gets in. Tension is real. But Liam Jurrah was - and is - proof that this AFL-mad, far-flung community has something to say, something to offer.

Whatever the white court system might say about him, Jurrah’s “tribal voice”, as Yothu Yindi once put it, is more telling than the lights of the MCG.
No matter the outcome of his prosecution, no matter the ugliness of this tribal dispute, there is one thing that Liam Jurrah’s arrest tells us: Aboriginal culture is still alive.
Lawyers have for decades been arguing that Aboriginal law, which is our country’s first law, should receive some recognition on our statutes. All the talk has come to nothing.
Now that we have a true star facing court, for tribal reasons, perhaps we’ll think again what it means to drag a tribal person to a white court.

By Paul Toohey - Herald Sun 9/3/12

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Bee swarm delays game between D-backs & Giants

By Steve Henson, Yahoo Sports! 5/3/2012

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Bees and baseball don’t mix. Sure, the Salt Lake City Bees and Burlington Bees are minor-league teams. But a swarm of bees flying into a stadium during a ballgame will certainly halt the action, sending players scurrying for the dugout and fans from their seats.
Talk about a buzzy story. The Arizona Diamondbacks and San Francisco Giants were in the top of the second inning of an exhibition game Sunday afternoon when the bees arrived en masse, entering the field over the right center-field wall, flying directly over the infield and settling in the Giants’ dugout.
Fire officials were summoned, and it took 41 minutes to clear out the bees and get on with the ballgame. The incident took place in the most deluxe spring-training stadium, Salt River Fields at Talking Stick. The facility opened a year ago and is shared by the Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies

The Diamondbacks and Rockies were involved in the last game delayed by bees, before the teams moved to Scottsdale from spring training sites in Tucson, Ariz. In 2005, a game at Tucson Electric Park was delayed 20 minutes. A bee delay also occurred at the same stadium in 2003.
Diamondbacks ace Ian Kennedy was pitching when the bees disrupted play. The Giants had runners on second and third and Freddy Sanchez was at the plate with one out. Rarely has a rally been halted in such a strange fashion.
As the swarm moved slowly over the outfield with most fans unaware of the situation, Diamondbacks center fielder Chris Young began making a, er, beeline for the dugout.
“I heard it before I saw it,” Young said. “It’s not the first time it’s happened, so somehow I knew what was going on.”
First baseman Paul Goldschmidt was confused when he saw Young running off the field. Then he looked to his right and understood. He immediately sought safety.
“I was trying to get away as fast as I could without looking too scared,” Goldschmidt said.
Fans above the Giants’ dugout evacuated their seats, and a message on the scoreboard explained the reason for the delay. Officials say it did not appear that anyone was stung or injured.
“When you have how many millions of bees swarming around, it’s not fun,” Diamondbacks shortstop Willie Bloomquist said. “Get out of the way and let the authorities take over.”
The game resumed 41 minutes later and apparently the Diamondbacks were the more shaken of the two teams: The Giants went on to win 11-1.

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