This day marks

THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR DAYS of hearty, and joyful howling on Sherwood brought to you by the Sherwood Howlers.

THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR DAYS.

CLOSING IN ON OUR ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY. TEN DAYS AND COUNTING.

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Tonight I am howling for the:

LOUISVILLE SLUGGER

The most famous baseball bat of all times.

Woodworker J. F. Hillerich and his 17 year old baseball fanatic son John “Bud”, made these gems in his shop in Louisville. Legend has it that Bud, who played baseball himself, slipped away from work one afternoon in 1884 to watch Louisville’s major league team, the Louisville Eclipse. The team’s star, Pete “Louisville Slugger” Browning, mired in a hitting slump, broke his bat.

Bud invited Browning to his father’s shop to hand-craft a new bat to his specifications. Browning accepted the offer and got three hits to break out of his slump with the new bat the first day he used it. Browning told his teammates, which began a surge of professional ball players to the Hillerich woodworking shop.

The rest is history, as they say.

The greatest hitters of all time used Hillerich bats like Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig. Forget those modern day guys. They are all hoped up on steroids. These guys only had alcohol to see them through, except Lou Gehrig, who contracted Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a fatal motor neuron disorder that targets nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain. ALS symptoms mimic drunkenness, of which people accused Gehrig. Today we call this horrid, essentially untreatable disease, Lou Gehrig disease.

During World War II, Hillerich produced wooden rifle stocks and billy clubs for the U.S. Army, items sort of like bats, but used to smash human skulls rather than baseballs.

In the day, Hillerich made his bats out of northern white ash, a hard, dense wood that could stand the rigors of having the crap knocked out of it at every swing. See Sixty Second Natural History Note below for a side story on that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4-gsdLSSQ0

Take me out to the ball game.
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks.
I don’t care if I never get back.
Let me root, root, root for the home team.
If they don’t win it’s a shame.
For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out.
At the old ball game!

Take me out to the ball game.
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack.
I don’t care if I never get back.
Let me root, root, root for the home team.
If they don’t win it’s a shame.
For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out.
At the old ball game!

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SIXTY SECOND NATURAL HISTORY NOTE

The Nexus between Nature and Sports

Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire)

Most of Fred and Bud Hillerich’s wood bats are made from Northern white ash grown in proprietary forests on the New York–Pennsylvania border.

Ash trees in the US are now under attack from the emerald ash borer, an invasive insect species native to Asia and first detected in Michigan in 2002. Since then it has moved into 35 states, and the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Manitoba.

The adult beetles nibbles on ash foliage but cause little damage. However the larval stage bores the inner bark and disrupts the tree’s ability to transport water and nutrients, eventually causing death. Very little can be done to stop the expansion of this insect. In fact, it is in Virginia now. People can treat individual trees with systemic pesticides, but treatments are expensive.

Emerald ash borer probably arrived in the United States on solid wood packing material carried in cargo ships or airplanes originating in its native Asia.

Where the hell are we going to get bats now? Not to mention badly needed rifle stocks and billy clubs.

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AMERICAN TRAVELS

Day #1 – Dr. Howl and his wolf pack are on the move. We are traveling across this great land to see nature on the move, in its comings and goings, and our children in their comings and goings. First stop, Louisville, KY, home of the Louisville Slugger. We bedded down in a Aloft motel after visiting the 550 acre E. P. “Tom” Sawyer State Park which Wikipedia will tell you was named in honor of Republican Jefferson County Judge/Executive Erbon Powers “Tom” Sawyer who was killed in a car accident on Louisville’s Interstate 64 in 1969 while still in office. Sawyer was the father of journalist Diane Sawyer.

However recently discovered records and DNA evidence suggest the park was named after our Tom Sawyer, aka Fang.

Day #2 – Daniel Boone Conservation Area south of Jonesville, MO.

Missouri has over 1,000 designated “conservation areas”, relatively small “islands” of protected wild habitat, totaling about 1,000,000 acres. We are on the edge of the Great Plains. The eastern extent of the Ogallala Aquifer lies beneath us. These habitat fragments remind us of what “wild” Missouri land was like not too long ago.

The 3,200 acre BBCA is rich in plants and animals. Woodland wildlife, such as whitetail deer, turkey, and squirrel inhabit the area year-around. Pileated woodpeckers and other forest birds are common most of the year. Hawks and owls patrol the skies on the alert for mice and rabbits. Nature has forged deep valleys, woodlands, savannas, glades, and rugged wooded hills here. The area also supplies an important stopping point for many neotropical migrant songbirds.

Day #3 – Hunkered down in a dog friendly La Quinta in Lincoln, NE after traveling along I-70 with the northern most extent of the Ozark Mountains just to the south. The 47,000 square mile broad Ozark dome, covers most of the southern half of Missouri, most of Arkansas, and eastern portions of Oklahoma and the extreme southeastern corner of Kansas, making it the largest highland region between the Appalachians and Rockies.  Geologists call the Ozarks and the Ouachita Mountains in western Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma the U.S. Interior Highlands.

The land form has changed a lot since the Chickasaw, Illini, Loway, Otoe-Missouria, Osage, Quapaw, Sac & Fox and Shawnee Indians roamed these parts before Congress, intent on securing these lands for white settlers, passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

The Indian Removal Act. Think about that.

Today we traveled Route 29, northwestward along the Missouri River, just to the west from Kansas City, Kansas to Lincoln, NE, through extensive agricultural enterprises. Current occupants of this region have channelized and built berms on every river and stream that crosses under the road, for as far as one can see, to prevent seasonal flood waters from spilling out into what used to be flood plain, flood waters that gave life to extensive fresh water wetlands where millions and millions of birds prospered.

I am living in the wrong age. Of course, if I lived here then I would not have had Medicare insurance.

Tomorrow, sandhill cranes.

Namaste

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.”

Yogi Berra