The MoFo Personal Pictures Thread

Good for you Brother
Yet I was stunned you have gray hair, and now feel ....not young.

I started going gray in my early 20s and was significantly gray in my 30s. Right around COVID, in my mid-to-late-30s, it went REALLY gray/partially white.

It's genetic, my Dad was exactly the same way.

Ok, incoming jokes in the next 60 secs…
Yoda was mildly disappointed when he showed up as Jack Sparrow only to discover he misunderstood Pirates Fantasy Camp.

Yoda was more than mildly disappointed there was no Livvy Dunn sighting. His wife, however, was not.

Paul Skenes showed up and reminded Yoda not to crowd the plate with a little chin music.

This fantasy camp reminded Yoda why he should stick to fantasy baseball.

Livvy Dunn still hadn’t shown up by day 2, and the amount of participants dropped by a 3rd.

And something something Yoda was hoping to earn a position much like Vince Papale did for The Eagles.

That’s all I got….

Did you play baseball at any level?

Oh! I’ve got one more!
Pirate Fantasy Camp. The only time they can play for a World Series.

Just Little League from 9-12.

After that, I started playing softball at 30, which I've done for the last 10 years. Though I do play a lot, it peaks at like nine teams in the summer. I played 168 games last year. Some of that translates, particularly on the fielding side.

Did you face any major league pitchers at this camp?

Two former major league pitchers, yeah. In the mini-game against the pro staff everybody gets at least one plate appearance against a former big leaguer, though they're not always guys who pitched in the majors. But I was lucky enough to get two, one against each of the still-capable former pitchers in camp: Matt Capps, and Doug Drabek. The photographer got pictures of them both:

I remember Drabek.

So the first day I just wore the pants "normally." I'm not sure why I went with the high socks after, but something inspired me to try it, and I liked it way better. Think it looks a lot cooler, too, especially with the black jersey.

Kinda true! Skenes was there, apparently, though understandably laying low. A lot of Pirates come down there early to work out. Jared Jones was out tossing on one of the side fields, handful of campers crowded around. Technically anyone could've just walked across the field but everyone was refreshingly cool about it all.

But we all got the next-best thing to facing Skenes: they had a state-of-the-art pitching simulator on site. The Pirates *lease* it for $500,000 a year. It can project any pitcher onto the screen and reproduce their velocity, location, and spin rate. The ball comes out of a hole right at their release point.

Of course, they set it to Skenes, which is who everyone was going to ask for anyway. Each fastball came in between 97-100 MPH. Everybody's goal was to make contact--any contact at all--and as a secondary goal, actually hit a fair ball. My wife got the whole thing on tape:





I actually did far better than I'd expected. I figured the glove work would translate from softball (especially having worked out with a few local campers leading up to the camp), but I wasn't sure about the hitting. But it went great. They don't score errors so everyone's average is inflated, but I hit .737, second-highest in the camp. Turns out the only guy ahead of me was a 6'4" 235-lb guy who used to play at Auburn. I think I can live with that.

The age difference helps (I'm 40 and your typical camper is more like 60). I was the sixth-youngest person at the camp.