Category Archives: News - Page 2

Rangers Win In Walk Off

Posted by on August 1, 2011 No comments

In exciting fashion the Chandler Rangers won a 9-8 decision against the Georgia Roadrunners. Again the rangers fell behind, but battled back to tie it. Damon DeVirgillio pitched a gem, holding the line as the Rangers chipped away at an early 6-3 lead. With the score tied, they gave up two late runs to trail 8-6. Then, they loaded the bases with one out, when Alex Murrietta #24 hit a hard single to center to win the game 9-8.

This is how crazy talented these guys are – the #8 hitter for the RoadRunners covered 80 feet faster than a guy could throw a ball to first. It seemed like it.
At this level, the pitchers throw fast alls so hard you have to start your swing before you can see the breaking pitch break. They hide the ball – making it extremely difficult to pick up the spin.

There are no developing teams here. They are all champions, and not just tournament champions but Super-NIT champions. And the top teams? They travel a lot to mitigate that as an excuse.

Every game feels like a Sunday game.

The rangers clearly feel like they are suffering some distraction, and falling behind early has been a problem. But they showed true grit battling back and evening their record.

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Rangers take bus back to hotel.

Game 1 – rain delay – update

Posted by on July 31, 2011 No comments

Waiting for weather to clear. Score cast will start as soon as game does.
All clear given, players returning to field. Start to warm up for a third time. That has to be good for the players right?

Off To Florida

Posted by on July 29, 2011 Comments Off

This is the craziest Month for us with Baseball. First, there’s the Pitch, Hit, & Run stuff. Amazing. Matt’s run at the little league state title, (amazing).

And now we pack up the family and head to Florida, so the Chandler Rangers can compete in the USSSA Elite 32 World Series.


Chandler Rangers Team Photo

I’ll be tweeting updates @scottnovis of you can go to my twitter page and click on the follow me button.

I finally understand Twitter

Posted by on July 18, 2011 No comments

I have to confess that I never understood twitter. I knew it was SMS (short messaging system) based but why? All the buzz on blogs like lifehacker and gizmodo and engadget all talked about desktop applications, or apps for your iPhone or iPad. I tried it a couple of times, but there was nothing I could do with twitter that I could not do better with a blog, or email. Tumblr is simple and clean and effective. Facebook is way more popular to most of the people I know and easier to understand.

But I did see lots of celebs using twitter… Like their one personal PR channel, but I’m not famous and no one really cares what I have to say in 140 characters or less so what good is it?

Then I tried to send a group text to 24 people…the result? A big fat FAIL! That’s what. You can’t do it. Even more depressing, I got myself caught in tech no mans land. I use google apps for everything. Google supports Microsoft exchange format. iPhone supports Microsoft exchange format. So now I have google apps integrated with my iPhone and it rocks EXCEPT I can’t get my google groups to flow through to my iPhone. This means that creating texting groups on my iPhone means I’m buying an app. Sigh… Really?

And then.. AT&T won’t let you send a group text to more than 10 people. Seriously.

And then I learned something about twitter. You don’t need a computer. In fact you can sign up for twitter right from your phone. And it’s simple.

Now I know why 10947462786468618 people use twitter. It’s the network marketing (re pyramid scheme) of communication. If I create a twitter account with my phone. And my friends create a twitter account with their phone and FOLLOW me. Every time I send a text message to 40404 – everyone who follows me gets that “tweet”.

In short, I can create a text distribution network using twitter that is almost limitless. Forget the PC and the apps, once you connect your phone to a twitter account, you and your friends can use it as a sort of public broadcast system. If everyone in the group follows everyone else then it becomes like a public Internet chat room.

That’s some powerful stuff.

I started using it to keep my baseball team up to speed with important information while on a travel tournament and 90% of the parents signed up. So far everyone has gotten my texts and using retweets I can take messages sent to me and I can share them with everyone else. The only thing I don’t like about it, is that twitter is not private like email. At least I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.

But for me, I can now see how twitter can be used as an awesome group communication tool. Just don’t tweet and drive.

Lots of Buzz

Posted by on July 14, 2011 No comments

Ryan’s Catch was featured on a number of websites, including

Yahoo Sports: Big League Stew
MLB.com: Ball Boy Makes Sick Grab
Huffington Post/AOL: Kid Makes Outstanding Diving Catch
KMLE 108 Country: Ball Boy Makes Great Catch At Home Run Derby
WKDQ 99.5: Kid Makes Amazing Catch at MLB Home Run Derby

Ryan wins it all

Posted by on July 12, 2011 No comments

You probably know the rest of the story by now. Ryan won the National Pitch Hot & Run championship. But his real prize may have been getting caught on camera laying out to snag a gold ball hit by Robinson Cano, this years home run derby champion.

Pictures and links will be coming.

And now we wait

Posted by on July 11, 2011 No comments

The competition is done but they don’t name the winners until AFTER the home run derby.
Right now we are watching work out day – and it’s funny you have a bunch of all stars shagging balls for all stars.

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Everyone booed prince fielder for not picking Justin Upton for the home run derby team. Those balls are $30 each (derby balls).

The fans are rabid for them.

Pitch Hit And Run National Finals

Posted by on July 11, 2011 No comments

[this will be a live blog format. I'll just keep taking pics and entires on the end.]

12:30 it’s started. They are starting with the girls. At every level until the finals you have to hit a target – any part of it. But now they have to put it through a hole into a net and that is a lot harder

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12:39 Lita hit 2 of 6. I was worried until the other girls in her age did the same. Girls are almost done.

12:46. Girls are done. Very last girl hit 6 of 6. Very impressive. She was like a machine just putting them in there. Nicely done.
7-8 boys are done. Now the 9-10s.

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12:58. Ryan hit 6 out of 6! Way to go kid. The other two guys were 4/6 and 4/6.

They are now setting up for hitting.

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1:15 the girls are done hitting. Best hit was about 198 on the tape. Wow that’s a long way to hit a softball. I’m a little nervous because they have to hit off a mat. That puts the ball in a weird spot.

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You actually don’t want to hit a ball in the middle of the plate.

1:24 some 12 year old representing the nationals just set the 12 year old record hitting it 305 feet off the tee. Tyler – the player in front of Ryan had three real nice hits over 280 but they were a little far off the line. Ryan had one hit right on the line near? 300 it looked to me but it could have been more than 10 feet short. The record for 13/14 is 356 feet. That record is in no danger today.
Ryan was frustrated but I think he still has a chance. It’s the first competition where he hasn’t out driven everyone by 20 or more feet.

Now it’s time to run.

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1:36 Boys are running now.

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Ryan will be in the last group.

Ryan and Tyler tied for the fastest time with a time of 6.97. Luke trailed with 7.1

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So now we wait. They don’t announce the winners until much later but I think Ryan has a shot to win it!

Pitch Hit And Run National Finals 12:25

Posted by on July 11, 2011 No comments

The parents are just hanging out chatting.

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The field is ready – but notice the tarp to protect the infield.

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And the ESPN desk is all setup.

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All-star HRD 10:30

Posted by on July 11, 2011 No comments

All Tivos set. Sure enough one of them had “gone gray” meaning the tuner card just stopped sending pictures. Nice. But ingot it fixed and I added time to every recording before and after. they should be good to go. I packed up a backpack. Time to head to the stadium. I’m not competing but why am I so nervous? Lots of texts from friends and well-wishers. This is so cool.