Fundamentals

Recent Rocky Mount High School graduate Hannah McMillan is in Sun drenched skies and oil laden beaches of Mobile Alabama today competing in National Junior Miss Pageant. 51 girls are competing for the title. I think the TV coverage is Saturday night on TLC. Here is a circumstance where a good light is being shone on Rocky Mount. We need to all be behind Hannah. If she could make the top ten or what ever Junior Miss calls their cut list, it would gives us good news instead of what we have most of the time. Good luck Hannah!

Baseball is considered a sport that you may see something in any game that you might never see in a game again. Here is a few examples’ of plays you don’t see everyday.

The recent little league finals a ground ball was hit to the short stop with a runner on second base. The short stop faked at if he was going to throw to first, instead he held on to the ball and the runner on second took off and ran right into the short stop holding the ball to tag him out. If I remember correctly Whit Casper was the short stop and that was a nice play on his part to get the runner at second.

The home Rocky Mount Legion game against Wilson there was a ground ball hit between first and second base and first baseman Matt Berry and second baseman Michael Whitehead were not able to come up with the ball which rolled to right field. Spencer Bell who was covering first from the pitcher’s mound was on the base after the runner rounded first and right fielder Fuller Weatherly threw back to Spencer Bell who caught the runner off base after getting a single. This was a clear case of a player Spencer Bell doing the fundamentals of the game and Weatherly executing a good throw and was able to get an out after just giving up a hit to the same batter.

Even last night in the Edenton-Rocky Mount Legion game how many times to you see a steal of home. You see this on the high school level that a runner is on first and takes off to second. A base runner is on third and the runner going to first tries to get into a run down where the runner on third takes off for home. If the runner from third scores that is considered a steal of home. Rocky Mount pulled that off last night, later in the game an Edenton base runner actually stole home the old fashion way beating the pitchers pitch to home before he could be tagged out. When was the last time that you saw both teams steal home in one game?

We all in life have fundamental things we do everyday that go unnoticed because they are basic things The ball field the team that does the basic’s the best most of the time wins games. There are other times when we don’t do basic things in life and they cost us dearly.

We have heard about the young man from Alexandria Virginia who didn’t have a license this past weekend in the Big Rock Fishing Tournament and got his team disqualified. In the process his team lost the $912,000 first prize, plus a bonus of over $300,000 for catching the first Blue marlin in the tournament that weighed over 500 pounds.

The license could have been bought for $10. Fishing without a license in North Carolina is $35 plus $125 cost of court. The young man did buy a license two hours after their boat got back to shore. The Tournament found out about it when the winning boat members had to take a lie detector test to prove that they didn’t cheat during the tournament.

A ten dollar fishing license basic fundamentals of fishing.