Cody Macomber (4) finishes ahead of Cam Richards (37R) and Corey Morgan (26)
(Oxford ME) There’s nothing quite like the first time.
“It was awesome,” was how young Cody Macomber summed up his first win in the Mad Bombers Division tonight.
Cody Macomber with his first trophy in the Mad Bombers Division
Cody was in the Rookie Division last year and had been successful there.
“I had plenty of podiums,” he recalled.
This year Cody moved up to the Mad Bombers where the drivers are more experienced, and the field is crowded.
Through the first nine races before tonight it has been tough. Seventh place finishes in May and June were as good as it got.
That’s probably why tonight’s win was so surprising and so sweet for Cody.
I asked Cody what was different that would explain the startling win. “I started up front (behind pole-setter Tony Gibbons) and the car was good.”
Cody starts behind pole-setter Tony Gibbons
Cody stayed low on the track for most of the 20-lap feature and it paid off. Once he had the lead, he kept the inside and forced challengers to try outside passes.
Cody gets the lead from Tony Gibbons
Cody’s last challenger (Corey Morgan) ventured up to the “Angels’ Highway” on the track hoping to get by the young leader but couldn’t get it done.
Cody in the lead with Maddy Herrick (95) second
Corey Morgan (26) ventures onto the Angels’ Highway
Asked about future races in the division, Cody said with a smile, “We’re going to drive to the front and do it again.”
You could tell the crowd awareness when Trevor’s name was announced.
And they saw six innings of him.
He looked good.
Trevor is rehabbing his right wrist. That wrist got mixed up with a pitched ball late in the 2022 season. It didn’t appear to be healing right so surgery was performed on the wrist in January of this year.
The rehabbing process is underway. This coming week Trevor will be in AAA Worcester.
Trevor Story makes a throw from deep short
Trevor made a play today that would suggest that the wrist is coming along fine. A New Hampshire batter hit the ball to deep short to Trevor’s right. Trevor got there and then elevated and made an accurate, in time, throw to first. Great play for any shortstop but for one on a rehab assignment it must have felt especially good.
I was near the Portland dugout, so I was able to see Trevor in the dugout as well. For his six innings there he was seldom in the same place.
Something important (I think) happened in the sixth inning. In that inning, Trevor had walked and eventually gotten to third base. At third, he was replaced, and you knew that his day was done and that he would probably be heading for the exits. Not so fast.
Once in the dugout, Trevor picked up his glove and went over and sat down beside Marcelo Mayer. Marcelo is Boston’s #1 prospect and a 20-year-old shortstop. Trevor sat with Marcelo during what turned out to be a long inning and engaged in a lengthy conversation.
Trevor Story talks to Marcelo Mayer before leaving
Marcelo, wisely, did a lot of listening to someone who already is a major league shortstop and one who will likely have that position with the Red Sox when his rehab is over.
I thought it was a neat gesture by Trevor and certainly helpful to Marcelo.
Today’s game started out to be all about Trevor but when it ended it was also about the no-hitter that three Sea Dogs’ pitchers (Wikelman Gonzalez, Brendan Cellucci, Luis Guerrero) had put together.
Wikelman Gonzalez was part of a 3-player no-hitter
It was a little hard to realize that today’s pitching would be eventful because Portland’s pitchers allowed seven walks and two runs were scored by the Fisher Cats.
But it ended up a no-hitter.
Interesting, to me, was that pitcher CJ Liu was the player signing pregame. CJ pitched a seven-inning no-hitter in Akron on May fifth for Portland.
CJ Liu was signing pre-game today
Trevor’s play from deep short saved a hit but it was third baseman Blaze Jordan’s snare of a line drive that was the defensive play of the game in my opinion. Blaze’s grab saved a run and turned into a double play as he finished the play picking off the NH baserunner at second base.
3B Blaze Jordan congratulated by Trevor Story after nice catch
Speaking of finishing, Slugger continues not to be able to finish. He gets around first base with a win in sight and just runs dry. Granted he’s big but he does have long legs. He always puts on a good show but it’s never on the bases!
Slugger down and out after another loss
Plenty of sun on this afternoon.
I chose to bring only my Sigma F2.8 – 70-200 today. Last time I went strictly with the 600. I was hoping for some Trevor Story closeups with the 200 which I couldn’t get with the 600 because of its length and high F-Stop. The 200 was a good choice. That F2.8 was good for raising the speed to 1/2000 on some action shots. I could also adjust it to get some nice closeups.
I have been collecting 8×10 pictures when CVS offers free ones. One of the Trevor Story pictures will certainly be the next one I get done.
The sun at Hadlock is in the “targets” faces but it is what it is. Close shots take care of that issue.
Thanks, as always, to Chris Cameron for giving me the opportunity to “get close” at Hadlock Field.
Tyler McDonough drove in runs today
Nick Yorke
Marcelo Mayer
New Hampshire runner picked off by Tyler McDonough
You ask anyone who just attended a Sea Dogs game, “Who won?”
They might get that right, but it is unlikely they’ll have the score.
Why?
Too many other things caught their attention and later their memory.
And for each visitor the memories will vary.
I am easily caught up with watching/photographing the major leaguers of the future.
Some might care less for that. They hardly know the names of the players on either team!
Chase Meidroth was one of seven top-thirty prospects in the Portland batting order today
Today was gold for me. Why? The top seven in the Sea Dogs batting order were the seven of the top thirty Red Sox prospects. How often does that happen?
Newcomer Blaze Jordan had two hits vs New Hampshire today
Sometimes you go to Hadlock, and some of the prospects are inactive. Not today. They appeared at the plate one after another. There certainly were opportunities to get a look at each of them.
My struggle, photographically speaking, was the noon start in bright sunshine. I want the sun in my face so that the players’ faces I am trying to get are not shaded by visors. Not possible today because the only angle available had the “sun issue.”
The conditions forced me into some high ISOs. When I raised the ISO, the faces weren’t shaded BUT Portland’s white uniforms were overexposed. Getting the uniforms right shaded the faces.
Next time solution? Different lens. I brought my 600 with its high-numbered F-Stop. I couldn’t speed things up to lower the ISO. I had to drop the speed down to 1/640 and in doing so lessened my chance for great focus.
What I do like about the 600 is that I can avoid being too intrusive when shooting a person.
I am realizing that most of the long shots I take are of lesser quality. Most of what I want to shoot is going to come into range of my 200 and its nice F-Stop of 2.8. It will be a bit frustrating to let go of the long-range action shots, however.
Matthew Lugo hit a three-run homer for the Sea Dogs today
The star of today’s game was New Hampshire’s starter Sem Robberse. He shut out the Sea Dogs (and all their prospects!) for five innings while his teammates went off against Sterling Sharpe to build up a 7-0 lead. Matt Lugo had a 3-run homer off NH relief in the eighth inning to lessen the spread. However, the cows had left the barn!
I was intent on getting newcomer Blaze Jordan (#10 prospect) and Nick Yorke (#3 prospect). Blaze (1B) & Nick (2B) were selected 3rd and 1st in the 2020 draft.
Blaze had two hits this afternoon while Nick had one.
Today was recreation department day at Hadlock. Many camps attended and there were activities for the kids on the field before the game. Most camps had their own specific bright shirt. Probably helped the counselors trying to keep track of kids!
Marcelo Mayer having fun pregame in the dugout
Marcelo Mayer seems to be the prospect likely to make the biggest future splash at the major-league level. He’s 6-2/188 pounds. Good size for a shortstop. He seems very comfortable in the field for a 20-year-old. Drafted in the first round in 2021. He bats left-handed. I have tried to get shots of him in quantity because it is quite likely he will move on to AAA Worcester before the end of the season.
Nick Yorke
My photo moment of the game was catching Nick Yorke in the dugout in full spit. I was shooting at a fast enough speed to catch the “flow.” Some may be offended………I blame the camera!
Another race loss for Hall-of-Fame mascot Slugger. The Big Guy (not Biden) was up against a camper from O-AT-KA in Sebago. They were even heading into the final stretch, but Slugger couldn’t finish. He does a lot of walking around the stands greeting patrons before he does the race. That could well be taking the legs out from him.
Thanks to Chris Cameron for allowing me access to ever-entertaining Hadlock Field.
But the peripheries minimized the heat and the lengthy program.
Football was played but the major takeaway (for me) was the financial generosity shown to those in less fortunate circumstances.
Getting involved was not an option for the players and the cheerleaders. They were expected to fund raise and wow did they!
The total raised this year was reported to be $235,399.
Matt Charpentier and Jordan Craft
The top fundraisers were Matt Charpentier (York) & Jordan Craft (Old Town) and they were honored at halftime.
The money raised goes to the twenty-two Shrine Children’s hospitals.
I decided to get to Lewiston High School 45 minutes to an hour early. I wanted a good place to park so that I could leave with some ease.
When I arrived, I quickly figured out that I might well have been the LAST person to arrive. The parking lot was full and fortunately, for me, I slid into a pretty good location.
I walked up the hill into the stadium area and saw the stands packed and the players already on the field. So much for getting set up before things started!
I surmised that the players/cheerleaders came by car not bus. Therefore, getting there early was a necessity for parents.
The sun was shining, and the field was turf.
The East wore red, and the West wore blue.
The teams had several weeks of practice at Foxcroft Academy.
Trying to put a team together on such limited notice had to be extremely challenging. Granted, seventeen of the nineteen seniors on the Maine All-State team were involved.
The game had a ton of penalties with most of them being in the “not-enough-time-together” category.
A scoffer might say, “You put a flag in an official’s pocket and sooner or later they’ll want to throw it!” Plenty were thrown. Also, plenty of timeouts were used when coaches could see that the expected play had players out of place. But this was bound to happen under the circumstances.
Stability could be a difference maker and fortunately for the East they had it in quarterback Eli Soehren (East MVP) and his dad, head coach Mark Soehren.
Coach Mark Soehren and son Eli
The state-champ, Oxford Hills duo guided the East to a 28-23 win ending a three-game losing streak.
Eli, who will attend Colby, took every snap and had a connection to every point. How? He threw three touchdown passes, rushed for a touchdown, and kicked four extra points.
The West had a pretty good passing game too. Jaelen Jackson (12-17 = 147 yards) and DJ Alston (9-18 = 126 yards) found receivers, especially West MVP Nick Laughlin (9 catches for 157 yards).
QB Jaelen Jackson
The West rallied back to within five points late in the final quarter but couldn’t get another possession to shoot for the win.
The East’s Eli Bigelow had two touchdown catches in the first half.
I was close to one of Eli’s TD catches. In that one, he caught the pass near the back of the end zone and sat down against the fence beyond the end zone. (That chain link fence was alarmingly close to the back of the end zone IMO.)
Eli Bigelow after second TD catch
There were also senior cheerleaders for both sides. They, too, had practiced for today’s event. At half-time the two squads combined for a performance. What I thought was a brilliant idea was that they did their routine twice………once for each side of the field. This arrangement gave everyone a look at what the squads were doing.
Information you may not need: I sat on the East bench during half-time as the cheerleaders were performing. My intention was to look through my pictures and try to delete the ones needing deletion. Suddenly, one of the West’s cheerleaders came running my way. I guessed she was after a prop for the performance. Wrong. She headed for a big trash barrel nearby and embraced it, losing a meal. She then took about five steps back toward the field and was back engaged with that barrel again! After that she ran back to the action and joined in. Talk about a gamer!
Later, when I was processing the pictures I took, I realized how many photographers were there. So many of my pictures had photographers behind the players I was shooting at. I’m guessing that I also made my way into a few pictures I wasn’t posing for.
Picture taking can be hazardous. You never know when the action will be coming to you. But when it does, you must instantly decide how many pictures you’ll take before you bail out for safety’s sake.
My moment, in that regard in this game, was when the West’s Hayden Whitney (Thornton Academy) came clear around the left end in the first half. My concern was tacklers coming from the left who would drive him out-of-bounds to where I was. I jumped out of picture-taking possibility early and Hayden was driven out of bounds about five yards before he reached me. I got a shot of Hayden (41-yard carry) but his eyes are closed.
Hayden Whitney
The crowd was relaxed and so were the players on the sidelines. The coaches were a bit frustrated at times but even they were mellow compared to what I’ve heard at some football games I’ve been to.
I really enjoyed the whole experience. I will probably consider attending next year unless they choose to play it at Fort Kent!
(Harrison ME) Hallmark Channel isn’t the only place Christmas is celebrated in July!
On the ninth of July, Main Street had a collection of costumed runners setting out from in front of the Grange for some morning competition in Harrison’s Christmas in July 5K.
Plenty of red and quite a bit of green showed up in many of the racers’ running attire. On a hot, July morning those cold-weather costumes probably lost some of their “good-idea” status as the runner climbed Brickyard Hill Road!
Harrison resident, Ken Ross, was the easy winner of the sixty-five finishers with a time of 20:23.
Ken Ross (20:23)
The top eight finishers were:
1 Ken Ross (20:23),
2 Chris Surro (21:18),
3 Michael Clarke (21:34),
4 Eric Martin (21:39),
5 Keith Moss (21:47),
6 Peter Banach (22:47),
7 Brian Ladd (22:50).
An interesting age range in the top runners. Ken Ross and Brian Ladd are in their 60s while Peter Banach is 11.
When I create an entry in Word, I need to realize that the first line of the entry will be the title of the entry when I paste it into WordPress.
When I’m done preparing a Word document, I need to select it and copy it.
Using WordPress.com/log-in will include a saved email address and a password.
Now into the RIGHT blog, I will click on “posts” and click on “add new post.”
That will get the document in front of me with the title (first line) in place.
IMAGES
Click below a sentence and a “+” will appear. Click on it and on “image.” Then click on “media library.” Then on the image I want and click “insert.” Into the document goes that image.
Above the image there are icons that, when clicked on, will enable me to edit the image.
“insert link” is important because if I do that, then a reader will be able to click on the picture to see it full sized.
“alignment” is important because if I leave it at “none” a large box appears to the right of the image. That box will prevent text from wrapping around the picture. I almost always want to be able to wrap text around a picture.
The arrows help me to position the picture where I want it.
There are also editing possibilities to the right. One of those possibilities is changing the size of the picture (25/50/75/100).
A brand new one for me was the “featured image” option. I clicked there, was led into the Gallery, chose a picture, and it became the Header. Of course, if the chosen picture isn’t 770 or less it will be substantially cropped. But if it is the right size then it is a quick way to bring on a new header.
(I started working on putting text on pictures but that is a work-in-progress at this point.)
Today’s repeat winner (Eric Ashe) complained about the humidity as did every runner I talked to.
“It was a tough day to run fast,” said Eric afterwards.
If it was tough for him, imagine how it was for the rest of the field trailing him!
“One fellow took the first half mile a little quick,” recalled Eric. “I caught him around a half mile and tried to stay strong up and down the hills the rest of the way.”
Eric finished the course in 20:45. Scott Mindel was second (21:19) and Tim Poitras third (21:32).
Scott Mindel
Tim Poitras
The most excited post-race runner may well have been female-division winner Taylor Bickford of Portland.
Why?
Let Taylor explain it: “This was my first time breaking the tape ever. I’ve run a lot of races in Maine and some marathons, but this was the first time I’ve ever won a race.”
Taylor admitted afterwards that she didn’t know the course very well but that she had heard about it.
Taylor Bickford and Abby Bennett (1029 – 2nd place)
“I started the race a little conservative because everyone had me worried about the hills,” she said. “Then I realized that I could pass a lot of people on the downhills so I kind of let it go.”
“I kept the first female in front of me for the first two miles,” she added, “after I passed her, I knew I was the first one.”
Scott Mindel finished second for the second straight year.
“Some kid took it out really fast and it was faster than I wanted,” said Scott. “I didn’t have as much left as I had the year before because of that start and the humidity. I soon realized that I needed to compete for the place rather than the time.”
Tim Poitras entered the race hoping to improve on his 4th place finish two years ago.
“I knew that Eric and Scott would be running the race,” said Tim.
“After Eric pulled away, I stuck with Scott,” added Tim. “I was pushing the uphills and he was pushing the downhills.”
The humidity eventually got to Tim. “It was such that I felt as if I was swimming,” he said. “I started to look behind me a few times to make sure I got third.”
Good crowd with plenty of enthusiasm.
Dave Albert of Fryeburg is the master of the National Anthem.
Sasha Mindel came in second last year but didn’t race this year. “She has been sick the last few nights,” explained her husband Scott. “My son did run the kid’s race. It’s always a fun weekend up here.”
Both Scott and Eric ran in Grandma’s Marathon on June 17th in Duluth, Minnesota. “Eric was shooting for Olympic Trials time but didn’t finish,” recalled Scott.
Taylor Bickford: “I grew up in Limington and now live in Portland. I am a strategy project manager at New Balance in Boston, so I commute to work. I am planning to do the Beach-to-Beacon.”
Yesterday I took care of getting into my blog and sizing images so that they could be used as headers.
Today I worked to locate and set up a document to put an entry on.
I took a document already labeled on my desktop and changed the label to “Blog Document Location.” I clicked in there and clicked on “New” to get a blank page.
I had to remember that the first sentence is going to be the title. I don’t doubt that I could fix the title within the blog if I had to.
I copied the document I created and went into the blog with it. I located “Post” and went to “New.” At the cursor I clicked Control V and the document was inserted with the title (first line) highlighted.
I could immediately publish the post if I chose to as I did yesterday.
Almost always, however, pictures must be included.
I decided that I would resume some postings but, alas, the whole blogging process is no longer familiar to me.
Old age? Could be part of it.
I am very active currently with photography. I take. I process. I send out………with hardly a glitch. But that is currently. Get away from it for a while and who knows what I’ll be able to do!
It behooves me to write out procedures for photography. I didn’t do that with blogging, and I have struggled just to get back into my blog to post something! Imagine if I try to add a picture.
My normal blog entries had pictures and commentary from a sporting event. It has been nearly a year since I’ve done that.
Let me set two goals for myself: (1) return to posting commentary/pictures, and (2) thoroughly write out the WHOLE blogging procedure so that I can go away from it and “easily” come back to it.
McClelland Miscellanea 