One of the earliest memories of my grandmother is visiting her in 29 Palms ^{1 2} in her permanent mobile home. I remember sitting on the davenport watching the Dodgers on a small 13" COLOR CRT TV. I remember that the game was broadcast on KTLA5. But what I remember the most is the voice of Vin Scully.

I don't know what who the Dodgers were playing, but I remember how much my grandmother LOVED to listen to Vin call the game. And it stuck with me. I was probably about 7 or 8 and I thought baseball was "boring". To be fair, I thought most sports were boring, but especially baseball. Nothing ever happens! But, I loved my grandmother, and I loved hanging out with her ³ and so I watched the game with her.

Years later I discovered that yes, I did like baseball, and no, it was not boring. And since my grandmother was a Dodgers fan, then I would be too. It was something that connected us. it didn't matter where I lived, or how old I was, we both loved baseball. We both loved the Dodgers. We both loved to hear Vin call the game.

My grandmother died in 2007, but something that helped to connect me to her in the years since was watching the Dodgers. Listening to Vin.

As Vin got older, he still called the home games, but he handed most of the road games to a new crew. I still loved to Watch Dodgers games, but I loved watching the games he called a little bit more. At the start of each season I always kind of wondered, "is this the last year for Vin?". And in 2016 the answer was yes.

I still remember the last game he called in Dodgers Stadium. I remember the back and forth. I remember the Rockies going up 1 run in the top of the 9th. And the Dodgers tying it back up in the bottom of the 9th. And I remember when Charlie Culberson hit the game winning home run in the bottom of the 10th.

I remember the last game Vin called in San Francisco. I remember the Dodgers lost ... but it was Vin's last game, so I still loved getting the chance to watch it. And to listen to him call the game.

Vin passed at the age of 94 on Aug 2, 2022. Just as I knew that there would be a day when Vin retired from calling games, I knew there would be a day when he wouldn't be with us anymore.

I've been trying process this and figure out why this is hitting me as hard as it is.

It all comes back to my grandmother. They never met each other (at least I don't think they did), but in my head they were inextricably connected. Vin was a connection to my grandmother that I didn't fully realize I had, and with his passing that connection isn't there anymore. He hasn't called a game in more than 5 years, but still, knowing that he NEVER will again is hitting a bit hard for me. And I think it's because it reminds me that my grandma isn't here to watch the games with me anymore, and that bums me out. She was a cool lady who always loved the Dodgers ... and Vin.

WinForVin

1. Yes that 29 Palms, right next to the LARGEST Marine Corp Base in the WORLD ↩︎
2. also the 29 Palms that is right next to Joshua Tree home to the National Park that is the current catnip of Hipsters ↩︎
3. she always had the butter scotch hard candies that were my favorite ↩︎

Posted by ryan on Fri 05 August 2022

I’ve been thinking a bit about how to decide which team to root for. Mostly I just want to stay logically consistent with the way I choose to root for a team (when the Dodgers aren't playing obviously).

After much thought (and sketches on my iPad) I’ve come up with this table to help me determine who to root for:

Opp1 / Opp 2 NL West NL Central NL East AL West AL Central AL East NL West Root for team that helps the Dodgers NL Central Team NL East Team NL West Team,unless it hurts the Dodgers NL West Team,unless it hurts the Dodgers NL West Team,unless it hurts the Dodgers NL Central NL Central Team Root for underdog NL Central Team NL Central Team NL Central Team NL Central Team NL East NL East Team NL Central Team Root for underdog NL East Team NL East Team NL East Team AL West NL West Team,unless it hurts the Dodgers NL Central Team NL East Team The Angels over the A's over the Mariners over the Rangers over the Astros AL West Team AL West Team AL Central NL West Team,unless it hurts the Dodgers NL Central Team NL East Team AL West Team Root for underdog AL Central Team AL East NL West Team,unless it hurts the Dodgers NL Central Team NL East Team AL West Team AL Central Team Root for underdog (unless it's the Yankees)

The basic rule is root for the team that helps the Dodgers payoff changes, then National League over American League and finally West over Central over East (from a division perspective).

There were a couple of cool sketches I made, on real paper and my iPad. Turns out, sometimes you really need to think about thing before you write it down and commit to it.

Of course, this is all subject to change depending on the impact any game would have on the Dodgers.

Posted by ryan on Mon 02 April 2018

My wife and I love baseball season. Specifically we love the Dodgers and we can’t wait for Spring Training to begin. In fact, today pitchers and catchers report!

I’ve wanted to do something with the Raspberry Pi Sense Hat that I got (since I got it) but I’ve struggled to find anything useful. And then I remembered baseball season and I thought, ‘Hey, what if I wrote something to have the Sense Hat say “#ITFDB” starting 10 minutes before a Dodgers game started?’

And so I did!

The script itself is relatively straight forward. It reads a csv file and checks to see if the current time in California is within 10 minutes of start time of the game. If it is, then it will send a show_message command to the Sense Hat.

I also wrote a cron job to run the script every minute so that I get a beautiful scrolling bit of text every minute before the Dodgers start!

The code can be found on my GitHub page in the itfdb repository. There are 3 files:

1. Program.py which does the actual running of the script
2. data_types.py which defines a class used in Program.py
3. schedule.csv which is the schedule of the games for 2018 as a csv file.

I ran into a couple of issues along the way. First, my development environment on my Mac Book Pro was Python 3.6.4 while the Production Environment on the Raspberry Pi was 3.4. This made it so that the code about time ran locally but not on the server 🤦‍♂️.

It took some playing with the code, but I was finally able to go from this (which worked on 3.6 but not on 3.4):

now = utc_now.astimezone(pytz.timezone("America/Los_Angeles"))
game_date_time = game_date_time.astimezone(pytz.timezone("America/Los_Angeles"))

To this which worked on both:

local_tz = pytz.timezone('America/Los_Angeles')
now = utc_now.astimezone(local_tz)
game_date_time = local_tz.localize(game_date_time)

For both, the game_date_time variable setting was done in a for loop.

Another issue I ran into was being able to display the message for the sense hat on my Mac Book Pro. I wasn’t ever able to because of a package that is missing (RTIMU ) and is apparently only available on Raspbian (the OS on the Pi).

Finally, in my attempts to get the code I wrote locally to work on the Pi I decided to install Python 3.6.0 on the Pi (while 3.4 was installed) and seemed to do nothing but break pip. It looks like I’ll be learning how to uninstall Python 3.4 OR reinstalling everything on the Pi and starting from scratch. Oh well … at least it’s just a Pi and not a real server.

Although, I’m pretty sure I hosed my Linode server a while back and basically did the same thing so maybe it’s just what I do with servers when I’m learning.

One final thing. While sitting in the living room watching DC Legends of Tomorrow the Sense Hat started to display the message. Turns out, I was accounting for the minute, hour, and day but NOT the month. The Dodgers play the Cubs on September 12 at 9:35 (according to the schedule.csv file anyway) and so the conditions to display were met.

I added another condition to make sure it was the right month and now we’re good to go!

Super pumped for this season with the Dodgers!

Posted by ryan on Tue 13 February 2018