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Jacoby Ellsbury: The early years
By adamg on Tue, 09/11/2007 - 8:58am
Yanksfan vs. Soxfan posts the memories of somebody who played Little League with Ellsbury:
... As a sixth-grader in Madras, my Little League team fell short of players midway through the 1992 season. My dad (our coach) was forced to "call up" a player from the younger league of third- and fourth-graders to fill the roster. With little hesitation, he passed over the older kids and chose a 9-year-old named Jacoby Ellsbury. ...
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Comments
Hometown Heroes
We recently traveled through Madras on a swing through Central and Eastern Oregon - the dry 2/3 of the state nobody seems to know about. This team is still celebrated at the city limits (yes, cities and towns really ARE dots on the map out there, and anything over 1,000 population = city!)
The OSU coach understood that his backyard was both overlooked and a potential goldmine. Instead of intensively recruiting in Texas and the rest of the south, where scouts are a dime a dozen, he started scoping out the local talent. As a result, he built legendary teams from neglected talent, and also made everybody so happy when their hometown kids went to bat for the Beavos that they would travel hundreds of miles from across the state to see their tax dollars at work.
In June 2006, my plane from Portland was delayed because of the victorious team was getting off their plane at an adjacent gate. A beaver-hatted teenage boy with Down Syndrome who was about to board my plane to Phoenix was naming the players one by one as they exited the jetway. That's deep fanbase right there.
Cities!
In Washington, anything that's gone through the process of becoming incorporated is a city. "Town" is used colloquially for downtownish areas in unincorporated parts of the county. There's one city I know of with 26 people, last I heard.
You probably know this, but many New Englanders won't: in much of the country, the state isn't divided up into city/town borders. Cities in Washington (and many states) will have a border around them that designates the city limits, but then there are also addresses that aren't actually within city limits. They're in unincorporated whatever county, using the closest city name as their address and ZIP code. Trash pickup and taxes and other such things are more often tied to the county than the city, since not everyone is in a city. There are also "census-designated places" that don't have a government per se but have a clear boundary whether you live inside or not. I don't really know what the point of this is.
I had a teacher in high school who, when students asked him where he lived, he'd say "unincorporated Snohomish county." He was a friend of my parents', so I knew he lived right in a local neighborhood where plenty of students lived (hence not wanting people to know where he lived!) but "unincorporated Snohomish county" could be anywhere in the rather large county.
Unincorporated Snohomish county
I could say that all day long. It's just a pity Snoqualmie isn't in unincorporated Snohomish county.
But, yes, on a recent trip across upstate New York, I had a devil of a time explaining to Greta (who made a point of wearing her Sox hat at every single rest stop we went to) how a town could have cities in it (such as my favorite, the town of Horseheads). Kids from Massachusetts just don't get it.
Snoqualmie
Yes, but the City of Snoqualmie is in King County, which is amusing because it was originally named after William Rufus King, then was "renamed" after Martin Luther King Jr. (first passed in 1986, signed into law in 2005).
One Question?
You are about the right age and look similar to a (then) girl my brother was friendly with.
You or your sister didn't swim for the South Snohomish County Dolphins swim team, perchance?
Don't think it was me...
I'm older than I look, but wasn't a swimmer. I do know people from that team though; that's funny. Hey, e-mail me and tell me where you went to school and stuff... ksanti at gmail dot com