I’m in the thick of it now. Thought I’d give you a sneak peak on my progress. Here’s a snapshot. I’m still working on the overall composition and trying to figure out how to balance out the words/pictures. Definitely some large chunks that still need to be filled in, but like I said, “gettin’ there.”

We’re getting down to the wire here folks. This baseball project is due, finished and completed, on Monday. The weekend is pretty much shot, because I have to have it to the printers in time for them to print it. Basically today is the day I have to get this thing near complete so that I can have it in class tomorrow for some feedback….sighhh… Dang this sucks, these are the kind of nightmares I have.

It’s my own fault. I got caught up in the visual style way to early. I’ve been wasting my time looking for nice clip art and beautiful fonts, researching inspiration from handwritten documents of the 1800′s, which is what I wanted mine too look like. This was a mistake, because I neglected the actual content of the piece. I should have spent my time thinking of an innovative way to teach this information instead of trying to make it look pretty.

Well, lesson learned, time to move on. Deadlines have always been great inspiration for me, so we’ll see how I do this time.

Look for a post later on tonight with my progress.

Well, it’s official. I’ve let this blog snowball. I waited to long between posts, and now there’s just too much to say. So instead of a big update, heres a short list of the things that have happened since the last update; all the Apple stuff (iPod shuffle, Mac mini, iWork, iLife), Design Charette 05, Reverend King’s B-Day and of course some great lectures and book readings. Since I don’t have the desire to type out the details of these things, you should just talk to me about them. I’ll be at Mellow Mushroom tonight celebrating Hillary’s day of birth, then over to the Jinx for a much needed 80s night. Or just give me a call. I look forward to hearing from you.

(By the way I’m still working on my concept map of baseball and should be posting a preliminary version this weekend.)

Here’s my rough draft for my narrative essay. I really tried to convey the competition, historical and emotional aspects of baseball in this, since the rest of the assignment will be mainly the logistics. Please post editorial comments and suggestions.

Kevin Millar approaches home plate, the white polyester uniform stretching to contain his biceps as he takes quick swipes at the air. A bat made of ash gripped in his hands as natural as John Henry’s hammer. Millar stops just outside the batters box making eye contact with Mariano Rivera as he tightens his batting gloves. Rivera stands 60 feet away on the raised pitcher’s mound in the middle of the baseball diamond. He turns the baseball over in his right hand, feeling it’s smooth white leather and the red stitching snaking its way across it. Inhaling deeply, Riveria contemplates the importance of the following pitches. Three strikes, game over. We can be done with these nine innings, done with this game, done with this series and back on a plane headed for New York with the pennant, in one strikeout. He exhales slowly, letting Fenway Park and the screaming Boston fans blur and focuses solely on his teammate behind home plate, Jorge Posada. Pasada stretches his left hand, feeling the worn leather of the mitt gripping tighter around it. The lucky mitt, the mitt that caught the final strike last year, sending Boston home and us to the World Series. The pain in his legs from crouching for four hours is pushed out of his mind as he watches Riveria. The weight of the game resting on that grey Yankees jersey.

Millar steps into the batter’s box infront of Pasada. Tapping the plate with his bat before raising it to his shoulder. His cleats wiggling deeper into the dirt as his body sways with fervor. Rivera’s grip on the ball tightens as he reads the signal from between Pasada’s legs. Two fingers, fastball. Rivera begins his windup slowly, like a freight train. He brings his hands to his face, gaining momentum as his left leg raises. He accelerates, vaulting forward, the ball comes speeding from his fingertips.

Millar’s unblinking eyes follow the ball from Rivera’s hand. In a fraction of a second the ball is within Millar’s reach. He has already begun to shift the bat from his shoulder, the power within his trained arms exploding as he steps forward with his left foot. His shoulders rotate, pushing the bat from behind him. The motion is fluid, practiced, like a machine revolving and pivoting on an assembly line. His calculations were right on, the ball collides with the tree at its apex. Millar hears the crack of the ball against his bat, but the power of his swing isn’t lessoned as he follows through. Without watching the ball, Millar flicks his wrist, sending the bat bouncing back towards the Boston dugout. He leaps forward, claiming the steps to first base.

The ball, reeling from the collision, sails over the diamond formed by the four bases, and heads for left field. Hideki Matsui, who had been watching Rivera’s windup and anticipated the balls path, has already started to move. His feet seem to gently tickle the grass as he scurries across it. His eyes locked onto the white sphere hurling toward him.

Millar rounds first base, only now looking up to see the ball soaring towards the stands. The crowd is on its feet; Matsui hears nothing but the ball slicing the cool night air. He’s at the wall. It’s falling, the ball’s coming down. This is his chance. Matsui climbs into the air, pushing off the wall with his right hand, stretching with his left. Extending each finger in his glove to the point of pain. He closes his eyes. Millar stabs second with his foot, slowing. As Matsui begins to descend he feels a tug at his wrist. With a smile he snaps his glove closed and falls back to earth. Millar stops. The crowd goes quiet. Matsui thrusts the white trophy skyward. The grey jerseys on the field seem to be sucked together as the center of the Milky Way shifts from the sun to Matsui. The crowd is still, a quiet pond peppered with the twitchings of a few New York water bugs. Quickly, the stands drain, leaving only the Yankee fans writhing and reeling. For them the night has just begun.

Man are there a lot of books about baseball. A quick search on Amazon showed 6,516 and on my trip to the local library I found 1,301 staring me in the face. Surprisingly, very few of them actually delt with the game’s rules or the logistics of playing, most were historical or contained stories surrounding the sport.

This reiterated what I had mentioned before, the game of baseball is more than just a game.

I’m still not sure how this emotional side will be conveyed in the assignment, although I have a feeling it will become apparent when completing the first part of the project, the written narrative.

We began work on this yesterday by creating a large list of all the words we associate with baseball. Our homework was to define these terms and rank them in order of importance. Luckily I was able to find “Baseball for Dummies” and as well as a nice fat “Encyclopedia of Baseball” that contains a glossary of terms.

I’ll continue to post as progress continues on it. (As a side note, I think my Anthropology teacher is Indiana Jones. He spends his free time excavating fossils and treasure hunting. It is his first quarter here at SCAD and he comes from a university in Florida bearing a Ph.D.

This anthropology class is the most academic course I’ve ever taken and couldn’t come at a better time, as I can finally appreciate that sort of thing. His lecture tonight was a brief overview of anthropology and I was happy to hear him explain what an ethnography was, realizing its similarity to our contextual inquiries and its relevance to design.)