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WITandWISDOM(tm) - July 31, 2001 ~~~~~~~ THOUGHTS: All things are possible until they are proved impossible - and even the impossible may only be so, as of now. - Pearl S. Buck Submitted by Bettie Snyder ~~~~~~~ SPECIAL THOUGHTS: A PERFECT GAME: It was Saturday, August 7, 1993 - a night game at Grant Field, a minor-league baseball park in Dunedin, Florida. The hometown Blue Jays were playing the Fort Lauderdale Red Sox, and 2200 fans were getting their money's worth. The Blue Jays had a 4-0 lead, and Dunedin starting pitcher Dennis Gray, a tall 23-year-old southpaw from Banning, California, had a one-hitter after six innings. "I was in a groove that night," he says. "Then the home-plate umpire called time out. A boy had stumbled onto the field and started talking to the players. The next thing you know, he turned and started coming toward me. "He got to the mound, and I saw that he was mentally handicapped. I didn't want to be mean to him. He didn't understand the rules. So I handed him the ball. And he promptly threw a strike!" As security guards stood off the side, the boy threw another pitch. Organist John Yusko played music to accompany the throw. The crowd in the stands went wild and gave the boy a standing ovation. Gray says he glanced down to see that the boy was tugging on his glove and smiling up at him. Then he gave the pitcher a hug. That's when Gray lost his composure and began to cry. "The kid was in heaven," Yusko recalls. "It was like the world stopped for a little while, and everybody was able to love him." After the boy's mother led the youngster back to his seat, Gray tried to compose himself. But he walked two batters, and then the third hit a double. When Jays manager Dennis Holmberg went out to the mound, Gray still had tears in his eyes. They agreed it was best that Gray leave the game, which the Jays hung on to win. Gray has spent years fighting to get to the big leagues. Staying focused and serious. Then this. He can't explain why he broke down. "It just kind of struck me that all of us are pretty blessed to be able to play baseball for a living," he says. "I had a great game going, but I wouldn't trade that for what happened for anything in the world." From: St. Petersburg TIMES by Tom Zucco http://www.sptimes.com/ Submitted by Homer Brown ~~~~~~~ THIS & THAT: On his way home to surprise his mother for All Souls' Day, Mishi Dobos stopped by the family's summer cottage to see what repairs he might undertake next. His eyes fell on the garden well, a solid brick structure four feet in diameter. As he leaned over to peer into the 74-foot shaft with a flashlight, he failed to notice the frosty moss on the well's rim. Within seconds, he had plummeted feet first into the shaft, landing ankle-deep in soft mud. For three days Mishi shouted for help. Then, on the fourth day, while attempting to make a place to sit, he ripped a carpenter's clamp - a foot-long piece of metal with upturned ends -- away from the rotting wood. Mishi thought, "What can I do with this?" Studying the walls, he saw a brick missing on one side. An idea dawned -- use the clamp to chip out bricks in a staggered, upward fashion and climb out! Mishi went to work. At best, he could remove three bricks an hour. But brick by brick and a bad fall later -- in all, six days and 23 hours after plunging into the well -- Mishi swung his leg over the edge of the upper rim, the rusty carpenter's clamp in his hand. Source: God's Little Devotional Book, Copyright (c) 1995 by honor Books, Inc., ISBN: 1562920960, http://isbn.nu/1562920960/price ~~~~~~~ KEEP SMILING: LEARNING CURVES Our friends took their first-grader on a car trip to Canada. To help pass time, the boy practiced his new reading skills by calling out road signs. He fell asleep just before they entered Quebec. When he awoke he saw the French highway signs and said in a worried tone, "I think I forgot how to read while I was asleep." - Contributed by Larrie Todd Source: Reader's Digest, Copyright (c) May 1999, http://www.readersdigest.com ~~~~~~~ TRIVIA: VISUAL SEARCH ENGINE Here is a search engine with a new twist. SearchShots describes itself as the visual search engine. It provides preview screenshots of every site you search. http://www.searchshots.com [You can experiment by copying and pasting the following three words into SearchShots' search box and see what returns. humor inspiration trivia ] Source: Neat Net Tricks, Copyright 2001 by Jack Teems. All rights reserved. U.S. Library of Congress ISSN: 1533-4619, http://www.NeatNetTricks.com/ |