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| Ottis Johnson |
Tomorrow (Friday) marks the sad anniversary of the death of
probably the greatest baseball player to ever come out of Conecuh County, Ottis
Johnson of Evergreen.
On June 10, 1951 Johnson, who played for the Dothan Browns,
died at the age of 25, eight days after getting hit in the temple by a pitch
delivered by Headland Dixie Runners pitcher Jack Clifton. The accident happened
during an Alabama-Florida League game at Peanut Stadium in Headland.
Johnson is buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Evergreen, and, to
date, he was the last professional player to be killed after getting “beaned”
by a ball during a game.
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As of Monday, the Atlanta Braves were 16-40 overall and in
last place in the National League East after three straight losses to the Los
Angeles Dodgers. The Braves continued their West Coast trip earlier this week
with three scheduled games against the Padres in San Diego. The Braves are
supposed to have a day off today (Thursday) before a three-game series against
the Cubs in Atlanta, starting tomorrow (Friday).
The Braves might want to consider playing the Cubs in
Chicago instead of Atlanta since the Braves record on the road is actually
better than it is at home. As of Monday, the Braves were 6-23 in games played
in Atlanta while they were 10-14 on the road. Earlier this season, the Braves
went 1-1 against the Cubs in Chicago.
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Someone asked me the other day about how much longer we have
to wait until the start of next football season. As chance would have it,
Hillcrest and Sparta are scheduled to kick off their regular season schedules
on Aug. 26 in Evergreen. Hillcrest will play Linden that night in Brooks
Memorial Stadium, and Sparta will play Wilcox Academy at Stuart-McGehee Field.
As of today, Aug. 26 is 78 days away, that is, 11 weeks and one day.
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I was out at Evergreen Municipal Park one day last week and
noticed the construction on the new fields has come a long way in a short
amount of time. Before you know it, they’ll be ready for use, and I look
forward to the day that I can run out there with my camera and take pictures at
the dedication or ribbon-cutting. Once complete, these new fields will be a
feather in the city’s cap.
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From the weird news file this week, I saw in the syndicated
“Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” cartoon Friday that Suzi Swinehart of Fort Wayne,
Indiana ran 73.3 miles in 12 hours on a treadmill. She actually stopped to use
the restroom, but the clock kept going.
I was curious about how many calories Swinehart burned
during this exercise and was interested to find out that the average female
burns around 91 calories per mile while jogging. On average, a woman who runs
73.3 miles burns 6,670.3 calories. Now when you consider that the average Big
Mac hamburger contains 540 calories, that means that she burned off around 12
and a half Big Mac during her treadmill run.
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