#FIGHT FINISHED

Washington Nationals, 2019 World Series Champions

What a Cinderella story! The 2019 baseball season began with a terrible slump by the Washington Nationals, landing them 12 games below .500 (19-31) on May 22. For many, the loss of Bryce Harper to the Phillies was a herald for the team’s fortune. The press was calling for manager Davey Martinez’s head, and predictions were dire for the season.

But something happened. Martinez was not fired, the front office fully supported the team, continuing to shape the bullpen and utility players, and almost magically, the Nats began their climb out of fourth place (only the Miami Marlins had a worse record).

Scrabbling and scraping, the team adopted the slogan, “Stay In The Fight.” Martinez’s public comments always reverberated the phrase, “1-0” (Today we are going for a 1-0 record). And stay in the fight they did. Utility outfielder Gerardo Parra was released by the San Francisco Giants, and the Nats signed him on. During a frustrating slump at bat, on June 19, Parra asked the stadium PA system to play a new “walk-up song:” Baby Shark. Getting two hits that day, the song became a rallying cry for the team and fans alike, generating “shark moves” by both during games. Some fans started wearing shark-themed attire to games.

From May 24, 2019 on, the Nats had the best record in baseball. They never reached first place in their division (National League East), but managed to nab a wild card slot. On October 1, the wild card game against the Milwaukee Brewers was played, and the Nats came from behind, scoring three runs in the 8th inning, winning 4-3 to advance to the divisional playoffs.

A five game series against the heavily-favored Los Angeles Dodgers, who were heavily favored to take it all, having had a regular season record of 106-56. The only team with a better record was the American League Houston Astros. When the dust had settled, the Nats had once again taken a 3-2 series, overcoming a 0-3 deficit and winning the finale by a Grand Slam home run in the 10th inning, shocking the baseball world!

Then came the League Championship series. This, a seven game series, was a new experience for the Nationals, who had never reached this level of competition before. Nevertheless, it didn’t seem to daunt them, as they swept the St. Louis Cardinals in four games! The league championship belonged to the Nationals!

There was only one series left to play: The World Series! Matched up against the Houston Astros, the Nats were considered severe underdogs. No one apparently told the Nats, as they continued to STAY IN THE FIGHT. Much history was made during this seven games series, perhaps the most striking is that the road team won every game! The Nationals played in Houston the first two games, and walked away 2-0. But Houston went ahead by winning all three games in Washington. Back to Houston, where the improbably happened: The Nats won both. And again, they came from behind in Game 7 to win it all.

My father was never a warm, caring father figure to me. He was a driven, Type-A man, who worked to succeed and provide for his family. Thus, my fondest memories of him were the times we spent going to Griffith Stadium in D.C. to watch the Washington Senators play. We would also sit on a darkened porch at night, listening to games on transistor radio. It was something we both shared. Maybe it’s a reason I played Little League Baseball (second base) and won the only championship I’ve been in. So, dad, you never got to see a Washington baseball team win the World Series. But I have.

I hope wherever you are Dad, I hope you’re smiling.

Any Questions?

FIGHT FINISHED!

MacDown Markdown

As the fabled Yogi Berra was reported to have said, “It’s like déjà vu all over again!”

Some twenty-five years ago, I started a web site (this one, but in raw HTML) to learn the emerging technologies that would power the Worldwide Web. Now, it seems I’m returning to those roots, on behalf of my employer.

The short story is that my employer, after dragging feet and pushing back, have realized that there is a need to provide online training for the products we create. To date, our training is on a published schedule, and either occurs in a physical training facility, or online. This does not work well in a world economy, where time zones differ, languages vary, and schedules don’t always align. A year and a half ago, I presented a basic proposal on moving to a self-paced modular training curriculum that would allow trainees to proceed at their own pace, on their own time.

Sometimes things just come together.

A week ago, during a routine call with the folks at MicroTek, the company we use for facilities-based training, I learned that one of their offerings was “self-paced training.” This is the exact phrase used by one of our VPs who struggles to provide training to his customers on the other side of the planet. As a result, we set up a call and saw a presentation, and all the pieces began to click. The solution presented not only addressed a number of shortcomings we have in our training, but also was a money-saver! Who couldn’t like that?

Key to this training is Markdown. Simply put, Markdown is a text-to-HTML tool. HTML itself isn’t so difficult, but it has evolved, and now includes Cascading Style Sheets, inline-code, server-side-includes, and more. Getting all the pieces of an HTML project in place is now as complex as writing other software code. Markdown allows a web designer to write plain English text, adding some basic syntax rules, and the HTML is generated as output.

What even better, is that there are a number of Markdown editors available that show you the output as you type! I’ve tried a number of (miserable) Windows products, but there’s a marvelous open source Mac project called MacDown.

MacDown logo

In less than half a day, I “converted” three PowerPoint slides into HTML documents, and created a few fresh ones from scratch. It’s that easy to do!

MicroTek’s implementation adds some features (“extensions”) that make for things like pages, alerts, interactive questions, knowledge boxes, and more. Coupled with user tracking, this gives full visibility into how trainees interact with the program, whether they answer questions correctly, and so on.

I’ve now run some numbers and when I’ve mentioned this to others (including the EVP), there’s a lot of interest. I’m going to formalize another proposal, including costs, time to implement, resource usage, and more. I admit, I’m pretty charged up about this!

And I’m back learning (or re-learning) web technologies!

#Natitude

I’m changing pace for a brief while.

My favorite sports were those I played when I was younger: baseball and tennis. Little League baseball was the only sport where I was on a championship-winning team; I nearly won a championship playing tennis, but came oh, so short…

Baseball

Living in the Washington, D. C. area (when we weren’t in between overseas assignments), my father used to take me to Griffith Stadium to watch the Washington Senators play. We’d also sit out on the screened-in porch in the dark to games on transistor radio.

The Senators were never a good team. I still remember the saying: “Washington – first in war, first in peace, last in the American League!” But they were my team, and I recall some of the players’ names: Harmon Killebrew, Eddie Brinkman, Camilo Pascual, Eddie Yost, Roy Sievers, and more. Sadly, the Senators left town in 1961 and became the Minnesota Twins.

They weren’t done, yet. From 1961-1971, another Washington Senators team played in town, but they were no better, and ultimately left to become the Texas Rangers. There was no Major League Baseball in the nation’s capital for the next 34 years!

The Montreal Expos moved to Washington in 2005, where they were renamed the Washington Nationals. They played in the National League, not the AL. But they were initially as bad as the former Washington teams had been. They did not post a winning season for the first seven years.

But something happened.

The new ownership of the team was determined to build a strong franchise. Through smart hiring and player drafts, the team became a contender, winning division titles in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2017, but losing in the division series each time. In 2019, as unlikely as it seems — especially since the team got off to a 19-31 start — the Nats, as is their nickname, won the Wild Card, the Division Series, the League Championship, and are now poised, for the first time in franchise history, to play in the World Series!

My love of baseball has been re-ignited, and the success of the current Washington team boggles my mind. I feel almost as if I’m experiencing a dream. And I don’t want anyone to wake me!