In 2014, the World Series of Beep Baseball was held in Rochester, Minnesota, giving many of our family, friends, and fans, a rare opportunity to watch the Millers play. The opportunity is rare because, most of the time, the Millers don’t get the chance to play in Minnesota because we’re the only team in the state.

Rochester has played host to a World Series of Beep Baseball three times, in 2007, 2010, and 2014. It was because of the 2010 World Series that the Minnesota Fighting Lions, our parent organization, decided to branch out of recreational beep baseball and form a competitive team. The Fighting Lions changed their name to the Millers in 2012, adopting the University of Minnesota Gophers maroon and gold color scheme. The Fighting Lions still play recreational beep ball, though, every Saturday from late April through mid September, giving people the opportunity to play beep ball in a more casual setting.

This year, the World Series of Beep Baseball will be held in Rochester, New York, a city known for its minor league baseball team, the Rochester Red Wings, it’s world renowned universities, The University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology, and as the birthplace of Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, and Xerox.

The Rochester Red Wings are the oldest continuously operating minor league baseball team in the United States. Founded in 1899, they’re a farm team for our own Minnesota Twins. They’ve won the Governors’ Cup, the championship of the International League, 10 times since 1933, setting a league record. Rochester was named “Baseball City, USA” by Baseball America in 1998.

The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has been the home of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf since 1966. In 1990, RIT started its first PH.D. program in imaging science. It now has 7 PH.D. programs, and became the first university to offer a Software Engineering degree at the undergraduate level in 1996.

The tallest building in Rochester is the Xerox Tower, clocking in at 443 feet. Other points of interest include the George Eastman House, the world’s oldest photography museum, Frontier Field, and the Strong National Museum of Play, housing the National Toy Hall of Fame.

It costs around $500 to fly from Minneapolis to Rochester. Busses and trains are also options, but they don’t cost much less and the 1009 mile trip takes nearly two full days. $7,500 of this year’s budget will be used to transport our 15-person team by air.

Rooms at the host hotel, the Radisson Riverside, cost $89 per night, plus 14 percent tax, for a total of 101.46 per night. We usually share our rooms, meaning that our hotel costs will only be around $5600. That’s 72 percent of this year’s budget. The rest is spent on food, equipment, ground transportation while we’re there, and tournament registration fees. According to our statistics, around 1800 people have read our posts over the last week. If each one of you donated $10, we’d easily be able to achieve that goal. Fortunately, many of you have donated much more. For that, we thank you. If you haven’t donated yet, there is still time. Donations are tax deductable, quick and easy. Simply click one of the donate links on this page. When you’re finished with that, share or like this post on facebook, twitter, or any other social network you’re a part of and again, thank you to all of our family, friends, and fans for your support.

Many of us are spending time with our fathers today. If we’re too far away, we’re calling, sending cards, or simply sending “happy Fathers’ Day” messages on Facebook. Several of the Minnesota Millers are fathers, and we want to wish all of them happy fathers day today. We also wanted to tell you about one very special father-son combo.

Coach Doug Van Duyne’s son Evan has been a Miller from the beginning. “My dad has been the biggest motivator for me to do well”, Evan said during a 2014 television interview.

The rest of us feel the same way. As we described in our post yesterday, Doug is one of the biggest motivators for us all to do well. Not only because of his excellent coaching, but because he treats all of us as if we were his own sons and daughters. He praises us when we do well, and makes sure we know why when we didn’t. He pushes us to do better each year. Through his coaching and through the example he sets for all of us.

Doug puts in an enormous amount of time off the field as well. He attends every Minnesota Fighting Lions board meeting, even though he no longer officially serves on the board. When the Millers aren’t practicing, Doug often spends his Saturdays with the Minnesota Fighting Lions recreational program, coaching less experienced players and scouting for new talent.

Please join us in wishing Doug, and all the fathers out there, a happy Fathers’ Day.

This post wouldn’t be complete without a reminder to help us achieve our $18,000 fund raising goal for 2015. We’re over half way there, but we still have a long way to go. Donating is quick, easy, and tax deductable through the donate links on www.mnmillers.org. Thank you to all of you who have donated so far. You’re helping maintain the tradition of beep baseball in Minnesota and we all appreciate your support.

A great deal of the coverage given to beep baseball focuses primarily on the blind players, but without our volunteer coaches, pitchers, catchers, and spotters, what we do wouldn’t be possible. For example, thanks to the dedication of two of our volunteers, coach Doug Van Duyne and catcher Kelly Peterson, we were able to turn a canceled event into a successful practice today.

Many people don’t realize that a blind person’s life usually has to be planned further in advance, at least when it comes to arranging transportation. Busses run on schedules, and don’t always go where we need them too. Para transit systems usually require at least a day of advanced notice when scheduling rides. Taxis are, for some, prohibitively expensive. This means that, for a beep baseball team, it can be difficult to arrange last-minute practices or pickup games. Today, though, Doug and Kelly transported four of our six twin cities players so we could do exactly that.

When we arrived at the park, Coach Doug and the players assisted each other in batting practice using a hit stick, a tool for improving swing consistency. This is particularly important in beep ball, where the pitcher and batter must consistently be able to meet each other in a strike zone about four inches wide.

After that, Doug batted, or threw, ball after ball out into the field so we could work on our defense. In beep ball, reaching a hit ball as soon as possible is essential to preventing the offensive team from scoring runs. A good hitter can easily propel the ball over 100 feet before it drops to the ground and can be fielded. Catching a ball in the air is so rare that the defensive team is automatically awarded three outs if they do it.

Many of the most powerful hitters are also fast runners and can reach a base, 100 feet from home plate, in around four seconds. All of this gives the defensive team very little margin for error, so practice is essential.

All of our players would like to thank Doug, Kelly, and all of our volunteers for their dedication. We’d also like to remind our fans that our volunteers don’t just donate their time, they often donate their money as well. Gas, to transport players and themselves, is just one expense volunteers have. Traveling to out-of-state tournaments, like the World Series, is as expensive for a volunteer as it is for a player. This is all tax deductable, but volunteers come from all walks of life and cost presents a problem for some more than others. Two of our newest volunteers, for example, are full time college students. Your donations insure that we can retain the volunteers we need to make beep baseball possible in Minnesota. Please visit www.mnmillers.org and use the donate button or mailing address provided there to help us achieve our $18,000 fund raising goal for 2015. We understand that this isn’t possible for everyone, but it is possible for everyone to spread the word. Please like or share this post so that more of Minnesota can enjoy the amazing sport of beep baseball.