I was at a softball game the other day, and the home plate umpire did something unusual. Before the game, he asked both teams to drag all their equipment out of the dugouts and line it up against the fence — bats, batting helmets, catcher’s masks, etc. He then proceeded to pick up each item, look it over and then put it back down.

In itself, probably not a bad idea. Sometimes a bat or a helmet that isn’t quite up to standards can find its way into the equipment bag (just ask Sammy Sosa). And I’m sure coaches check the equipment all the time, but it’s a nice idea for someone to check the stuff out right before a game to make sure a helmet isn’t cracked or a faceguard on a catcher’s mask isn’t loose. It’s kind of like checking your headlights and taillights before you pull out of the driveway — although I don’t know of anyone who does that. So, it seemed like kind of a good common-sense thing to do, even if it was a little annoying and puzzling to some of the fans watching.

Anyway, the game starts and this home plate umpire yells out to his partner that he forgot his balls-and-strikes indicator. It was still out in his car.

Just one of those funny little things.

I don’t know if much has been made of this in the newspaper (if it’s been mentioned, I must’ve missed it). Longtime Journal-Courier photographer Steve Warmowski’s last day at the paper was Wednesday.

Of all the people at the newspaper, I think Steve was the most widely known. Anytime we’re out in the community and we tell people we work for the Journal-Courier, they always ask us about “that photographer.” That’s Steve. You’ll probably be at a game someday and you’ll wonder what’s missing — until you realize it’s the guy in the orange coat and the weird blue hat.

There are few people who can be described as the heart and soul of a place, but Steve was that type of person. He had an energy and an enthusiasm for newspapering that was infectious and hopefully even contagious. I met him at my little interview lunch before I was hired some eight years ago (before they hire you here, they take you out to eat). I knew right away that this was where I wanted to work. I could tell these people genuinely cared about what they were doing (and they still do). You can’t say that about all newspapers, believe me.

Steve is a great shooter, but his technical skill as a photographer was overshadowed by his love for telling stories about people. I never thought he would quit the business. Not in a million years.

Steve took most of our sports photographs. He got all the big plays, but he was always looking for the small moments within a game. He turned in lots of photos of players helping opponents to their feet after they had fallen on the field of play — the types of moments that reveal the character of the young people we cover. I think those were his favorite pictures.

Steve was always willing to go the extra mile — literally. I remember waking up at 4 a.m. or something crazy like that so we could get over to Indiana to see the MacMurray football team play Wabash College. Steve wanted to take a nap on the way, so he made me drive his car when we got out on the highway, even though I had never driven a stick. Somehow, we made it. We’ve been trying to save some money here at the paper, so I rode with Steve to lots of events in the past several months. He did all the driving.

So where’s he gone? Steve is going to concentrate on taking wedding photographs with his wife, Tiffany. He’ll be doing some freelance work as well. Steve and Tiffany have been shooting weddings on weekends for about the past year now, and the double duty finally became too much to handle.

The Journal-Courier will get along without Steve, of course, as it would get along without any of us. After all, they’ve been putting out the paper since 1830. But it’s going to be a different place without him here. Steve made a difference.

I miss the orange coat already.

In this job, there are plenty of days that I wish I could be in two places at once. Today, I wish I could be in more than two places at once.

There are a ton of big events today. Big. For starters, you’ve got the Beardstown Tiger Relays and the Greene County Meet. Then there’s Quincy at Jacksonville baseball. Routt at Virginia/A-C Central baseball. Pittsfield at Beardstown baseball. And then there’s softball. Pittsfield at Rushville-Industry. And a game I am dying to see — Beardstown at Triopia-Meredosia, which features two of the area’s premiere pitchers, two of the better hitting lineups, and two legendary coaches.

We’re figuring on covering Pittsfield at Beardstown baseball — two solid teams, two rivals, and two teams we haven’t seen much this spring. But what a tough decision. Jacksonville baseball is starting to come around; Virginia/A-C Central wants a little revenge against Routt. Carrollton’s Tyler Lippert is tearing it up in the discus. I’ve never seen Beardstown’s Penny Grant run. And that softball game at Triopia.

Well … it’ll probably rain.

Mike Rigoni is a good basketball coach. So we were surprised Thursday when we found out his teaching position at Routt had been cut, and he would no longer be coaching there. Routt offered to let him stay on as coach, but without the teaching job, obviously it wouldn’t have worked for him.

Over the past several years, the same thing has happened at several area schools, and I’m thinking particularly about Carrollton. Budget cuts force the board to reduce staff, and sometimes, the staff member is also a coach. It’s not a good situation for the coach, the school or the players. Budget cuts are never good.

Routt had a ton of talent this year and should have gone further in the playoffs, but a couple of things happened during the season that kept the team from being everything it might have been and doing everything it might have done. There really wasn’t much Rigoni could have done to prevent either one of them.

We don’t know everything that goes on behind the scenes — sometimes, that’s for the best — but I don’t think another coach could have gotten more out of that team than Rigoni did. Through it all, Routt still won a share of the WIVC championship in 2007-08. That was no small accomplishment this season, with teams like co-champ A-C Central/Virginia, Carrollton and West Central to contend with.

Over the past three years it was interesting to see Routt progress as a team and to see Rigoni progress as a coach. Routt was his first head coaching job. The Rockets lost some big leads this year, which made some people a little crazy, but they almost always came out on the winning end. For some reason, people forget that.

Routt won a lot of games this year. The team went 22-7, and Routt was always fun to watch. No area team ran the fast break better than Routt did. And no coach was any more gracious after a win or a loss than Rigoni. No matter what happened, he was always willing to talk to us, and he was always willing to have the interview videotaped. No matter what. He took some shots from some of the posters on our Web site — some fair, some unfair — but he never once complained about that, either. I think he understood that criticism comes with the job. That’s kind of a rare thing in itself, especially for someone who hasn’t been a head coach for that long.

But Rigoni was kind of a rare coach in a lot of ways.

Best of luck, coach.

This past week I’ve heard not one but two people suggest that we sponsor an “honor roll” track meet for area teams. The State Journal-Register’s meet is nice, they say, but it would be nicer to have one just for the smaller schools that we cover.

I’ve thought about it for years. I think it’s a terrific idea. When I first got to the Journal-Courier, I started an honor roll for track, as well as for wrestling. I interned at the News-Gazette in Champaign many years ago, and that newspaper had honor rolls like that. Great idea. I think the News-Gazette sponsors a track honor roll meet, where the athletes with the best times and heights and distances are invited to compete. The wrestling honor roll, well, that’s just to give the wrestlers some recognition (and they really don’t get enough).

Our track honor roll was for recognition only. I figured, if enough people were interested enough in track to send in all their results, eventually we’d pursue sponsoring a meet.

They weren’t, so we didn’t.

The Varsity site would make keeping track of the best times and heights and distances in the area as easy as scratching in the triple jump. The site is set up so coaches can enter their own stats, if for some reason we don’t receive them.

Maybe we will sponsor that meet someday. But we’re going to need a little help.

It probably won’t be remembered as the single in the gloaming. But Heather Wilson’s performance in a 2-1, 15-inning win over Greenfield will be remembered.

It was one of those typical softball games between two very good teams. Those types of games usually come down to pitching and defense, and this one did, too. But it also came down to guts and determination. Wilson, who struck out 25 batters for the game, was struck squarely on the front of the ankle by a line drive late in the contest. Looking back at the videotape, at the crack of the bat, Wilson brought both feet together to try to keep the ball in the infield, but she couldn’t get her glove down quite fast enough to keep from getting hit. She hobbled off the mound and went straight to the dugout to make sure her foot was still working, then jogged down the third-base line to test it out. Then it was back to the mound. When the inning was over, Wilson still had a slight limp as she went back to the dugout.

Triopia-Meredosia has been involved in some weird games in the past week, including last Friday’s frigid, windblown win over Carrollton. Thursday’s game lasted until dark. The coaches and the umpires (and these were replacement umps; the umpires who were supposed to officiate the game never showed up) decided that the 15th inning would be the last before the game was suspended and finished another day. In the late innings, play was stopped several times as people in their cars beyond the outfield fence had to be asked to turn their lights off so as not to distract the batters.

Then with darkness closing in around them and the moon rising in the night sky, the Lady Trojans loaded the bases with two outs. Up strode Wilson, Triopia’s No. 3 hitter, who had scored the game-tying run an inning earlier, on a triple by catcher Amanda Lynn. Wilson promptly belted a singled up the middle to send everyone home.

It was another one of those amazing efforts by the Lady Trojans — and one of the most outstanding individual efforts of the spring.

OK, so I don’t think I got any viral videos Friday in Concord, but I might have picked up a virus.

I’ve been colder at games, and much more miserable. I’ve shot football in a driving snowstorm, after driving through a snowstorm to get there. I’ve shot football and softball in pouring rain. Lightning struck a building less than a mile from where I was shooting a youth baseball game. So I’ve seen some weather. But I’ve never been to a game that was played under windier conditions than the one Friday between the Carrollton and Triopia softball teams.

Should the game have been played? Well, it was played, so it should have been played. In other words, conditions weren’t unplayable because obviously, the teams played. And with the weather as it’s been, you kind of have to play when you can. It’s kind of a shame that it was as windy as it was, because those are two good softball teams. Carrollton picked up its first WIVC loss of the season, but as coach Candy Wagner said, both teams had to play in the same conditions. So even thought it wasn’t ideal, it was fair.

Every fly ball was a potential triple. Catchers and pitchers were putting their throwing hands in their back pockets whenever possible to keep their fingers from freezing. Triopia coach Gene Farmer said they were the worst conditions he’s EVER seen for a game. That’s saying something.

So, yeah, it was bad. You really have to love the game to play on a day like that. And you know what? They do. That’s what makes high school sports great. And we wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

When we asked basketball coaches to enter their stats this year, a few said no. They didn’t just not do it, they came right out and told us no.

I’m not exactly sure why.

When we get stats every night, we get field goals, three-pointers, fouls (sometimes) and free throws made and attempted. We rely on coaches to fill out field goal attempts, steals, turnovers and rebounds. Several coaches — we refer to them as our “Varsity All-Stars” — did this for every game.

But again, there were those who declined. There were two reasons. Some said they didn’t want other teams to use the stats to scout their team. Other said they didn’t want to embarrass the players who weren’t doing so well.

The reason we put together lists of stats on the Web site is not so we can embarrass people. Our goal is to gain readers, not to chase them away. To our way of thinking, stats are one way for players who aren’t the stars to at least get some recognition. If they aren’t mentioned in the headlines, at least they’re mentioned somewhere for whatever they do contribute to a team — whether they score 1,000 points or one point or no points. We think being on the team — putting in the time and effort in practice day in and day out — is worth something. I know coaches think so, too.

Every single player who stepped on a basketball court this season did something that I never did in high school. I think they deserve credit for that.

As far as scouting is concerned, to find out who the top players are, all a coach has to do is check the box scores from each game in the paper, refer back to last year’s game film, or call another coach.

Cumulative stats do not tell an opposing coach who is playing well at a particular point in the season. In fact, they may do more harm than good, as far as a scouting report is concerned. Someone off the bench might be playing better than any of the starters on a given night. The point guard might have the flu. A coach might have just tweaked the offense to get the ball to his center more often. Cumulative stats would not indicate any of that.

Someone on the Web site, presumably a coach, said if an opposing coach wants to spend time looking through stats on the Web site instead of using that time to make his own team better, that would be fine with him. Makes sense to me.

It also must have made sense to the team that advanced further in the playoffs than anyone else in the area — the Routt girls’ basketball team. All of their stats were on our Web site. Thanks, Routt.

I don’t care what anybody else thinks. The Illinois College football team should play MacMurray.

Some people are afraid the game would turn into a scene from “The Longest Yard.” I don’t think so. Truth is, nobody knows what would happen because the two teams have never played one another. But think of all the football rivalry games that are played year in and year out at the high schools and colleges across our great land, and tell me how many have had to be stopped because of a riot. If you don’t think the young people at MacMurray College and Illinois College can behave themselves for three hours on a sunny Saturday afternoon … what kind of people do you think they are?

A problem in the stands? I doubt it. A few rowdies usually show up at the softball and soccer games between the two schools, but they generally sit away from the rest of the crowd where only the players can hear them. They wouldn’t be able to do that in a football game. If you want to be on the safe side, designate seating areas and hire extra security. But it won’t be necessary.

Scheduling? It’s easy. Drop Blackburn from both teams’ schedules and play the game on the first day of the regular season, on the Labor Day weekend.

Why play the game? Because it’s silly not to. The game would attract a gigantic crowd every year. Make it a charity event. Bring together all the organizations on both campuses to sell raffle tickets or whatever, and then donate all the money to a worthy cause here in Jacksonville.

Not playing this football game does nothing for anyone. Playing the game could help bring the community together.

Recently I was checking e-mail and I couldn’t believe it: Someone actually commented on one of my blogs!

Here’s what he wrote, exactly as I received it:

“Dear, I’m a korean living in seoul.(name: Oh Minseok) Korean special investigative team are investigating samsung corporation. But they do not work right. Suspicious to be bought off. samsung corporation has many crimes. And the team investigates samsung corporation. It contains korean companies samsung,huyndai,sk CEOs’ illegal issuing stocks or bonds. The quantity are plenty. (Three company CEOs did(and are doing) many crimes to me. Many koreans are knowing it. But many koreans are bought off by illegal issuing stocks or bonds.) The team are knowing it. Korean special investigative team must investigate this. But they are trying to conceal it. I ask for asking for this criminal investigation to prosecutors in any country. And help the shareholders and me. P.S) Three companies are hacking me and trying to kill me. And are suspicious to use my name and email illegally. If you receive another message that I dictated above are not true, it is not from me, but from three companies. The things I dictated above are true.”

A fantastic tale, I’m sure you’ll agree.

So far I have not received another message from any of those three companies, just so you know.

What this has to do with sports, I have no idea. Maybe the lesson here is that if your team has a bad day, or the umpire blows a call, you shouldn’t take it so hard. Instead, you should take a minute to think about what kind of day Oh Minseok is having.

Keep those comments coming.