Word: batting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...time Cal Sr. was given the Orioles' Double-A team in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1972, the kids were old enough to help out--Ellie as the scoreboard keeper, Junior as the bat boy, Fred as a clubhouse attendant and Billy as the ball boy. "I think that's where I first picked up my work ethic," says Cal Jr. "My dad did everything. He was not only the manager but also the pitching coach, the batting coach, the batting-practice pitcher, the ground keeper. And when he wasn't on the field, he was talking baseball." Cal Sr., whose...
Travel upriver from Havre de Grace all the way to Cooperstown, and right there on Main Street is a statue of a boy called The Sandlot Kid. He's barefoot, and he's wearing a straw hat. But he holds his bat over his shoulder a little like Cal Ripken. Just one more game...
...Bat pups can weigh as much as a quarter of their mother's heft--the equivalent of a 100-lb. woman giving birth to a 25-lb. baby...
According to the fossil record, bats were soaring in the sky at least 55 million years ago. These ancient flyers, says evolutionary biologist Nancy Simmons of New York City's American Museum of Natural History, were "virtually indistinguishable from today's echolocating bats." Though laymen think they most resemble rodents, bats' closest cousins are primates. Modern bats are amazingly diverse; about 1,000 species account for nearly a fourth of all mammal species. The only known group of flying mammals, they range in size from Thailand's tiny bumblebee bat, weighing less than a penny, to Indonesia's giant flying...
Essentially docile, bats play a vital role in maintaining ecological balance. For one thing, they protect crops from marauding insects. The 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats that roost in Bracken Cave near San Antonio, Texas, from spring to fall consume 250 tons of insects every night as they swarm to altitudes of 10,000 ft. Farmers are not the only ones who benefit. A single little brown bat can speedily clear a suburban backyard of pesky mosquitoes, lapping up 600 bugs an hour...