Reading is FUNdamental!

"The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day," if you mean "yesterday" for "that day," and "The Baltimore Orioles" for "The Mudville Nine."  They've gotten this baseball season off to a muddy start, winning one, losing one, and never getting momentum built up.  This past weekend, they lost games to the Anaheim, California Angels of Greater Los Angeles, California on Friday and Saturday nights, scoring only one run in each game and looking, shall we say, either lacklustre or slapdash as a team. Possibly even haphazard.

So, what a ballclub needs to get out of a slump is a good pitcher, and when one regular pitcher reported out with bronchitis and another said his back was sore, the team turned to a rookie without one inning of big-league experience, Mike Wright. All Wright did was, he pitched 7 1/3 scoreless innings as the team beat the Angels, 3-0.
Now, you might expect that Wright might have been a trifle jittery before making his major-league debut.  He said he was a little nervous in the first inning, and then settled in for the rest of a great day.

I refuse to make a
"The Wright Stuff" joke

“That’s everything you dream of going into it, and it was really fun,” said Wright, who gave up four hits, walked none and struck out six. “I was a little nervous the first inning. It’s to be expected.”

Here is the secret, one I'm glad to pass along to those of you still employed in situations bound to make one jumpy:  Instead of sitting in the locker room with the rest of the team, hearing all the baseball team chattering and getting all worked up, Wright took a book and sat reading in the vacant stands.  Several hours later, some fan sat in the very seat once occupied by the man the fan was watching pitch so well!

And the book that Wright, a graduate of East Carolina University was reading?   “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows,” the last of the tripartite novel series by J.K. Rowling. 

Wright says he has always stayed in the habit of reading in the stands before a game, and also says he has read all the Harry Potter books at least three times.

Let's hope the next book he reads will be that sensational best seller "Adam Jones and The Coconut Cream Pie of Victory."