Here's What's Happening at East Polk Rotary
Posted by Walt Mozdzer
on Apr 07, 2015
Good Morning Rotarians!
At last week's meeting, our Rotarian of the Day Eric Borseth introduced us to Scott Sailor, the Director of Community Relations for the Iowa Cubs. Scott provided us with insight into the Cubs organization including an overview of the Chicago Cubs and their farm team system. He clearly explained the differences among the various levels of baseball's farm system and how they contribute to the parent team's success. One of the more interesting parts of his talk was how there is a new clock as part of the game. A pitcher now has only 20 seconds to get a pitch off to the batter. If he fails and the clock runs out, it will be called a ball. If it's the batter's fault, it will be called a strike. Scott said that major league baseball has ordered an experiment with the new clock in an effort to speed up the game. Another requirement is that there will only be allowed 2:25 between innings. Scott pointed out that surveys have not revealed a major gripe with the length of games among fans and he doesn't think it's needed. But they plan to follow through with the request to see what impact it will have. Opening day for the I-Cubs is April 17th.
Our good friend Dr. Jim Blessman was also in attendance at last week's meeting and thanked our club for the cumulative (including matching grants) $161,000 raised for new water wells in South Africa. East Polk contributed a block of that money which was added to money raised by other area clubs and then multiplied by the grant process including a Rotary International grant. Dr. Blessman said the money will supply 10 fresh water wells in rural schools where there is a chronic lack of fresh clean water among the local residents and students.
In other news, Eric reported that we now have as many as eight students identified for the upcoming RYLA camp this summer. This, of course, is a huge improvement over previous years and is reflective of Eric's ground level work within his committee and with Carol Von Tersch, his counterpart at Southeast Polk High School. Please take a moment to thank Eric for his persistence in this important area of the club's commitment. The challenge now is to find money to allow all these candidates a chance to attend if they wish.
Looking ahead to this week, Corinne Lambert is our Rotarian of the Day and Tom Downs is the Sergeant at Arms. We'll see everyone in the morning.