Springfield Southwest Baseball: Fill & Download for Free

There is a very good reason as an Illinois native that you shouldnt root for the Cubs and White Sox. If you live southwest of Springfield (say like East Saint Louis) you would probably just want to root for the Cardinals.I grew up in the shadows of Wrigley Field and have been a massive Cub fan my whole life. Prior to Interleague play I would cheer for the White Sox. The late 70s White Sox teams were fun to follow. Old Comiskey was still around and Chicago hadnt won championships for decades. We were starved for any team that was a winner. The Southside Hitmen were great theater.With Interleague play, boring new stadium, insecure-angry trolling from some Sox fans and lots of other reasons, Ive grown to hate the Sox.Still I could see someone cheering both teams. Some people dig polygamy.I wish the Sox would build a new stadium south of downtown and get competitive again. It would be great to have 2 good teams in Chicago at once. I wouldnt root for the Sox but I could respect them. As for the Cardinals, I wish they would put those jerseys in dumpster fires.

It depends where in Northern Virginia. If you are working in South Arlington, Alexandria, Springfield etc. I would live in Southwest DC. It is the smallest quadrant. Right by the Potomac river and near the baseball stadium. It is on the yellow line, which heads south and easy to get on the highway. It is getting more expensive to live there but there are deals to be made.If you are working in North Arlington, Tysons, Rest on, etc. it gets more complicated. The traffic is horrible, so hopefully your job is near a metro train and you could focus on living on the orange/silver lines on the metro with driving access to 66. Neighborhood like Foggy Bottom and Eastern Market would fit the bill. Foggy bottom is going to be more expensive. The further East you go, the less expensive. If you have to drive, then the traffic is going to be a nightmare anyway (I used to work in Reston before the metro and still work in that direction), so it doesn't matter as much.

Ohio gets a bad reputation for a lot of things that simply are overblown or someone simply doesn’t like the state without any real facts or evidence of why they don’t like Ohio. I could actually understand if someone can put out facts, figures, logic and reason of why they have issues with Ohio. Most of the time I just hear someone bellyaching about things in Ohio.It’s not as if most of Ohio is such a bad place in most areas. Of course, there are bad communities and bad counties and you can find that in most any state. I live in Indiana and we’ve got our share of lowlife infested small towns that would be bad places in any state but overall the state isn’t all that bad. Where it needs to do better is in certain small towns and certain areas that refuse to grow up and take responsibility at the local level of government.Ohio gets a bad rap because of some of the cities in Ohio that have economic issues, less than optimal education and obvious crime that results from the lack of education as well as economic opportunity. It’s not as if Ohio is actually near the bottom of the United States when it comes to personal income or education or most anything else. In my travels to Ohio, its one of the better states in the country though there are some things that could use improvement like the local economics in certain communities that have been hard hit by the decades long manufacturing decline.Certain inner city areas of Ohio have some serious issues like Cleveland, East Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, Cincinnati, Dayton and Toledo. Those same problems exist in most every state in the country that has cities of 100,000 people or more. In fact some of the problems like rampant drug abuse exists in small towns in my state and the same goes for most states. There’s no totally perfect place in the country.That being said, it seems to me that there is plenty to do in Ohio despite the fact that it is landlocked from the ocean although you do have Lake Erie for spring, summer and fall and even people going ice fishing in the winter though I am sure that is going backwards a bit with climate change. There are plenty of things to do in Ohio such as Kings Island, Cedar Point, minor league baseball in Dayton, Columbus, Toledo, etc. You have two major league baseball teams being in Cincinnati and Cleveland. Two NFL teams in the same city and an ice hockey NHL team in Columbus. You have some great universities in the state of Ohio such as Ohio State, Ohio University, Bowling Green State, Kent State, Dayton, Cincinnati and several others in the various towns and cities in Ohio.You’ve also got the Great Lakes of which Lake Erie makes up most of the north border of Ohio and Ontario, Canada and its a days drive to all of the rest of them anywhere from a 300 to 600 miles to all of the rest of them. You can do boating in the summer on the Great Lakes, boating on Ohio River, boating on the various lakes around Ohio, fishing, hunting for deer and small game, etc. You’ve got forests, smaller mountains and hills in Southern Ohio and the ability to get to other surrounding states like West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, New York, etc for other things.There’s a lot of opportunities in various places of Ohio. Unlike some states where its mostly comprised of a lot of small towns which are off the beaten path, you’ve got interstates and good highways crossing pretty much everywhere in Ohio and cities anywhere from say 40 to 70 miles away in any direction and you can find just about anything in those metro areas. Its like Cincinnati being close to Dayton and not really all that far from Springfield and Columbus as well. The same for Akron being close to Cleveland and small cities like Findlay and Lima being not all that far from Toledo or Dayton overall. Same with how Springfield and Zanesville are maybe an hour from Columbus. Plenty of opportunities there to go elsewhere to look for employment or shopping options or entertainment. ‘There is also a good deal of existing industry in Ohio tied to the automotive industry located around Central Ohio and of course you’ve got a sizable business presence in cities like Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati.It’s not a boring place to me unless you are simply boring and there is a decent amount of cultural and other events including sports, music, social events and things to do. In fact, there about two states in the Midwest I would highly consider and one of them is Ohio if I didn’t already live just a couple of hours away and can make a day trip over there to most of the state.The people that generally give it a bad rap very well are bored just about anywhere. Of course, its not Hawaii, California or Florida and the weather can be highly sketchy but the summers pretty nice overall minus the sticky humid you get from being close to the lake in the north and then course getting humidity that comes up with weather patterns from the south and southwest. Then again that’s a very similar weather pattern to what we have in Southern and Central Indiana. I used to go to Central Ohio near Springfield quite a bit to see some relatives of hers until they passed away.I’ve spent a lot of time driving around Columbus, Springfield, Dayton, Cincinnati and lesser in Cleveland but I’ve been there a few times. Like anywhere you’re going to have some sketchy people and sketchy places. After living near Gary, Indiana at one time I’ve experienced that so its no crisis and I’ve been to enough ghetto type of areas in all kinds of cities from Chicago to St. Louis to KC to Memphis to New Orleans and elsewhere. Be smart and be safe and pay attention to your surroundings always and use good judgment.Some people tend to think that Ohio is boring but to be honest its a quite perfectly middle of the road state in income, education and opportunities. You get out of life what you are willing to put into it and that’s the same whether you visit Ohio or live there. There are other states that I’ve lived in and visited that I would say hell no to living there but Ohio is not one of them. I’m thinking more along the lines of states like Alabama, South Carolina, West Virginia, Arkansas and my least favorite state which is Kentucky where I lived for about 7 or 8 years and I don’t miss it at all. I even lived in nice parts of Louisville the biggest city and that place was the biggest drag of a place around.There are plenty of places in Ohio that I think I would be more than happy to reside in and as long as its peaceful and relatively close to amenities such as good schools, employment, colleges and other stuff I think I could be very happy there. Then again, its just that I am usually optimistic but I can’t ignore when I see things that are as bad as what I’ve seen in Kentucky and most Southern states. It’s like going back in time a couple of decades and in some places they are stuck in the 60s, whether that is the 1960s or 1860s I cannot always be sure because the mentality seems to be that way.Good luck on Ohio and give a good shot because I think that is a perfectly decent place as long as you find what you are truly happy doing with your life and you’re willing to try something new. If the community sucks then by all means start looking to move elsewhere because life is too short to stay somewhere you are perpetually miserable.If anything you can is negative about all of Ohio is that its sometimes not very nice in the winter or rainy and cold with not a lot of sunshine during most of the winter from November until March. After that it turns green and beautiful in a lot of places.