posted 12-06-2006 12:20 AM               

From Tariq Malik, SPACE.com:

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Play Spaceball!

An official 1984 World Series baseball hovers before a camera aboard the International Space Station (ISS) during a sports-themed demonstration of spaceflight.

ISS Expedition 14 commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, an avid baseball fan, used a ball signed by former Detroit Tigers outfielder Kirk Gibson (top) to show the station’s movement during a Dec. 4 orbital boost. Along for the ride is what appears to be a mermaid floating in a contained sphere.

During that 23-minute engine burn by a docked Russian cargo ship, the space station raised its orbit to a maximum altitude of about 219.5 statute miles (353 kilometers). As the station flew higher, it moved around the baseball giving the sporty sphere an appearance of flying the length of the U.S. Destiny lab (bottom).

Meanwhile, Lopez-Alegria’s Expedition 14 crewmates, flight engineers Mikhail Tyurin and Thomas Reiter, also filmed various objects inside the space station’s Destiny.

In the bottom view, Lopez-Alegria appears at the lower right, while Reiter has turned his back to head out of Destiny, the baseball close on his heels.

Monday’s baseball antics were not the first orbital sports event of the Expedition 14 crew. Tyurin smacked a golf ball into orbit during a Nov. 22 spacewalk using a gold-plated six-iron club [image].

European Space Agency astronaut Christer Fuglesang, who is slated to perform two spacewalks outside the ISS next week during NASA’s STS-116 mission, is also taking a Frisbee with him to set a new orbital record.

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posted 06-21-2007 02:49 PM               

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Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of Major League Baseball. Its five-year mission: To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before.

Michael Lopez-Alegria, a NASA flight commander and devout Red Sox and Astros fan, was the true Captain Kirk of this enterprise. He was aboard the International Space Station from last September until finally landing back on terra firma this April 21 -- spanning a period from the hot pennant races of one season into the days when the next year's stats and standings were just starting to matter.

Lopez-Alegria epitomized today's modern baseball fan in many ways, requesting the capability from MLB.com to uplink audio game feeds while conducting science experiments aboard the ISS. MLBAM and NASA coordinated to provide him with that regular capability. And then when he got back home, one of the first things he said he did was subscribe to MLB.TV to watch the games live and catch up.

So as you are enjoying that live Major League broadcast over your computer with MLB.TV or Gameday Audio (which is essentially what he used in space), just consider what you have in common with fans who spacewalk for a living. And if you aren't such a subscriber, then see why it is now most certainly out of this world. MLB.com caught up with "Michael L-A" back on Earth in this Q&A...

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posted 08-11-2007 09:01 AM               

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Houston Astros pitcher Brad Lidge didn't mind this baseball getting blasted into orbit, and he still has the sense of humor to laugh with those who joke that it's the second-longest shot of his career.

Two years after giving up the most infamous home run in Astros history, Lidge signed a ball for astronaut Tracy Caldwell, who took it into space on the shuttle Endeavour. Now it's orbiting more than 200 miles above Earth.

"To Tracy," the dedication read, "hopefully no one ever hits one this far off of me."

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posted 05-01-2008 08:46 PM               

Yahoo! Sports Cardinals' Barton is a space case

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One day, he wants to go into space. Brian Barton turned 26 earlier this week, and though the astronaut dream tends to die about the time hormones bloom and adolescence rages, Barton never could abandon it.

"The sky's the limit," he likes to say, and in this instance, he does so standing in front of his locker in the St. Louis Cardinals' clubhouse. He takes the cliche literally and figuratively, the former in his desire to float in the atmosphere and the latter in the career he has carved out in the meantime.

The sky? It's for the African-American kid from South Los Angeles who grew up surrounded by basketball, football and everything but baseball. The one who didn't get drafted out of the University of Miami after a productive college career because teams were worried that he was going to finish his degree in aerospace engineering and hook on with Boeing, where he interned, or perhaps NASA. The one who later signed with the Cleveland Indians for $100,000, put up gaudy numbers at every level and still couldn't crack the 40-man roster because they worried about knee surgery he had last fall.

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Ah, but what if? What if NASA called tomorrow and told him the next time the shuttle took off, he'd be on it? What if he needed to answer his ultimate hypothetical?

"If I had an opportunity to go, man, I'd want to go," Barton said. "If it came down to baseball or that, it'd be a hard decision. Good thing I'm not in that position."

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