Requiem for a Slugger: Manny Being Manny Mystery Cache
Requiem for a Slugger: Manny Being Manny
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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A straight-forward puzzle. The solution requires knowledge of
coordinate projection.
The coordinates listed above are for parking.
Solve the puzzle below to find the location of the cache
container.
BOSTON, July 31, 2008 - Minutes before the trading deadline,
Manny Ramirez was traded to the Dodgers in a three-team deal that
will send Pirates outfielder Jason Bay to the Sox.
Whether they love him or hate him, there's one thing citizens of
Red Sox Nation can all agree on. Having Manny Ramirez on the Red
Sox was never boring. "Manny being Manny" is now a part of the New
England sports lexicon, as much as the phrase "it is what it
is".
For eight years, "Manny being Manny" meant many things to New
England baseball fans. It meant having a league leader (in various
seasons) in batting average, home runs, and OPS, but not having a
him as a leader in the clubhouse. It meant having a World Series
MVP after eighty-six years of drought. It meant fans shaking their
heads and rolling their eyes upon witnessing Manny's latest antics
-- taking "breaks" inside the Green Monster, taking games off due
to the deaths of his grandmothers (all three of them), "dogging it"
down the first baseline. It was not uncommon to see "goofball" and
"greatest natural right-handed hitter" in the same sentence in the
sports pages.
The final accounting resembles a geocache log entry. Out: Manny
Ramirez, Craig Hanson, Brandon Moss, and $7 million to cover the
remainder of Manny's 2008 salary. In: Jason Bay. Let's hope the Sox
have traded even.
One of Manny's last statements in a Red Sox uniform was, "The Red
Sox don't deserve a player like me." Perhaps that is another thing
Red Sox Nation's citizens can all agree on.
*** SOLVE THE PUZZLE BELOW, TO FIND THIS
GEOCACHE ***
On April 19, 2005 at Fenway Park, former Boston Red Sox slugger
Manny Ramirez crushed a first-inning solo home run off Toronto Blue
Jays pitcher Roy Halladay. The ball sailed above the light tower
and Coke bottles atop Fenway's Green Monster, bounced on the roof
of the parking garage across Lansdowne Street and came to rest on
the train tracks next to the Massachusetts Turnpike. It is
considered one of the longest home runs in Red Sox
history.
This cache will give you an appreciation of how long Manny's home
run was, and will test your abilities to recognize objects on an
orthographic image. To find the cache, you'll have to determine the
distance and direction of Manny's legendary blast.
You'll have do some homework before you leave the house. Use a
mapping tool with satellite imagery (I used Google Earth) and a
distance calculator (I used FizzyCalc) to accomplish the following
:
- find the coordinates for the point where Manny connected with
the pitch (Point A). Hint: home plate at the lyric little
bandbox.
- find the coordinates for the point where the ball came to rest
(Point B).
- determine the distance from the Point A to Point B.
- determine the bearing from Point A to Point B.
- use the coordinates listed below as "YOUR POINT A" for your
starting point, and with the derived distance and bearing of
Manny's April 19, 2005 home run, find the coordinates of the cache
container.
Assume the baseball traveled in a straight line, as described above
-- from home plate directly over the center of the leftmost light
pole, bouncing on the part of the garage with lined parking spaces,
and rolling straight to the middle of the set of tracks closest to
Fenway.
The next time you pass Fenway Park on the Pike, note the gun
control billboard at the roadside. This is where Manny's homer came
to rest.
Additional Links
GoogleEarth
FizzyCalc
distance calculator
The Boston Globe's interactive chart of Manny's 500 home
runs
Poorhouse (poor farm)
wiki.
You can check your answers for this puzzle
here (within 40 ft):
Cache Swag
The cache was initially filled with Red Sox items. Please trade
similarly themed items, if possible.
The cache container was originally placed in August 2007,
intended as part of the Green Monster series, but is no longer a
part of that series.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
[mapping hint: ybbx sbe gur funqbj bs gur yvtug cbyr gb genpr gur cngu bs gur onyy]
[container location: orgjrra gur gevcyr gehax naq gur qbhoyr-l]
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
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