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baseball

Auburn / baseball / photo / video — Comments Off
15
Feb 13

Pinnnnng!

Football wound down. We tolerated basketball for two weeks. Now we have the ping of ball off bat. Today was the opening day of the college baseball season.

Auburn opens their season with a four game homestand against Maine. Why Maine? Because the coach from Maine would rather be in the South in February. And he was handsomely rewarded today. Just a gorgeous evening for the game, even if we forgot the peanuts:

A good game too. There are so many new players even veteran fans were diving for rosters. Even still, there were plenty of things to remind us all of seasons past in this close game. We had random bunts. There was an error at shortstop. We had fun with the good-natured heckling of the opposing left fielder.

And there we were, in the bottom of the 9th, in a tie game. Someone started the heckling chant version of the slow clap for the freshman left fielder. (Who had put together a nice game for himself.) To lead off the inning was Auburn’s new third baseman, Damek Tomscha, a junior college transfer brought in to add some defense at the corner. He took a hanging fastball and put it somewhere the pitcher hadn’t anticipated:

Earlier another one of the new players saved a home run:

And the bullpen looked sharp, too. Baseball season is here.

Oh, look, one of those sunset photos made it on the nice new AUSunset Tumblr. Follow her.

Tomorrow: Intolerably colder, but more baseball and one other important sport.

Auburn / baseball / football / Friday / music / Samford / video — Comments Off
7
Dec 12

I wrote a review

Dave Brubeck, who invented the notes that landed between the things that you don’t play that mean you’re making jazz, recently died. Everyone that is knowledgeable about his importance to music can talk far more about this than I can.

But someone found footage of a concert he performed at Samford in the 1980s. Not sure why it is in black and white. Just enjoy the show:

Since I mentioned Bo Jackson yesterday … The War Eagle Reader asked me to write a little preview of the 30 for 30 on him, which debuts tomorrow. I had the chance to watch it last night:

The first story is from retired baseball coach Hal Baird, “I saw Bo jump over a Volkswagon.”

The second story, the one about Jackson standing in thigh-high water and doing a standing back flip, is from one of his coaches at McAdory High School. I’ve heard that one from a few different people that fit in that period of Jackson’s young life.

There’s the story about Jackson throwing a football up to the scoreboard before the Sugar Bowl. Randy Campbell told me that one himself.

Dickie Atcheson, his high school football coach, talks about Jackson using a pole vault pole designed for 180-pounders. Bo cleared 13 feet at 215 pounds.

There’s another story where he literally destroyed a batting cage in front of the top scout for the New York Yankees. In high school. With one hit.

Baird didn’t mention the story about hitting three home runs into the lights at Georgia as a freshman. No one told the story about the home run he hit that carried halfway over the football field. The one about when he came back to the high school after his hip replacement. He was still faster than everyone, including the kid that would capture most of his high school records.

Bo Jackson was amazing:

Bo Jackson is amazing. Always will be.

I only wish the documentary covered Bo Bikes Bama. Because HE SCARED TORNADOES OUT OF THE STATE.

You Don’t Know Bo was directed by Michael Bonfiglio (you can read TWER’s interview with him here). It premieres on ESPN on Dec. 8th at 9 p.m.

baseball / Friday / iPhone / photo — Comments Off
26
Oct 12

Fortune-ate one

We had Chinese for dinner tonight. We’d ventured out to watch major league baseball players take some batting practice for a good cause. It was a home run derby and some of these guys needed the cuts.

The Atlanta Braves’ Tim Hudson does this every year for his foundation, which provides financial help to children and their families living with a life-altering or terminal disease. He put pitchers against field position players this year. The pitchers had a shorter fence, and that brought the entire event down to the last at bat, by Hudson, a pitcher, who happened to be an excellent batter in college.

And so he won the thing. The fix was in, surely. But probably not. No one cared. They raised almost $15,000 tonight.

So we had Chinese after, because nothing sounded good to anyone and I thought Chinese would be convenient and everyone likes Chinese and the place we go would still be open for takeout.

Only they were still open for dine in, so we ate there and got fortune cookies and everything.

Mine was pretty good:

Pretty good “news” for a Friday night.

adventures / baseball / food / Friday / friends / iPhone / memories / photo / Samford / Tumblr / Twitter — Comments Off
1
Jun 12

But, hey, this will be quick

We had dinner with our friend Paige tonight. Drove up to her house.

She let me take a picture of the famous Rory:

This is only slightly intimidating. I was shooting her cat with my phone. Paige is a photographer on the side. In fact, she shot our engagement:

It was 17 degrees with about nine inches of snow on the ground. Maybe more. We shot those at a park up the street from The Yankee’s parents’ home, a park where she’d played as a child. There’s a pavilion there. Under that roof, there was six inches of snow covering everything.

The next year she shot our wedding in Savannah.

It was well into the triple-digits that day.

It seems we can’t all get together without severe weather, so naturally it rained tonight.

By the time we got back home there was lots of rain.

We ate dinner at a Thai place called Somewhere in Bangkok. Good food, lousy website. The server was … well, she was as American as could be.

Today I fixed a printer problem, which is a piece of equipment normally beyond me. Samford won a huge baseball game in NCAA regional play. I uploaded three pictures to the Tumblr blog.

Also, don’t forget to check out Twitter.

Yeah it is thin. I’m not spending a lot of time on the computer just now.

Auburn / baseball / photo / weekend — Comments Off
20
May 12

Baseball weirdness

I never played baseball, but no matter what sport you might have been involved in you always heard the coach yelling at you about keeping your head in the game.

Or maybe that was just me.

Anyway, here’s an example of that. This is the penultimate example of poor base running. The situation: Justin Shafer is standing on third base in the fourth inning yesterday as Florida led Auburn 3-2. A ground ball turned into a fielder’s choice when Shafer ran home.

The infielder threw to the catcher and Shafer pulled up short:

The catcher, Caleb Bowen, almost dropped the ball.

The baserunner patiently stood by while Bowen spun, dropped down and leaped to his feet. Shafer looked up:

No doubt someone in the dugout was by now bursting a blood vessel yelling at him.

Bowen tagged him out.

Florida would score a few moments later in the fourth, extending their lead to 4-2. But it should have been 5-2, at least. And this little play helped determine the outcome.

And, oddly, it was only the second-worst thing we’ve seen on the field this year. There’s also the tale of the baserunner who tried to steal second standing up …