Auburn hosts Mississippi State for a three game series this weekend. The first pitch was delayed for an hour by rain. Between the fifth and sixth inning there was another 23 minute rain delay. Auburn starter Derek Varnadore went six innings, collecting five strikeouts while walking three and giving up three runs, one of them unearned.
In the bottom of the seventh inning Auburn trailed Miss State 3-2. With a runner on third Dan Glevenyak was punched out by the first base umpire to end the inning:
In the bottom of the eighth inning Auburn trailed Miss State 4-2. Ryan Tella is at bat here, he singled to right, scoring Jay Gonzalez and moving Creede Simpson to second base:
The heavily accented guy in the background is not me.
Also in the bottom of the eighth inning, with Auburn now trailing 4-3, the tying run was standing on third base in the form of Creede Simpson. Garrett Cooper hit a fly ball into right field.
State’s Brent Brownlee had a fine throw home to get Simpson in the double play. It was aggressive base running and a great tag by catcher Mitch Slauter.
It ended Auburn’s rally. Mississippi State scored again in the top of the ninth and would go on to win the game 5-3.
On the occasions that Auburn and Samford play each other in some sport — as they did in football last year, as they occasionally meet in the non-revenue sports and as they do in every year in baseball — my loyalties are not torn. There’s my alma mater and there’s my employer. I’d like for both of them to win.
But since everyone doesn’t get a trophy in collegiate sports, I hold out for a good finish.
Auburn was at Samford tonight. They’d trailed for most of the game, but took a 5-4 lead in the eighth inning. In the bottom of the ninth the Tigers’ Justin Bryant was on in relief. He hit a batter. Then he allowed two singles, so the bases were loaded.
Sophomore Phillip Ervin walked to the plate for Samford:
Samford wins 8-5. The Bulldogs are now 17-8, the Tigers 15-10.
Another beautiful day here, how has your weekend turned out? Hope the weather is lovely, hope you got a dose of this. I hope you don’t mind if we hang on to it for, roughly, ever.
This is the day on the site where I throw a bunch of pictures on here that haven’t otherwise been featured from this week. Sometimes there is context, sometimes there is a theme. Often they are just pictures I thought were worth uploading. Enjoy!
The bird feeder has attracted a couple of sets of cardinals. And now we’ll find out how territorial they are:
Fans at a baseball game. The little one needs a bit of directional practice, but she’ll get there.
They thought it was beach night at the park and so a dozen or so college kids blamed her for talking them into wearing their floral prints. Turns out she was unjustly accused. It was beach night. No one else knew it:
The guy that made our cable and Internet problems all better. For now, at least:
I do a lot of pictures of the cat, so I thought I’d show her off as a watercolor. I was pecking away at something in the library and she was fascinated by the dramatic bird chatter going on just beyond her reach:
You want fries with that? At Publix:
A sliver of the moon. Jupiter and Venus were shining brightly over it, but the photographs didn’t do it justice. Mine never do:
Freshman Daniel Koger threw three perfect innings today against LSU. He had three unearned runs given up behind him, but he had another solid outing today:
Aubie is looking for a series sweep:
But he would not find it. For the third game in a row LSU-Auburn was in doubt until the last pitch, this one. Kody Ortman had the unenviable task of being put in as a pinch hitter. With the tying run on first Auburn took out a guy that was 2-3 on the day and batting in the .330s for a cold player with about half his average. Ortman hit it well, driving the ball crisply into centerfield:
… but the ball was caught, the game was over. LSU avoided being swept by Auburn for the first time since the Reagan administration with the final, 4-3.
It was the kind of day that should last forever and not change at all. Only you’d get bored of it. Sunny, breezy and 79? Again?
Maybe you’d get bored of it. Not me.
And if you don’t believe me, here:
Look at that sky, check out those clouds, ignore the guy pretending he knows how to ride a bike.
Rode 30 miles today, my first time on the bike since Tuesday. I was just beginning to convince myself that I was figuring something out about my bike or my legs or … something … earlier in the week because everything felt great. And then I got sick, and then it rained and now here we are. I’m on some precipice where three days off feels like a long time for whatever I have that passes for conditioning. I thought that today might be feel like I’d taking a slide backward.
But it felt a lot better than I thought it might. My legs were fairly strong. On the particular route I took today, one third was familiar and the rest was new. It didn’t include the most daunting hills around, but I was moving up rollers and slight hills with ease. I’d look down and realize I hadn’t even changed from my smallest gear.
Not sure what to make of that.
Baseball: Auburn beat LSU 3-2 in another game where the outcome was in doubt until the last pitch.
Here are the highlights:
That’s eighth ranked LSU. Auburn has won five in a row and is tied for the division lead in the young season. And this is a young team, picked to finished closed to last, still learning to put it all together, still stranding almost 10 runners on base per game.
The future looks bright. Maybe all of the days will be as pleasant as this one.
It was one of those days that you thought it would rain all day. When it finally started raining, which seemed delayed somehow. But then it did rain and, even though it didn’t rain hard, you thought it might take over the entire day. Except for when it wasn’t raining, which was beautiful.
My meteorological skills may be a bit off.
But there was the rain, so it was an indoors morning, which suited me just fine. We had our weekly Barbecue House breakfast today — one of my favorite parts of the week and not even because of the hash browns — where we did not see any local celebrities for a change. We also did not see anyone pulled over nearby for a change.
We had a quiet breakfast, a biscuit for The Yankee and a sandwich for me. The food is all delicious and they know us by name and the place is busy, but quiet. You could probably get a splinter by rubbing your hand on the wall. The restaurant is the same age as I am, so I’m trying not to make the details of the joint autobiographical, but I wonder about the splinters.
It rained in the afternoon. I don’t ride in the rain if I don’t have too — one day I’ll change my mind about that — so I stayed on the computer.
Things cleared away late in the afternoon, just in time for baseball. Only as time for the game drew close there was an allegation of a lightning bolt. So they kept the field covered. The sky was beautiful, but the radar showed a blob, and this is a day that seemed like it could rain at any time. The fans were impatient for baseball:
Here was sunset over Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum (click to embiggen):
Finally they played removed the tarp:
And finally they played, the young Auburn squad trying to figure out where they should sit on the spectrum of SEC baseball this year, and the eighth ranked LSU team. It was a terrific game of back and forth momentum. It was tied at two after six innings. Auburn scored in the seventh. LSU answered in the eighth frame to tie things at three. In the bottom of the eighth Zach Alvord doubled. He moved to third on a sacrifice and then Ryan Tella brought his hot bat to the plate:
That swing gave Auburn a 4-3 lead. LSU would manufacture a double in the ninth. They put in a pinch runner. Auburn collected two outs. And Auburn baseball announcer Rod Bramblett takes it over from there (this video is helpfully queued to the last play of the game):
There’s a certain way you can look at the framing of that shot that might give you the inclination to say that umpire’s call was a bit of home cooking. LSU certainly seemed to think so, but they lost 4-3. It was a great game.
