May 2, 2008

We played some good baseball against Long Beach, but ended up leaving 0-3 for the weekend. On Friday, Waldron did not have a typical Tyler Waldron outing allowing eight runs in three innings pitched. Long Beach only got two more hits than us in the game, but we walked too many Dirtbags. They took full advantage of the free passes and outscored us 10-3. On Saturday I really thought McCain was going to be very effective keeping their free swinging hitters off balance, but he ended up giving up 5 earned runs in 5.2 innings. He threw well enough to keep us in the game, however, we could not hold on to our lead going into the eighth when the Dirtbags scored 5 runs in the bottom frame of the inning. We showed some heart putting together a three run rally in the top of the ninth which was highlighted by a big two run double by freshman Brian Martin (one of his three doubles in the game). Unfortunately, Long Beach found a way to push a run across in the bottom of the ninth to win the game on a chopper up the middle by Long Beach's Big West Male Scholar Athlete of the year, Shane Peterson. On Sunday, we got a pretty strong outing from Joey Centanni giving up just three runs in six innings on the hill. We swung the bats well scoring six runs, highlighted by Noah St. Urbain's first career homerun in the fifth. Once again, we found a way to give up our lead late in the game as Long Beach tied it up in the bottom of the ninth to force extra innings. We had some great opportunities to score the g-ahead run in both the tenth and eleventh, but failed to execute. Long Beach loaded the bases up in the bottom of the eleventh and once again, they ended the game with a chopper that cleared our second baseman, Wideman's glove by a few inches. It was unbelievably frustrating to give up those games and it made for a long bus ride home Sunday night.

We didn't really have a chance to do much during our downtime in Long Beach as we stayed at the Marriott right next to the airport. Sunday's game had a military theme and before the game, some military supporters were in both our and Long Beach's dugout having us players write letters to soldiers in Iraq. It felt really good and patriotic to do this because I think sometime we forget about the things going on overseas and we don't always show our appreciation as citizens to our brave troops risking their lives everyday to protect our freedom. They also had a color guard unit present the flags during the singing of the national anthem.

Tuesday night's game wasn't the cleanest game we've ever played, but we came out on top and put an end our losing skid. It looked like a circus out in the field early in the game by both teams. USF jumped out to an early lead as Waldron was pushed up to start Tuesday's game on short rest, and had another tough outing. Our bullpen came through and shut the door as Casey Neimeyer threw four scoreless innings, working out of some tough jams. It was chocolate lover's night at Klein Family Field and there was a lot of spirit in the crowd as it was the final game for our athletics department's spirit competition. The pep band was also there playing songs in between innings and having a good time. This week in practice we worked on individual skills and did a lot of hitting in the cages.

UC Riverside rolls into town today as we play them tonight and Saturday at 6 PM and then on Sunday at 1 PM. They are struggling as well this season, so hopefully we will continue playing our good baseball and get some W's under our belt. Next week on Monday night, Cinco de Mayo, we travel to Stanford to take on the Cardinal and then on Wednesday night we play Santa Clara at home at 6 PM. We hope to see you out at the park this weekend and Wednesday night.