If I learned anything the past week

It is that Russell Wilson is a heck of an athlete! Anyone who knows baseball could see that instinct that you are either born with or you’re not. A quick eye, quick wrists, patience, judgement at the plate, all of these things he showed in his limited at bats. He also looked quite good int he field reading balls, etc.

This from his bio: “Earned all-metro and all-state honors as a senior in 2007 after batting .536 with seven home runs and 29 RBIs … Also pitched and went 6-2 with 52 strikeouts and a 1.83 ERA … Was all-state in baseball all four years, and all-state in football as a sophomore, junior and senior … Chosen by the Baltimore Orioles in the 41st round of the 2007 MLB First-Year Player Draft”

It’s a little early to say he’ll be the next Brian Jordan, but he seems like a kid who is really smart on the field. I am excited to see how he performs on the football field now…

Let’s play 3!

It’s the bottom of the eighth, but it seems as though we will win. Today’s game was great. Just all around respectable performance, well, except for Marcus Jones stealing 3rd with 2 outs! There is no situation where you should do that. Plain stupid and maybe cost us a run.

Brian Jordan has turned out to be a very good commentator, at least for the college game. I really hope to hear more of him throughout the CWS.

4pm Sunday baby! It would be the biggest NCSU moment since going to the Sweet Sixteen in 2005 if we could win this series.

Simple. UG 1, State 0

clayton looked unhittable the first 2 innings. his fork ball is unreal.

in the end, they hit timely, we hit into double plays.

we made mental errors which led to physical errors.

we lost, they won. we didn’t play bad, they did play good.

a huge hole, i mean HUGE.

but we can come back. win saturday boys, don’t ever give up.

Mid week ramblings

The Chicago White Sox are in first place of their division and don’t have a player batting over .292

Josh Hamilton went from Hall of Shame to potential Hall of Fame.

The State – UG game tomorrow is on ESPN. Great exposure for the team.  I’m not going to do any analysis, let’s just see what happens tomorrow. It’s pretty simple though, we need to minimize damage that the top of the Georgia line up inflicts, keep the bottom half off base, and other than that just play good baseball.

Where is everyone watching the game tomorrow? I will be near North Hills mall, any place good around there??

Baseball team shines for Wolfpack Nation

Hello everyone. We finalized our move from the athletic wasteland of upstate New York to the heaven-on-Earth we call North Carolina last night. My wife graduated from Cornell (Master’s degree in science something or another) and we’re back in town! For good!

Driving down Sunday from Harrisburg, PA we finally got in range of 88.1 to listen to the game around Rocky Mount. I was confused to hear music, made a few phone calls and realized there was a weather delay. After fueling up at a Bojangles (nothing even close up north) we made a b-line for Doak Field.

We parked near the ice cream building (I’m not too good with the building names) and as soon as we got out of the car a roar came from the stadium. Yes, we arrived in the top of the 7th when Matt Payne knocked in what would be the game winning RBI. We walked as fast as we could as chants of “Wolf” … “Pack!” rang through the glorious pines surrounding Dail Park.

We watched the remainder of the game through the fence behind section 12. What a great night to get back to North Carolina. Good food, baseball, great weather, and a NCSU win over “USC”.

…Looks like GT will lose to UGa, but I’m still looking forward to next weekend.

Mid May update

I’ve been from NC to NY (or vice versa) 4 times in the past 2 weeks. Add to that a bachelor party to plan, wedding events in Southern Pines, etc, I just haven’t had time to post anything lately. The final move to NC will be June 1 so I hope to be back to normal blogging after that date.

Baseball: NCSU ranked #20 with a 35-16 record. Since I last wrote (the BC series) the Pack has generally taken care of business. If they could have won against UNCW (lost 3-2 in 11 innings) that would have been significant. Pitching has been solid. Hitting good. The past two games we outscored Maryland 29-9. Assuming we take care of NC A&T this afternoon, we will go into the FSU series at 36-16 (17-9).

State has locked up the #2 spot in the ACC Atlantic Division behind leader FSU and can finish no worse than 4th overall in the ACC. In other words, no matter what happens this weekend, NC State will have the #4 seed in the ACC Baseball Tournament. I’m basing this on my interpretation of the ACC rulebook:

The two division champions will automatically be seeded number one and two based on winning percentage in overall conference competition. The remaining teams will be seeded (three through eight) based on winning percentage in overall conference competition without regard to division.

I would also like to remind everyone of my independent pre-season prediction of a 37-19 overall record. Of course, the rained out UNC game throws the total off, but I could still come very close to hitting my projected regular season record.