Saturday, May 24, 2008

BASEBALL GAMES IN THE BOARD ROOM AND BLAIR FIELD AS THE BEACH BOYS KEEP HOSTING HOPES ALIVE

Well the sun came up this morning but the Weatherman, neither Mike of the Dirtbags or the Meteorologist of the Doppler, offer any climate guarantees for this evenings round two of Long Beach-Fullerton college baseball. For the home boys they know that they can play better than Friday and like their competitor to host another SoCal regional, UC Irvine, the evening offers another opportunity to impress Lynn Thompson, Brian Quinn, Michael Cross, Bobby Staub, John D’Argenio, Larry Templeton, David Heeke, Tim Weiser, John Anderson, and Pat Murphy. Who are those guys? Well for this season they are the lords of post season and the folks that more than the Federal Reserve will affect the fortunes of 49er fans who are determined to see their team play somebody somewhere next weekend, credit cards be damned.

If you had told me yesterday before they unfurled the big flag that it would rain in May and that the Dirtbag middle infielders would make two errors in two innings you would now be driving my classic tank-full 1997 Avalon and marrying my Swedish nanny. Both things (rain and whoops) happened and the only silver lining is that our Blair Field event drew 2500 plus and Irvine’s Bren Annex event drew 400 plus. “They won the Friday night game with their No. 4 starter," UCI coach Mike Gillespie said. "...they smell blood in the water.” Unranked UCSB defeated #14 UCI 6-2 and now are tied with LB for second the Big West. UC Irvine is in a fifth place tie with UC Davis and, as Letterman says, “I wouldn’t give their troubles to a monkey on a rock”. The official crowd count was 472 vs. 2532 at Blair and both places had weather worries and Lakers on TV.

NEXT TO THE LAST DUST--Tonight the win window opens a bit wider for the Niners who won’t look out and see Jeff Kaplan…Saturday’s have been decent for the Dirtbags and almost tragic for the Titans…the Nutwood Nine is convinced that the second game of a weekend is a vacation from the timely hitting and defense they flash on Fridays. The Titans will offer Daniel Renken (5-5, 3.82) to go against LB freshman Jake Thompson (2-4, 4.48) who missed last weekend after taking an up-the-box blast to his leg the week before…Sunday the Bags will select from the reigning BWC Pitcher of the Week, Brett Lorin (4-3, 2.54) or Vance Worley (6-3, 4.55)…Kaplan now has wins over Clemens’ semifinalists Gorgen, Strasburg and Liebel…he gave up one earned last night while Liebel yielded two before the hour thirty seven rain delay…the Beach did score once when play resumed and had chances in the 7th … Liebel now 8-3, had retired eight in row prior to Fellhauer's single in the fourth…Tyler Topp pitched the 49ers final three scoreless innings….at UCI Gorgen took the loss allowing three runs in seven innings…the out of town scoreboard gets a lot of attention in this get in, get packing, or go home bubbly weekend…the Big East had already said goodbye to top seed St. Johns and now both Louisville and Cincinnati want an at-large and those folks in the first graph gets a lot of text messaging…off topic, the Tampa Bay Rays have a second Long Beach connection…Evan Longoria and an area Little League coach William King who is better known as one-third of the famous funk/soul band The Commodores…the group kicked off the Rays Summer Concert Series tonight….. King's son, Ryan (walk-up song Commodore classic, “Brick House”) played some shortstop for Long Beach… …now don’t tell Vic Cegles this but in the house last night was Henry Tran, the big time Titan donor who met with CSUF AD Brian Quinn to discuss the possibility of bringing football back to the 10,000 seat White Elephant Downs (aka Titan Stadium)...Tran and his posse got excited when Georgia State University announced plans to play again in 2010…Curious about George?...here is Mr. Horton’s schedule for the Ducks first season in 2009: St. Mary’s, Fresno, Washington, Santa Clara, Nevada, NY Tech, Portland, Hawaii, Sac State, Irvine and the usual PAC 10 brothers…elsewhere around the Big West Northridge had Davis on the ropes but shortstop Jason Dabbs allowed two unearned runs to score, and UCD won 4-3. The win improves the Aggies to 33-21 overall and 12-10 in conference and as the only football playing school in the league would be a cinch to get in when the NCAA selectors add their extra points for grid-ironing…the forgotten defending BWC champs from UC Riverside beat Cal Poly 4-1 and those crazed Beavers from Oregon State took out their anger on hapless Pacific 15-2 to keep their invite hopes alive. back to the bases, did you know that baseball is the second biggest money-making sport for NCAA championships (hoops #1) yet it is also the least-funded sport, given just 11.7 scholarships and the worst coach-to-player ratio…who says, the just retiring Ron Polk who offered our closing quote, "The NCAA has used college baseball as its whipping boy because they know we're not going to stand up and fight back. If this happened in football or basketball there'd be a huge fight."—DR. DAN

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