Sunday, May 25, 2008

LBSU COMEBACK KIDS INSTANT MESSAGE THE NCAA, WIN 8-6, SET UP A SUNDAY SHOWDOWN

If you are an NCAA party planner and were scouting for locations to invite the baseball families of four of your promising participants I trust that some time early this morning the name of Blair Field as a venue and Long Beach State as a host was written in bold letters on your white board. The 49ers (36-19, 15-8 Big West) are a good team and despite trailing 3-1, 5-3, and 6-5 had the character, courage and talent to beat Fullerton 8-6 Saturday night. The stadium, ranked at various times as one of the top college baseball venues in the land, looked great and served the 2657 very nicely. The city is excited, the set up for media and teams is well rehearsed, and out-of-towners can always find the way to LA.

Now for our game story. Due to space constraints we move ahead in our coverage to the bottom of the eighth when super sub T.J. Mittelstaedt worked a bases loaded walk from the Titan closer Adam Jorgenson to tie the game and set the stage for Jonathan Jones’s wipe-the-blood-off-this ball chopper just over the head of Titan third baseman Joel Weeks. Two of JJ’s teammates scampered home and then the still fresh 49er pen took over and slammed the door on the kids in Cal Trans Orange. Dirtbag Bryan Shaw picked up his eighth save, LB leveled the series at a game apiece and Mike Weathers finally exhaled. “Coach what’s going on with the NCAA committee?” “They know what they need to know. Next question.” “How did you all do it?” “Well Brett Lorin was very good for us; he kept us in there (4.1 with 1 ER). Tweedy and TJ worked pretty hard to get walks. I like our pen, and I will like them again Sunday. We have Topp and Roberts rested and ready and we are keeping Vance Worley (6-3, 4.55) starting on Sundays (he won a week ago at SLO). Both sides have known for a week that they are in the tourney but due to the tie breaker rule the winner of today’s game receives the automatic NCAA berth and 12 months of cross-county bragging rights.

THE LAST DUST—and we thank the almost 40,000 readers of the Stadium Dust this season and growing gang that hit the blog or read the Gazette…Shaw's final two outs featured sliders sent in from the bench…”I knew I had to stay out of the middle, to work the black” he said post game…Jared Clark (3-5) struck out with runners on the corners before Brian Wilson grounded out …the Titan collapse was a team effort, errors early kept the Bags in the game until the eighth when reliever Jason Dovel put two runners on and Jorgenson walked two of the next three…Nick Vincent (4-0) finished off the eighth and got the W...LBSU tied the game in the sixth with an explosive RBI triple by Danny Espinosa, the 13th in his career…Regional sites will be announced about 4 p.m. today and likely will have Arizona State, Fullerton, Stanford and hopefully …ESPN shows the whole field Monday morning at 9:30...fans and friends will try to raise $250,000 to endow a scholarship in the name pf former coach John McConnell…John was the organizer for a recently completed $125,000 scholarship fund in the name of another ex coach, Bob Weusthoff…in game entertainment included bat boy battles between kids racing in from their respective dugouts…three birthdays in the house, two seven year olds and one 36 year old…that would be a star on the Niners 1993 CWS team Gabe Gonsalves…the CSUF starter is Titan freshman Corey Arbiso (11-2, 4.15)…Saturday’s sun shine was actually ordered early by boosters Bill and Marcia Scharfen who threw a pre-game BBQ and fund raiser on the pool deck of their Park Estates home…speaking of funds, that PGA-worn Paul Goydos Dirtbag baseball cap went for $4000 at the Jewels of the Night auction Saturday…in the rest of the Big West it was Oregon State 8, Pacific 6; UC Davis 7, Cal State Northridge 2; UC Irvine 14, UC Santa Barbara 7; and UC Riverside 7, Cal Poly 2…for the Pac Tens the OSU Beavers upped their record to 27-24.but will it be enough?...the rest of the PAC Tens featured UCLA whipping CAL 7-0 (2-0), Arizona 7, ASU 4 (2-0); Stanford 8, Washington 5 and Washington State 4, USC 2…we close with a note on our first pitch celeb today, back in the 60’s the locals called Niner Rod Gaspar the Rocket for his exceptional foot speed which he used in a major league career highlighted by the Mets 1969 World Series championship…now the rest of the story, long after he hung up his spikes Gaspar won a number of regional handball titles…see you somewhere next weekend, hopefully right here.—DR. DAN

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