Opening Day

It was a good way to end the work week for sports' fans. If you missed the opening day of the College World Series than you seriously missed out on some good ball games. I guess they were not so good if you're a pitching aficionado, but if you enjoy the ping of a metal bat you were in heaven. There was also a full slate of interleague MLB games tonight, including Bonds' first trip to Fenway. So let's get rollin'.


25 runs later . . .

The starting pitchers' at today's CWS games got a rude welcome to Omaha. In the first game of the day their was a total of 25 runs scored and neither starter was able to complete five innings. By the end of the day Rice overcame Louisville, climbing back from a six run deficit to score 11 unanswered runs after trailing 10-4. Ironically in this offensive explosion, it was in fact the highly touted pitching depth of Rice which allowed the Owls to win the game. After giving up runs to Louisville in each of the first five innings, the Rice bullpen shut down the Cardinals' offense, preventing them from scoring the rest of the game. The Louisville pen was not nearly as successful, as their best arm, closer Trystan Magnuson, gave up the final six runs to the Owls in his only inning of work. 34 hits and 25 runs later, the game still came down to who had the better pitching. Overall it was a wildly entertaining battle, the only negative in my mind was the four Louisville errors on defense which led to three unearned runs for Rice. To me at least, that made it clear that experience does matter in the College World Series, as the Cardinals were just unable to make fairly routine defensive plays down the stretch, looking uptight and nervous in the late innings of their first CWS appearance.

In the nightcap, North Carolina also had to overcome an early deficit in its 8-5 victory over Mississippi State. The Tar Heels fell behind 4-0 almost before the National Anthem had been completed. In yet another display of shaky starting pitching, neither starter in this game was able to get through more than 5.1 innings. While the score was much lower, this game was remarkably similar in the way it played out to the first game. The Bulldogs of MSU came out swinging to score their early lead, only to be overcome by the superior pitching depth of UNC. The Tar Heels were able to stick eight unanswered runs on the board to take the lead for good, before MSU got a run late to close the scoring. While not as fast paced as the first game, this matchup completed a very good first day at the College World Series.

A note about yesterday's post, "belmont" accurately pointed out in his comment my error in saying that Arizona State had played UCLA in their Super Regional when they in fact beat Ole Miss to get to Omaha. I got the series mixed up with the Cal St. Fullerton Super Regional. Thanks to belmont for being on the ball there.

Bonds' Greeted in Boston with Asteriks

Barry Bonds made his first ever trip to Fenway Park tonight as the Giants squared off against the Red Sox. As Bonds walked to the plate for his first at bat, some fans were seen holding up pieces of paper with large asterisks on them, clearly stating their belief that the career home run record which Bonds is about to break will be a tainted accomplishment. Now I am a Red Sox fan and normally I find the Fenway faithful's antics both clever and amusing. My favorite has to be a tshirt some fans made for Johnny Damon's first trip to Boston as a Yankee which had a picture of Damon's face on the front and on the back it read, "Looks like Jesus, Throws like Mary, Actus like Judas." Now that's pretty good stuff right there. However I can't say I agree with the Boston fans on this one. To this point I haven't weighed in on the steroids issue here on Big O Sports Blog, and I hope to not have to do so again, but its relevant in this situation so here goes. First of all, Bonds has been under the microscope for a good long time now, and Major League Baseball has yet to pin a positive steroid test on him. This is the country of being innocent until PROVEN guilty still right? But that really isn't even the point. My second and most important contention is this; everyone was doing steroids in baseball. The pitchers, the hitters, probably the bat boys and the public address announcer too. Maybe even the guy that throws batting practice. You cannot arbitrarily decide to put asterisks next to certain things because they matter to you. If you want the steroid aided accomplishments to not count for anything then you'd have to wipe out an at least entire decade of everything that happened in pro baseball.

Baseball is a game that goes through phases and corrective periods. Should the marks pitcher's like Bob Gibson put up have an asterisk next to them because they were pitching from a more elevated mound? No, it is just how the game was at the time and people accept that. You have to remember that using performance enhancing drugs wasn't even against the rules in baseball until a few years ago. Bonds would not have been doing anything against the rules during the time period in which most people allege that he used steroids. How can he be a cheater if he wasn't breaking any rules?

Well that wraps it up for today. I respect everyone who can make a coherent argument on the case of steroids in baseball just to make that clear before you decide to rip into me about this in any comments you might make. Hope you enjoy your weekend and don't forget to tune into the CWS.