2023 college baseball/softball thread

And all of that Swagger and showboating and other crap is what has caused the NCAA to crack down on all of the non-sporting acts like bats flips, chest puffing, finger wagging ... basically anything directed at the opponent is an automatic ejection. At the national umpires meetings, the examples shown were almost all Tenneseee.

 

The Drew Gilbert Rule.

 

ICYMI, Ole Miss and Southern Miss played a midweek game Tuesday night at the Double-A Mississippi Braves' stadium. They'd recently replaced the sod, and it wasn't quite ready for primetime. Players were slipping and tearing up chunks of it all night, until they finally called the game in the bottom of the fourth inning. Southern Miss was ahead 2-1, but it was declared a no contest.

This is the second time this season that Ole Miss has left the field behind on the scoreboard, but not given a loss. Earlier this year they were playing Louisiana Tech in Oxford when lightning caused a lengthy delay in the top of the seventh inning. Louisiana Tech had just scored to go ahead 5-4, but since the inning wasn't completed the score reverted to the previous completed inning and Ole Miss was awarded a 4-3 win.

Also, the Mississippi Braves are catching hell for this. Not just for the piss-poor field conditions, but the way they're handling refunds. As in, they're not. They offered tickets to any M-Braves game this season, which is like trading a steak dinner for a Big Mac. The tickets to the college game were premium prices (some were about $75), and some people traveled a few hours for it. They're not at all happy that they're being offered tickets to a July game against the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp instead of a full refund.

 

So the baseball version of the college football crackdown on taunting, preening and strutting after the 1993 season, directed at the U.

 

This is interesting. Reggie Drummer, the umpire from the infamous UNO-Valley strike three debacle a couple of weeks ago, finally spoke out. He did about a 30-minute interview with an umpiring podcast and went into quite a bit of depth about not just that last call but the entire game. The video of the podcast looks low-rent, but they actually do do a good job of splicing in clips and some audio of the relevant plays.
The upshot is that Drummer admits he blew the last call. But he says it wasn't what the last batter did, but what Valley's coaches, players and fans did throughout the game. He claims they were throwing out racial slurs all night, calling him an Uncle Tom and "Not a real n-----" after a few calls went UNO's way. The coach's brother was thrown out of the ballpark, both benches received warnings, and several Valley players were ejected during the course of the game. Drummer said he lost his cool at the end and just wanted to get out of there.
The interviewer does a few minutes asking about Drummer's background, and then they get to talking about the game around the 7-minute mark. It's worth the 20 minutes if you have any interest in this story.

 

Goodness gracious. Estimated at 487 feet.

 

Didn’t Mike Leach live there for his first year at Mississippi State?

 

More fun from Starkville, this time from the softball team. Runner gets called out for leaving the base early on a home run, and the assistant coach loses his mind, channels Lou Piniella, and then storms out — but not before grabbing his satchel.

 

Not sure what's a worse look: A coach in khakis and looking like one of the umpires, or a coach leaving the field with his briefcase.

 

Not a disaster, I guess. Lost two close ones, kicked their butts 14-7 in the finale.

Defense and base running are comically bad. 25% of the runs they allow are unearned (vs. 6% for a good team like LSU).

 

There's an old retort to a pitcher who complains about run support, that they should just hit a home run and throw a shutout.
This guy took it to an extreme by hitting for the cycle and throwing a no-hitter.

A cycle and a no-no? This college player did both in the same game