The Road to Omaha: NCAA Baseball Tournament Thread

Tough (for me, anyway) to watch USM give free passes that late in the game.

 

A devastating way to lose for Southern Miss.

North Carolina probably tees off on 'em.

 

Corky Palmer spends a lifetime in baseball and gets a trip to Omaha for a going-away present. Then his bullpen thinks they're pitching to the plate at Council Bluffs Little League Park, missing the strike zone a few miles east. USM oughta double his pension for having to go through that on national teevee.

 

They've been down before and come back, and their No. 2 guy is a pretty good pitcher. But, man, that was tough to watch. And you can't even blame the umpire, because, as has been said earlier, the strike zone was cavernous.

 

There's nothing else in Fahey Stadium at the moment -- two weeks of CWS and 50 weeks unaccounted for. The O-Royals said from the beginning they weren't going to move downtown (the new stadium was still at least two times too large for their purposes), so the mayor and his cronies did their best to force them out of the city by campaigning against the Royals' move to Sarpy County. That failed, thankfully, so the Royals will build a 7,000-capacity stadium in the 'burbs and Fahey and Co. are left looking clueless.

There is talk of trying to bring in an American Association team to play in the new park, but if it would've been too big for the O-Royals, independent league ball is even less suited to it. Hal Daub spoke of bringing in soccer, rugby or lacrosse for the new stadium, but his loss in the mayoral election killed what little chance there was of that happening.

 

After thinking about it, I believe Southern's going to be OK come Tuesday. When they analyze it, they're going to say to themselves, "you know, we stepped on the field with the Texas Fucking Longhorns, with their 33 College World Series appearances and their 6 national championships and their No. 1 seeding, and we outplayed 'em. We showed we belong here, every bit as much as anyone else, and if we just play our game, we can beat Carolina."

 

Which sounds great unless they remember that no current Longhorn player had been to Omaha before.

 

If they can't find somebody to throw late-inning strikes, forget about it.

 

I'm sure they can find some local high school teams that would love to play there during the season. Maybe the state finals, even? There's still a lot of dead time there, though.
Is a 7,000-seat stadium acceptable for the O-Royals? I thought you had to have at least 10,000 seats to be up to Triple-A standards.

 

Hey, Mr. TV Guy, maybe you shouldn't do a live remote as the crowd is leaving the stadium ...

 

Surely ESPN will eventually figure out that Arkansas' pitcher played at LSU as a freshman.
Not a word so far. Seems like an obvious note.

 

JD, he wasn't in there long enough for them to talk much about him. He was gone in the second inning. Tigahs are looking mighty good right now.