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Countdown to First Pitch: 14 Days (Kevin Jacob Blog)

Feb. 5, 2010

The Georgia Tech baseball team begins the 2010 season Friday, Feb. 19 when it opens a three-game series with Missouri State. With preseason practice underway, fans can check out RamblinWreck.com to find blogs, video interviews and Q&A’s by members of the 2010 squad about their lives as college students, what’s going on in practice, and their excitement about the upcoming season in the countdown to first pitch series.

Today’s blog is with junior pitcher Kevin Jacob.

Today was a rainy day at “The Rusty C”. Taylor Wood was able to practice his backstroke in left field. Mark Pope even snorkeled through the visitor’s dugout. Due to the poor weather we had to cancel our scheduled intra-squad scrimmage and in place, do some work in the cages. So instead of boring you with what we did today at practice, I thought I’d take this time to tell you a little bit about a pitchers life.

First things first– pitchers are athletes, and the one thing we do to show this is “PFP”, otherwise known as “Pitchers Fielding Practice”. During this time we show off our fielding skills as position players drool in amazement.

Pitchers also love to spend time in the bullpen, whether it is during practice throwing a bullpen session or hanging out with our bullpen catcher Harrison Bell during a game. Our bullpen was recently renovated and looks pretty spiffy. We pitchers are still trying to get a flat screen and a drink machine in the pen, but we’re still working on that.

Another thing we may not necessarily love but are amazing at, is running. You’ll see us running all the time on the warning track, whether we are sprinting, jogging or doing a slow crawl. The runner with the best form on the team has to go to Taylor Wood as he uses his strong legs and bird cage chest to his advantage.

A pitcher also has to overcome some adversity during a game. One thing we have to deal with is time on the bench, because no pitcher gets to pitch every inning of the game. Some like to take this time to work on their farmer’s tan, while others see who can blow the biggest bubbles with their bubble gum.

Last but not least, a pitcher’s time to shine is in batting practice. Shagging balls in the outfield gives us another opportunity to show off our athletic ability. Running down fly balls, robbing home runs or fielding grounders is our specialty. Freshman pitchers on the other hand are not too found of batting practice, and would rather it be canceled everyday. They have to fetch home runs and are usually stuck with bucket duty (collecting all the batted balls). Home run duty is actually not all that bad, except when you’re at visiting ballparks and have to deal with all the hecklers. Buckets duty on the other hand, is just all around awful. You have to collect all the balls, run the buckets to the pitcher and avoid getting beamed by our teammate Matt Simonds.

Let me take the time to say that we pitchers know that we would not be anywhere without our offense, and love all the run support we get from them during the season and the defense played behind us.

To all our fans, we thank you for your support and hope to see you on the 19th.

-Kevin

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