Feb. 17, 2009
ATLANTA – The Georgia Tech baseball team begins the 2009 season Friday, Feb. 20 when it opens a three-game series with Lipscomb. Every day, leading up to the first pitch, a different member of the 2009 squad will check in with their thoughts on the upcoming season. Today’s blog is by sophomore catcher Cole Leonida.
(Check out Jack Wilkinson’s Top 10 Reasons to Visit the Rusty C Friday)
Hello Tech Fans,
Only three more days until the season kicks off! I know the excitement in the clubhouse is contagious. We are all chomping at the bit to get out on the field and take it to Lipscomb on Friday night. I hope to see all of you at the Rusty C, sporting your Old Gold and White. I know you all must be just as excited as we are with the potential for such a great season ahead of us.
Over the past few weeks, we have really come together as a team and have been playing very well in our intrasquad scrimmages. The competition has been great. However, I know our pitchers are looking forward to facing some new hitters. As for our hitters, I’m sure they are all ecstatic to finally have some real umpires behind the plate. Jason Haniger, Brandon Miller, and I have been the temporary umpires this spring and we have not made many friends among the position players, as every “borderline pitch” is obviously a strike. Today, Chris House got rung up on one of those borderline pitches from Jed Bradley. It was a backdoor slider that may or may not have caught any of the plate, but from my point of view (behind the dish) it was right down Broadway.
As the season fast approaches, we are tuning down our scrimmaging routine this week. Today, our scrimmage was a brief three-inning tune-up, with Bradley and Taylor Wood each throwing two innings and Zach Brewster and Mark Pope both getting a quick inning of work.
Naturally, with Opening Day only a few short days away, the weather is cooling off. Tomorrow, we are hoping the afternoon will clear up for us so we can put our second to last day of practice to good use. The Freshmen are on call for Tarp-Duty whenever the rain stops tomorrow. We can only hope for good weather this weekend, if for no other reason than for the sake of our Freshmen’s sleep cycles. You see, when it rains on weekends, the Freshmen become the groundscrew’s groundscrew. If there is a forecast for rain until late Thursday night and then clear skies on Friday morning, then it is the Freshmen’s job to get to the field, before sunrise, to pull the tarp. This would require them to get up around 7:00 on a game day! Now that may sound inhumane, but we have all been there. No one likes it but we’ve all been there. It is little things like this, or the hair cuts, or the team camping trip, that we all do that brings us closer as a team. To add to Kevin Jacob’s list of 10 reasons why we are ready to go to Omaha, Reason 11 would have to be our team chemistry. We really are a close-knit family in this locker room and you all are a huge part of our family, as well.
Thanks for checking in with us. We all look forward to seeing our entire extended family out on the Flats this weekend. Go Jackets!!!
-Cole Leonida
Past Blogs/Q&A’s:
Countdown to First Pitch: 4 days – Q&A by Deck McGuire
Countdown to First Pitch: 5 days – blog by Patrick Long
Countdown to First Pitch: 6 days – blog by Kevin Jacob
Countdown to First Pitch: 7 days – Q&A by Zach Brewster
Countdown to First Pitch: 8 days – blog by Jake Davies
Countdown to First Pitch: 9 days – blog by Zach Von Tersch
Countdown to First Pitch: 10 days – blog by Thomas Nichols
Countdown to First Pitch: 11 days – Q&A by Tony Plagman
Countdown to First Pitch: 12 days – blog by Connor Winn
Countdown to First Pitch: 13 days – blog by Mark Pope
Countdown to First Pitch: 14 days – Q&A by Jeff Rowland
Countdown to First Pitch: 15 days – blog by Matt Simonds
Countdown to First Pitch: 16 days – blog by Jay Dantzler
Countdown to First Pitch: 17 days – blog by Chris House
Countdown to First Pitch: 18 days – Q&A by Jason Haniger
Countdown to First Pitch: 19 days – blog by Derek Dietrich
