February 12, 2009

Countdown to First Pitch: 8 days

Feb. 12, 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 freshman Jake Davies.

Hey Jacket Fans! It was a beautiful day for baseball, if any of you noticed. Thursday is typically our short day because we don’t have a scrimmage, but all else was pretty much the same. We worked on pickoffs and game situations, took some batting practice and got after it. Coach Hall was actually pleased with us, so we don’t have to worry about running tomorrow – that’s a VERY good thing. Although, Coach White (aka Whitey or Heavy Wallet, as he like to think of himself) still enforced his 5 second rule on running to first, so a couple of the guys – including me, because I am a bit on the slow side – had to run after practice. Other than that, it was a short and good day of baseball.

Since it was a short practice and I don’t have much else to say about it, I thought I would let you know some things about a few of the guys. Jeff Ussery is still hurt (from a broken leg over the summer) and limping, and he likes to fall asleep in the training room so a few of us played some tricks on him while he was a sleep today – it wasn’t anything harmful. Tony “Manimal” Plagman is still the locker room goof ball, so we played a little FIFA soccer today. He, of course, won because he is bigger and an upperclassman. Oh, and if any you wanted to know, Deck McGuire is the anti- get hyped guy on our team. He likes playing these slow, sad country songs in the locker room – it puts us all to sleep. And finally, if there are any single ladies out there, I know for a fact that there are a bunch of strapping baseball players that are having girl troubles (including Jeff Ussery – he could really use your help.)

As a matter of fact, if any of you ladies (and I guess this could apply to ANY Tech fans!) are going to be around campus this weekend, you should stop by the men’s basketball game against NC State. They play Saturday at 1:30 p.m., but the real treat starts at noon, when gates open and I and my teammates will be signing autographs at the coliseum. Stop by to see us!

Speaking of fans, we need our fans to help Patrick Long out. Earlier this week we all turned in the songs we wanted played when we came in to pitch or hit (and since I do both, I picked multiple), but P-Long struggled to narrow it to fewer than five songs. Therefore, he had the idea to let YOU GUYS pick his intro music – see that survey on the right side of the page? Can you help a guy out?

Other than that, it was a typical day at Russ Chandler Stadium. While I’m thinking about it, let me hand out a bit of advice that I’ve learned in my first half-season at Tech: If there are any aspiring college baseball players out there, one of the things that you will learn very quickly is to be mentally prepared for everything. Freshman classes aren’t a joke, and if you combine that with pitching and hitting, you have to be ready to go every day. I have learned to just keep plugging along though, and the rewards will be so worth it in the end. That’s about all I have for you today, but don’t forget to come out and pack the house on February 20 when we open the season against Lipscomb. We want to see you guys there!

I’ll leave you on this note: WHAT’S THE GOOD WORD????

–Jake Davies