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So Josh Fields is back in Athens after being drafted by the Braves last year, and now he’s not only a closer, but a DH, and dude is pretty good at both. In last Friday’s opener against No. 1 Arizona, he had a bunt single (something he said he hadn’t done since high school), a home run and, of course, a three-strikeout save. That’s pretty impressive. Both Fields and his Diamond Dogs started off pretty poorly last season (dropping a three-game series to Oregon State, with late-inning collapses galore), so you would think Fields would have that on his mind upon taking the mound Friday.Wrong.
“I thought about that a little bit before, but once I went out there on the mound my mind was just blank and all I was thinking about was throwing strikes and going after hitters,” Fields told reporters.”But it was on my mind a little bit before. That first game last year, it was tough to start like that at the beginning of the season, and I guess we kind of felt like we had an uphill battle after that and this year I know just the guys that remember that last year just want to relax and not put so much pressure on ourselves.”Fields wasn’t the only one preaching that the Diamond Dogs have put their 23-33 2007 behind them, but it will be interesting to see if they make good on the promise.
As I was sitting in the press box at Sunday’s rubber game, the Diamond Dogs squandered a 4-0 lead going into the seventh, and proceeded to give up nine runs in the following two innings. In the eighth, an Arizona runner tried to steal second with two outs. Bryce Massanari’s throw went into the centerfield, and the runner rounded third, and proceeded to unnecessarily truck right on over Massanari, despite the fact that the transfer from Las Vegas didn’t have the ball. And, to me at least, he didn’t make a particularly strong effort to touch the plate. Georgia third baseman Ryan Peisel proceeded to have a near heart attack, flying down the third base line to come to the defense of his teammate. Benches cleared, big bad college athletes pretended as if 65-year-old men could really hold them back and stop them from getting to the other team, etc., etc.I’ve seen a lot of baseball on TV and been to a lot of games, but that was the first bench-clearing near-brawl that I’ve witnessed live, and I must say it was pretty cool. (Although a couple people didn’t particularly appreciate it— Arizona coach Andy Lopez was still screaming at his team when I left Foley about half an hour after the game, and Georgia Athletic Director Damon Evans saw it too, and didn’t look too stoked).
The Diamond Dogs played an exhibition with the Braves on Wednesday, and as one that’s been to a Braves spring training and a lifelong, bleeding heart Braves fan, I just have one thing to say.How cool is that…
In other, severely unrelated news, a colleague of mine, Red & Blacker Kevin Copp, sent me this quote from Georgia gymnastics coach Suzanne Yoculan talking about Nikki Childs, one of her gymnasts.I realize a lot of people aren’t particularly fascinated in gymnastics, but I thought the quote was pretty funny and had pretty good insight into Yoculan’s personality (she’s what I like to refer to as, lovingly of course, a crazy person). And plus, you don’t see a coach just straight up vent about one of his/her players very often:”Nikki….aaaargh…I want to ring her neck. She drives me crazy. I love her, but she’s just aaaaah. She’s a big competitor. You put her in the big meets, under the lights, championships, she’s on the money, but in the little meets it’s almost like she’s playing with me and making me mad on purpose. I’m like, ‘Nikki, what are you doing?’ She’s a gymnast that can age you for sure because she’s so good and you have to love her…It just looks like she has a hit routine and all of a sudden she wants to torment me. You can’t even see a technical mistake leading up to her wobbles. It’s like all of a sudden she wants to bend over.”
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