Monday, June 26, 2006

Congratulations, Beavers!

Yes, that's right, Oregon State won the NCAA College Baseball World Series. You hadn't heard? Heck, neither had I until a few minutes ago. And I'm a pretty big baseball fan. ESPN's Skip Bayless ponders the question of why baseball players are invisible between Little League and the Major Leagues. Actually, some start to get back on the radar if they're tearing up the minor leagues, but his point certainly holds for high school and college baseball. What gives?

While we're at ESPN, three cheers for the always-entertaining Bill Simmons's round-up of the best videos available on YouTube. Simmons is like Chuck Klosterman with more sports. He did miss this citizen addressing the Charlotte, North Carolina City Council on the issue of a "rogue helicopter pilot," though, nor Connie Chung's sung farewell to cable TV.

And for those of you interested (not my sister, apparently), Fox Sports adds a couple of photos to that gallery of World Cup babes every day. But tantalizingly, they stick the new shots in random places. This lovely senhorita appeared in the #12 slot today, but she may have been bumped to a different position by the time you look at the gallery:

2 Comments:

At Wednesday, June 28, 2006 at 9:46:00 PM PDT, Blogger Ryan said...

Dude, the RBI Baseball re-enactment of the 1986 World Series game 6 is pretty freaking amazing. I saw that cause Sports Guy linked to it.

OSU-NC game 3 was a great game -- it's probably the most college baseball I've ever watched (the Sox drafted the starting pitcher for NC #1, my reason for watching it). The bad throw on a routine play by the 2b (who came in as a defensive replacement) was a worse flub than Billy Bucks. Seriously.

 
At Wednesday, June 28, 2006 at 10:52:00 PM PDT, Blogger Adam Villani said...

Most people watching major league-level baseball barely give fielding an afterthought, but in some ways, it's the most visibly obvious difference between high-level baseball and lower-level baseball. It isn't all that obvious to the naked eye, the difference between a slugger who can only hit fastballs and one who can hit curves, sliders, changeups, and knuckleballs, mainly because the low-level pitchers aren't throwing all those other pitches with consistency. But a "routine" grounder may not be so routine for a high school or low-level infielder, and the difference between the effortless performance of a big leaguer and somebody who has to think consciously about the procedure is remarkable.

 

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