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AJC > Sports > UGA > Blog > Archives > 2008 > June > 05
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Doing it the hard way
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
More random thoughts of a Bulldog nature …
• It’s almost bizarre the way David Perno’s Diamond Dogs continue to follow patterns: great teams every other year, a penchant for winning NCAA tournaments the hard way by losing early and then having to move up through the losers bracket. So they’ve done it again, and in the sweetest way possible, dispatching the rivals from North Avenue in a pounding Monday night where a mercy rule would have been in order.
Now it’s a Super Regional at Foley Field in Athens, with North Carolina State the hurdle between UGA and another trip to the College World Series. They play at noon Friday and Saturday and, as they say, if necessary at 4 p.m. Sunday. Hey, this is Georgia baseball we’re talking about. The odds are pretty good they’ll be playing Sunday.
• It was good to see USA Today run a feature this week on what a baseball talent hotbed the state of Georgia has become in recent years. The paper noted the way Perno has built the UGA program on mostly in-state talent, and prominently featured were SEC pitcher of the year Josh Fields, who was named 2008 national stopper of the year Wednesday, and big-hitting shortstop Gordon Beckham, who’s one of five finalists for the Golden Spikes Award, given to the top amateur baseball player.
The recognition is particularly gratifying for Fields, who turned down a chance to sign with the Braves last year in order to play one more year in Athens. If that happened more often, maybe UGA’s every-other-season success rate would skip the off years.
• You can’t sum up the current state of the athletic rivalry between the Bulldogs and the Yellow Jackets (and the shift in state dominance in baseball) better than did a banner some students erected on the Kudzu Hill fence overlooking Foley Field Monday: “Give us your lunch money, nerds.”
• The Athens Banner-Herald had a story the other day on former Redcoat Band member Lloyd Winstead, who turned up a rare piece of sheet music for Georgia’s original school fight song, which is so old and forgotten that even Dan Magill and Fred Birchmore don’t remember it. It’s called “Red and Black March” and was written in 1908 by R.E. Haughey, who was director of what at the time was called the University Cadet Band.
Winstead, associate director of UGA’s Wilson Center for Humanities and Arts, said he sent a copy to the Redcoat Band’s director “to see if it’s something the band could play.” Well, one factor in its favor is that it doesn’t mention a certain former athletic director in the title, so perhaps it won’t get on Mikey Adams’ banned list like “Dooley’s Junkyard Dogs.”
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