Dogs are 9-0 in baseball

Athens — How bad did the Georgia baseball team want to play Wednesday night’s game? So bad that the players literally shoveled snow off the infield the day before the game.

The six inches of hard-frozen white stuff that blanketed Foley Field when the Bulldogs made their triumphant return from Arizona threatened to postpone Wednesday night’s game against Wofford. The Bulldogs weren’t ready for an unscheduled day off. Not with the historic start they’re off to.

With Wednesday night’s 13-6 victory over Wofford, No. 10 Georgia (9-0) matched the best start in school history. That record dates to 1911. For what it’s worth, that team finished 17-5 and split four games with Georgia Tech 2-2.

“Ninety-eight years is a long time,” Georgia coach David Perno said with a laugh. “Hopefully we’ll stay locked in and keep doing what we’re doing.”

Said junior Rich Poythress: “Yeah, we heard about it the day before the game. Any time you break a record it’s good for the team. And there’s been a lot of good teams through here.”

The perfect start is coming from a Georgia team that was supposed to be in rebuilding mode after last season’s national runner-up finish. But some perspective must be applied. The Bulldogs aren’t exactly enduring the scheduling version of murderer’s row.

With the exception of this past weekend’s trip to Tucson — and that wasn’t your vintage Arizona baseball powerhouse — Georgia hasn’t exactly been testing its mettle. And it won’t be anytime soon.

Previous victories have come in series against Youngstown State and Presbyterian. Awaiting the Bulldogs is a three-game set with Quinnipiac this weekend and two games with Lemoyne next week.

Not until the March 13-15 series at Alabama will anybody get a realistic idea of what these Bulldogs are really made of, and they should be 14-0 by then.

“It’s still tough [to win every game] coming out of the gate with so many new guys like we are,” Perno said. “You expect a slip-up somewhere. We’re playing a lot of freshmen, but they’re good players.”

In the meantime, Georgia looks very, very good. It still hasn’t trailed at the end of an inning this season and has scored double-figure runs in all but one game, and it had eight in that one.

Wednesday’s game was more of the same as the Bulldogs methodically dispatched Wofford (3-4). They jumped to a 3-0 lead in the first inning on a passed ball and two-run single by catcher Joey Lewis. They added a two runs in the third on a Poythress home run to right-center field and two more in the fourth on towering solo home runs to left by freshmen Zach Cone and Colby May to make the score 7-0.

And that was that. The rest of the game was academic as Wofford went through seven pitchers and Georgia cleared its bench.

With snow piled up again the outfield fences, the most amazing part might have been just that they got in the game.

“It was a little sloppy out there but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be,” Poythress said. “I walked up to our head grounds crew guy [Kenny Pauley] and thanked him because I didn’t think we’d be able to do it.”