Keep Moving On ...

Senior Greg Blohowiak and redshirt freshman Michael Porcaro, members of the Milwaukee baseball team, will be blogging all season long on the UWM website.

Blohowiak is back for his third season of blogging, while Porcaro gets his first go at it. Today is their seventh entry for the 2012 season.

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Baseball is such a tough game. It truly is a game of failure. I mean, a guy who fails seven out of 10 times is considered a good baseball player. No other sport is like that. The players and teams that refuse to give in to failure are the ones who are great. We’ve faced a lot of adversity so far this year and have put ourselves in a tough situation after this weekend. But, no way is this team going to back down from a challenge and give in - I can guarantee you that.

We are two weeks into conference play. There’s a lot of baseball left to be played. It’s important for us to continue to work hard and stick to the plan. It isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. The goal is to get better every day and when game time comes, it’s our job to execute plays and play harder than the other team. I think the key in sports; especially baseball because it’s so mental, is to stay positive. A lot easier said than done but it is crucial.

With that being said it’s time to start focusing on this coming up weekend. Home opener at THE HANK!!!!!!! I encourage all of you to come out and support us as we take on UIC. Big series for us and we appreciate all the support you guys give us.

It’s time for some more introductions. This week I’m going to introduce the corner infielders.

Yup, that’s sophomore third baseman Sam Koenig. The Sauk Prairie native is a big fan of Culvers as you can see. Sammy lives in the training room. I’m pretty sure he rented out a room and sleeps there overnight. He should be a certified trainer by now with how much time he spends in there. He is definitely one of the worst at "Draw Something". His drawings are on the level of 2nd-graders. Merrrr.

What up Al?! This is Alex Erdmann, a redshirt junior. Al is a third baseman and a reliever this year in the bullpen. As you can see from the picture, Al can rock pretty much anything. Is that shirt from the 1980’s? Does that shirt even come in men's? I’ve had the pleasure of rooming with Al on the road the last two weekends. He got me addicted to playing "Sporcle" on the Internet. We even created a quiz where you try to name every player on our roster.

CLICK HERE and see if you can do it!

It was Al’s idea to create the quiz, he’s such a genius!

This is senior first baseman/catcher Paul Hoenecke enjoying a nice hot dog. Pauly is one-of-a-kind. He likes to be the instigator in getting guys riled up with his “You won’t, you won’t!” “Say something back, say something back” comments. Pauly is a great guy. He hits balls really far and gets good grades in the classroom. He’s always in class. It’s kind of unfortunate because he can never teach the little kids how to drop bombs on Monday and Wednesday nights. Hey Pauly can you do camp tonight? Paul responds, “Naaa, I got class.” Such a good student!

I know what you’re thinking. You think that’s MC Hammer in a UWM uniform. Nope, that’s just senior first baseman Phil Striggow. Phil doesn’t have a Facebook so this is the best photo I could find. 'Big Rig Strig' as we call him, spends a lot of time out on the farm back home on his Big Green tractor. That explains why he is “farmer strong”. Big Rig is a simple man. He enjoys hitting baseballs far, listening to country music and talking/skyping with his girlfriend on the phone. I saw him online looking at rings the other day. Wedding announcement could be coming soon!

Next week I’ll move on to some of the outfielders.

I’m going to head out and let Blow take over…

Hope to see ya’ll out at the Hank this weekend!

Paco Thoughts… Brewers Baseball is less than a week away, how exciting… Noodles & Company followed by Cold Stone is a great combo… Dibble dabble is the greatest pool game ever. Shout out to our trainer Will for making the play of the year when he belly-flopped across the pool to get the straw… He definitely got robbed when he didn’t make SportCenters Top 10 plays… Tim Tebow will be the starter for the Jets by week 6… Heard it hear first!

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Hey there everybody! What an emotionally and physically draining past week. Here’s to recharging the batteries and being completely fresh for this HUGE series versus UIC at home. This upcoming series is actually the one I circled at the unveiling of our schedule. They are our bitter rivals and we are extremely amped up for the weekend. I’d expect to see a renewed focus and competitiveness against them, as most rivals will bring that out. It's going to be a fierce series and I hope you all take time out of your busy schedules and make your way to “The Hank” to take in a game or three.

“Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.” - Samuel Johnson

That quote above carries weight in each and every one of us. This quote is especially true when it comes to the game we play. We always talk about adversity and overcoming it and how that overcoming adversity is one of our teams strengths. Adversity brings out character and I think that our teams character is something you can be proud of thus far. Playing a ton of games on the road to start the year, battling bus rides and long travel days, and not necessarily playing the best of late are all examples of some adversity we’re facing.

Nonetheless, our team has found a way to stay together and believe it or not, get closer as a team along the way. Our character is something that we pride ourselves on, how we handle ourselves and treat one another. Strong character will breed success and overcoming adversity breeds character. I am proud of the team thus far as we continue to pull for one another and grind day-in and day-out to put forth our best performance on the field. Thanks for supporting us thus far and we look forward to seeing all your bright faces as the season progresses.

This past week or so has taught us alot about ourselves and we have taken note, all we can do is do that and move forward. There is no use in carrying that baggage forward and as far as I’m concerned, this Friday is the start to a new season, one pitch at a time.

All seriousness aside, here we go with some more introductions. This week I’ll focus on two more of the relievers, redshirt junior Jake Long and sophomore Gunnar Eastman.

It's pretty hard to find a picture that completely exemplifies someones personality such as Jake's, but this picture does it very well. Jake loves to have fun, no matter what. He will always be the first one down by the pool on roadtrips to play dibble-dabble (best pool game ever invented) or he’ll be on the bus having his fun with his crush Alex Erdmann.

Jake is probably the biggest gamer (video games) on our team, and with that being said, he is probably the best at those games. Just ask Jimmy or Spurley about his NHL game and they’ll tell you. He is a redshirt junior who has had terrible luck when it comes to injury. He is the ultimate teammate who just shows up and gets his work done, such a great mentality especially considering his injury history. He is the younger brother of Ben Long, an alumni of Panther Baseball, and they both share the same fun-loving, hard-working mentality.

I still don’t know where he stands though with me, because he told me freshmen year that he hated me following a heated game of 'Call of Duty', but I guess that speaks to his competitiveness. Just a warning though, if you are down by the pool with him, or just at practice or on the bus, you always have to watch your back as you can surely expect a gentle push, poke, tickle (in Erdmann's case) or punch.

Gunnar “Gunshow” Eastman, as shown on the right in the picture, is a true hick at heart. Coming from the tough streets of Green Bay (920 represent), he had to find a way to differentiate himself, and I think dressing like this regularly helped shed his “ghetto, thug” reputation, although he would still list either Lil Wayne or Eminem as his favorite artists.

Gunnar is a unique cut, as he was completely silent his freshmen year. It was a miracle if you got him to speak up about anything and coming into this year our whole team was hit with a wall of Gunnar. He is one of the more outspoken members of the team and on a regular basis you can bet you’ll hear his “oohhhhh duuddeeee, sweetttt duuuddeeee” sarcastic rhetoric. He is apart of the Cramer house (not the famous Mustard House) with the dude on his left and Cale Tassi. On his free nights he likes to cuddle up in his bed and watch a good chick flick with his best friend Josh Uhen. He is a third-tier grill master but is a first-tier consumer of food. His favorite, and I mean FAVORITE, meal to make is Hormel chili with cream cheese in a casserole. He is a man with a mystery and we are all trying to discover this mystery.

I told you he was a thug. Unbelievable Gunnar.


I don’t have much time for thoughts so I just have two.....Soap Operas are something my parents pride themselves on..their trivia savvy for them is unreal....Dibble Dabble...clear drinking straw...cut it in three equal pieces...throw one of the pieces in the pool...try to find it...good luck.. Hi Cale hahaha

League Play Begins - We're all 0-0

Senior Greg Blohowiak and redshirt freshman Michael Porcaro, members of the Milwaukee baseball team, will be blogging all season long on the UWM website.

Blohowiak is back for his third season of blogging, while Porcaro gets his first go at it. Today is their sixth entry for the 2012 season.

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It was nice to open conference play with a couple wins and a series victory. Although we let a game get away and couldn’t finish the sweep, we accomplished the weekend goal of winning the series.

Once again the pitching was fantastic this weekend. They continue to keep us in ball games and put us in great position to win. The bats definitely showed signs of how good we can be as an offense. Especially in game two when we had three guys go yard. We had some big 2-out RBI hits, something we haven’t got much of this year. So it is good to see the bats coming around. We just need to continue to work hard and make every at-bat competitive.

Like Blow said last week, it’s hard to keep you guys entertained every week. Most of you reading this probably know all about the games this past weekend so it would be pretty boring to get a play-by-play of the games all over again. With that being said, it is my turn to introduce some of the guys on the team. This week I’m going to introduce the middle infielders. The guys I spend most of my practice time with.



This is the veteran of the group, Jimmy Lundstrom, AKA Jimbo Slice. Jimmy is a fifth-year senior and a second baseman. Jimbo went to Madison College before taking his talents here to UWM. In the off-season you can find Jimmy doing work at the basketball games running stats. Jimmy is one of two guys on the team from the state of Illinois and unfortunately that makes him a Bears fan.



This right here is junior Nick Lingvay. He is a man of many nicknames. Ling-a-ding, Ling, Linger, Lenny, whichever one you choose he will respond. Ling spends a lot of time in the classroom. That is because he is taking on the daunting task of being an engineering major. Ling is a member of the “Mustard House” with Jordan Guth, Drew Pearson and Jon Capasso. If you ever need help with your math homework, hit up Linger, he is a numbers whiz.



You see that guy screaming his lungs out with the mullet? That’s sophomore Tell Taylor. Tell is known for his unique ability to imitate Domingo Ayala (he is no semi-pro at it). He is also known for the ability to grow out a mullet, as you can see in the picture. His mullet is considered one of the best in the Midwest and is up there with the best of them in the nation. I know Panther Nation is wondering when we will be seeing this mullet again. Well, I have great news (Mike Poll voice). Tell is currently in the process of growing out his mullet and we should be seeing it in about month.



And finally to round out the middle infield here we have Trevor Theissen. He sure looks good in pink doesn’t he? Trev is a freshman this year and can play both shortstop and second base. Trevor is an avid tweeter. You can follow him @ttheissen. He is from Franklin and when he has time he enjoys making the short trip home to visit his girlfriend.

It was fun introducing the middle infield to you guys, next week we will continue the introductions as well as sharing some thoughts from the Valpo series. This week is all baseball as we get a week off from school due to spring break.

Paco Thoughts… Chipotle has the slight edge over Qdoba in my opinion… It seriously feels like summer in Wisconsin with this weather… My bracket got busted real quick (thanks Mizzou)… Congratulations to Emily McClellan of our swim team for a great season and her performance at the NCAA Championships… Fear The Deer!!!

Here’s Blow…

I can definitely start my portion of the blog out by saying I will not miss traveling to Youngstown, OH. Ever since I started playing here I never really heard good things about the surrounding areas. Our stay in Warren, OH (city close to Youngstown) was quite entertaining. The hotel was vintage, seriously, having been built around 1880 and utilized as a hotel (Park Hotel) in 1895. I'm convinced that the hotel has not seen any upgrades other than technological advances between the 117 years between when it opened and when we stayed there. It was an experience, to say the least, with plenty of scenes to be had from the convention there to the water quality warning. Thanks Youngstown for your hospitality over the years, however I’ve seen better days.

Conference play is always intense. No matter who you are playing, in the Horizon League or in baseball for that matter, you cannot let up at anytime during the game. That was our problem in game three of the series. I feel as though we kind of let out a sigh of relief and got complacent and before we knew it we were in a dog fight.

Unfortunately, they put together a few hits and ended up winning the game. It was such a sour taste in our mouths following that loss, however, we mustn’t forget that we achieved our goal of winning series. In our minds though we should never lose to that Youngstown team, and I’m not saying that to be disrespectful towards them but to give you a gauge on how high our expectations are as a team. Winning series’ are the main objective each and every weekend and if we do that we will walk away with a Horizon League championship.

Since it is spring break I’m going to take a little bit off my blogging and get strait to introductions of some of the pitchers. This week the two lucky fellas are seniors Kaleb Engelke and Kyle Spurley, who are also suspected of being bromantically involved.



This guy right here seen surrounded by pumpkins and with his girlfriend Molly in hand is Kyle Spurley (@kspurley1). He is a transfer from MATC who was held out of his transfer year with a torn ACL. Since this unfortunate accident, pitchers have not been trusted to so much as look at a basketball. Although he doesn’t necessarily look like the guy in this picture I assure you that man is hiding underneath his mop of a hairdo and his extremely large muscles. He is known for causing ruckus and getting people “riled” up on long bus trips. One time he was confused for a megaphone-wielding construction worker, but little did we know he talks that loud. The only way to mum his loud voice is to make sure he is around his girlfriend Molly.



I don’t even really know where to start with his guy. Kaleb Engelke (@theREALgulk), a senior, is one of a kind, not to mention his dad has the most outrageous hat/hair combo. His body temperature reaches as high as 102 degrees normally. When that happens his cooling off method is to just simply take his shirt off. It is a rarity to see him with a shirt on, so if you see him around campus make sure you snap a picture of him as it is comparable to picturing an eagle.

To answer all the questions you are posing, no. No, his two front teeth are not “blacked out” they are actually missing. Unfortunately, he found something that was harder than teeth to fall onto. Some of the best times are when he pops out his retainer with the two teeth on them to mess with people. He is truly a character and will make your life better by just being in it. Not to get all emotional but it is great to be surround by people from all walks of life, puts things in perspective. Who wouldn’t wanna wake up next to this smiling face? I can think of two people who would, and one involves a slipknot jersey.



Lastly, to continue the tradition of introductions, I’ll introduce a diehard Panther baseball fan as well as an alumni. This man here pictured with our very own Nick “Linger, Lenny, Ling-a-ding” Lingvay is no one other than Kyle Mayer (@KThomas38). He was actually on the team a few years ago as a pitcher. He lives in the very famous “Mustard House” and is a frequent follower of the blog. He is very supportive of his housemates as well as Panther baseball as a whole. You can see him ripping around campus on his moped or on the balcony of the “Mustard House”. We miss his antics as a team and are always looking forward to seeing him around. We appreciate the support and look forward to seeing him out at the Hank for our games, even though he is a proud supporter of the Vikings, I can bite tongue and let that slide for a few months.

Quick thoughts from Blow....

Love the weather....50,000 population to a 20,000 population is not a good thing Warren....I hope the people involved in the motorcycle/SUV accident we saw on our way to dinner one night are ok...The Bucks are fun to watch....Tim Tebow will NOT be a Packer, shut it Shefter....you too Bayless...Spring Break was much needed..please follow me on twitter @gbloho15 haha....Congrats to Tennis on a victorious match in Florida, I’m sure they’re enjoying the weather down there as well...Luke Meeteer is a boss and he knows why....The Walking Dead is a great show...I recommend it, however that show also shapes hatred towards a few characters on the show...Breaking Bad and Mad Men are a must as well! See yaaaa next week! #GOPANTHERS #BEATVALPO

The Joys of 13-hour Bus Rides...

Senior Greg Blohowiak and redshirt freshman Michael Porcaro, members of the Milwaukee baseball team, will be blogging all season long on the UWM website.

Blohowiak is back for his third season of blogging, while Porcaro gets his first go at it. Today is their fifth entry for the 2012 season.

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What’s happening Panther Nation???

After flying out to our games two of the last three weekends, it was back to the good ole’ Lamers bus! It was a long 13-hour bus ride down to Little Rock.

Being the smart guys we are, we made sure to bring plenty to keep us busy. Ipods, iPads and laptops were all crucial to helping us make it through the trip. Our unofficial team mascot, Chad Pole, made his first trip of his career. It was a blast having him on the bus. I know we all enjoyed him, especially Josh Uhen (see picture). I think we went through three movies on the way there and a lot of us caught up on some Z’s. I think I personally spent about half of the trip sleeping, although sleeping on a bus has got to be one of the toughest things to do! So uncomfortable!

We arrived in Little Rock a little past midnight. The next morning we enjoyed a delicious breakfast at the International House of Pancakes, AKA IHOP. After a little downtime at the hotel, we headed to the field for game one of our series against Arkansas Little-Rock.

Gary Hogan Field (possible relation to Hulk Hogan?) was very nice. The artificial turf came up big and allowed us to play on time despite Little Rock getting a lot of rain during the week.

Not much to say about the first two games. Poor execution, lack of intent and no energy. We did not play good baseball at all.

But we ended up bouncing back in game three. Our bats arguably had their best game of the year. Mike Schneider once again gave us a great start and our bullpen was solid. Our defense was even flashing the leather! Drew Pearson got the start out in right and made two web gems with the Pruss 2000 (it’s what he calls his glove). Shout out to Jerry Pruss for supporting UWM baseball and being a loyal reader of the Diamond Chronicles!

Because of the expected rainfall on Sunday we ended up playing a doubleheader on Saturday. We ended up leaving Little Rock on Sunday at 8:30 a.m. The hour we lost due to daylight savings time was killer, but we gained it back on the bus! I think about 30 minutes into the trip back our whole bus was asleep. Except for the driver of course!!!!

This week of practice is crucial as we prepare for the conference opener at Youngstown State. Thankfully, the weather is beautiful and we’ll get some defensive work outside.

I’m sure I missed out on a lot of important details from our weekend but my guy Blow will fill you in. It’s mid-terms this week, so I gotta run and get some work done! Cya next week Nation!

Paco Thoughts… Little Rock has the narrowest roads in the world… Big shout out to the candy man from Fayetteville for making the trip to Little Rock and supplying us with gum and taking great photos! Welcome back to the bus Zills… Welcome to the Bucks Monta!!! Colts should of kept Manning… Let the Madness begin! My Final 4: Kentucky, Mizzou, Ohio State, North Carolina… Hit me up on Twitter @MdotPaco1


Chasing Pavement AKA Displacing Pavement

Phew. That was a sigh of relief. I really didn’t know how my body was going to handle long bus rides coming into the year and right now I’d say I fared pretty well. I want to extend a welcome to our SID Chris Zills as well for his first appearance with the baseball team, even though he donned the women's basketball warmup pants with his name on them the whole weekend, it's okay, they looked good.

[Editor's note: It was NOT the whole weekend.]

As many writers of blogs can tell you, it is hard to keep an audience engaged week in and week out. The successful ones are those who can do that. This blog is no exception. I wish there were extremely exciting things to share with you all each road trip, but truth is, there isn’t. The two games we lost were as Paco mentioned, not baseball. The last game of the series showed our grit as a team as we played from ahead most of the game.

I was out there for my third inning and on the 2-out, 2-strike count, the guy flat out beat me and hit the seams off the ball, scoring the tying run in the ninth. While upset with myself for allowing the tying run to score and losing Schneider's first win of the season, I was not upset after the game. We won the game yes but the way we did it after I came out was awesome to watch. Kaleb Engelke came in after me with a guy on second and made the hitter he faced look foolish to get the out. When we got up to bat it was as if Poseidon gave us his trident and nodded. With that we unleashed the bats and scored six runs, relieving all the pent up frustration from weekends before of offensive deficiency.

Like I’ve been saying this whole time, our team will never quit. Our resolve and willingness to succeed is unmatched and it will show. When we play at home in front of more than just the parents we’ll show you, game in and out, how much we care with our hustle, competitiveness, and yes, with some of our reactions. Not condoning negative reactions or poor body language following a poor result, sometimes it really is the “next 10 steps” you use to clear the mechanism. All you golf aficionados will understand the “next 10 steps” rule, as I definitely am guilty of with my fair share of duffed shots and slices.

I guess what my point is is that the style we play will definitely allow the onlookers to see our emotions, with the negative ones hopefully being spaced out as far as possible. We are coming up on our first home games and I am attempting to give those of you who have yet to see us play get a sense of the team.

With that being said I want to switch the direction of this blog and start to introduce our team. We’re going to include a multitude of teammates pictures into the blog each week so you guys can feel closer to them when they’re out there pitching or hitting. We’ll usually do that in groups, with the first group being the bullpen.

The guy pictured here is Eric King. He was included last week with a full family picture, which was magnificent and was probably the reason his parents made the trip to Arkansas this past weekend. He is a redshirt freshman and is a caretaker to the team mascot, Chad Pole. This picture probably is the best one you can get him to take as his girlfriend Jessica doesn’t allow him to take many pictures without her permission.


I'm not quite sure how old he is in this picture but it is pretty spot on as to his looks right now. This is Jordan Guth and he is a junior pitcher who prides himself on flat brim hats and cutting hair. He is the team barber for sure. He resides at the “Mustard House” along with Drew Pearson, Jon Capasso, and also Jerry Pruss (Pruss2000) and is involved in a “who's house is better” competition with the other Cramer house. We are not sure whose truly is better but the friendly debate is always fun.

Since this is the first week of it, I’ll leave it at two players. Next week, along with our blog about Youngstown, Paco will showcase some hitters (middle infielders) and I’ll showcase some pitchers (bullpen). We are also planning on having guest bloggers as well as some video links we’ll post in here so we can keep your attention!

UALR was fun but this weekend starts a journey to win a conference regular season title! Lets get after it!

Quick thoughts from Blow..

Mike Goetz would rather hit .310 and have 25 RBI’s than hit .150 and be an everyday player for a World Series champion in the MLB ... A pitcher, who will remain nameless at this point, threw a pitch to the equivalent of 1/5 of the cost of wings on temple run (100 mph) ... pretty exciting ... UALR has some sketchy places backed up by some even sketchier stories from their players ... the roads are indeed too narrow and the slope of such streets are unacceptable. Our Lamers exchanged some paint and metal for some pavement on multiple occasions this past weekend ... One of the most avid followers of our team, who is a non-parent, is probably Jordan “JAYOH” Oster, roommate of pitcher Josh Uhen. He is actively showing his support via twitter, facebook, in our everyday lives, as well as on the blog. A conversation I overheard today actually was about how he shared in the disgust of how slow the GameTracker is. (with Cale Tassi’s gf Megan “Megabyte” Norby) His heart is certainly in the right place and on a few occasions he was a few minutes away from emailing the whole student population about the baseball program ... He is the first one to exploit the “comments” portion of the blog this year and I urge you all to comment as we’d like to get some sort of feedback ... We appreciate all the support he gives us and it is refreshing knowing there are people out there that have our back ... thanks Jayoh. (we know he is not the only one either, and I assure you, none of our friends, or family members are safe as far as the blog goes) (winky smiley face)

No wonder he is a proud supporter, he has baseball flowing through his veins. (that's him pictured tagging out a foe). Rumor has it he threw 81 his sophomore year of HS but it was downhill after that. Thanks for the support brother! We appreciate it!

Did Anyone see Tony Gwynn?!?

Senior Greg Blohowiak and redshirt freshman Michael Porcaro, members of the Milwaukee baseball team, will be blogging all season long on the UWM website.

Blohowiak is back for his third season of blogging, while Porcaro gets his first go at it. Today is their fourth entry for the 2012 season.

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What’s happening #PantherNation?? Pretty depressing writing this in the California sunshine, knowing we will be heading back to eight inches of snow later on tonight.

We headed out to Cali on Wednesday. Some guys were lucky and flew straight to San Diego, while others had a layover in Kansas City. Fortunately, I flew straight through and arrived in beautiful San Diego at about 5:45 Cali time.

We grabbed our bags, hopped on the bus and headed to the Sheraton Inn. For the second consecutive week, our hotel was very nice. The Sheraton even had Starbucks coffee in each room, which a lot of the guys enjoyed. As soon as we dropped our bags off at the hotel, we immediately took our empty stomachs to Wendy’s and enjoyed a nice dinner.

The guys who were on the layover didn’t arrive to the hotel until about 9:00 Cali time. That night, we all went to bed relatively early because we had an 11:00 a.m. game the next morning vs. San Francisco. Jon Capasso clutched up for the second consecutive week when he hit a walk-off 3-RBI double in the bottom of the ninth to win the game for us.

Our next game wasn’t until 7 p.m. on Friday night, so we had a lot of time to explore San Diego. A lot of guys and their families went to downtown San Diego Thursday night. On Friday, some of us went down to the ocean and also took a tour of the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier. That night we took on the San Diego State Aztecs.

After getting off to a slow start in the first couple of innings, Cale Tassi settled down and threw another nice game. Our bats were alive all game. We were facing a hard throwing righty, but our at-bats were competitive and aggressive all night. We took a lead going into the eighth inning, but we hit a speed bump and ended up losing 7-4. It was a tough loss because we felt like we played a really good game. We just didn’t close it out.

The next day versus Cal Poly, we came out flat and couldn’t bounce back after being down 4-0. That night, some guys enjoyed their last opportunity to experience San Diego while others had to work on homework. Doing homework on a road trip is not fun, but then again when is homework fun?

We wrapped up the weekend with a game against San Diego the next morning. Mike Schneider threw an absolute gem. He was dicing. But in the seventh, San Diego’s first baseman took a pitch up in the zone over the fence to give them the lead. Mike threw a great game and made just one mistake. Unfortunately, we didn’t give him the run support he deserved.

We let a few games get away this weekend, but we also learned a lot. The starting pitching was great again and our bats showed some positive signs. Now it’s time to put it all together.

I’m going to wrap this up and dish it to Blow so I can do some more homework. Thanks for the support this weekend nation!

Paco Thoughts ... Shout out to Flip for the food and making the trip this weekend ... Shout out to the kid in the San Diego airport who tipped Mike Goetz for playing his guitar ... San Diego weather is unreal ... Congrats to Kyle Spurley and his Tar Heels for beating Duke this weekend (it hurts to type that).

That’s all I got, here’s Blow...



First things first, check out the picture above, isn’t that just studly? If you guys don’t know who that is, its my fellow blogger, Mike Porcaro.

This California trip was pretty breathtaking, especially for someone (myself) who has never been to that part of California. I am convinced that there is no where else in the United States that can showcase that kind of weather on a daily basis. Feeling the heat from the sun in San Diego was unmatched, playing in that sun versus some high-quality opponents is indescribable.

We had a great weekend, even though our record didn’t reflect that. Every facet of our team was tested this weekend from starting pitching, small ball, defense, to bullpen pitching. We had situations where we had to make clutch pitches where we flourished. Situations where we had to get clutch hits and make clutch plays that we also succeeded at. We have a lot to hold our heads high going into next weekend at UALR but that doesn’t make the losses any easier to swallow.

Losing has got to be the worst feeling someone can feel. Such an empty feeling and to anyone competitive a feeling that is never welcomed. I can guarantee you that our team is ultra-competitive and this past weekend is weighing heavily into our practices and workouts this week. We were not satisfied with winning one game and being “in” every other one versus these west coast teams, we want to win every game. We expect to put forth an immense amount of effort and hopefully that translates into a win.

California was a great opportunity to play against opponents we can expect to face in a regional. Gaining valuable experience against these opponents is imperative for us moving forward. We know what it takes to win those games, and more importantly, we have what it takes.

We had a lot of fun in California, from roaming the mall, to playing some dibble dabble in the pool. The weather was amazing, it was great playing in the weather, and it was an overall nice weekend. The only thing missing was the result we wanted, but if we continue getting better day by day we will see the results we desire without pressing the issue, but by just being us.

Quick thoughts by Blow
Our starting pitching has been lights out to begin the year, Eric Semmelhack, Cale Tassi, Mike Schneider, and Justin Jaquish will have us in every single game this year ... check out this article about Cale ... speaks volumes of his character.

CLICK HERE

Congrats to the Seniors on the Men’s and Womens Basketball teams on their careers here at UWM! I can’t wait for retired Volleyball player Kerri Schuh to snap photos of our squad during our games at The Hank ... I'm expecting at least 800 photos each game! The Fresno State Softball team is kind of ridiculous ... not a bad thing but they said they really never watched softball while in high school ... like ... I knew who Taryrne Mowatt was and they didn’t? Cray .... our team has definite #CaliSwag and it starts with Kyle “Sasha Vujacic” Spurley ... ahhh off to Arkansas we go! Everyone please remember to Gametrack it or whatever is necessary to see us play!

Last thought: Tom King is a boss ... I hear nothing but good things about the father of RS Freshmen Eric King .. like just look at this picture (below) (Eric in the middle row middle and Tom at the top right). What a beautiful family!



See ya’ll next week!