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!
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