Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Unnnnnnbelievable…

It’s tough for me to add much to this truly awesome YouTube clip from Monday’s Red Sox-Angels game in Boston’s Fenway Park.

The best part is NESN color analyst Jerry Remy’s detailed analysis of the whole incident, from the moment the fan appears to interfere with the foul ball to when the other fan throws his pizza at him. (Seriously, you’ve got to watch the video.)

Actual quote from Remy, around the 2:40 mark: “I’d be ticked off too, if somebody decided to fire a whole pepperoni pizza at me. It seemed unprovoked, too. He just let it fly!”

And people have the gall to say baseball is boring.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Break up the Tigers!

The Auburn baseball team is looking awfully good all of a sudden. Winning two games at LSU was one thing...after all, LSU is waaaaay down from its glory days, in its first season under a new head coach and pretty short of SEC-level talent. But South Carolina is none of those things.

Auburn’s absolutely crazy 16-1 win at No. 4 USC served notice that AU is an totally credible SEC contender. Are the Tigers the best team in the league? Of course not, despite wins in four of their five conference games and Paul Burnside looking like one of the SEC’s best pitchers. But they’re hot, and they’re talented, and everything seems to be coming together.

The offense was downright ugly in the first two weeks of the SEC season, but lately, Auburn’s hitters seemingly can’t miss. Scoring eight runs against USC starter Harris Honeycutt (who entered the series 7-1 with a 1.43 ERA) is huge. According to Auburn media relations ace Dan Froehlich, Honeycutt had given up more than three earned runs just TWICE in his career before Friday night. That’s pretty incredible.

Left fielder Mike Bianucci came back from his 10-day absence (he separated his shoulder April 3 against South Alabama) in a big way: He went 2-for-4 and hit his ninth home run of the season. Josh Donaldson also hit dinger No. 9. Not bad.

And Bruce Edwards—who I’ll admit I wasn’t sold on as a leadoff hitter—was the catalyst. Bruce went 4-for-5, scored four runs and had four RBI. Tough to top that.

Of course, the real story was Paul Burnside. He’s had three consecutive very good starts...here are his pitching lines from the last three weeks (forgive me if they don’t line up on your computer screen):

March 30 against Ole Miss
IP H R ER BB SO AB BF NP
--------------------------------------------------------
Paul Burnside.......  7.0 3 3 2 2 9 23 28 106

April 6 against LSU
IP H R ER BB SO AB BF NP
--------------------------------------------------
Paul Burnside.......  9.0 3 1 1 2 5 28 31 112

April 13 against South Carolina
IP H R ER BB SO AB BF NP
--------------------------------------------------------
Paul Burnside.......  7.0 5 1 1 3 5 25 29 107

That’s ace material. Not bad for a guy who spent last year in the bullpen and wasn’t in the weekend rotation when the season started.

Friday, April 06, 2007

Turnaround time?

Friday was definitely a good day for the Auburn baseball team: AU beat LSU, 6-1, at Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge. Not bad at all.

The biggest story of the game was sophomore pitcher Paul Burnside, who threw a complete game (!), allowing just three hits and two walks. That’s a HUGE outing in SEC play. Burnside’s the first Auburn pitcher to throw a complete game since Josh Sullivan did it against VMI in 2005. The last AU pitcher to throw a complete game in the SEC was Arnold Hughey against Alabama in 2004.

I wasn’t on the beat when Hughey threw his complete game, but I remember Sully’s, and as impressive as he was that day, he wasn’t better than Burnside was Friday. I listened to most of the game on the radio, like the good beat writer I am, and I was struck by how many times he got himself out of trouble. He found himself in a few jams—that’s just the way he pitches—but he always got out of it. Of course, he got some help from the defense, but he also came up big in big spots. I’m guessing pitching coach Butch Thompson is going to be using Paul’s outing as an example for the rest of Auburn’s pitchers for a while to come.

In other words, I picked a good weekend to write a Paul Burnside feature. I interviewed him Wednesday about the pressures of being the No. 1 starter, about his opinion of AU’s slow start, and his expectations for the rest of the season. His thoughts on how special it is to be a Friday night guy are a big part of my story, which will appear in Sunday’s Opelika-Auburn News. Check it out.

Anyway, Burnside was obviously the biggest part of Friday’s game, outpitching LSU ace Charlie Furbush. But Auburn’s offense wasn’t too bad either. The Tigers scored all six of their runs off Furbush, including a grand slam by freshman second baseman Robert Brooks. That’s a pretty good first career home run for the rookie, who’s looked good most of the season.

Auburn had five freshmen in Friday’s lineup: Dustin Spruill, Joseph Sanders, Robert Brooks, Ross Smith and Ryan Jenkins. They all batted in a row, with Spruill DHing and batting cleanup and Jenkins catching and hitting eighth. Brooks and Sanders were the only Auburn players with two hits. Every one of the freshmen got on base at least once, and Sanders and Brooks drove in five of Auburn’s six runs.

That’s a good sign for Auburn.

Meanwhile, the softball team lost both games of its doubleheader at Alabama on Sunday. The first game was ugly—a 10-0 loss that ended by mercy rule in the fifth inning. AU kept it competitive in the second game before losing 5-3 in seven innings.

Apparently, the grass IS greener…

Billy Gillispie is moving on, leaving Texas A&M to become the latest coach to enter the pressure-cooker of Kentucky basketball.

Good luck, Billy. You’re going to need it.

Kentucky’s a great job and a great situation. It’s a rare situation: An SEC job where the basketball coach is the biggest name on campus. Unfortunately, the UK basketball coach is also one of the biggest names in the entire state. He’d probably be the biggest if it weren’t for some dude named Pitino running things over at Louisville.

All that attention can take its toll, as anyone who watched Tubby Smith’s star-crossed tenure in Lexington can attest. Tubby was a solid coach in a job that demands greatness. Most SEC fanbases would be entirely content with all those NCAA Tournament trips and the 1998 national championship (admittedly accomplished on Pitino’s coattails). But Wildcats fans expect a lot more than that.

Can Gillispie provide it?

That’s a tall order for a guy with exactly four winning seasons on his resume.

Why leave A&M in the first place? As my good friend Daniel Peck of Sportscall has pointed out, five years from now the Aggies would be naming the court after Gillispie for giving them the kind of success the program has never experienced. Instead, he’s heading to a place that won’t tolerate anything less than perfection. Being good’s not close to good enough. The guy’s been past the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament one time as a head coach...that won’t cut it at Kentucky.

I wish him luck...I just wish he’d stayed at A&M, where he had a chance to build a program in his own image, rather than chasing the spotlight to Kentucky, where he’ll toil in the shadow of Adolph Rupp and Pitino for as long as he can hang on amidst the pressure and negativity.

But for now, the honeymoon is on, full steam. In fact, if you go to Kentucky’s official site in the next few days, the first image that greets you is a full-page celebration of Gillispie’s hiring. Can’t beat that, I guess. And the press release announcing his hiring comes with—I wish I was making this up—“Billy Gillispie desktop wallpaper.”

That’s awesome.

More from me later this weekend. I’ll be following the baseball team’s series at LSU and the softball team’s three games at Alabama. Could be a rough weekend for the glove-and-bat teams.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Catching up

Hey guys,

Busy weekend. Obviously the Auburn baseball team snapped its long skid in SEC play, as I covered in Monday’s Opelika-Auburn News. The postgame celebration there was sort of funny...After the last out, the guys on the bench ran out on the field and everyone started celebrating for about 15 seconds—long enough for at least two chest-bumps and a whole lot of high-fives. And then, all at once, it was like a realization set in: Oh yeah...we’re 1-8 now.

Still, Sunday’s game had plenty of tension and suspense, if not a whole lot of excitement. Brett Butts did a great job, throwing 2 2/3 scoreless innings. He faced eight batters and retired every one. It doesn’t get much more perfect than that. If Butts can have more outings like that, he’ll be what Tom Slater and Butch Thompson are looking for in the bullpen: A stopper. Not necessarily a closer, mind you, though he looked comfortable getting the save Sunday in a 1-run SEC game against a pretty good lineup.

In other baseball news—more interesting, at least to me—the Cincinnati Reds are 1-0 in 2007, and currently in a three-way tie for first place in the NL Central. I predict a wire-to-wire division lead for the 2007 Reds, en route to a four-game sweep of the American League pennant winner in the World Series.

Not really. But that’d be pretty awesome. Many thanks to Reds outfielder Adam Dunn, whose two homers helped my favorite team and my fantasy team, always an enjoyable double-dip.

Sorry. Back to Auburn-related stuff now.

The Auburn basketball team picked up a verbal commitment from Simi Valley, Calif., center Boubacar Sylla. I’m hoping AU’s Classics Department will be working overtime on popularizing his ready-made nickname. Or not.

Sylla, originally from Paris, France, is listed at 7-foot-1 by Rivals.com. I always take recruits’ heights, weights and speed times with a grain of salt, but if Sylla is anything close to a legitimate 7 feet, he’ll be Auburn’s biggest player.

Of course, bigger isn’t always better. Jeff Lebo’s style of play seems to revolve around versatility: Forwards like Josh Dollard and Quan “Gravy Train” Prowell can shoot 3s, guards like Quantez Robertson can post up and everybody can run the floor. Bringing in a big, slow guy like Sylla doesn’t really seem to fit into AU’s plans. That’s why, when folks have asked me over the last few years what the team’s biggest need is, I’ve never said “a big guy,” which seems to be the conventional wisdom.

What Auburn really needed last year, and will continue to need, is a dead-eye shooter. Rasheem Barrett and Archie Miaway were both intended to fill that role, but neither of them is exactly Reggie Miller. (Or Scotty Pohlman, if you prefer.)

Of course, I’d be stunned if Sylla came in and all of a sudden started eating into Vot Barber’s minutes in the middle. He averaged 2.3 points and 3.0 rebounds as a high-school senior...not exactly numbers indicative of an instant impact player. He wasn’t a starter: He backed up Hamady N’diaye, who’s committed to Rutgers. But N’Diaye isn’t exactly a great player either.

Bottom line: Sylla’s a project, a guy—like Matt Heramb this year—who might pan out or might not. If he does pan out, it’s obviously a big recruiting coup for Jeff Lebo, who’s a good recruiter. If he doesn’t pan out, what’s the harm? It’s not as if Auburn had hordes of big-time recruits clamoring for its lone scholarship of the late signing period.

Anyway, good luck to the kid. Anyone named Boubacar is OK in my book.