Matthew Brown: A fool and his sports
Apr. 5—Folks, if I'm at a ball park in a town called Due West, South Carolina (population about 1,214, salute!) on April 2, I'm thinking somebody got a late memo about when the Fool's Day is.
Weather, as in serious wind, had to be a factor in a college baseball game between Peach Belt Conference member Lander University at Erskine College. After four hours and 20 minutes, the final score is Lander 22, Erskine 20.
Lander, whom Georgia College & State University will play at John Kurtz Field next weekend, led this game 11-0 after two turns at-bat. Great, somebody's thinking, it will be over with in seven. Then Erskine scores six runs in the bottom of the second. Maybe it will calm down, and it did, Lander scoring the only run of the third inning.
But then Lander, in the fourth, scored six runs. Maybe it will end early after all. 'Fool'ish thinking. Erskine scores the next 13 in a row over the next four frames. It goes from 18-6 Lander to 19-18 Erskine after seven. They have another quiet inning, the eighth, where Lander gets the lone run. Tied game.
I've been at these games in high school where a team rallies from a huge deficit to level things up, then everybody forgets how to score, or suddenly remembers how to stop the other side from scoring. When will it end?
Anybody thinking free baseball in Due West? Not quite, for Lander got three in the top of the ninth to one by the home team in its half.
The final numbers: Each team had 19 hits. Eight were home runs. Seven batters were hit by a pitch. Only 13 walks and three errors. Only four stolen bases (nobody caught). Lander used seven pitchers, Erskine 11. Each side had one guy face 15 batters, everybody else 10 or fewer.
That's madness in April.
And that brings me to the other spring madness.
Sadly, it's become commonplace for the state of Georgia to have zero representation in the big March Madness brackets. This year that was true for the men and women. To find any state school competing for an NCAA championship, one needed to look at Division II, where Peach Belt members North Georgia (men) and Georgia Southwestern State (women) made it to the Elite 8 (D-II makes big logos and has central locations for the Elite 8 instead of the Final 4).
What's that? Why, yes, somebody from Georgia did make a little Division I postseason noise. And I have all the asterisks and caveats ready.
No foolin'. On that same April 2, the Georgia Bulldog men played in another Final 4 held in a favorite town of the Bulldog Nation, Indianapolis. Alas, the 'Dawgs fell to Seton Hall in that semifinal (that never would have happened to the football team ... hah, April 6 Fools, Seton Hall doesn't have football).
The Bulldog Nation owes a great big debt of thanks to several people for that bid to the National Invitation Tournament. Must say, hearing that the Georgia men were playing in the NIT after a 17-16 season caught me by surprise. But, again, a big thank-you goes out to the seven schools that reportedly turned down bids to the NIT. Maybe not all were p.o.'d about being left out of the big NCAA field of 68; Providence was certainly bitter about being snubbed but still played in the second-tier event.
It was a nice run for Georgia, going on the road to beat Wake Forest and Ohio State. Winning the tournament would have been akin to John Daly winning the 1991 PGA Championship. To refresh memories, Daly is a golfer nobody's heard of who got into the PGA field as the ninth and final alternate (Nick Price's wife was about to give birth). His grip-and-rip style becomes world famous as he wins the major by three strokes.
The NIT, by the way, was brought to you by ... the NCAA, since 2005. Every year the story resurfaces about how the NIT's history precedes the NCAA tournament and once was held in higher regard. But if you are looking for great NIT moments of note, none come to my mind.
College basketball history is about John Wooden's UCLA teams winning 12 times in 14 years. It's Bird versus Magic in 1979. It's freshman Michael Jordan's 1982 game-winner over Georgetown featured in last year's movie "Air." And it's Jim Valvano's one-man court storm in Albuquerque one year later (UGA says you're welcome, Wolfpack, for not having to play those same Tar Heels in the semifinals).
The NCAA took over running the NIT from a now-disbanded association made up of five New York area colleges as part of settling an antitrust lawsuit. The semifinals were first moved away from Madison Square Garden last year (played in Las Vegas). If madness rules the NCAA and the big tournament expands by 20 or 30 teams, all it takes is a snap of the finger and the NIT goes bye-bye.
Gone, and probably forgotten.
(If at all possible, give pet adoption a try through the Animal Rescue Foundation in Milledgeville. Donations of any kind are also in great need. ARF is a little red building at 711 S. Wilkinson St., and more information is available at animalrescuefoundation.org.)
