Short Hops
Mar 22, 2004 | Baseball
March 22, 2004
NEW ORLEANS, La. - If there's one thing I've learned during my three years of Tulane baseball is that road trips are a lot more fun when you win. Right now, we're in flight somewhere between Atlanta and New Orleans after taking two of three from conference title contender East Carolina. I've been trying to write this first paragraph for about 10 minutes now, but I keep getting interrupted by two things. First, the turbulence flusters me and breaks my concentration. Second, and most importantly, Matt Mann keeps punching me in the leg every time he hits a ball into the water in Tiger Wood's Game Boy golf. I'm about to call the flight attendant on him.
Anyways, we started off the week by splitting a two-game series with the Trojans of Southern California. Anyone who attended those games definitely witnessed some entertaining baseball. We hit the ball really well, losing the first game in a high-scoring, extra-inning battle before taking the second game. It's always fun to play teams like USC because it prepares us for the type of competition we'll see in the postseason. It was also the type of momentum we needed to carry us into the conference opener against East Carolina.
East Carolina was a very interesting place to play. The school is located in Greenville, N.C. I don't know how many of you have ever been there, but Greenville basically includes ECU and the hotel we stayed in. No, it wasn't that bad, but it was small. The playing surface was nice, and there were tall pine trees surrounding the entire field, reminding a lot of us local players of the baseball fields on the North Shore. The fans seemed to be cool for the most part. The most vocal fans stood behind the left field fence in "The Jungle" and really harassed Matt Barket and Nathan Southard all weekend. I thought it was really funny listening in from shortstop. I don't think they do as good of a job of hassling opposing outfielders as the Hack Shack Crew at Turchin Stadium, though. Either way, it didn't work too well as we took two out of three from the Pirates, highlighted by Sunday's complete game shutout by senior right-hander Cory Hahn.
Well, we're returning to New Orleans with two conference road wins under our belt. As I understand, this is the first time that Tulane has won the opening conference weekend series since the conference was formed back in 1996. I know it's the first time we've done it since I've been here. This week we travel to Nichols State on Wednesday night before playing host to Charlotte this weekend. It feels good to be coming back to Turchin Stadium. It's always fun to play in front of our fans at our field. I've got a really good feeling about the way we're playing baseball right now. Starting with the two big wins we picked up this weekend, this team has a great opportunity to get on a roll and take control of the conference. We just need to keep playing like we know how, and put teams away when we have the opportunities.
We're starting our initial decent into New Orleans now so I have to wrap it up and shut my computer off. I know I'll see all of you guys out at the stadium this weekend. It should be a great weekend for baseball. Thanks for reading.
Roll Wave,
Tommy
