A Winter Wonderland
The team's snowman at Olsen Field (photo courtesy Shane Minks)
Pretty good snow falling right now at Olsen Field and in the entire Bryan/College Station area. I’ve been in this town a good 15 years now, and I can say I’ve seen it snow like this here once, maybe twice at the most. Coach Childress took some good-natured ribbing from some of us when the weather “cooperated” and gave us 75 and sunny on Sunday afternoon (of course right after he’d pushed the Seton Hall finale up). But he sure got this one right. Tomorrow’s going to be a cool but sunny day at Olsen and I’m looking forward to the team getting back on the diamond.
Speaking of that, I am hoping to get up to Olsen early tomorrow and snap a few pics of how the grounds crew will deal with this blanket of white that will be covering the playing surface. It’s no doubt a problem that guru Leo Goertz has rarely had to deal with in his years maintaining the nation’s best playing surface…he gave me some ideas as to what they’ll have to do to clear the field for batting practice, which they will, but a lot of it depends on what the snow has done overnight. Regardless it should make for some cool photography and I’ll post it here.
Leo reports this is the first time in the 32-year history of Olsen that a game has been snowed out.
Wednesday Matchup: Stephen F. Austin
SFA is 3-0 on the season after a sweep of Grambling this past weekend in Nacogdoches. These weren’t just three wins for the Lumberjacks, they were impressive ones, as they outscored the Tigers 25-7, hit .344 and posted a 2.33 ERA. The most impressive stat to me, however, is a perfect fielding percentage…114 chances, all executed successfully. That is hard to do. The ‘Jacks also were patient at the plate, drawing 21 walks and striking out just eight times. Stephen F. is off to its best start since 1989, so you know they’ll come in to Olsen Field flying high.
The Aggies have never lost to SFA in a series that dates back quite a ways. The teams met once in 1949 and then not again until 1988, when the ‘Jacks were a frequent opponent on the schedule. Following the 1995 season, however, baseball was disbanded at Stephen F. Austin and only recently resurrected. A&M has played SFA in each of the last three seasons and, while picking up wins each time, they have not usually been easy…two one-run affairs, one in 2008 and another last year.
For those of you unable to make it, we’ll have free live video and statistics as usual on aggieathletics.com. For those near a radio, the game will air locally on Sports Radio 1150 The Zone, as 1620 AM has a political forum scheduled in the early evening followed by the men’s basketball game at Baylor. Speaking of that, I’m not sure I mentioned it yet here on The Full Count, but you need to check out radioaggieland.com…you can not only listen to football, basketball, baseball, softball, soccer and volleyball games through there on your computer, but you can also tune in worldwide on PDAs, BlackBerrys and iPhones. And best of all it’s free, thanks to the good folks at Bryan Broadcasting.
And don’t forget, if you don’t have quick access to a computer, we’ll provide inning-by-inning scoring updates on Twitter at @aggie_baseball.