Baseball America Interview

An Interview from Wednesday's show with Baseball America's College Baseball Writer Aaron Fitt. Aaron discusses the NCAA Tournament and more specifically the Athens Regional.

Aaron Fitt Interview.mp3

Sean Moth Interview

An Interview from Wednesday's show featuring Sean Moth, the Play by Play voice of the Louisvile Cardinals Baseball Team. hear Sean talk about what to expect from U of L in the NCAA Tournament.

Sean Moth Interview.mp3

Possibly The Greatest Ever!?!?

As the days get longer the list of the sports topics and things to catch our interest dwindle as the mercury creeps up. And every summer the same thoughts creep into my head, who is the best or the greatest at various things. For most things it's easy like best Basketball player ever, or best golf player, but when you get down to it picking the best athlete in Georgia Tech history is a lot more difficult to discuss. First you have to lay out the groundrules:

1. Must have played at least two years at the school - While I don't think Thaddeus Young will ever be a Hall of Famer, it still doesn't feel like he was a real part of the Flats.
2. Their pro-career must be taken into account - It isn't just what they've done with the Old Gold on, but what have they come to represent as a professional or in stages off the Tech campus.
3. They must have contributed SOMETHING to Tech - Whether it was personal, All-American, hitting record, or team related, a National/Conference Title.

With that squared away let the debate begin (Feel free to leave suggestions in the comment section) and my nominee would have to go for Matt Wieters. In what is a pre-emptive strike on my part, I want to begin the Matt Wieters as Best Ever talk here today so I won't be described as a bandwagon. While his stay in pro-baseball has been brief just look at his numbers. Matt Wieters is playing a video game, while everyone else is struggling to make the majors. He leads the Carolina league in HR's, RBI's, OBP, Slug. and he's second in BA, & OBP. There is no hole in his game, and while Baltimore doesn't want to rush him to the majors it will soon be time for ESPN to put a "Get To Know Matt Wieters" montage put together. Who's your greatest Yellow Jacket of all time.

NOT The ACC Rookie of the Year!!

After climbing their soapbox to profess their preference for the new football coach, Tech fans should join together to clamor and make their opinion heard, this time for an injustice done to one of the school's outstanding baseball players. Earlier today the All-ACC team's were released, a group of players who performed outstandingly during the baseball season. There were the obvious names from the power schools like FSU, UNC and Miami. Even four Jackets made the 2nd team, a surprise for this unheralded team.

Reading down the press release I wanted to verify something I had assumed, that Derek Dietrich would be named Freshman of the Year. I mean he's leading all freshman in RBI's, OPS & Slug. so of course there's no way this guy will be not given this award. But like when you pass a bear on a journey through the woods, my brain hit the brakes and stopped. Alas, Dietrich wasn't the ACC Freshman of the Year, but instead it was Miami's SP Chris Hernandez. Now don't get me wrong Hernandez was a worthy candidate. He lead his team with 10 victories, the lowest ERA of any starter and had the highest strikeout total on the team. It looked like the toss-up between Kobe and CP3 in the NBA, but here's why Dietrich is Kobe to Chris' Paul.

It's not just the stats that Dietrich received, but also how he earned them. Early in the year he didn't have a Feltes and Plagman behind him who were crushing the ball, instead he was a one-man show out there carrying the team offensively. In one early series he even won games all alone with his bat. Secondly Miami's pitching staff has been aided by their team's great offensive outbursts to put pressure on the other team. When your down by six in the first two innings, it makes it easier to have a low ERA and great winning percentage. On the other hand, Dietrich has had to fight through times when his pitching staff was blowing leads and putting the bats in precarious situations.

Fortunately however, Dietrich can still do something about when the Jackets take on the Hurricanes in the ACC Tournament in Jacksonville on Thursday at 5 p.m. (That Game can be heard on WREK-Atlanta 91.1 FM, along with all other postseason games. Play-by-Play courtesy of Jason Boral and Kyle Tait at the ACC Tourn.)

Hopefully for all our sake this argument won't end like the BCS, untied with a bunch of loose ends, or the Democratic primary, instead Dietrich is talking his own smack, silently celebrating with an ACC Championship.

Elimination of Aluminum Bats

While I was browsing through the New York Daily News website (mostly to find more about the Yankees in yellow thongs), I noticed a family in New Jersey is filing a lawsuit against Little League Baseball because of the medical damage a line drive off an aluminum bat did to their son. It is a debate that has raged for decades on the safety and plausibility of wooden versus aluminum bats at levels below the professional ranks, and with the College World Series there is no better time to reignite that fire. Most people still debate the truth to the fact that a baseball leaves the bat faster off a metal bat versus the wooden, but just look at the physics behind a swing. If you go back to your first Physics class, you remember that energy can't be created or destroyed, but instead is transferred. So when a bat shatters in a thousand pieces (hopefully nowhere near Roger Clemens) imagine the energy it took to break that bat, and where did that energy come from? The baseball.

Not only would this solve some of the injury concerns parents have it would also improve the college game by an exponential amount. One reason, beside the money, a lot of players elect to skip the college experience and begin in the minors, is because of the ability to begin swinging the wooden bats as early as possible and develop a feel for them so that when they hit their mid 20's they are already stars on their way up the list of Baseball America's Top Prospects.

The simple cost of paying for a few extra bats would be well worth the develop of more refined college ball players and reduce the possibility of injury at younger levels. Plus that cost isn't even really THAT big of a hurdle to jump over. With all the wood around us, used for infrastructure and such, I'm sure that is a tree out there that can handle the constant barrage of force a wooden bat goes through.

An all wooden bat concept throughout baseball would usher in a brand new error, while ending the era of "Fear the PING".

Looking away from Division I for the real Championship

With all the attention given recently to the BCS and possibility of moving to a +1 or playoffs system, it would be easy to miss another NCAA championship outside of Division I. In the next couple of weeks Houston will play host to multiple Division II championships for competitors at the Division II level. These sports, golf, softball, baseball and tennis, rarely get fanfare even at the Division I level, but this time in Houston the competitors will be treated like the champions they are. The week of festivities will include opening and closing ceremonies just like the Olympics before finishing out with the championship competitions. Giving an Olympic type feel to some of the lesser viewed sports is a great way to give them some of the same emotion that both football, basketball and baseball receive. These teams and players compete just as hard as football and basketball players and should be awarded with some of the fanfare. Obviously with tradition and precedent it is a little more difficult to put together such a series of events. Seeing that Omaha has signed a contract to have the College World Series for the next MILLION years things would have to be modified for the Division I level. But let's start somewhere, and maybe the place to start is right here in Atlanta. The city already hosted the Olympics, how much more difficult could it be to put together facilities for Tennis, softball and golf (I mean who doesn't want to play some of the links in the Metro area). Something to think about.

~Jason Boral