The production stage of our Annual Senior weekend ceremony is now entering the final stages, and a great deal of time over the next seven days will go into my ability to take the story of their journey that is coming to the end of a chapter.
Luke, Braeden, Carson, Ben, and Andrew each had the strength 💪 to survive the rigorous classroom demand of college and the equally demanding task of wearing our Golden Bears 🐻 uniform.
These young men come from different spots on the globe 🌎 but managed to blend together on and off the diamond during their time in Beckley, West Virginia.
Next Saturday afternoon at Linda K Epling Stadium 🏟, the challenge will be to find the right mix of syllables to describe the sacrifice made by each member of the group !
Midway is the opponent, but the focus will be on sending out the group with class, the same level of which they displayed on our campus !
We are in Columbus, Indiana, for a 48-hour window 🪟 to play a 3 – game set against Indiana University – Columbus with two games today and one on Saturday before heading back to Beckley, West Virginia late tomorrow night.
Staying behind in order to handle things at both Cavalier Park and Tommy Thompson Field meant missing my ride over with the team. Hence, the Middle of the Night drive last night.
Arrived at the team hotel 🏨 at 8:30 a.m., knowing that our 35-member traveling party would need to eat six times across the two days being that it will be late on Saturday night when we pull back into campus.
Meal #1 – make sure that everyone has their breakfast voucher at Hilton Garden Inn, easy enough by comparison. At 10:00 the team departs for the ball park, making it time to go to the market.
Meal #2 – The between games, food consists of water 💧, power aide, protein bars, apples 🍎, oranges 🍊 and bananas 🍌. You load all of that up and head to the Diamond 💎.
Meal #3 – This one won’t take place until 7 to 8 pm and is the one that requires the most work. You have to find a restaurant that is willing to take 35 people when you can’t give them a certain time. Tonight, the answer will be your neighborhood Applebee’s. Jason was a treat to deal with and I told him that I would give him 3 updates throughout the day.
The time is now 2 : 11, and we are heading into the top of the 7th inning down 6-2….. I see 👀 a shot at a 45-minute nap so I will pick this back up shortly.
2:59 pm – The Crimson Pride got to our bullpen in a big way in the bottom of the seventh, so game 1 is over early. It’s time to update the folks at the restaurant. It’s still a guessing game at this point, but at least it’s now an educated guess.
It’s time to look forward to meals 4, 5 & 6 tomorrow. Breakfast once again will be vouchers at the Hotel 🏨 with one difference in that our group will be checking out of the rooms before heading over to the park.
#5 will trigger a second trip to the grocery store to restock the goods. It is easier the second time around because if you use the same store, you know where everything is. Did not know that there were 7 different types of apples before today.
The sixth meal is quite possibly the toughest one. Here in a bit, a list will be created with three sub shops, and one will be chosen from it. Then, three menu items will be offered, and the players choose their dinner 🍽 from there. Getting the list to the chosen shop with a pick-up time in mind. The goal is for me to get the order picked up and brought to the park around the time the single game ends.
After the team meeting, the players will take their food and load up for the drive 🚗 home.
The weekend should end around 11pm when the players head back to their dorms after the final weekend road series of the season.
3:37 – meeting with the umpires
81°, 1st Pitch – 3: 40 p.m
4:24
5:06 – trailing 2-1, top of fifth in 7 inning game.
5:47 – Final Score, 2-1
Applebee’s knows to look for us 1 hour earlier and now it’s on to the ordering of the subs
7:45 pm
Our Seniors
2:00pm Game Time 1:55pm Plate Meeting 1:30pm IU Columbus Senior Ceremony 1:15pm Tech I/O 12:30pm Field Arrival 12:05pm Departure (could change) 12:00pm Load Vans 6:00am-10:00am Breakfast
Thank you to the folks at the Register – Herald for the coverage!
In the 18 years that Skipper Lawrence Nesselrodt and I have been trying to move the needle on West Virginia Tech University Baseball, many a student athlete have worn our uniform.
With that said, few, if any, have worn it better than Mr Logan Stump. Everything about the young man, on and off the Diamond 💎 was what you would want to have representing your program !
Knowing that Logan will treat his new uniform in the same manner that he treated ours makes me believe that Raleigh County is a better place to live today !
Randy Jones uptop and two guys with a connection down below.
Turning back the clock ⏰️ to just over 50 years ago, there was a 10 year old Navy Brat that was falling in love with the game of baseball ⚾️ but now found himself in rural South Georgia, far from his beloved Oakland Athletics.
Dad was stationed in Lemoore, California, when I was born back in 1963, so it was a natural thing to pull for the Oakland A’s and wow, Was that a fun bunch of personalities. Even the owner, Charles Finley, was larger than life itself.
Joe Rudi, Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Gene Tennace, Bert ” Campy ” Campanaris were some of the stars in the field while Jim ” Catfish ” Hunter, Rollie Fingers, Vida Blue and others toed the rubber. Finley tried to get Vida to legally change his first name to True so he could call him True Blue.
South of Lemoore was an expansion team called the San Diego Padres.
San Diego is a beautiful place, and they were owned for a long time by the founder of McDonald’s, Ray Kroc. There was a man with a business plan !
The Padres were never going to replace the A’s as my childhood team, but they did have a tall, lanky left-hander that was fun to watch. Randy Jones was a character, and maybe part of that at first was his larger than life afro and how it grew out under his cap.
While I can not back it up as absolute, check out the three year stretch where Jones went from losing twenty games to winning 20+ in the following two seasons. Incredible turnaround, and if anyone else has ever done it, I would like to hear about it.
Jones was a rookie back in the early 70s, and he wasn’t the only one. Fresh from Marshall University, by way of a brief stint in the minors, was Joe Goddard. My favorite part of calling a Golden Bears 🐻 Baseball game is saying Assistant Coach, the legendary Joe Goddard.
Goddard and Jones were teammates in 1972 in the Texas League, playing for Alexandria. Goddard would get the call up later that season, and Jones would get the same in the spring of 1973.
Joe has stories about how Jones threw a ” heavy ball ” back then, and while the lefty found some success, he was hindered by the Padres’ struggles. Check out the year he had in 1978, with an ERA of 2.88, Jones finished up at 13 – 14 on the season.
This past winter, Jones received his final call-up as he passed away in November. The tribute that the team held 40 years past his playing days showed that I wasn’t the only one who found Jones as lovable.
Meanwhile, Joe Goddard and I are hopeful of being around for a while yet. The added connection of the catcher who made it to the show and worked with one of my childhood heroes.
The things in the life of the Legendary Joe Goddard that pop 🎉 are much more than sharing a batters box 📦 with Hank Aaron or catching Randy Jones. The lifetime experience of teaching the game of baseball, still today as he is closer to 80 than 70, is the tip of the iceberg.
Rest in peace, Randy Jones, and thanks for the memories !
The road less traveled ! 