If you’re a baseball fan, Hog fan, or even just a casual sports fan, it doesn’t get any better than this. The drama in the SEC West is building with only 10 more games until the SEC tournament.
The Hogs scrapped their way to victory last night in a 10-inning nail-biter against a tough Oklahoma team worthy of their top-10 ranking. If you want drama, this game had it all: a come from behind win, game-changing home runs from both dugouts, questionable calls from the home-plate umpire, and a hero. In this case the hero was Sophomore Brett Eibner with two home runs and a game winning … walk.
Some might call a bases loaded, two-out walk-in an anticlimactic ending to such a game. But those people weren’t in the stands to see Eibner fight off 12 pitches, fouling six. It was in every sense an earned walk. For a more in-depth look at the game go here , here or here.
This brings up an interesting situation as LSU comes to Baum this weekend. The Tigers lead the SEC West with Arkansas only half a game behind. This gives the Hogs the opportunity to help their own cause. With the recent victory of top-10 Oklahoma, two out of three wins in the series against the Tigers would most likely put the Hogs back in the Top 10 polls.
To further increase the drama, SEC arch-rivals, Ole Miss, are only a half game behind the Razorbacks going into their series at Auburn this weekend, which means the top spot in the SEC West could be a tight race with the Rebels still scheduled for their trip to Baum later in May.
The plot thickens, indeed.
This is it. This is Cubs/Cards. This is Yankees/BoSox. This is baseball!
I’m hesitant to tell everyone to come out and support the team. If you really are a tried-and-true Hog Baseball fan, you already know all of this. It seems like every time the baseball team is on the verge of breaking into something big, the bandwagon gets full, records get broken for attendance and the wheels somehow fall off the bus (see the Vanderbilt series back on April 10)
Baseball fans are more likely to believe in jinxs than fans of any other sport. So not wanting to produce any bad mo-jo, I’ll just say-the Hogs are playing this weekend, and weather permitting, it should be a great weekend for baseball.
[Photo by TipsterHog via Flicker and Creative Commons 2.0.]
