A funny thing happened on Sunday of this week, as an idea I floated out as on a whim came to fruition. While planning my humble blog’s preview, I thought it would be a fantastic idea to seek some input from the Vanderbilt athletics beat and from some of the elite national baseball writers. Much to my surprise, not only did I get responses, I got great answers and a new Part 5 of the Season Preview was born.
In this segment, I’ll look at what the nation expects of Vanderbilt, breaking down the position in the polls and asking actual, real journalists i) what they expect out of Vanderbilt in 2013 and ii) what player need to step it up for the Commodores to compete for a national championship.
The first two parts of the Season Preview are in, looking at the transition to the 2013 season and the new recruits, which leads us to an examination of the product Commodore fans can expect to see on the field this Spring. I was unfortunately not able to make it down for the Black and Gold series in the Fall, so my preview is largely based on performances last year and reports on player development.
This Part 3 of my annual baseball prospectus will go through the Vanderbilt roster with a look at each of the positions around the diamond.
I apparently was restricting comments behind proxies in my spam filter settings. The restriction has been lifted so feel free to comment away. Apologies if you had comments that were rejected by virtue of that.
Riley Reynolds had quite the day on Wednesday, hammering his first career homerun and winning the #RileySonnyHomeRunChallenge over Sonny Gray. Photo by Mike Rapp, VandySports.com.
I’ve been busy of late and it’s been hard to stay on my regular weekly schedule for these. I’m going to try to catch up again this weekend after the Florida series and cheering my lungs out for Stevie Thunder and the #VUnit in the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
The big news for the weekend is Ty Beede reentering the weekend rotation, pitching on Sunday in place of Sam Selman. That sets the matchups against consensus #1 Florida as
Friday, 6 CT — LHP Kevin Ziomek (2-1, 3.09) vs. RHP Hudson Randall (2-0, 3.65);
Saturday, 12 CT — RHP Drew VerHagen (2-1, 3.93) vs. LHP Brian Johnson (2-0, 4.12); and
Saturday’s game will air on CSS/ESPN3.com, while Friday and Sunday are viewable in HD by subscribing monthly to GatorVision.tv(not covered by CBS All-Access).
In the meantime, how about Riley Reynolds. The career .317 hitter had no homeruns (and few balls that even threatened to leave the park) in his first 622 plate appearances as a Commodore. In appearance number 623, he changed all that by putting a charge into a ball to right on Wednesday night against Sienna. His homerun put the exclamation point on a much needed midweek sweep in which the Commodores finally started to look like the Omaha-bound team they were a year ago.
Click through for video of the homer, Riley’s post-game interview and a look back to 2011 with the Baseball Banquet video package produced by Will Hinson (@TheVUCount). Read more…
It’s been a bit of a crazy couple of weeks for me, between my social life, work life and following the Commodores down in Nashvegas and, starting in a few hours, Omaha. I’ve been strapped for time and haven’t really had a chance to update things on here, both baseball related and otherwise (e.g., Michelle Bachmann being the greatest threat to American liberty, Hangover II being good but not great, how awesome White Lies was in concert, a couple of fun books I’m reading, and how amazing Game of Thrones has been).
This will be my last weekend traveling the nation with the Vandy boys on their way to a national title. I hope to post some thoughts from my travels at some point next week and get back into a regularly scheduled program of posting.
Been a bit swamped the last week or so as I juggle work, having my best friend in town for a week, pushing ahead with renovations on my new apartment, packing up my old apartment and (for good measure) coming down with a cold. As such, I’m a bit behind on things. I hope to catch up on stuff shortly. Until then, keep on keeping on.
I started this website on a whim and, initially, as a Tumblr about 10 months ago. When I did, I told myself it would be for my personal pleasure and to get me to write more. When I realized that Tumblr was a somewhat addictive format that didn’t lend itself to substantive writing I shifted my focus to WordPress (while maintaining a Tumblr account for it’s outstanding Dashboard feature and community). Since doing so in late November, just over nine months ago, I’m had the pleasure of welcoming 10,000 unique visitors. That total is a good 9,000 more than I would have expected.
Though I hope to write more social commentary, political discussion and scientific/religious debate, I’m quite enjoying the pop-culture and review format so much of When[It]StrikesMe has assumed. And it pleases me greatly that those of my friends that I’ve let in on the site’s existence have enjoyed reading it.
I was asked recently what advice I would give to someone who was just starting out with their own site. I told them to a) write it anonymously (I sure as heck don’t want my ability to write freely impinged upon by knowing the consequences of doing so publicly and in perpetuity online) and b) to do it for pleasure and not revenue (though, of course, if you want to click on an ad and help defray the GoDaddy cost of hosting, that’s greatly appreciated too).
You can more easily follow the blog by clicking the RSS feed, Twitter feed and Facebook icons on the upper right hand of your browser page. Anyways, thanks to all 10,000 of you visitors. It’s my hope that you’ve enjoyed reading as much as I have enjoyed writing.
I haven’t had the time to post in the last two weeks. I hope to correct that with a LOST Quick Hits in the morning. I’ve just been extremely swamped at work and with some personal stuff re: buying an apartment.
In the meantime, please consider supporting Nashville during this horrific (and criminally under-reported) natural disaster. For those who still don’t know due to the mainstream media’s baffling refusal to acknowledge the devastation in Middle Tennessee, Nashville and its environs are under water with many historic buildings, businesses and homes quite simply devastated by floodwaters as high as 13 feet in some buildings.
I’ve been a bit under the weather the last week and have gotten way behind in doing updates. As a result of said illness, my fam decided to push 24 this week to a double dose next week. Hopefully there will be more of naughty Chloe next week for my 24 Quick Hits. I do plan on doing LOST Quick Hits after tonight’s episode, but I’ve been delinquent in doing the SEC Power Poll with Phil from Save The Shield. Finally, I hope to get back to doing LOST Recaps. Next up is the Jeremy Bentham episode which I do really want to write about. Hopefully I’ll do that this week.
Anyway, to get away from my dreariness and the update central, here’s the fun stuff I found on the interwebs this morning. All in the form of cartoon, with one outstanding video, to boot.
I’ve been swamped at work and haven’t been able to churn out the site product like I’ve wanted to. So here’s an update of what I have in the works once work calms down:
Book Reviews
Non-Fiction Book Reviews (“The Next 100 Years”, “The World Without Us” and “The God Delusion”)
Graphic Novel Reviews (“The Walking Dead”, “Y: The Last Man” and “Pax Romana”)
TV and Film Reviews
TV Reviews (The Shield: Season 1 Review and The West Wing Recap for Season 1)
LOST Recaps (The rest of Season 5)
Movie Reviews (Carriers, Rogue, The Education of Charlie Banks and Angels and Demons)
Gadgetry Reviews
Review of the FitBit, two weeks in (what I’m closest to being done with)
A funny thing happened on Sunday of this week, as an idea I floated out as on a whim came to fruition. While planning my humble blog’s preview, I thought it would be a fantastic idea to seek some input from the Vanderbilt athletics beat and from some of the elite national baseball writers. Much to my surprise, not only did I get responses, I got great answers and a new Part 5 of the Season Preview was born.
