By Rusty Simmons staff reporter Texas Tech had not lost at home in over a month, but Tuesday TCU fielded a baseball team capable of defeating the Red Raiders at Dan Law Field as the Frogs beat the Red Raiders, 7-5. TCU (12-20) and Texas Tech (17-16) tied four times as the momentum of the game shifted hands throughout the innings. The Red Raiders opened the scoring in the second inning with a single run, and the Frogs answered with runs in the third and fourth innings to take a 2-1 lead. Texas Tech worked the score back to even with a run in the bottom half of the fourth inning. TCU took the first significant lead in the fifth inning when senior designated hitter Shaun Wooley hit a two-run home run, sixth of the season. Head coach Lance Brown said Wooley hit the only legitimate home run in the game. "The other homers went out to left where the wind was blowing, but Wooley hit his directly into the wind," he said. "It was a bomb that hit the top part of the scoreboard." The Frogs added to their 4-2 lead with a run in the sixth inning, marking their fourth consecutive run-scoring inning.
Senior pitcher Shawn Thompson left the game after recording only one out in the sixth inning, but Brown said Thompson had a good outing. "The two home runs weren't even hit hard," he said. "The wind was blowing out at about 45 mph, and they just popped fly balls into the jet stream." Brown said the only thing Thompson struggled with was walks. "He seems to do that every game," he said. "I think it is more of a mental thing than a physical thing because he doesn't walk anyone for six or seven innings, then he loses control in one inning." The Frogs pulled away in the final three innings, with a run in both the eighth and ninth innings. Junior relievers Josh Gardner and Stan Newton shut Texas Tech out for the final 3 and 2/3 innings. Brown said his relievers have been throwing strikes and getting outs consistently since the team returned from a trip to Hawaii March 19. "Our bullpen has only walked, like, three batters in the last 20 innings," he said. "Before that, the bullpen wasn't holding the leads. Good teams have good bullpens, and bad teams have bad bullpens. "At least we feel confident when we send our relievers to mound now." TCU plays a three-game Western Athletic Conference series in Houston this weekend against Rice. Brown said the matchup will be somewhat different from the past years when the two schools were vying for first place in the WAC. "In the past, we would go to Rice and try to outscore them," he said. "Lately, we've really been concentrating on throwing strikes, our defense has improved a lot, and we have been swinging at good pitches. "If we go to Rice and do those things, I think we have a pretty good chance of putting some wins together." This season Rice is 5-7 and TCU is 3-6 in WAC play as the teams sit in fourth and fifth place in the conference standings.
Rusty Simmons
I don't know what to make of my feelings for this year's NCAA men's basketball tournament. With teams like Florida and Wisconsin and, this season, North Carolina in the Final Four, it makes me long for the days when national championships were decided by polls. You know, like football season. At first I was caught up in the wonder of Gonzaga and Seton Hall knocking off heavily favored teams in the early rounds of the tournament, but eventually I expected some semblance of order to prevail. Then Wisconsin defeated Purdue by a touchdown for the right to go to the Rose Bowl last weekend. And no, Ron Dayne didn't score. If you honestly believe that any of the four remaining teams, other than Michigan State, deserve to be the national champions, then you probably believe Mark Fuhrman is a latter-day Sherlock Holmes. Cincinnati's Kenyon Martin and Arizona's Loren Woods had more to do with life in Bracketville than did anyone suiting up this weekend. When Martin's and Woods' bodies failed them, even before the opening number of the "Big Dance" two weeks ago, the path to the championship became a bracket free-for-all. But unfortunately, this is the charm and the harm of the 64-team, "one-and-you're-done" format. While it's heartening to see unheralded teams like Wisconsin, who remind me a little bit of the Green Bay Packers, make it onto college basketball's largest stage, a bit of me wonders how much more exciting the finals would be had Duke, Temple or say, Stanford, lived to play another day. This is not to say I won't be watching, or even enjoying, the final three games of the college basketball season. TV is so bad these days, I'd even watch Bobby Knight's Greatest Choke Jobs. Highlights would probably include Neil Reed and first-round losses to Pepperdine. n Although I promised myself I would never write about Atlanta Braves' reliever and noted xenophobe John Rocker again, I can't help but comment on the disgrace of a scene I witnessed him take part in two weeks ago. As Rocker raced to the pitcher's mound for his first appearance in a spring training game, the Kissimmee, Fla., crowd inexplicably gave him a standing ovation. To which I ask: For what? What were they applauding Rocker for, exactly? For being a self-described "dumbass"? For insulting everyone, other than heterosexual, English-speaking, white males from the Deep South? Those fans gave Rocker a feeling of redemption, the feeling that he's a martyr, that somehow he's not the one who's wrong here. When Rocker speaks of "all the support" he's been receiving since he voiced his ill-conceived ideas about the ethnic makeup of New York City in Sports Illustrated, I'm hoping that he's speaking of "support" from the Klan. I read a letter to the editor in some publication I've forgotten the name of, but he or she said Rocker couldn't be labeled "stupid" because he had a 3.5 GPA and scored a 1280 on his SATs in high school. Yeah, Rocker is so smart he might go out and discover the antidote for penicillin. n What's up on no more group celebrations in the No Fun League? NFL officials have effectively killed the St. Louis Rams' "Bob and Weave" and dances by teams that don't score enough to choreograph end-zone celebrations. Do you know how teams could prevent being on the receiving end of a "Bob and Weave" or "Dirty Bird" or even a "Mile High Salute"? By playing better defense. If you don't want to see Deion Sanders high-stepping after an interception, don't throw the ball to his side, or work on your quarterback's mechanics in the off-season. Don't want to see Ickey shuffle? Stop him from scoring. Hate looking at the "Lambeau Leap"? Invest more money in your secondary. But maybe I'm a little biased. I still miss the long-since banned "throat-slash" gesture. Hey, not everybody in the NFL is a potential Rae Carruth.
Opinion Editor Joel Anderson is a senior
news-editorial journalism major from Missouri City, Texas. |
The three-run lead did not last long as Texas Tech scored
three runs in the bottom of the sixth inning. The Red Raiders hit two home
runs in the inning, Jason Rainey led off the inning and Marco Cunningham
hit a two-run shot.| The TCU Daily Skiff © 1998, 1999 Credits |