|
ECU News, Notes and Commentary
-----
|
The
Bradsher Beat
Thursday, May 26, 2005
By Bethany Bradsher |
 |
A day in the life
©2005 Bonesville.net
What
happens when you take East Carolina’s most exciting and consequential
baseball game this season and play it on a Wednesday morning hundreds of
miles away?
You get an
unforgettable moment in Pirate athletics that many fans had to miss because
of those ordinary Wednesday restrictions like school and work.
Throughout
Greenville and to the south in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the hours before
and during the ECU-Houston game were marked by a mix of the extraordinary
and the mundane.
6 a.m, Central Standard Time:
Starting
pitcher T.J. Hose and his teammates are jarred by the wake-up call in their
Hattiesburg hotel. Since the opening pitch is scheduled for 9 a.m. by their
clocks, they have to rise at an hour that few college students ever see. But
on Tuesday evening, Hose was excited about the opportunity to help propel
his team into the NCAA Tournament.
“It’s very
important, these couple of games,” said Hose, a freshman who was put into
the starting rotation early in the season because of a rash of injuries to
more experienced ECU pitchers. “We need to come rested and fired up, and
everything will fall into place.”
(The
following times are all EST)
9:45 a.m.: At One Source
Communications in downtown Greenville, Jeff Clark and a few other employees
make sure their radios are tuned to 1250 AM and settle in for the broadcast.
Clark and some of his co-workers brought radios from home for the morning,
he said, and he fervently hoped that the billing department where he works
would get very few inquiries during game time.
10:12
a.m.: Hose throws his first strike out, to Cougar freshman Bryan Tully.
10:14
a.m.: Houston infielder Brad Lincoln hits a sacrifice fly to score
Travis Tully and give his team a 1-0 lead.
10:35
a.m.: The Pirates dominate the bottom of the first inning, tallying five
hits and one walk to go ahead 4-1.
10:50
a.m.: Houston starting pitcher Kevin Roberts comes out and is replaced
out of the bullpen by Ricky Hargrove.
11 a.m.:
Professor O’Cool’s opens its
doors for the lunch crowd. But even though it’s one of Greenville’s most
popular sports bars, the restaurant won’t attract any groups of Pirate
baseball fans. The game isn’t being broadcast on television, and co-owner
Linus Martinez says that 1250 AM doesn’t come in clearly inside O’Cool’s.
11:20
a.m.: Kenny Jenkins, the director of congregational care at Covenant
United Methodist Church in Greenville, can’t devote his attention to the
entire game, but he is doing his best to stay connected with his Pirates.
“I am
listening off and on,” Jenkins said. “I listened to the first inning, and
I’ve checked in a few times.”
11:40
a.m.: The Cougars have their biggest inning — the fifth — with four hits
and three runs, giving them a 5-4 lead and threatening an early end to ECU’s
season.
12:05
p.m.: Pirate fans throughout the East exhale when Billy Richardson hits
a single that brings Mike Grace across the plate and ties the game 5-5.
12:22
p.m.: An advertisement for Innovative Mortgage Solutions airs on 1250 AM
between innings, but Chad Aldridge says they don’t have the game on at the
Innovative Mortgage office. Aldridge and Gary Alford follow ECU avidly,
Aldridge said, but they had to settle for checking the score on the Internet
occasionally on Wednesday.
“We’re big
Pirates fans, but we haven’t had it on today,” he said.
12:57
p.m.: Brian Cavanaugh pulls off the ultimate baseball moment when he
comes to the plate in the bottom of the ninth with one out and nails the one
and only home run of the ballgame to give his Pirates
a 6-5 victory and the chance to
fight another day.
1:00
p.m.: Ray Craft of Signs Now, who was listening on the Internet, posts a
simple message outside his Greenville Boulevard store: “Pirates Win.”
3:30
p.m.: Tulane defeats the University of Alabama-Birmingham 8-6 to advance
to a second-round meeting with ECU. The two teams will face off at 5:00 p.m.
on Thursday, presenting another round of workday challenges for the Pirate
Nation.
 Send an e-mail message to
Bethany Bradsher.
Click here to dig into Bethany Bradsher's Bonesville
archives.
02/23/2007 01:11:22 AM |
