My First Game Of 2012

I just had the pleasure of enjoying three hours on a warm, bright, breezy Saturday in Surprise, Arizona, watching the Oregon State Beavers defeat the Saint Louis Billikens by the score of 6 to 5. The engaging game was played before a modest gathering of roughly 350 people, most of them OSU fans clad in orange and black. The game served as a bookend to my off-season, ending it once and for all. Words cannot describe how happy I am to be on this side of the bookends.

I think there’s something very cool about how my 2012 baseball year is starting at the same stadium where my 2011 season ended.  To help me celebrate, my sister Nancy joined me in a trip to the Surprise Stadium Sport Shop where she treated me to two new Spring Training t-shirts and a D’backs hat. Thanks, Sis!

Today was all about enjoying the game, catching some sunshine, periodically changing my seat and watching some college baseball. The affair was part of the 2012 Surprise Coca Cola Classic, a six-team field of squads from Saint Louis, Winthrop, Oregon State, Northern Illinois, Arizona State and Saint Mary’s.

Those two errors shown on the score board below were both made in the top of the sixth when sloppy defense by the Billikens permitted the Beavers to score three runs and take the lead. A spirited rally in the bottom of the ninth, fueled by three successive Billikens doubles made it tense, but in the end the Beavers prevailed. And so ended my first game of the year. What a great start to 2012!