Going Yard

What better way to end the southeastern leg of our Going Yard journey than with the No. 1 team in the country? That would be the Vanderbilt Commodores, who began the season 20-0 and are off to the best start in school history.

One of the highlights of the day was great only partially because of baseball, though it did eventually involve one of the Commodores' best players. When Tennessee had a meeting at the pitcher's mound in the third inning, the public-address folks here decided to play the theme song from "Who's the Boss?" over the loudspeaker. The Commodores responded moments later with a three-run home run from sophomore third baseman Pedro Alvarez to cut Tennessee's lead to 5-3. Three batters later, Vanderbilt tied the game, proving that you might indeed awaken to a brand new life around the bend.

Tennessee catcher J.P. Arencibia also went deep, tying the game at 6 with a solo shot in the seventh inning. But the Commodores would eventually prevail 7-6 thanks to an RBI single from Ryan Davis in the bottom of the ninth, meaning only two home teams have lost on the first leg of our trip. If I might milk this 80s-sitcom theme-song theme for a minute, the Vandy victory makes you wonder: What would the home teams do, baby, without us? Sha la la la.

This guy is posing for one of those Starting Lineup action figures.

After the game, we hung out with Vanderbilt's star pitcher, junior lefthander David Price, who two days earlier carried a perfect game into the seventh inning against Tennessee. He had 14 strikeouts in that game and is now 7-0 on the season. Last week, he also became the school's all-time strikeout leader.

In addition to being such a good pitcher that some have projected him as the No. 1 pick in the next Major League Baseball draft, he was also incredibly gracious, allowing us to tag along with him to his post-game spot, a cookout at his roommate's girlfriend's parents' house. (Whew, that's a lot of apostrophes.) Everyone there was kind enough to feed and tolerate us as we chatted with Price.

A note of interest with regard to our trip: Price is apparently quite the video game player and claims to be good at Halo 2, which as you might recall, is a favorite of Ole Miss pitcher Will Kline. Though Kline claimed Ole Miss baseball was the No. 1 Halo 2 school in the country, Price thinks Vandy has got them beat. We're hoping that if both of them end up in Omaha, we can set up the offiical Going Yard Halo 2 Grudge Match^TM.

PRICE IS RIGHT

WATCH CLIP

In addition to being the No. 1 team in college baseball right now, Vanderbilt is still feeling the thrill of its first-ever NCAA team national championship, which came in . . . wait for it . . . women's bowling. We were a day late for the ceremony honoring the bowling team, but they were selling national championship T-shirts at the campus bookstore.

As my mom, a Vandy alum, put it, "We'll take any national championship we can get." That certainly explains why the baseball team, which was at Kentucky when the ladies won the bowling title, watched the replay once they got back to Nashville, even though they already knew who won. Plus, Price is quite the bowler himself, sporting a high game of 267. The baseball team used to go bowling every week, but the pitchers' arms started feeling a bit heavy afterwards, so that tradition had to fall by the wayside. Besides, if they stick with baseball, there's the chance they could add to Vandy's trophy case before it's all said and done.

And that does it for our East Coast leg. See you in California.

Oh, don't worry. We won't.