Going Yard

Every day is a new day as my mother used to say, and I am learning it first hand on this trip. Our visit to the University of Texas on Friday night was the epitome of decadence in college baseball as we spent time on the Texas Sport Bus. Today we experienced the opposite end of the spectrum with some good old-fashioned manual labor.

Texas State is approximately 30 miles south of Austin in San Marcos, and their field maintenance crew invited us to stop by the park extra early to see how they get the field ready for a game. As I told them, I am a New York City boy through and through. Therefore, landscaping is not something I am intimately familiar with. I am open-minded, however, so I was fully prepared to immerse myself in this new experience.

Jeff, Evan's substitute for the weekend, owned his own landscaping company in high school, so he gave us some needed credibility. It was called "Nice & Neat Lawn Care," and their motto was, "A cut above the rest." For those interested in a little more information, Jeff wanted you to know that the official vehicle of this business was a 1978 El Camino.

Spend a few minutes with the Texas State field crew and one thing become abundantly clear: They love what they do and they are proud of it. Within moments of meeting them, they were boasting about the renovations they made to the Bobcat Field by hand. The trio of Patrick Tate, Cody Farr and Patrick Grant (along with an absentee named Joe) tore down the chain link fence down the left-field line and replaced it with handmade walls and gates to create a gorgeous home bullpen. The gates are most impressive because they did the welding by hand. They estimated that if they had hired a contractor, the job would have cost $35,000, but they did it for about $15,000. It's no wonder they are proud.

GOING YARD WORK

WATCH CLIP

They showed us much of their pregame routine, which involves getting to the park about seven hours before first pitch. Their first job is picking up trash around the park and then they do their primary field maintenance. The most pressing aspect of this is replacing the holes created on the mound and in the batter's box that are caused by the pitchers' front feet landing and the batters digging into the back of the box.

After batting practice they drag the field and line the foul lines around the batter's box and first and third base. They don't have dirt baselines and we were told this saves them a lot of time. As it was, it seemed pretty time consuming.

Jeff looks sweet on a John Deere, but it hardly compares to his '78 El Camino.

Both Tate and Grant got degrees in turf management, but Farr learned his trade on the fly. He pitched for UT-Arlington from 1992-1994, and even spent three years playing professionally in independent leagues. After his career ended, he took a job as pitching coach/field manager at Texas Lutheran College. The only problem was that he had no experience with field maintenance, so he called Leo Goertz at Texas A&M. I had no idea who he was, but to those in the business, Goertz is the godfather. He gave Farr a number of pointers and his career took off from there.

Tate, Farr and Grant lean on the wall that Tate, Farr and Grant built.

Once the game began, we got to spend some time with Justin Fiske, the Bobcats Friday night starter. Fiske didn't have his best stuff yesterday, but he gutted out seven innings as the Bobcats took down Stephen F. Austin 13-3. Though he stands about 5-foot-9, Fiske is the consummate crafty lefthander with a fastball that barely cracks 86 mph. He boasts a variety of junk, with his changeup being his main weapon. He also claims to be able to throw a knuckleball, though coach Ty Harrington won't let him throw it. After his win on Friday, the senior is now 7-2, 2.23 with 85 strikeouts in 84 innings. A good chunk of those strikeouts came in a 17-strikeout performance against Nicholls State.

SFA's program is in just its second year after a decade-long hiatus, and they have been surprisingly successful. One would expect such a young program to struggle (particularly one without its own home field), but the Lumberjacks entered Saturday's contest with a 25-22 record. That's right, they are called the Lumberjacks. It's not quite Anteaters, but it is pretty darn good.

They are Lumberjacks, and they're OK.

A big part of their success can be attributed to first baseman Steven Hill, who trails only Kyle Russell on the NCAA home run leader board. He gave us a glimpse of his prodigious power with a first inning bomb to left that was his 21st of the year. It was probably the longest home run we have seen thus far, and TSU left fielder Jared Bunn did not budge.

That was the highlight of the day for the Lumberjacks as they fell to Texas State for the second straight day by a score of 8-5. Not all was lost for them though, as they were lucky enough (as were we) to be in San Marcos on the day the TSU parents decided to throw their boys an enormous feast.

Closer Jason Baca's father was the primary organizer, but all the parents chipped in for an orgy of goodness. The feast included 20 briskets, 25 pounds of beans and 50 pounds of mashed potatoes. The cooking crew arrived on Friday and began cooking that night in the lot beyon right field. They cooked so much food, they invited the opposition and everyone in the press box to partake. I'm not going to lie, even if we had not gotten the formal invitation, Jeff and me would have been looking to sneak in some grub.

Kind sirs, would you mind if we mooched off your postgame meal?

I'd like to thank Jeff for his help the last two days, they would not have been nearly as enjoyable without him. Now off to Houston for a solo mission, with Evan rejoining me on Monday in Dallas.