Hello everyone ! Hope you all had a great Valentine’s Day with that special someone in your life. Valentine’s Day is a great day to show that special someone how much you actually care about them, but it’s also the report date for pitchers and catchers. Now this is a great day. Like every other true baseball guy, we look forward until the first pitch of the season. A couple of DII schools have started up already while Division I schools start this week. Tons of changes to the college landscape will happen this year, from the bats that some schools use to a pitch clock. I cannot say that I am in favor of a pitch clock; that has always been one of the great things about the game of baseball that you cannot sit on the clock. I understand that you need to make the college game friendlier to the TV audience, but I don’t think a clock is the best thing we can do for the game.
The preseason CACC poll came out this week and we were fortunate enough to be picked number 3 in the league. This is the highest Post University’s baseball program has been ranked. I firmly believe it is better to be the hunted rather then the hunter. Everyone in the program is ready for the season to start. We are confident in our ability and trust the preparation that we have put into our season, but know that there are no cupcake games on our schedule and every game will be a battle. It will be interesting to see how this team will handle getting every team’s best effort as we move forward into our season. We have the mind set that while it is nice to be given the accolades at the beginning of the season we would much rather have the accolades come at the end of our season. We are preparing for Molloy on the 25th and not looking past them. We are getting close to that first pitch. Our guys have been taking great swings against our very good pitching staff in the cages. I feel that we are ready for the season to start. This week we will go back over some D work and we will have some offensive brainstorming meetings this week. I think that it is beneficial to bring the guys into a classroom setting and get everyone on the same page and throw out ideas on how we can attack from an offensive standpoint.
With this being Valentine’s Day week it made me think of the story I read about a coach that scarified himself for one of his players. I have been fortunate to meet and speak with many great coaches from Coach Bianco of Ole Miss , Coach Tim Corbin of Vanderbilt and many other great coaches and learned a tremendous amount from them. Coach Walter from Wake Forrest however went above and beyond the duty of this great profession. Coach Walter donated a kidney to one of his players. When we go out recruiting we talk about how close our team is and how much we are like a family but Coach Walter did something that not many people would do, and did it for the right reasons. He donated a piece of himself not for the spotlight, not because it would give his team notoriety, he did it because it was the right thing to do and he did it without a second thought. I am amazed by Coach Walter’s selfless act, it is truly one of the great stories of the college season. We have the great fortune of changing young men’s lives and Coach Walter did just that and that after all is why we chose this profession.
Good luck to everyone who is starting up this week from JUCO to D1. I’m looking forward to getting out on the field. Until next week you can follow me on twitter at @CoachRix8
