Monday, September 30, 2019

Sports Journal September 2019

I have sort of grab bag of sports events that I randomly wrote about this month.

9-17-19
The Triple-A Championship game was broadcast on KROD tonight.  Given that the Chihuahuas weren’t involved, it wasn’t that interesting for most of the El Paso/Las Cruces-area audience.  However, on the IL’s Columbus Clippers was recent Aggie star, Daniel Johnson.  It was pretty cool getting to hear him play.  Hopefully, he’ll be in the big leagues next year. 

9-24-19
I got to watch a great baseball game tonight: Nationals versus Phillies.  Most of the time I have a game on, I don’t get to watch most of it.  Today, for whatever reason, I was able to watch most of this game.  It had some importance as the Nat’s magic number was 2 to clinch a Wild Card spot.  As they were playing, their competition to get in, the Cubs, were playing the Pirates.

The Nationals trailed for most of the game.  Trea Turner put them up dramatically with a grand slam.  Later in the game, Bryce Harper came up getting boo’d by Washington crowd.  He was facing Hunter Strickland, who’d famously plunked him last year when he was pitching for the Giants.  What a change.  Last the time, it’d been the Washington crowd booing Strickland for hitting Harper.  All they did was change shirts!  Jerry Seinfeld might say.  Bryce hit a home run this time to get the score within one and some revenge.

However, the Nationals did prevail.  As the Nats went out on field to congratulate each other, the video screen in the outfield immediately cut to the Cubs versus Pirates.  The team stayed on the field to watch, as it was in the ninth there with two outs.  With the Pirate victory, the Nationals celebrated getting the Wild Card berth.  This game had a bit of everything.  That was fun.  This ended up being the last regular season baseball game I really watched this season.

Aggie Lia Mosher
My goodness she's attractive

9-26-19
I went to work a bit early and immediately brought up Aggie Soccer’s match in South Dakota on the WAC Digital Network.  They were already down 5-1 halfway through the second half.  They’d lose 5-2.  Keeper Dmitri Fong played the first half and gave up 3 goals.  Mia Montano played the second and gave up 2.  Both had 5 saves each.  I hope Dmitri isn’t hurt again and the coach just took her out because she was having a bad game.  Hannah Leitner and Alexa Barrera each had goals.  That was Hannah’s first college goal.

A little while later, Aggie Volleyball took on Utah Valley on the road, also on the digital network.  The Wolverines were 3-9, but they were the WAC Championship runner-ups last year.  From the UV pregame, I learned they’re down a critical player.  After the player introductions, the Wolverines tossed t-shirts into the crowd.  For the Aggies, Analyssa Acosta was still in at libero.  The UV announcers liked her and highlighted her play in the match.  They were impressed with her.

Set 1 was close to start.  The Wolverines had Megan Hart blocked at the net, triple-teaming her at times.  She did have a highlight of hitting one through three blockers.  UV took a brief lead, but then Natalie Mikels went on a six-point run on serve, only broken up by a timeout.  Krysten Garrison, who’d had serving problems last week, also had a serving run.  The Aggies took it up to an 8-point lead and won 25-19.  The Aggies took a commanding lead in Set 2 and didn’t look back.  Savannah Davison, who’d also had serving problems last week, had a run here.  Cat Kelly got her tenth kill of the match.  The Aggies took it, 25-17.

Set 3, the Aggies again had an early lead.  The announcers marveled at the Aggies proficiency in sideouts this match, which jinxed them.  The Wolverines came back to tie and take the lead.  At this point, I had personal problems trying watch on an iPad and missed the rest of the set.  The Wolverines went up by 7 won it 25-16.  For Set 4, the Aggies took a 6-point lead.  But after a ninth service error, the Wolverines came back within 2.  Halle Razo then aced to put the Aggie back up by 6.  The Aggies would go up 10 on her run and would win 25-14 and 3-1. 

For the match, Cat Kelly led with 17 kills, and Savannah Davison followed with 14.  Megan Hart had 5 on a rough night for her with 6 errors.  She still had 6 blocks.  There were 9 service errors, but 5 aces.  Coach Jordan might find that acceptable. 

I may have put my finger on the Aggies’ inconsistencies this season.  I think Coach Jordan is missing his former assistant Ben Wallis.  He was like having a second head coach on the team.  Of course that meant he’d have to leave someday to take on his own team.  Coach Wallis was interviewed on KROD the day before.  Steve Kaplowitz seems to be making an effort to promote volleyball at UTEP, since the station got Miner Football and Men’s Basketball back.  The program is doing well under Wallis’ leadership.  He said that their match against the Aggies made the Aggies better.  I’m going to have disagree there.  It seemed wreck their confidence actually. 

9-28-19
After a short stint at Aggie Softball this morning and a busy afternoon, I had a busy night too.  The evening was a full on ADD episode with everything on at the same time.  There were three movies on TV I was interested in.  The Cardinals and Cubs were on TV and the Brewers and Rockies were on the radio.  The Cardinals and Brewers were fighting for the Central Division.  (They both lost.)  The Rangers were playing Yankees on another radio station.  I think the Rangers won.  There was some poor reception on that.  This was the next to last game at the Ballpark at Arlington.

Aggie Roy Lopez

And, the Aggie Football team was playing on radio and TV.  They lost 30-17 vs Bulldawgs.  It was a shocking loss to Las Cruces High School.  Oh, wait.  They were playing the Fresno State Bulldogs.  I was confused by their very similar mascots.  During the halftime show on the radio, they mentioned the other Aggie sports, who were on the road.   Aggie Soccer had lost at South Dakota State by 4-0.  That’s not good.  Aggie Volleyball won in straight sets at Seattle U.  I’d thought this was going to be an off weekend, but I ended up being pretty busy. 

9-29-19
Finally, NBC decided to show a NASCAR race over-the-air.  I don’t know why they didn’t show their summer races here instead of on cable when there wasn’t much competition on TV.  Now, there’s plenty on.  During Clint Bowyer’s prerace interview, he stopped at one point, looked off to the side at a TV on his RV, and said, “I think the Chiefs just scored.”  Even the drivers are watching the NFL instead.  (If they could watch in their cars, they might do it.) 

NASCAR was now in their “playoffs.”  They were in Charlotte this week with the track in its “Roval” configuration.  This was a fascinating experiment last year: putting a road course in the playoffs.  I was really excited for it.  Too bad I didn’t see it, since it was on cable.  Apparently there was a dramatic twin wreck at the end with Martin Truex Jr. and Jimmie Johnson.  They took each other out coming out of the final chicane right in front of the finish line. 

Regrettably, I have no idea how the current playoff system works.  They’ve changed it too many times and keep making it more complex and I’m not able to watch every week.  It gives the announcers plenty to talk about during the race, but I can’t follow it.  I suspect I’m not the only one.  The pity here is that the racing on this track is actually excellent.  It’s quite challenging for the drivers.  While open-wheel cars on road and street courses tend to be boring races, stock cars are actually much more entertaining there in general.  They can take some damage from the close quarters contact and keep going.    

I did fully mean to recap the race.  Unfortunately, the race had significant competition on other channels that kept distracting me.  The Overwatch championship was on ABC.  That Sinatraa guy is good.  On Fox, after football, they showed a WWE Wrestlemania documentary.  I’ve never seen a Wrestlemania.  Wow!  Those are quite the spectacle.  I was really impressed.  Of course, the constant commercial interruptions during the race also just begged me to change channels.  When they went side-by-side with the coverage, all that did was add extra commercials.

What I did see was lots of fun.  In the third stage, race leader Chase Elliot plowed right into the barrier at Heartburn Corner on a restart.  There was another big tie-up.  Then there was a red flag.  I missed whatever caused that.  There was impending rain at the track with 7 laps left.  A lot of the race commentary centered back in the pack to see who was going to get bumped out from the next round.  Improbably, Chase passed everyone over the course of the final stage to retake the lead and win it.  Interviewed on track, he turned to the crowd and said, “Y’all like that?”  I gave him a round of applause myself.  I hope I can watch some more racing before the end of the season.

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