D3baseball.com Daily Dose

A little cool this morning but the skies are blue and although there is ample sunshine, it is mostly cloudy. It is Cape Cod weather. The field is getting a touch up now so the field logos will look good on the video. The white will be very white, the blue, very blue.

Today we crown a champion. Will it be Trinity or Johns Hopkins. Yesterday the UW-Whitewater Head Coach said he was already working on the movie script but he had his team coming in against all odds and winning the Walnut and Bronze trophy everyone has started out this season competing for.

Will Trinity meet the fate of the 1954 Cleveland Indians who won 111 game but fell 0-4 to the New York Giants or will Johns Hopkins be like the Red Sox in 2004, 3 games down too the Yankees.

Trinity will have to get their bats going unless they can shut down a Johns Hopkins offense that found their stoke yesterday. Trinity has trailed in only 12 games this year and none in this tournament as the Bantams put their runs up early and made the lead stand. This is what they have done in the regional and here in Appleton.

Never give up on the Blue Jays, they know what it takes to win and believe that they have the team that can end the dream of a perfect season.

Hey its a great day for baseball and why not – lets play two.

Elimination day. Two game, two more teams headed home. Adrian is still wearing that glass slipper and has yet to spend their bullpen. They will need all they have since they have to win four more to capture the Walnut and Bronze.

UW-Whitewater has the fan support and I have not seen the same crowds for them since their loss on Friday. The Warhawks seem content of feasting on the back end of the pitching staffs and are going to let their offense lead them into the playoffs.

Johns Hopkins still is looking for their best game of the tournament. They played well against Trinity

Trinity (Conn.) and Johns Hopkins had the first rain delay of the championships this evening, and although it was a brief one, the players on each side still found ways to entertain themselves.

One of them was by tossing a ball back and forth between dugouts, playing a long distance game of tic-tac-toe.

Photos below are by Larry Radloff, D3sports.com.

The game gets started, reportedly by Trinity first baseman Kent Graham

Trinity is impressing folks here. They play late again and Trinity is the one team who has escaped without the obligatory press conference due to the late hour. Johns Hopkins has yet to play their best game and still in the winners bracket. They will need those bats when they face the Bantams tonight.

With three errors each, the Liinfield/Trinity game was not the best played defensively. Linfield did played well offensively. They had a lot of runners on base but could not get the big hit. They threatened to pull off the upset and almost did, coming up just a run short.

The game is on and Kevin Zalnis just ties a WS record with assists in an inning (3)

Got to love this. Less than 8 hours ago I left the ballpark and here I am again. The sun is out and the music is great. Adrian is getting ready and Kean is here I am sure.

It was a great baseball yesterday. The most lobsided score was 5-1 and that was close until the end. I ecpected this. The best teams in the nation with their best pitching staffs and this is usually what you see.

I have less faith that one of the teams starting today in the losers bracket can make it out winners. Kean and Cortland State have the pitching. Adrian is new to the show and they have a big hurdle today with Kean. UW-Whitewater was just flat against Linfield and it gets tougher with a draw against Cortland State. Chpman and Trinity have to be the favorites but Johns Hopkins will find their hitting stroke and Linfield is disciplined with an experienced team that could just be the team to end Trinity’s winning streak.

With less than an hour to go to first pitch – Play Ball.

On a cloudy and cool day with a touch of wind it is 0-0 in the second inning of the Chapman-Kean game. Just settling in to what will be a long day here at Fox Cities Stadium. A good early crowd cheering on both teams. The support looks pretty equally between the Cougar and Panther supporters.

Wait that almost was a 1-6-4-6-3 putout at first of dh Mattonelli.

Time to get out and visit with the crowd. I’ll be posting notes throughout the day so check back. If your here at the games – look for me in my yellow hat and traditional hawaiian shirt and say hello.

My plane leaves in about two hours and I am still thinking who wins this whole thing this coming week. The answer is difficult since I can see most every team having the chance to make it to the end. If there is a cinderella team, it is Adrian. They started the season with big wins down south as they defeated Emory and Piedmont back-to-back. The did not back down in a evenly matched regional in Terre Haute. They might have showed a crack when Heidelberg forced a winner take all game, but are now all square in Appleton.

Chapman, Cortland State, Trinity, Kean all breezed through their regionals without a loss….and in a few days two will have a loss as they have to play each other. The good news is that two teams can make it to the winners bracket final before one of these four emerges with out a loss. Throw in UW-Whitewater, and we have five favorites.

Linfield and Johns Hopkins had to battle to make the final round. Linfield needed extra innings while the Blue Jays were able to let their offense take over. Both team came back from first game losses to capture the regional.

The contest is wide open and nobody in the field will surprise me if they end up coming out of the winners bracket. I hope all will be following the games and enjoying the live video on the last two days. I myself am looking forward to five days of good baseball and let the teams decide the action on the field.

Hope to see many of you at Fox Cities Stadium.

Whew. It is out. There is a lot of work that comes with an All-American team. Thanks goes out to those who nominated a lot of quality players as the process starts with a school SID, coach saying this is a player who should be considered. Once nominations are in, the ballot has to be distributed to the voters and in some cases, the real work starts. How do you take 150 pitchers who all had good seasons and say 1 out of 10 are not good enough. How does one tell a player batting .400 on a championship team, your not an All-American. These are the tough decisions made by each voter. I know the time I take to complete my ballot and it takes time to make those judgements.

One thing we do at D3sports.com is to make sure that all of our teams can take the field and compete as a team. There really is no need for 4 first basemen and no other infielders. Our All-American team fits this mold as there is a catcher, a shortstop, ….

One new feature might not stand out, because the pitcher spots don’t indicate it. One pitching spot is reserved for a relief specialist. The reality of todays game is that a complete game includes a reliever – long relief or a stopper/closer a team can depend on to close out the win.

I would like to here the positive and negative comments.

Thanks to John McGraw for passing this along. I know he’s been in a few rain delay situations in his broadcast career (including one on a D3football.com football broadcast this past season) but this may well take the cake.

One thing for sure — it can’t be said that Lynchburg and Christopher Newport were at all tight during their rain delay Thursday night. And thanks to someone with a camera and JTSliders’ YouTube account, you can all see for yourself.

When we wrote on the front page on Tuesday that games “threaten to go past midnight” we were speaking from experience. And that experience was relived Wednesday night in Auburn and elsewhere as the final pitches of the Ithaca/Ohio Wesleyan game came at about 1:22 a.m. ET.

That’s even late in Alaska.

So to the 53 people listening as Ithaca loaded the bases with none out, down two, and as Ohio Wesleyan wriggled out of the jam to get the W, thanks for staying up late. It was a doozy of a Day 1, and Day 2 is just getting started.