Last night was a great night. I interviewed Mike Hargrove, he came up to the Lawrence-Dumont Stadium press box to wait while I wrote my story, then we jaunted on over to the Hyatt to watch a DVD of Game 6 of the 1995 ALCS between the Indians and the Seattle Mariners. What a great game — Kenny Lofton scored from second on a wild pitch!
On a serious note (except maybe that did really happen), Hargrove sure had his Bee Jays ready to play last night. For a team that plays its home games in a relatively-small western-Kansas town, Liberal sure didn’t look intimidated to be playing against the defending champ, Havasu, in front of a big crowd. The Bee Jays were loose and confident and they played like it. Along with Santa Barbara, I’d say Liberal is a favorite. But I haven’t seen every team play.
My responsibilities during the tournament have included doing “sound” for 10 p.m. games when I could make it, public address for 12:30 a.m. games and, my absolute favorite, covering the games for The Eagle. It barely beats out doing sound — who doesn’t love to have 6,000 quotes from “Anchorman” at his disposal? I get pretty power-hungry.
Tonight, though, I’m making my color commentary debut. Debut as in this is the first time I’ll ever have done this and I’m saying there’s a 49.9-percent chance that I fall flat on my face and embarrass myself and ruin the family name. And a 51.1-percent chance that I’m working for ESPN next week. Really, there’s no middle ground. I will either be awesome or horrendous.
EDIT: Yeah, I know … that’s 101-percent total. Whatever. By the way, I was in between. Not great, not horrible. OK, maybe a little great.
So check the 5 p.m. game (It’ll start way late because the first game of the day went 15 innings) on KGSO, 1410-AM. I’m quite thankful that I’ll have Shane Dennis at my side doing play-by-play. My boy is a pro and he could make a capable color man out of pretty much anybody. I’m a little nervous, but I’m doing my research and of course drinking my lime juice.
Finally, the Wingnuts. They took a lead into the bottom of the ninth inning at Lincoln last night before closer Byron Embry gave up the lead and Wichita dropped the final game of the three-game series. Losing two of three at Lincoln didn’t end the Wingnuts’ season, but it may have been the beginning of the end. They still have to pass four other teams and don’t have much time to do it. A winning streak pretty much had to start yesterday.