Bumped

I don't think I can recall a time in my last nine seasons of Baseball Road Trips where a planned baseball game has been bumped in favor of another sport. Baseball is my favorite sport, and at any time of the year, my focus is on that. However, in this particular year, at this particular time, baseball will take a back seat. This is in large part because of my second favorite sport and my first experience with Fall Ball this past Saturday down in Riverside. Neither one are bad, but when circumstances present themselves, you have to act upon them.

This past weekend, I traveled down the 215 freeway from Highland to the campus of UC Riverside. This was the first time I had been there since late May and my final college game of the year. For this trip, I was interested in a scrimmage between the Highlanders and the Division III Broncos of Cal Poly Pomona. It was a non-counting game and, early on, I understood what the idea of Fall Ball is. It is very intriguing, but it is an experience that can afford to be bumped.

Fall Ball is the culmination of the Fall Practice season for teams. These practices give new players the opportunity to stake out starting spots on rosters come February, and for teams to begin building the foundation for the long upcoming season. As a result, both the Highlanders and Broncos cycled through almost a dozen pitchers and at least that many fielders each through the 12-inning affair. I liken it to a College version of Spring Training, but without nearly the amount of pressure and scrutiny of the Cactus or Grapefruit Leagues.

What was also different was the complete lack of competitive structure. Case in point: Cal Poly Pomona  tied up the game at 1 a piece with a run in the top of the eighth. Both teams struggled until the bottom of the 12th when UC Riverside plated a run. OK, so if the home scores a run in the bottom of the ninth or later to take the lead, game over, right? Well, in Fall Ball, because the emphasis is on reps and getting players playing time, the competition is secondary. In this case, the winning run scored with one out, but the game continued to until the inning was finished and both teams had exhausted their pitching staffs. UC Riverside ended up winning 2-1, but it was sort of anti-climatic and I didn't expect them to keep playing after the run had scored. It reminded me of that Cactus League game I went to a few years back that ended in a tie.

After the game, I went a little further down the freeway to Murrieta to watch my Oregon Ducks football team play Stanford with the local Inland Empire Ducks group. My team won, setting up an early afternoon match-up next Saturday with rival USC. The game conflicts with my scheduled trip down to Fullerton to see Cal State Fullerton's inter-squad scrimmage for Fall Ball.

Look, my Ducks are in the hunt for a Pac-12 Championship and are playing good football right now. I enjoy watching them with the Inland Empire Ducks. And, an inter-squad scrimmage for a team I really don't have an allegiance with down in Orange County, while interesting, just doesn't match-up in this case. So, as a result, I'm bumping it and closing the Fall Ball trip.

Hey, to be honest, it is a decision that I really weighed and thought about. I mean, how often is it that you can watch baseball underneath a sunny sky in 80-degree weather at the end of November? For the obsessive fan that I am, it's tempting. But, I can go to bed at night knowing that I got a really good taste of that this past weekend, even if it was just for one day and one game. That can't be said for many of my Baseball Road Trip brethren across the country. It also keeps my foot in the "baseball door", as it were, during the lean month of November leading into my final trip and final game of the season down to Mexicali next month.

Everything now turns to that trip. As with the last two times I've crossed the border, this trip always involves lots of planning and research. I'll go more into depth with what I'm doing in a later post, but let's just say I've got some exciting things in store.

In the interim, I'll probably throw out a post or two with some musings about the game. Keep an eye out for them!

Always take on a 3-0 pitch ;)