America's Pastime :)

Welllll it's FINALLY here! Baseball is Back!

Umm yeaahhhhh

Still on the high of coming off such an amazing season last year, College World Series Finalist, it was hard not to be itching to be back at Dudy Noble come Opening Day. As most people know I LOVE baseball. With the recent move I don't get to enjoy Dudy Noble as much as I would like, but I am there for every home weekend series. 

My friend Darnell is lucky enough to have his birthday opening weekend for college baseball each year...almost as lucky as I am to have a birthday on opening weekend for the Atlanta Braves each year (even though they are away this year *tear*). So that's how we brought in opening weekend this year. Dudy Noble (LFL-Left Field Lounge) Friday night, more LFL Saturday and then helped Darnell celebrate his birthday. Followed by even more LFL Sunday :). That my friends is a perfect weekend. And I have to say last year was COLD....I'm talking there was snow, sleet and temps below 30 degrees all in the first month. This year so far has not brought any of that. Granted this has been the hardest, coldest winter in a long time LFL has not been unbearable so when I hear people complaining about how cold it is out there I have to bite my tongue from saying "And just where were you last year? Ugh rookies" :p

The view from LFL at night

Getting to see these faces makes these weekends even better!

Oh, how we love the LFL!

That sums it up ;)

Crawfish, baseball and beer...you can't get much better than that!

Ben makes LFL so much fun!

Enjoying a Sunday in LFL

Since I'm an awful blogger and have been sitting on this post for about 2 months now I'm going to go ahead and do one big baseball blog. The above pictures were from February and these next ones are from Super Bulldog Weekend. It is our big annual spring event that is a weekend full of all sorts of sports and events held on and around campus. This year's was kind of a big deal because we hosted our in state rival TSUN (The School Up North aka Ole Miss). We lost game 1 and game 2 was electrifying...one could say they've never experienced so many ups and downs in one game in their life, but I cannot say this because I am a Braves/MSU fan ;). I must say by the end of the game the fans seemed as exhausted as the players, as if we had been dueling on the field for 10 straight innings. We were tied at 2 by the bottom of the 9th, which meant free baseball for the record crowd on hand! Then TSUN crushed us one last time in the game with a 10th inning 2 run homer off of our star closer and went onto score a 3rd run for a 5-2 lead. Bottom of the 10th........wooooo. We got back to back doubles and a sac fly; the score at 5-4 with Big Poppa at the plate. Wes, who has been in a slump as of late and everyone had dogged all weekend long (probably more than they normally would have, but with him being my FAV why not rub it in even more to me, right?!) What did Big Poppa do?? TIED the game up with a DOUBLE. I cannot come close to describing the atmosphere at this point. Literally minutes ago we were all depressed about probably losing the series to our arch rivals and THIS happens. And as a storybook ending would go a freshman came up and delivered a walk-off single! Electrifying...I cannot come up with a better word for that moment and experience. Though we went onto lose game 3  the next day we'll never forget that game 2. We set a new attendance record of 15,586 which made the victory even sweeter.

It was a tough day haha

One of my favorite coasties

Everyone HAS to have a friend like Zack!

Some of the group playing around on the field after the amazing comeback win!

After the game was over on Saturday our crew hung around and grilled where we usually sit for the games. A big props to our beloved DX friends who are kind enough to share their establishment with us out in LFL. Most of us became friends during college and we have never lost touch. A few of the alumni hold a special place in my heart and I consider them and their families part of my own...kind of a running trend here at MSU if you haven't noticed. As the afternoon went on and the sunshine faded into darkness we were still there, basking in the glory of what had went on that day. People were randomly scattered at different rigs throughout the outfield socializing, eating, drinking and so forth. It was starting to get late and we knew we eventually had to leave so we started cleaning up. This is when I heard one of the DX alumni yell out "Hey y'all get some food". When I looked over I noticed two guys who were cleaning up the trash from the day's events stop and look surprised and excited all at the same time. Brian had offered them the rest of our AMAZING food and they quickly took some and thanked him. I looked at Brian with the biggest, cheesiest smile and said, "Doesn't that just make your heart happy?" He replied, "That's what it's all about".  And it is...these are just a few reasons I bleed Maroon and White. We are family. We experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows together and no matter what we are still there, back for more every year. There goes that big cheesy smile again ;). With only 2 more home series left I feel like the season is drawing to a close, which seems really weird after last year's season seemed to go on and on (no complaints at all). Hopefully our season will last just as long as last years, but with us as the champs instead of finalist this go around!

That's all for this one folks...more posts to come and more frequently too! Get excited...

Oooooh ONE more VERY exciting thing that happened today. Eeekkkkkkkk! To my Braves fans out there, do you remember Mark Wohlers!? I know right, how could you not! Wellll check this out:

 You can't see the blue check from that screen, but that's HIM! :)

-Casey