Lots of things

First of all, it's looking more and more like laryngitis than bronchitis. Also, I'm getting better. Thank God.

Furthermore, Arizona beat Cal both Friday night and last night. I should have a roundup of the entire series later today or tomorrow.

Finally, as I seem to be musing about life's unfairness quite a bit lately, and since I talked, in my first post, how it's unfair that Phil Hartman and Chris Farley are dead, I'd like to talk about another person who should be alive but, unfortunately, isn't.



Greatest singer of all time. Bar none.

God bless you, Freddie. The world misses you.

Arizona 13 - New Mexico 5

Another shellacking of the Lobos (28-10, 8-4 MWC) by the Cats (16-16, 3-6 Pac-10), but I wasn't at the game due to prior commitments. What I saw on the gamecast impressed me, though.

Arizona 9 - New Mexico 3

Great effort by the Cats (15-16, 3-6 Pac-10), but somewhat expected since we have a near-80% win percentage against New Mexico (28-9, 8-4 MWC). A shellacking like this wasn't out of the question at the very beginning.

Joe Allison had a great showing in his first career start and went six innings. On the other hand, the Lobos went through a lot of pitchers, and if I remember correctly, their first two pitchers (the former of which went for 1 2/3 innings) combined for four beaned batters, three of which came in one inning.

As I said earlier, it was a shellacking. I'm probably not going to make it to this afternoon's second game of the series due to prior commitments.

For the record, I'm pulling an all-nighter because I can't sleep and I have no idea why.

Oregon State 8 - Arizona 3

Once again, not much to report since I missed part of the game due to prior commitments.

Another disappointing effort by the Cats (14-16, 3-6 Pac-10). It was close, but Oregon State (20-7, 7-2 Pac-10) broke open the game with a pair of home runs combining for three runs.

Of course, getting rained on and soaked because I was wearing shorts and forgot my umbrella made it worse.

Next up is a two-game series against New Mexico on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Arizona 6 - Oregon State 5

Not much to report on this one, since I got there between the 6th and 7th innings due to the game starting at 2 PM and me having class until 4.

Great effort by the Cats (14-15, 3-8 Pac-10) to keep Oregon State (19-7, 6-2 Pac-10) behind, especially Jason Stoffel who showed no frustration over his lackluster showing last night and absolutely shut Oregon State down in the 9th.

I'll be similarly late to tomorrow's game since it starts at noon and my priority registration for next semester's classes is at 1.

Oregon State 9 - Arizona 5 (otherwise known as the game where Kevin got threatened again)

Another disappointing loss by Arizona (13-15, 2-8 Pac-10), but a good game overall. It was a close one for most of the game. Oregon State's (19-6, 6-1 Pac-10) a good team, no doubt.

Once again, the action in the stands proved just entertaining as the action on the field. Here's what happened.

One of Oregon State's players is originally from Tucson. Jokingly, I yelled to him "Why did you abandon us?" and "Tucson is a much nicer town than Corvallis!" Stuff like that. His family, apparently, was sitting a few seats away. They didn't seem to be too happy about what we're saying. One of them threatened to shoot me. Security dragged him away.

Good times.

The best part was, after dragging him away, security also pulled away several of my fellow fans and the OSU fans started cheering like they were getting thrown out. Our fans came back. Theirs didn't. We cheered as loudly as we could when our fans came back just to annoy the OSU fans. Opposing fans don't seem to like the Hot Corner too much because we don't shut up. We keep it clean, but we don't shut up because there's nothing the opposing fans can do to stop us.

Win or lose, I love Arizona baseball.

USC 15 - Arizona 14

Arizona (13-13, 2-6 Pac-10) lost to USC (12-14, 3-5 Pac-10) 15-14. All in all, a good result after we gave up 10 runs in the first inning. We managed to come so close thanks to a pair of five-run innings, one of which came thanks to Hunter Pace's first career home run being a grand slam.

I'm disgusted by the actions of several USC fans, though. Near the end of the game, in response to some of the stuff us Arizona fans were saying, they came over and attempted to intimidate us. Several of them tried to surround me in the seats and one even threatened to fight one of my fellow fans. They probably would have tried to fight us if security hadn't intervened. Truly thuggish behavior, but then again, I'd expect that from a bunch of stuck-up private school kids.

Likes and dislikes

I figure I should probably list my favorite and least favorite sports teams so you know where I stand on the teams. After all, this is a sports blog, so I might as well set the ground rules.

I may or may not add to this list and/or edit in reasoning behind each one later. Teams (save for the first place listing of Arizona, ASU and the New York Yankees in their respective lists) are not necessarily ranked in order.

College:
Favorites: Arizona Wildcats, Florida State Seminoles, LSU Tigers
Hates: Arizona State Sun Devils, everyone else in the Pac-10, Florida Gators, Miami Hurricanes, Ohio State Buckeyes, Oklahoma Sooners, Texas Longhorns

Soccer:
Favorites: Manchester United, Chicago Fire, Barcelona
Hates: Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Real Madrid

NFL:
Favorites: Chicago Bears, San Diego Chargers
Hates: Green Bay Packers, Oakland Raiders, Denver Broncos, New England Patriots, Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants

MLB:
Favorites: Chicago White Sox, San Diego Padres
Hates: New York Yankees, Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox, Minnesota Twins/Everyone in the AL Central besides the White Sox, L.A. Dodgers/Everyone in the NL West besides the Padres

Arizona 7 - USC 6

Arizona Athletics has the full report. Here are my thoughts.

Arizona (13-12, 2-5 Pac-10) was down 6-2 going into the 8th. We scored 3 runs and then Jason Stoffel shut down USC's (11-14, 2-5 Pac-10) offense in the top of the ninth. Bottom of the 9th, with two outs and bases loaded, Brad Glenn hit a line drive to left field and Arizona won 7-6. A great game.

Half the fun at that game came from being in the Hot Corner, which is the student section at Sancet Stadium. It's truly a great experience. The trash-talking is epic, but clean and non-vulgar. Near the end, in the last two innings as Arizona was coming back, I kept yelling about how quiet the USC fans were. It was a nice contrast to the lone USC fan who tried, at the beginning of the game, to get us to shut up by yelling something along the lines of "Shut up, you idiot" at one of the more vocal fans, only to be booed in response.

There were several older USC fans (think 40s/50s) and we had a good back-and-forth with them at one point. There were jokes made about midlife crises and I even got a good one in.

"You're like the guy from Lethal Weapon: you're getting too old for this!"

Game two of the series is tomorrow at 6PM PST.