Tickets Hope everyone enjoyed a lovely Mother's Day yesterday. I know I did, but now it's Monday again. So, there's that.
For those looking for a lift on Monday morning, I did find out Community is being renewed for another season, to my surprise after their darkest timeline finale on Thursday. Found it interesting in what I thought was their least entertaining season of all and one where they were pushed back months after their anticipated premiere, NBC shows more faith in it than ever. But, what do I know, and who cares. More Troy and Abed in the morning, please.
Let's eat ...
--- Final of baseball games for this season this week, starting with a Tuesday game against Butler (6:30 p.m.), then Notre Dame comes to town for a three-game set starting on Thursday (6:30 pm.), Friday (7 p.m.) and Saturday (4 p.m.). That will round out a year of building the foundation around an impressive group of freshmen for UC.
If you haven't been out to MSS this year to take in a tilt, I'd highly recommend doing so this week. No, the record doesn't show it, but the next few years look bright with this group.
Freshman pitcher Mitch Pattishall proved it yet again with a quality start in UC's lone victory of the Santa Clara series this past weekend. He went seven innings with five strikeouts, allowing three runs in the 7-3 victory.
With so much talk about the development of the freshman another strong season from Justin Glass has been lost in the conversation a bit. The junior held down the middle of the order and led the team in RBI and total bases with a .306 average. In a year of ups and downs he's been a beacon of consistency.
--- Spoke with JK Schaffer for a bit this weekend at Bengals rookie mini-camp, he's there working on things and getting prepared to make a run at a roster spot for next season.
He's put on some extra muscle and appears to be far and away in the best shape of his life. Not that anyone would be surprised to hear such things from the repeated overachiever.
Did say he's spending most of his free time playing golf these days. Picked up the game about four years ago, apparently and is already firing even par rounds at Miami Whitewater. As if there was any suspense over what helps carry his game, he can bomb it off the tee.
When I asked him if he's over 300, his facial expression gave the impression he's flying it over three spins. Put in your scramble requests now.
--- Also, Cam Cheatham was invited to the Bengals rookie mini-camp. Nice for him to be working with the hometown team. He'll be a long shot to land on the team, but by all accounts showed well.
--- Some news from last week I hadn't been able to get to yet was the date being set for The Crosstown. It will be Dec. 14. Not necessarily news, although, I do like the game moving to Saturday night. If you are going to hold it downtown and have it be a celebration of the revitalization of that area along with college basketball, it needs to be on a weekend night. The weeknight deal last year didn't make much sense to me, of course, that was the last thing on people's minds before last year's game.
Man, do I love on-campus games, but for this city and this rivalry I still believe that's the top venue for this game going forward. We will see what happens after this, but I thought the atmosphere was special there last year. Nearly all who were in the house agreed.
--- If you haven't seen Bill Koch's multi-part series on the state of UC's conference affiliations, you should be. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here, which posted today.
Great look at the reality and challenges this department is dealing with at the moment.
--- Randomness ...
--- I can't imagine bacon hot dogs being anything but delicious. Is there a food people aren't shoving bacon into these days? Feels like we are in the Golden Era for the product. Forget the Industrial Revolution or launch of Rock N'Roll, can't imagine a better era to be living.
--- Hitting the club, it's not just after dark anymore.
--- Love the emergence of these fake Gmail inbox screenshots. The latest on Derrick Rose is strong to quite strong.
--- Even though Mother's Day was yesterday, have to post a great mom song. If you grew up loving hip hop as a kid, LL Cool J pretty much takes the cake.