Thursday April 22

Woke up at 5:30 a.m. this morning, not too hyped about that. Vandy baseball has a flight to catch at 9 a.m., so we are meeting at the locker room around 6:30 a.m. Going to Gainesville, Fla., is no doubt going to be a fatiguing event. We fly to Orlando, then drive two hours to the Cabot Lodge.

As I went to sleep Wednesday night, I noticed my cell phone’s light: It wasn’t going off. I had no idea why, but I knew something bad was going to come of this.

Finally, when we get to the hotel (I mean lodge), I realize that my cell phone battery is completely dead. So $40 later, I have purchased a new battery, hoping it will do the trick.

It does, but the light continues to shine. Although I’m not exactly sure how it ended up turning off, I am sure that it sucks to burn $40 on a cell phone malfunction.

Anyway, after running around for the battery, it was time to practice at Florida’s field. It is nothing out of the ordinary. We orchestrate a typical three-hour practice and feel confident about the upcoming games.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday

I’m not even going to bother breaking down these days.

Aside from Sunday being 10 innings, all the games were essentially the same. All three starters pitched well enough to win, but at one point or another made a costly mistake. I made an error Friday, Jensen made one Saturday and Mullins (who pitched outstanding) hit a guy with bases loaded.

Much like the Ole Miss weekend, we failed to manufacture runs at certain times and had the lead in all three games (only to lose them). The scores of the weekend were: 5-3, 4-2, 3-2. So we lost three games by a total of five runs.

No doubt we feel terrible as we’re heading back to Nashville, but there’s not much we can say about our performance. We played unbelievable defense (except for myself), we hit many balls hard (right to fielders) and we pitched good enough to win. It just happened that Florida was the better - and luckier - team this weekend. It’s just baseball.

It’s the reason I hate it, and the reason I love it. No matter what goes on, some parts of the game are always out of your control. These external factors can be your best friend, or your worst enemy. This weekend, they loved Florida, and hated us.

Once again, we can’t let this weekend get us down. There are still four weeks left of SEC play, plenty of time to make a run, just like last year. Our best baseball is still ahead of us.

Next opponent is Lipscomb on Tuesday. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to throw an inning in relief.

Jeremy Sowers

(photo courtesy of Vanderbilt Media Relations Office)