Can we pray for a rainout this weekend?

[coastratdog]

Would that get us in the tournament?

[msstate7]

There is a lot of rain in the forecast. Be nice if we could only get one in, and throw small at them

[sleepy dawg]

There's about a 80% chance we are out as it stands right now. We need these games and we need to win. As an SEC team with a losing record, we need to be top 30 RPI.

[Dawg-gone-dawgs]

Would that get us in the tournament?

I remember the same attitude right before we swept Arkansas.



.....ahem.....

[msstate7]

I remember the same attitude right before we swept Arkansas.

Florida good bit better than ark. Haven't lost a series (ANY series) since last season vs tenn (April 7-9, 2017).

[Jack Lambert]

Win one and we are in.

[Lord McBuckethead]

Win Thursday, rain out the rest of the weekend. Win the series and get into the post season.

[Dawg-gone-dawgs]

Florida good bit better than ark. Haven't lost a series (ANY series) since last season vs tenn (April 7-9, 2017).

I was just stating a fact

[JoseBrown]

Florida good bit better than ark. Haven't lost a series (ANY series) since last season vs tenn (April 7-9, 2017).

Well, now seems like a pretty good time to end that streak for them....

[MaroonFlounder]

The only problem is that Sully hates MSU. (And the feeling is mutual)

We will get his, and his team’s, best effort...and then some.

[Todd4State]

The only problem is that Sully hates MSU. (And the feeling is mutual)

We will get his, and his team’s, best effort...and then some.

I thought that was more about Cohen and Mingione?

[MetEdDawg]

We've become a bunch of scared kids if we start hoping for a rain out. If that's where we are, we aren't nearly the program we think we are. Go down fighting or go home. Pray for rain? You do that when your kid has a Saturday double header in the summer and it's gonna be 100 degrees outside.

[shannondawg]

Never discount the Dude, the pressure is on them to continue that series streak.

[Bulldog1]

I want us to play all 3. Who knows- we might take the series.

[Dawg-gone-dawgs]

Still want that rain? We bringing another rain!

[msstate7]

Still want that rain? We bringing another rain!

I'm really surprised and extremely proud of this team

[Bully13]

Would that get us in the tournament?


https://s7.postimg.cc/r1iuw24vf/Little_Faith.jpg

[Offshore Dawg]

We've become a bunch of scared kids if we start hoping for a rain out. If that's where we are, we aren't nearly the program we think we are. Go down fighting or go home. Pray for rain? You do that when your kid has a Saturday double header in the summer and it's gonna be 100 degrees outside.

Should be this way, any other way of thinking is limp dick.

[Bully13]

This thread makes me think of the Ted Williams story when he could have sat out during the final days of the 1941 season to preserve his .400 batting average yet refused the offer his manager made and continued to play out the final few games. Little did he know he'd be the last guy to hit .400 in the 20th century.

https://sabr.org/research/day-ted-williams-became-last-400-hitter-baseball

September 28, 1941. Shibe Park, Philadelphia. The Red Sox split a Sunday doubleheader with Connie Mack’s Athletics on the final day of the 1941 season. These were meaningless games in the standings; the Red Sox were in second place but 17 1/2 games behind the Yankees and the Athletics were dead last, 37 1/2 games out of first. But these were professionals and there was something else at stake.
Young Ted Williams, who had turned 23 less than a month earlier, woke up that morning hitting .39955 on the year, just .00045 below the hallowed .400 mark. Except for a stretch from July 11–24, when his batting average dipped as low as .393, he’d been hitting above .400 since May 25.

On the morning of September 27, the Philadelphia Bulletin headline noted what Williams faced: “Williams Risks Batting Mark” with a subhead showing his determination to play out the full season: “Boston Star Refuses to Protect his Season’s Record of .401.” This is when Ted could have sat out the final three games.

Indeed, the Bulletin reported, “There was a rumor that Manager Joe Cronin would let Ted spend the rest of the year on the bench to protect his batting mark.” Williams took “a special session of batting practice at Shibe Park” during the day on Friday, after the Red Sox arrived in town, and Ted told the Bulletin’s Frank Yeutter, “I either make it or I don’t.”

Yeutter mentioned to readers a couple of obstacles Williams would face: “the lengthening shadows of autumn afternoons, and facing strange young pitchers getting the usual end-of-the-season tryouts.” The advantage, he said, was in the pitcher’s favor.

On Saturday the Athletics rookie pitcher Roger Wolff was pitching in only his second-ever major league game (he had lost a tight 1–0 game in Washington the previous Saturday, allowing just three hits). Williams drew a walk from Wolff his first time up and then doubled to right field. But then he flied out to Eddie Collins Jr. in right, fouled out to first baseman Bob Johnson, and struck out—the only man Wolff whiffed. It was Ted’s last strikeout of the season, number 27.

By batting 1-for-4, Ted’s batting average dropped to .39955. It could have been rounded up to .400 if he had sat out the two Sunday games. But .39955 was not .400.

Naturally, Williams wanted to hit .400. He had no way to know that he’d be the last .400 hitter in the twentieth century, but a .400 batting average in 1941 was still a major mark of distinction. Ty Cobb and Rogers Hornsby had each hit .400 three times. Hornsby could have done it a fourth time, if one applied rounding. Entering the last game of the 1921 season, he was hitting .39966. Hornsby played that game, failed to get a hit in four at-bats, and saw his final average fall to .397.

In his autobiography, My Turn At Bat, Williams recalls Joe Cronin telling him, “You don’t have to be put in if you don’t want to. You’re officially .400.”1 Ted reports his reaction: “Well, God, that hit me like a ******* lightning bolt! What do you mean I don’t have to play today?”2

The Philadelphia Bulletin’s Yeutter reported that “Before the two games started he was nervous and sat on the bench, biting his fingernails. His mammoth hands trembled. He condemned himself for getting only one hit for four times at bat Saturday. He wondered who was going to pitch for the Athletics. He asked Jimmie Foxx if the late afternoon autumn shadows ever bothered him when he was a kingpin hitting in Shibe Park. He asked if the Athletics had knuckleball pitchers, for knucklers had been his nemesis all year.” Wolff, who had struck out Ted his last time up the day before, was a knuckleballer.

After that first hit, Ted’s average stood at .40089. If he’d made an out his second time up, he’d be hitting exactly .400. He had nothing to lose by taking that second at-bat. If he’d made an out, would he have allowed himself to be taken out of the game? We can’t know. But the question became moot when he led off the fifth inning, still facing Fowler, and homered on a 1–0 pitch, driving the ball over the high right-center field wall, a shot of perhaps 440 feet. It was his 37th homer of the year; he led both leagues in homers. Now he was batting .40222 and could make outs each of the next two times up and still be hitting a little over .400 at .40044.

But he didn’t. The Red Sox had taken a 3–2 lead in the top of the fifth, but the A’s scored nine times in the bottom of the inning, building up an 11–3 lead. Next time up, in the top of the seventh, Ted was facing reliever Porter Vaughan, who threw two straight curve balls, both of which missed the plate. Vaughn threw another curve, and Ted guessed correctly. He was waiting for it. “I hit a bullet right through the middle–base hit.”10 It was a single, and the Red Sox scored six runs that inning, closing the gap to 11–10 (they’d scored once in the sixth, too), and he singled off Vaughan a second time.

And even though Boston scored twice in the top of the ninth and won the game, 12–11, the Philly fans were all for Ted all day long. “Each time he came to bat the crowd roared, and when he went back to left field each inning the bleacherites gave him added applause,” wrote the Evening Bulletin.

By the end of the first game, Williams was batting .40397. He could have gone 0-for-4 in the second game and still been above .400 at .40044.

But he wasn’t done. In the second game, he faced Fred Caligiuri, who remembered Mack telling him to bear down: “Don’t give him anything! Pitch to him!” Caligiuri talked about pitching to Ted. “He could hit most fast balls, and the only way to get him out is to change speeds on him. We tried to change up on him, if I remember. I know one changeup I threw him he hit—in Shibe Park there was a kind of a megaphone that sits up on top of the wall, and that ball went on a line right into that megaphone and fell back into the park for a double. I suppose that megaphone was at least maybe two feet across, just a speaker up there. He hit it pretty good. It kept it in the ballpark. If it had been a few feet left or right, it would have gone out of the ballpark.”13 Indeed, only the ground rules kept the ball from being a homer, since the loudspeaker was deemed in fair territory. That ground-rule double was Ted’s second hit of the second game; he’d singled between first and second his first time up.

Finally, in his eighth time to the plate that day, with darkness encroaching, the Athletics got Ted Williams out, when he flied out to right field. He was officially 6-for-8, hitting .40570, or, when rounded up: .406.

“There was not a questionable hit among the group,” wrote the Inquirer. “All were slashing drives that whistled through the infield or fell far out of reach of the outfielders.”

After the game, Ted said he’d never felt nervous in baseball before. Now, he said, “I was shaking like a leaf when I went to bat the first time. Then when I got that first hit, I was all set. I felt good. Gee, there’s a lot of luck making that many hits.” He turned to Jimmie Foxx and exclaimed, “Just think–hitting .400. What do you think of that, Slug? Just a kid like me hitting that high.”

[msbulldog]

Good read, thanks 13.

[somebodyshotmypaw]

A lot of people in this thread are afraid to compete.

[msstate7]

A lot of people in this thread are afraid to compete.

To be fair, if you said we wouldn't have to face singer and kowar the first two games, this would've been a different looking thread

[somebodyshotmypaw]

To be fair, if you said we wouldn't have to face singer and kowar the first two games, this would've been a different looking thread

To be fair, if you said we would be facing Clayton Keyshawn and Max Scherzer, I would have been in favor of competing to win rather than cowering in the corner.

[msstate7]

To be fair, if you said we would be facing Clayton Keyshawn and Max Scherzer, I would have been in favor of competing to win rather than cowering in the corner.

I want us to make the postseason. I really don't care how. We gonna make it, so we all good. Had this series gone the other way with kowar and singer winning first 2 games, I doubt we see this thread bumped. Hindsight always makes a hot take easier...

If you could go back and allow singer and kowar to start the last 2 games, would you? How much you like to compete? I just assume face the guys that makes winning easier... if that makes me a coward, so be it. I want to win

[somebodyshotmypaw]

I want us to make the postseason. I really don't care how. We gonna make it, so we all good. Had this series gone the other way with kowar and singer winning first 2 games, I doubt we see this thread bumped. Hindsight always makes a hot take easier...

If you could go back and allow singer and kowar to start the last 2 games, would you? How much you like to compete? I just assume face the guys that makes winning easier... if that makes me a coward, so be it. I want to win

I don't disagree. But rainouts aren't winning. Because you aren't actually playing.

[Bully13]

I don't disagree. But rainouts aren't winning. Because you aren't actually playing.

Yep. All we needed was one win to get to Hoover. If we are scared about not being able to take care of that kind of business, then we don't need to go to post season. I would rather fight hard, take the ass whipping and let those thoughts fester in the off season and bring an attitude into training the next season wanting to not have that take place again.

Thankfully, and I do think 7 is correct in hindsight being 20-20, it appears at this point none of our players or coaches were hoping for rain. Not even after we went scoreless deep into game 1.

[msstate7]

I guess we should wish for rainouts vs everyone in the sec outside the top 10. In sec games vs top 10 teams (om, ark, and Florida), we are 7-1. In sec games vs non-top 10 teams, we are 7-14.

[somebodyshotmypaw]

I don't wish for rainouts at all. I want to play all the games and EARN our way into a regional. And I don't want something handed to us that we didn't earn or deserve.

[DogsofAnarchy]

Would that get us in the tournament?

NO, but I did pray that you wouldnt be overcome by fear anymore about MSU baseball.

[DogsofAnarchy]

I guess we should wish for rainouts vs everyone in the sec outside the top 10. In sec games vs top 10 teams (om, ark, and Florida), we are 7-1. In sec games vs non-top 10 teams, we are 7-14.

This team has been good this year. They have been inconsistent because they’re young. Some of you will get it one day.

[DogsofAnarchy]

Yep. All we needed was one win to get to Hoover. If we are scared about not being able to take care of that kind of business, then we don't need to go to post season. I would rather fight hard, take the ass whipping and let those thoughts fester in the off season and bring an attitude into training the next season wanting to not have that take place again.

Thankfully, and I do think 7 is correct in hindsight being 20-20, it appears at this point none of our players or coaches were hoping for rain. Not even after we went scoreless deep into game 1.

We administered the “ass whipping” instead of taking it. Please make note of that where you can adjust your mindset about MSU baseball.

[msstate7]

Thank God a rainout didn't cost us a 3-game sweep over Florida. Gotta admit I'm shocked with how well we played. Hats off, dawgs and Henderson... you guys obviously were up for the challenge.

[Commercecomet24]

This team ain't scared of nothing! Get used to it, enjoy it!