After growing up in Omaha, Nebraska and skinning his knees on the concrete walkways of Rosenblatt Stadium, Eric has had college baseball in his veins for as long as he can remember. When the College World Series was going on each June, his parents would drop him and his friends off at the stadium in the morning and pick them up after the last game that night. Poor parenting? Sure. But it also fueled his fever for the sport that much more.
Eschewing the normal journalistic road to sports writing, Eric has been an advertising copywriter for years. He admits that creative background has added to his unconventional approach to sports writing and is a main contributor to his unique style.
Eric’s “addiction” to college baseball writing began back in the late 90s, when he became one of the original national writers for the sport. In the years that followed, he has covered college baseball for such media outlets as USA Today, CSTV, CBS Sportsline, CBS College Sports, College Baseball Insider and his current gig with College Baseball Today.
Living in Southern California with his wife Mandy, Eric sits in one of the hotbeds of college baseball. When he’s not covering a game or writing about the sport, he enjoys surfing, snow skiing, playing hockey and rough-housing with his black lab “T.O.” Eric was also 7th runner-up in “The Most Interesting Man In the World” competition held by Dos Equis in 2009.
Okay, so here’s a sweep-the-kitchen of some pics that I have yet to post from the last 10 days in Omaha and the final College World Series in Omaha. Check ‘em out…
… and for 2010, it’s South Carolina!
So, you breathing again yet?
How about THAT finish?! My-oh-my. It wasn’t a walk-off. Not even a jog-off. When Whit Merrifield sliced that bend-it-like-Beckham line-drive to right field, sending Scott Wingo to home plate with the winning run, this officially became a sprint-off win. The rest of the Carolina team came charging from the dugout en masse and started mobbing their late-game heroes on the field.
And think about this… You just don’t get a jog-off victory in extra innings very often in the national championship game, but what a bitchin’ ending this was to the 2010 season. I s’pose the only way to have topped it would’ve been if it had been in the third game of the championship series, instead of a series sweep in two games. But hell, who here wearing Carolina pinstripes is gonna argue that?
For South Carolina fans, this was the first time for standing on top of the mountain of college baseball. Not to state the obvious here, but a huge “congrats” to them. Gamecock Nation, here is your party.
More images from last night’s first game of the championship series, as South Carolina takes control in their pitch for the first national title in school history.
For the third straight year in Omaha, the SEC has a team one win away from a national title. But to be honest, none of the two previous teams – Georgia and LSU – have looked as impressive in their opening game of the title round. Carolina got some seeing eye shots throughout the game, slapping 13 singles in their 14 hits, and got some early defensive foul-ups to put UCLA in an early hole, and ended up cruising from there.
So now the Gamecocks are a full 27 outs from winning their first national title in baseball. And if tonight was any indication, 24 hours from the time I’m writing this, they could possibly be the last team ever to dogpile in Rosenblatt Stadium.
But put a heavy emphasis on the word “possibly.” This is a proud Bruin squad that won’t lay down and die.
Hey guys and dolls, prepare yourself for a hateful, repugnant waste of nine minutes.
Here is my latest Baldcast, shot while in Omaha before the championship series between UCLA and South Carolina. Below that I’ve included 10 very strong suggestions for the new stadium when it opens in downtown Omaha next June. Here you go:
Before this best-of-three starts, can we at least check to make sure Pete Carroll is using eligible players this time?
Okay, okay, enough B.S. aside… it’s good to see the Bruins and Troja… (sorry, habit) Gamecocks will now be set to square off for the national title starting on Monday night.
On a day more befitting of an entry in the owner’s manual of a convection oven, the Bruins and the Gamecocks both survived the heat and earned their way to the championship round with wins over TCU and Clemson respectively. The temps inside of scorching-hot Rosenblatt Stadium was so bad that these two sessions saw their lowest paid attendance for a game since 1991.
So yeah, it’s not as sexy as LSU-Texas or as dynamic as Miami-Fullerton or as turnstyle-reliable as North Carolina-Arizona State, but like it or not marketing moguls, we’ve got the Bruins and the Chickens going claw-to-beak for the big brass ring.
Double header elimination games day at Rosenblatt, and strangely there wasn’t much excitement to go along with it…
Even with over 20,000 fans coming through the turnstyles for each of today’s games, the one thing the ushers and security people forgot to let into the stadium today was a sense of excitement. But that wasn’t a problem for TCU or South Carolina, who squashed any form of excitement with dominating mound work.
For the first time since 1988, the first year of bracket play at the College World Series, both brackets will go to a seventh “if necessary” game on Saturday. That’s because both TCU and South Carolina were able to avoid elimination in a pair of games that had as much intrigue and mystery as a box factory.
Matt Purke and Michael Roth both put on surprising performances, for different reasons, as the Horned Frogs and Gamecocks took all the mystery out of these games today, and that being in quick fashion.

Jackie Bradley Jr. strikes a halleluia pose after scoring the winning run in the 12th inning tonight.
Okay, first, that was a huge, clutch, cocksure performance by South Carolina to beat OU 3-2 in 12 innings. Man, those elimination games are a panic! Wow. Just, wow.
But here’s the other thing, guys. This site is sponsored by Easton. So please excuse me if I quickly point out that all four of the remaining schools at the College World Series are Easton schools. I’m not gonna mince words here, they all play with best technology in their bats and in their equipment they use. That’s the common thread between them all, assuring us for the third year in a row, an Easton-sponsored team will hoist the trophy over their shoulders.
And before you start calling me a company shill, I thought I’d go ahead and remind you all at this time that Easton also seems to care about college baseball more than just about any corporate entity in the world. Hey, that’s why I’m here and why you’re reading this right now on this outlet.
Now, that being said, let’s take a quick look at Carolina’s remarkable win tonight in Rosenblatt.
RPIGuy says:
Nice work again this year, Eric!