About Eric Sorenson
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.
Florida packs for Omaha. And I’ve got two more teams that should go too.
Okay, I’ve got a special request to ask of the NCAA. After seeing UCLA and Fullerton go jugular for jugular against each other for two nights in a row now, I’d like to propose this:
How about moving game three of the Los Angeles Super Regional to Friday in Omaha?
UCLA was pretty excited to survive and play another day. But they should be in Omaha.
Really. Both of these teams deserve to go to Omaha and be there for the final go-round in Rosenblatt. They shouldn’t be penalized by a selection committee that didn’t reward them accordingly. And plus, what would it hurt? Their game can be played Friday, with the winner moving on to their regular game slot on Saturday. No muss. No fuss. Everybody is much happier. And two deserving teams are playing where they should have been playing.
Okay, I’ll wake up from my peyote-fueled hallucination now.
Recent Comments:
June 14, 2010 at 3:50 amBulldog says:
BOOMER!! Great win today for the Sooners and Neal only went 3 innings....... th
June 13, 2010 at 7:24 pmTim K. says:
What is up with the strategically placed NCAA banners over the Easton signs on t
16 say goodbye. More to follow.
N.C. State's Eliot Avent finds a couple of guys who are not big fans of the ACC.
It’s been a tournament of only a scant few surprises so far as most of the No. 1 seeds are playing as expected. All 16 of them are still alive as Fullerton was the only No. 1 in jeopardy of getting the home version of the game along with various cash and prizes for being the first loser to hit the bricks. But the Titans were able to avoid the accursed 0-and-2 performance with a one-run win over Stanford today.
Elsewhere, the ACC played better than any other conference as they matched the win totals of the SEC and Pac 10 winners today combined.
So we say goodbye to 16 teams after today’s second day of action in the NCAA tournament, but only 11 of them are four-seeds. So while there haven’t been any Earth-shaking upsets yet, not every underdog is underperforming.
Mercer Bearpiles!
Ya’ know, 27 years can feel like an ice age for most people.
But for Mercer University head baseball coach Craig Gibson, tonight’s 7-3 win over Jacksonville woke up some old ghosts that made him feel as if it was 1983 again.
Some grab the momentum. Some grab their golf clubs.
Damn. What a painful and elation-filled day it was in college baseball today. Hard to believe that teams like Michigan State, Duke, Tulane and Notre Dame have seen their once-promising seasons come to a painstaking end. Like a hammer missing the nail and hitting the thumb. Curses!
The Minnesota Gophers celebrate their fifth Big 10 title of the 2000s. (photo courtesy photographer Walt Middleton, sent to me by UMinn. S.I.D. Steve Gellar)
Oh yeah, and Coppin State’s season has also ended… surely by some form of cheating by those crooks at the MEAC ‘coz they were obviously the best team in the conference, if not the country.
Anyway, onward to Sunday… where more seasons will end.
Dogpilin’ Straight Outta Compton.
So, are you ready for more scenes like this?…
UC-San Diego dogpiles after the win over Hawai'i Pacific to advance to the D2 College World Series.
You know, it IS May, so we’re getting nearer and nearer to conference tournament time and more of these kind of scenes throughout the country. So I thought I’d get you warmed up for them with this.
Midway through my community service work today, when I got online to see if Minnesota State had made the Division II playoffs, I discovered that the West Regional of the D2 Tournament was being hosted by Cal State Dominguez HIlls out at the Urban Youth Academy in Compton. So I hurriedly got out of my orange jumpsuit and raced out to see the last few innings of the title game between UC San Diego and Hawaii Pacific.
USA! USA! USA!
Florida Atlantic blinks, South Alabama wins.
Jake Overstreet (#8, far right) trots in as home plate umpire Brian Martin points at home plate to signify that Florida Atlantic has committed a game-ending balk. (Note USA head coach Steve Kittrell - #3 - leading the charge toward Overstreet)
Really? THIS is how a great back-and-forth game that could decide a conference championship is going to end? By a balk call in the 9th inning? Gah!
Well, I shouldn’t complain, it was still that high-drama stuff I love. In a back-and-forth battle at Stanky Field tonight, the Sun Belt-leading Florida Atlantic Owls looked to have a second straight win over the Jags in the bag… until a nightmarish 9th inning that featured a bases-loaded balk knocked them on their canasta. That pressure-filled faux pas cost FAU a chance at cementing the weekend, now setting up a winner-take-over-the-SBC-lead game on Sunday.
It’s May. The Month Where Frauds and Pretenders Start Emerging.
I have to admit, Stitch-Heads, today is one of the days in our sport that pisses me off. It’s one of those days in every baseball season where we all just have to shake our heads and wonder why some pretty average teams are so high up in the national rankings and still getting all that RPI love. It’s like being rewarded the ultimate unearned run in our sport… and it happens every year.
Hmmm, makes me want to re-start that feature known as “The Fraud List” again. Today’s results just scream for it.
The New Mexico Lobos are casting a big shadow on the college baseball world with their solid play this season.
Well one team that is definitely NOT on the Fraud List – and a team that won a series against that University of Texas team that everybody is simultaneously fawning over – is New Mexico. I had a chance to catch these guys as they dismantled a recently hot San Diego State team for another impressive win down in LoCal on this Saturday night.
From The Couch.
After going back East last week and road-trippin’ with the dog the last two days, I found this Saturday to be a perfect day to sit on my fat butt and just catch a handful of games on the tube. And what an eventful day it was. Rivalries. Intensities. Walk-ons. Jog-offs. Busted dreams. Broken streaks.
Somewhere under that mass of screaming Seminole humanity is Stuart Tapley, the Saturday hero in the win over Miami.
A lot of big things happened in and out of the major conferences today as teams keep jockeying for post-season positioning and plenty of players saw their egos get bruised. Hey, it’s a long season. These kind of things are gonna happen. Just don’t let it snowball from here.
Liberty’s About Face
You know how things can change in an instant? Wind direction. The Dow Jones. The policiy of every politician. But it’s hard to imagine a game having a bigger turn of events than today’s VMI-Liberty game. The Keydets looked golden early on, racing out to a 6-0 lead after two innings and were cruizin’ with a capital “C-R-U-Z” past the midway point.
Matt Williams wears half the infield on his jersey but helped bury VMI with the go-ahead two-run double.
But a funny thing happened on the way to a certain W. it was give-me-Liberty-or-give-me-death time as VMI looked to even the series with the Flames. Turns out, after one big inning doomed them, Liberty gave them death.
See, the Atlantic Coast Conference CAN win a national title.
And it happened (again) today. In fact, the ACC has now won more national titles in hockey the last three years than they have in baseball in the last 62 years. (Sorry, that was a stupid cheap shot on my part).
Coach Jerry York, far left, led his Boston College Eagles to another national title today.
But still, in what amounted to a great day in Boston College sports, the baseball team swept a pair of games from Maryland to improve to 15-15 on the season. Then, just for a little more icing on the cake, the BC hockey team used its diminutive size and incredible speed to whip the much bigger Wisconsin Badgers 5-0 to win the 2010 NCAA national championship. This marked BC’s second national crown in three years.
Okay, Eagle baseball team, now it’s YOUR turn to win a national championship. Your hockey team can’t go out there and win all the hardware for your school, ya’ know.
PhxTitan says:
Do Robin Ventura and partner in the ESPN booth even know they aren't being fed t