Bulldog Wins The TPC

N C State Grad Tim Clark won the Tour Players championship this afternoon in Jacksonville Fl. Not only do I like Tim because he's a Wolfpacker and the other reason is I am taller than he is and can hit it about as far as he can. Eight times Clark has finished second on the PGA tour and had carried the label best player on tour without a win but no more.

Tiger Woods dropped out with an injury. This is me thinking out loud, any one besides me notice since the PGA random drug testing policy has been in place Tiger's body is falling apart?

I can take no credit for this like I tried to claim on my earlier blog today about the perfect game pitched by Jim Hunter. Today Dallas Braden of the A's pitched the second perfect game in Oakland history. Just some where on my blog today I awoke the baseball Gods in order for this to happen after I just spoke about Hunter's perfect game, so maybe I should try to take credit.

I can not for what ever reason get on the brackets and give you any playoff pairings at this time. I can tell you Rocky Mount will play D H Conley Friday night at Gryphon Stadium. Conley is the number three seed in the Coastal conference and this is not a good draw in the opening round. All high school teams have at least one decent pitcher and Conley has a really good one who has signed with ECU. You know he throws against Rocky Mount Friday. Gryphon hitters will determine whether the Gryphons move on to round two.

Softball opens play Monday at 7.30 in the Big East softball tournament. They face Nash Central who is the number three seed. This is their last chance at a victory this year.

Since I can't get on the NCHSAA web site I don't know who the tennis team plays Tuesday in the playoffs but they are home.

Girls soccer is home in the playoffs at 5.00pm Wednesday.

North Carolina did what they needed to do in ACC baseball. They swept Wake Forest over the weekend and are now tied with State for eighth. Brian Goodwin got another triple last night which is his sixth of the year. He is two off the Carolina record which is eight in a season. It would help his cause if Carolina could go deep in the NCAA's, but in order to do that they need to win four out of six the next two weeks against Virginia and Virginia Tech.

Elliott Avent won victory number 514 at N C State today. Aventon's very own is now the winningest coach in N C State history.

Mother's Day Quiet

Hope everyone is able to enjoy today with your family on this special day for Mothers May Ninth.

Yesterday was the anniversary of a special event that happen that I had nothing to do with but I sure thought I did. May eighth 1968 was the day that Jim Hunter pitched a perfect game for the Oakland A's. Back in those days when Philco transistor radios were the rage and with Oakland playing Minnesota there was no station on the east coast carrying the game on the radio.

If Oakland played in the east Baltimore, New York, Boston Cleveland or Detroit you might be able to find the game on that Philco and I could hear every pitch that he threw when the signal would not fade in and out like am radio can do at night. This game was in Oakland and even the paper had gone to press by the end of the game so there is no box score to jump out of bed for to see if Jimmy had won.

Local radio was however buzzing about the event. Jimmy Hunter had pitched a perfect game. The first perfect game in 55 years in the major leagues. Once I heard those words I was on cloud nine for the remainder of the day. My Geometry teacher was Dutch Overton who umpired high school baseball and was a scout for the Cleveland Indians. Dutch thought that Cleveland was going to sign Hunter right up to the point when Charles Finley offer a $75,000 bonus to sign when Cleveland had offered $50,000. There was no geometry class this day but an hour of Baseball.

Just five years earlier Jimmy was a member of the Ahoskie American Legion team who had played for the state championship with a ten year old boy named Tony dragging the bats. To me even today eleven years after his death I feel like he's part of my family just like Freddy and Francis Coombs were. All those guy on that team I had a bond with them even though most of them were six to eight years older than me.

Hunter set a record that that night which has yet to be broken. He had four rbi's while pitching the perfect game. Only six thousand saw the game which was the smallest crowd to watch a perfect game pitched. One oddity, that was the A's first year in Oakland and it was only the tenth major league game ever played in Oakland at that time.

Mis-spoke yesterday: I mis-spoke yesterday, I said that if Pitt CC won the region X title last night they would go the JUCO world series. Last night they beadt USC-Sumpter to win the title. 18-4. The Bulldogs now play in the Eastern District regional which the winner of regions X, XV and XX play each other with the winner going to the JUCO world series. This district tournament will be played in Winterville at Pitt. This will give local people a chance to see our three local players Jim Leggett, Zack Woodley and Mike Williams in college playoff games.