As regular readers of this weblog are aware, several cities are vying for the right to host the SEC baseball tournament, and Duluth, Ga., is one of them. Lisa Anders, the marketing communications director for the Gwinnett Convention and Visitors Bureau, was kind enough to take the time to answer some of my questions about the bid to bring the conference tourney to the Peach State.

Dawg Sports: For the benefit of those of us who have not yet taken in a game at Coolray Field, tell us what the ballpark has to offer to SEC baseball fans.

Lisa Anders: Coolray Field is incredibly fan-friendly, with great sightlines and not a bad seat in the house. It is a very open facility that is state-of-the-art. It's the newest facility among the potential bids, with great food & beverage and a completely involved and supportive executive and office staff.

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In early May, it looked like the choice was between Hoover and Memphis as the host site for the SEC baseball tournament. (The posting linked to in the preceding sentence also attests to the extent to which grammar nerds think alike.) Later that same month, Duluth got into the mix. Now, however, as Red Cup Rebellion has noted, Jackson, Jacksonville, and Montgomery apparently also are among the contenders.

The SEC is selecting its baseball tournament site through an open bid process for the first time ever, and assistant league commissioner Craig Mattox indicated that he was surprised by the high level of interest exhibited. The crowded field might have been even larger, as Little Rock was thought to be among the cities vying for the right to host the tourney. However, the Natural State venue opted not to be considered due to the smaller seating capacity of its stadium.

In the postings linked to above, I have examined Duluth and Memphis as alternatives to the league tournament’s current home in Hoover, but Jackson, Jacksonville, and Montgomery are new entrants into the field. Here is what each brings to the table:

Jackson, Miss.: Trustman Park accommodates some 8,480 souls. The stadium, which opened its doors in 2005, is located in the suburban city of Pearl. Class AA’s Mississippi Braves play their home games there.

Jacksonville, Fla.: In 2003, the Gateway City unveiled the Baseball Grounds for the benefit of the local Jacksonville Suns, who play in Class AA. Jacksonville has experience hosting a conference baseball tournament, as the city by the St. John’s River welcomed the ACC’s postseason tourney there in four of the last six seasons.

Montgomery, Ala.: Riverwalk Stadium, which houses the Class AA Montgomery Biscuits, is a 7,000-seat park built in 2004. Although the SEC prefers to hold the conference tournament at an arena with a capacity of at least 10,000, the local Chamber of Commerce claims (less than convincingly) that Montgomery will be able to meet the league’s needs. Area convention and visitor bureau vice president Dawn Hathcock asserts: "We will be able to make accommodations to seat more than the 7,000. Officials with the stadium say it can be done." Well, O.K., then.

With the Atlanta, Birmingham, and Memphis areas in play, I would be shocked to see any of the three surprise latecomers get the bid. Montgomery would appear to be the most attractive of the additional options, but the smaller stadium reduces the odds of the Cradle of the Confederacy wresting the tournament from the Magic City. Although I am an advocate of keeping the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party in Duval County and a fan of maintaining the SEC’s historic ties to the Gator Bowl, I have no desire to see postseason baseball moved to Jacksonville.

Bid proposals are due on Friday. While we most likely will not know until December which site will host the event beginning in 2012, we will know for sure by the end of the week whether all six cities have thrown their respective hats into the ring. Assuming that each of the half-dozen putative contenders submits a bid, which city should host the SEC baseball tournament?

Go ‘Dawgs!

At this point, I am prepared to go on the record and declare that my son and I are good luck for the Tampa Bay Rays. Since I finally forgave major league baseball for the 1994 strike and the steroid era, I have taken my son, Thomas, to Atlanta Braves games at Turner Field and to Diamond Dogs games in Athens and on the road, but we have no track record of success with our hometown major league team or our college baseball squad.

However, we spend several days each summer at the beach in Sarasota, and, last year, Thomas and I made the trek to Tropicana Field for a Rays game. We attended another Tampa Bay outing this year, taking in a game against the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday night. The Rays won, making Tampa Bay 2-0 in games attended by my son and me.

We also have a habit of catching quality pitching matchups. We have seen David Price twice, once against Roy Halladay and, more recently, against Tim Wakefield. I like Wakefield---having grown up a Braves fan in the 1970s, I have a fondness for Phil Niekro that frequently finds expression in a favorable view of knuckleballers generally---but I don’t like his team. My brother-in-law said it best when he learned that Thomas and I would be going to this particular game: Bill Simmons and a pair of recent World Series victories for the Red Sox have made Boston sports fans so insufferable that it is now not only possible but downright reasonable to root against the Red Sox even when they are playing the Yankees.

That is harsh, I know, but not overly so, and, although the exchanges I heard between Boston fans and the northern transplants among the Rays faithful contained accents that made my ears bleed (I’ll make a deal with y’all: we’ll pronounce the G’s at the ends of our gerunds if you’ll pronounce the R’s at the ends of your nouns), it was nice to hear the sort of batter-by-batter trash talk that helps make baseball such a conversational game; after the Tampa Bay fan behind us referred to David Ortiz as "Big Sloppy" and characterized Kevin Youkilis as "Kevin Useless," Thomas opted to get in on the act by calling Bill Hall "Bill Fall." Hey, he’s seven and he’s used to century-old recycled SEC insults, so give the kid a break.

Following several consecutive rainy days earlier in the week, the Sunshine State finally lived up to its name on Wednesday, as Thomas and I drove to the ballpark beneath clear blue skies. We wore our matching Georgia baseball jerseys; I am happy to report that I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of smart remarks our fashion choice provoked, although I have noted on both of my visits to Tropicana Field the dearth of Gator attire among baseball fans in St. Petersburg. We bought matching Rays caps at the stadium; my grandfather was a lifelong St. Louis Cardinals fan, my father grew up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and I grew up a fan of the baseball team that arrived in Atlanta from Boston by way of Milwaukee a mere two years before I was born in the City Too Busy to Hate, so my family’s major league allegiances are as transient as the franchises themselves.

We arrived in time for me to take Thomas by the rays touch tank. (As a Georgia fan, I strongly approve of live animal mascots.) Evidently, I got better seats than I intended; we were in Row C of Section 212, within sight of the press box and just in front of the Johnny Bench Suite on the first base side. When you’re a seven-year-old boy attending your first major league night game with your father, nachos and cotton candy will suffice for supper.

As an SEC football fan first and foremost, I don’t find Tropicana Field particularly fearsome as a sports venue; a Mississippi State fan would hear the tinkling of cowbells in the Tampa Bay arena and scoff. However, it remains a kid-friendly venue, as the Rays go out of their way to provide every imaginable opportunity for youngsters to step onto the field and appear on the scoreboard. Aside from the forthcoming Vanilla Ice concert (Vanilla Ice? really?), the franchise appears to do everything it can to bring fans to the ballpark, which is why I find it so baffling that a community that worked so hard for so long to attract a team to the area cannot get more fans in the stands.

I freely admit that the father-son nature of these outings accounts for a large portion of my enjoyment of Rays games, but, as I drove down I-275 across the illuminated span of the Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway Bridge with my son nodding off in the back seat after watching Evan Longoria break up a scoreless pitchers’ duel with a home run, I couldn’t help but wonder why more folks didn’t make more of an effort to make it to Tropicana Field to watch a successful team with good players at a venue located right off the interstate. I make it there once a year, and I plan to continue to do so, and my ties to Tampa exist at more than one remove. (My wife’s father’s family is from the area originally.) The Rays are a fun team to watch and Tropicana Field is a fun place at which to watch them. If you find yourself within an hour’s drive of St. Petersburg in the spring or summer, I highly recommend devoting an afternoon or evening to taking in a Tampa Bay game. If you happen to have a parent or a child who might like to accompany you, that’d be a good call, too.

Go ‘Dawgs!

After the Georgia Bulldogs completed the worst baseball season in school history, David Perno fired Brady Wiederhold and personally took charge of coaching the Diamond Dog pitchers. To fill the vacancy this left on the baseball staff, Coach Perno hired Wingate head baseball coach Allen Osborne to serve as the Red and Black's hitting instructor and third base coach.

Coach Osborne earned a master of education degree from the University of Georgia while serving as a graduate assistant under Robert Sapp in the late 1990s, then he returned to Athens as a volunteer assistant coach under Ron Polk in 2000. Coach Osborne remained in the Classic City for the first season of Coach Perno's stewardship of the program in 2002 before serving stints as an assistant coach at East Carolina (from 2003 to 2005), Wakefield High School (in 2006), and Memphis (in 2007).

Since taking over as the head coach of the Wingate Bulldogs in 2008, Coach Osborne has taken his team to the South Atlantic Conference tournament each season, finally winning the league tourney in 2010 to give Wingate its first conference tournament title in a decade.

Coach Osborne sounded excited to return to Georgia to work for Coach Perno, who coached him as a player at Marshall in the early 1990s. Frankly, I had hoped Coach Perno would hire a big-name pitching coach rather than bring in an assistant with whom he has prior history, but Coach Perno has earned the benefit of the doubt, and the baseball program seems to be one of the few areas of Georgia athletics in which hiring coaches with previous ties to the program is not a recipe for disaster, so I will keep my doubts in check and simply welcome Allen Osborne home.

Go 'Dawgs!

The TCU Horned Frogs will take on the UCLA Bruins at 2:00 this afternoon, with the Clemson Tigers and the South Carolina Gamecocks squaring off at 7:00 tonight. The respective winners will meet in the best-of-three College World Series finals in Omaha.

Feel free to follow along and offer observations about the action in the comments below. Which teams do you like? (By that, I mean, "Which teams do you believe will win?", and I also mean, "For which teams will you be rooting?" Personally, I am torn, so I'm curious how you come down upon this crucial question.)

Go 'Dawgs!

If you're like me, you're watching the College World Series, wishing the Diamond Dogs were in Omaha, and wondering who taught Matt Purke how to wear a baseball cap.

Of course, Georgia's 2010 campaign was the worst baseball season in school history, so the Classic City Canines came nowhere near earning a trip to Rosenblatt Stadium, but that doesn't mean the Athenians were awful at absolutely everything. For instance, the Red and Black finished tied for third in the conference with fourteen triples in 53 games. (League-leading LSU tallied 24 in 63 outings, while the SEC's second-place finisher, Florida, notched fifteen in 62 contests. Georgia is tied with Auburn, who used 64 games to get to fourteen three-baggers.)

Admittedly, I'm reaching to find something positive to say about a Bulldog baseball club that had a horrible year, but there are worse things to be good at than hitting triples. Baseball arguably is the most "retro" of major sports---few games have changed as little on the field in the last century as the national pastime---and there are few things more deserving of the "throwback" label than the triple.

In 1901, the Cincinnati Reds' Sam Crawford hit sixteen home runs and sixteen triples; he led the league in round-trippers yet finished only fifth on the senior circuit in three-baggers. Crawford retired in 1917 with a record 312 career triples, making him one of many standout players in his day to conclude his stay in the majors with more three-base hits than dingers. Frank "Home Run" Baker, Ty Cobb, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, George Sisler, Tris Speaker, and Honus Wagner also all retired with more career triples than homers.

Be that as it may, though, a triple is just an anachronistic holdover from the dead-ball era, right? Well, maybe not. Sometimes, in sports, less is more. I recall a game a few years back in which the Atlanta Braves were trailing late by a score somewhere in the neighborhood of 6-0. Ryan Klesko led off one of the last innings with a solo shot. Atlanta went on to lose 6-1. A triple might have started a rally; a home run with nobody on altered the margin but was strictly of statistical, rather than actual, significance.

Consider this: Zach Cone, who captured the triple crown for the Diamond Dogs this year, was one of the few bright spots for Georgia in 2010. Cone carded a team-leading seven triples for the Red and Black this season. That propensity to hit the ball hard helped him compile a .627 slugging percentage and drive in 53 runs . . . 21 more than the next-best batter in the Bulldog lineup, and more than one-fourth of the Georgia team total. Cone's 133 total bases in 2010 exceeded by more than 30 the second-place Red and Black batter's tally.

For what it's worth, the team that currently leads all NCAA Division I squads in triples is Arizona State with 37. The No. 1 overall seed in this year's College World Series field is . . . Arizona State.

Go 'Dawgs!

As noted here previously, the College World Series field has been set. On Saturday, the Florida St. Seminoles will take on the TCU Horned Frogs and the Florida Gators will tussle with the UCLA Bruins, while Sunday will see the Oklahoma Sooners cross paths with the South Carolina Gamecocks and the Arizona St. Sun Devils battle the Clemson Tigers.

Also noted here previously is the fact that David Perno has elected to serve as his own pitching coach. Since this move seems unusual, it is worth taking the time to find out just how odd a practice this is, and I can think of no better place to start than with the eight teams who made it to Omaha. Here is how the 2010 College World Series combatants go about coaching their hurlers:

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Even before David Perno fired Brady Wiederhold, I had a list of assistant coaches he should call. It turns out that, instead of placing those calls as soon as the opportunity presented itself, Coach Perno has looked in-house and selected as his pitching coach . . . himself.

Coach Perno, whose coaching resume includes a stint as a pitching coach during his days as an assistant at Middle Georgia, will be taking charge of the Bulldog hurlers. He explains, "I’m going to move over and have more hands-on responsibility with the pitching. I’m excited about getting over there and bringing some more accountability with what’s going on over there."

While I can’t claim I’m completely sold on the move, I admire Coach Perno’s enthusiasm and I credit him with making meaningful changes after the worst season in Georgia baseball history. Not only did he release Coach Wiederhold (in a move that must have been as tough for him personally as Mark Richt’s decision to sack Willie Martinez), but he also added junior college standouts Bryan Benzor (RHP), Joey Delmonico (C/1B), and Curt Powell (IF) to a 2010 recruiting class that already appeared to have been assembled shrewdly, as most of the players the Diamond Dogs signed will be coming to campus instead of going to the minor leagues.

There are a lot of problems with the Georgia baseball team that need fixing, and I would have preferred it if Coach Perno had brought in a full-time pitching coach, but his track record of success has earned him the benefit of the doubt.

Go ‘Dawgs!