Stanford: Ousted From Omaha

It's probably too much of a reach to say that Georgia's 10-8 victory over Stanford which eliminated the Cardinal from the CWS was payback for what transpired on the football field almost 30 years ago, isn't it?

New Year's Eve '78 ... Georgia blew that 22-0 lead (wayyy back when the Cardinal was "Cardinals: plural") in the Bluebonnet Bowl (wayyyy back when the "Astro-" had been recently dropped from the title of "Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl") ... and coach Bill Walsh and QB Steve Dils led the comeback ... resulting in a 25-22 victory.

Those were some glorious days (pre-Turk Schonert, pre-T.C. Ostrander).

But, now it's over for the team which plays at Sunken Diamond ... courtesy of the Dawgs' Big-P Factor -- Ryan Peisel and Rich Poythress, the big guns for coach Dave Perno.

We don't know if the Junkyard Dawgs possess enough poise to bring a third consecutive World Series title to the state of Georgia (the Little Leaguers from Columbus, GA and Warner Robins, GA -- the latter, birthplace of strikeout god, Russell Branyan -- have brought LLWS titles home to the Peach State the previous two summers ), but ya gotta like any team which has somebody named "Poythress" on it.

Poythress ... what is that?
Norwegian? Bulgarian? Serbo-Croat?

Stanford TRIED to hang with Georgia in the name game, as was demonstrated the other night when, in their final AB, Toby Gerhart was hit by a pitch and Wande Olabisi came in to pinch-run.

When Aaron Yount drew a walk, J.J. Jelmini was brought in to pinch-run for Yount.

Sadly, the game ended with a DP grounder ... and most of us hate it when a game ends with classic baseball names such as Olabisi and Jelmini dying on the basepaths.

Uh-oh ... better not let Keeth Peeters or Rik I-Mur see that previous sentence with the distasteful metaphor.

Not because they'll condemn it; but because they'll steal it ...