Beavers On The Road: Baseball In Los Angeles
April 28, 2011
Associated Press feature on Oregon State | ESPN series preview
LOS ANGELES – As hard as it is to believe, the team’s trip to Los Angeles to play UCLA this weekend is the last time the Beavers will have to fly until the postseason.
The team’s remaining trips after this weekend are to Washington and a three-game series at Oregon. Naturally, the team will bus to Seattle and Eugene, respectively.
The fact it’s the last trip requiring a flight is significant in that it means there’s one month left and just a couple trips. Most importantly, less than 20 games (in fact, after the series with UCLA, that means just 14 games). It’s amazing how time has flown by so fast this season. I guess winning will certainly help that.
It’s funny; you always want the successful seasons seem like they take forever so you can savor them, and the less-than-successful years to fly by so you don’t need to go through the day-by-day. And yet, it seems like quite the opposite.
The Beavers left Corvallis at about 8:30 a.m. this morning and caught an 11:45 a.m. flight on Alaska to LAX, which landed the club at around 2 p.m. Being on Alaska of course meant no flying on the Washington plane, as was the case when OSU flew to the Bay Area two weeks ago.
Like every other flight, and this one was fortunately pretty smooth, just about everyone had their heads tilted back to get some sleep. There’s no better way to pass a two-hour flight. I sat next to Ben Wetzler and he commented on how two hours seemed like forever. I told him about our trip to Gainesville, Fla., last year for the NCAA Regionals and that it lasted about six hours.
That made him appreciate a two-hour flight easily (two hours isn’t even the longest in the Pac-10).
The Beavers had a couple hours to gather themselves after landing and the short trek from LAX to Culver City, where the team is staying this weekend. It’s about a 10-mile drive from the hotel to Jackie Robinson Stadium. In any other city, getting on the freeway (in LA it’s the 405) and driving there would make for a short jaunt. Not in LA. Not sure how the team bus plans on getting to the park, but I can guarantee I will be driving on side streets so I can hook around any potential bad traffic. That’s about the only bad part about the trip to Southern California.
After a two-hour break, the team’s players visited Jackie Robinson for a 90-minute workout that helped them acclimate to the park. Fortunately, they practiced at the same time as Friday night’s opener, so they got to see shadows and figure out where the sun will have its greatest affect.
In talking with the UCLA media relations contact, he informed me that the series will have a greater amount of media than usual. I guess that’s what happens when two top-25 teams meet. There may even be some national media there, so if you aren’t able to make it to the park for the series, do some searches in the LA market for media stories. Of course, we will have updated stats and a story after each game on osubeavers.com. And make sure to follow the OSU Baseball Twitter at twitter.com/beaver_baseball.
We have more than 1,700 followers, with about 200 new ones over the last 10 days. Would love to get that number increasing each day. OSU already has some of the most spirited fans in the country and ranks in the top 30 in attendance; let’s get our social media numbers up there as well. I like to think that social media figures represent how rabid of a fan base you have.
It’s time to go as the club has just finished practice. Hope to see as many OSU fans fill Jackie Robinson Stadium as possible and for the rest of you back in Oregon, tune in on the Beaver Sports Radio Network and Beaver Nation Online to follow the games.
Go Beavs!
Hank Hager
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