Beer Me.

I was supposed to make my way to the ACC Baseball Championship this past Sunday.  The tournament last all week and took place at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.  Unfortunately the tournament fell on the same as progress reports at school, which means that I am hellaciously busy with grading and typing grades into a grade book.  I figured with a three day weekend, it would be fun to take in the game.

Well, it did not really work out that way.  The game was moved up Saturday night to 10am because of the impending Tropical Storm.  Then the game was pushed back to 11am.  I like going to baseball games, but my five year old does not do really well with rain delays.  We decided to watch the game from the comfort of our living room.  

8 hours, 31 runs, and a whole bunch of Florida State errors later the Clemson Tigers won this year's ACC Baseball Tournament.  

My son and I had a good time watching the first few innings of the game, but by the time Clemson had opened up a 13-1 lead the little guy had moved on to watching Lego Superheroes.  I stand by my decision to stay home and watch the game....

Truth be told, I have actually already seen Clemson play this year.  Back in April, while I was on my vacation from blogging, I went to see the Tigers play Duke.  The Blue Devils have actually been playing a lot of their home games at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park in recent years, but they were playing at their on campus stadium Jack Coombs Field.  Coombs was a pitcher on the Philadelphia A's way back in the day.  Here is his statue outside the baseball stadium....

Jack Coombs is a small stadium.  The seating area is tiny and relatively flat.  Small stadiums can be nice when you have a good view, but then sometimes someone in a mascot uniform walks up and sits in front of you.....

Mascot Free.....

Mascot.....

Sir, your devil horns are obstructing my view of this baseball game.  So what does any of this have to do with Beer?  Great question.  If you are a fan of college baseball and have watched Clemson this year you will know exactly where this is headed, if not I will introduce you to a name to file away:

Seth Beer.  

Beer is the freshman right fielder for Clemson, the ACC Player of the Year, and should garner a few more pieces of hardware before the end of the college baseball season.  Beer graduated from high school in December of his senior season, so he was never drafted by a Major League team.  Just straight to college.....

Beer had a quiet game against Duke, but seemed to reek havoc against everyone else in the ACC.  Luckily, as a freshman, he is going to be around for a few more years.  I am looking forward to seeing him a few more times with Clemson, and I am guessing that he has a pretty good shot at making the USA Baseball College team too.  

While I was at the game I also picked up a card from a friend who I met up with at the game.  Also happens to be one of the biggest Clemson fans that I know.  The card was a Beer card.....

I rarely do in-person autographs, and while Beer has a few certified autographs from Leaf, I was really happy to land this card.  My friend actually was picking up a few autographs from a few of his favorite Clemson players.  Seth Beer stopped and signed and my friend was generous enough to give me one of the signatures.  Really cool card and a great player to watch in the future.