The trip down to Houston was pretty easy from Omaha. We had a chance to go to the hotel and change before we went to practice. It was pretty nice because it was the first time where it was hot, nice baseball weather. It was about 70 degrees down there, and it was like everyone was playing baseball for the first time.

Everyone was giddy and ready to go like a bunch of preschoolers running around out there, trying to hit the ball as far as they could. We knew it was going to be a good weekend right away because the weather was so nice.

The Friday game, we were missing our All-American ace because of a violation of team rules. When Coach A broke the news to our team, it was a pretty big shock. Not too many head coaches have the balls to leave an All-American ace pitcher back at home, but rules are rules.

Drew Bowman started against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and shut them down. I was pretty impressed with his performance, and he is going to be a major contributor for us this year.

On Saturday against Rice, Charlie Shirek started hot and threw maybe 30 pitches over the first three innings. Our hitters were amazing in the first two innings, and we jumped ahead 5-0. In my head, I was thinking the game was over because we had Charlie on the mound and a great bullpen. I would have never imagined that we would give up six runs in the fourth inning because of mental and physical errors. It was a testament to being our sixth game and not being outside too much. Those are the type of errors we won’t be making in May and June.

The one positive thing we took from the game is that we should have won. Rice is always a quality team with a great pitching staff and great hitters, but we thought that we let a win slip away from under us.

Sunday’s game was pretty wild. I knew people were going to score runs, but I didn’t expect to see the ball fly like it did. Johnny Dorn started and is probably the most competitive person I know. He gave up some bombs to Florida Atlantic, and they hit him pretty hard, but he is such as competitor that he got us through the sixth inning and gave the bullpen the lead; we took over from there.

Our hitters started very hot. Ryan Werhle hit a homer, and Craig Corriston hit his first homer, which was really good to see. Steve Edlefsen came in in the seventh and eighth and really shut them down. I came on and got the final out of a 9-8 game for my third save of the year.

For the most part, it was a pretty good weekend, but they left my bag at the airport. I still haven’t gotten my bag and it’s Wednesday afternoon. I’m getting kind of worried because we are flying to Orlando Thursday morning at 8 a.m.

Erik Bird

(photo courtesy of Nebraska Media Relations Office)