Ty Pryor is a junior pitcher at North Florida. He was 5-4 as a
freshman at USF in 2005. Pryor was 1-1 as a sophomore at Tennessee in 2006 with
52 strikeouts in 38 innings. He sat out last season and served as a radio color
analyst for UNF home games. Pryor was taken by the Indians in the 26th round of
the 2006 draft and by the Angels in the 28th round of the 2007 draft. His
brother, Tucker, is also an Osprey.
April 9, 2008
Savoring the Moniker "Giant Killer"
The digital clock on the bottom right of my
computer screen reads 1:45. I sit here in a row of computers in
the library at UNF and have given up on all notions of
meaningful sleep tonight. Apparently sleep is only for regular
students. By no means am I the only one here, but these people
have the option of taking a nap after class tomorrow, whereas I,
along with my teammates, will try to catch some z’s on a bumpy
bus ride to Gainesville.
This has become my life, and I’m sure it has
become the life of thousands of other ballplayers across the
nation. Forget practices – maybe if you’re lucky and have a home
series on the weekend you can squeeze some BP in on Thursday,
but more than likely that day will be spent on the road or in an
airport.
But enough of the sob story because getting out
on the mound and playing ball more than makes up for my slipping
grades, at least in my mind.
As
for my team, the “Giant Killer” label has stuck, and we continue
to build that reputation. Last Wednesday, we beat 13th-ranked
UF (That’s the Gators for all you non-Floridians) in an 11-10,
10-inning marathon. A win that, yours truly, “snaked” out of the
pen (ask a pitcher what that means). That also happened to be
our fourth win over a ranked opponent this year, and with
Florida State, Miami and North Carolina on the horizon, it’s not
our last chance to add to that win total.
Tonight, however, we couldn’t pull off another
win and dropped the game against Florida 5-3, forcing a rubber
match tomorrow. The weekend series between these two jaunts with
the Gators was successful, taking two out of three from
Campbell. One thing I have noticed with these big midweek games
is the fact that it is extremely hard to maintain the
excitement, momentum – what ever you want to call it – through
the weekend. When you have a three-game series with a school
like UF sandwiching a conference series, it is very easy to let
off the gas pedal and get trapped.
I read somewhere that we (the Ospreys) have a
Top-25 non-conference schedule, and it doesn’t surprise me. I
feel like every single midweek game is a battle, due to the fact
that there are so many good teams in Florida to play. I don’t
know if there is another state in the country that has as many
options of good to great teams to play out of conference. Maybe
I’m biased though.
Back in reality and the world of academia, the
class work is piling up, and the light at the end of the tunnel
is blocked by finals and research papers. Sleep, meanwhile, will
have to wait for smooth pavement on a seven-hour bus ride.
Ty Pryor
