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Jun062005
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Regional Champions |
About at quickly as I was jobless, I was back at work this morning. I arrived at about 10 and worked for a few hours on the dictation that had been piling up somewhat. I worked on it until Dad and I left the office shortly before six this evening. We went to see Tulane play Alabama this evening for the New Orleans regional championship. They were originally rescheduled to play at one this afternoon but the game was delayed even further after heavy rain this afternoon. Before heading into the stadium, we stopped for something to eat. We decided to try a little south-western place on Calhoun called Kokopelli’s. I had some soft tacos and Dad had something else. We got into the stadium with plenty of time to spare before the first pitch at seven. Earlier in the day, the Tulane grounds crew was rather busy trying to dry the field. It was largely underwater earlier this afternoon and they went to great effort to make the field playable. In addition to pushing water off the outfield, they brought a helicopter in to hover over the field in an attempt to dry the field somewhat. The field was still quite wet at game time, but it was a small miracle that the field was playable at all after some 3-5 inches of rainfall, which caused a bit of havoc across the city. There was considerable street flooding. There was no running water through most of the east bank for a while this afternoon after lightning knocked out a pumping station. Anyway, the game started at seven against all odds. Alabama scored one in the top of the first but Tulane immediately answered with three to set the tone. Alabama scored 2 in the third and Tulane scored 3. Alabama scored another run in the fifth to bring the score to 5-4, startlingly reminiscent of Saturday’s game. During the fifth inning, it started drizzling. As time went on, it grew into a light rain. There was also lightning to the south. Had this been a regular season game I’m sure we wouldn’t have been playing. Greg Dini hit a home run in the seventh for two insurance runs. Just after that at 9:45, there was a lightning strike nearby and the officials pulled everyone off the field as the NCAA is very serious about lightning. Actually it was pretty surprising that they had no done so earlier. The light show had been going on at a distance for some time. Earlier in the game, there was an announcement made stating “no flash photography is allowed in the stadium,” which was rather amusing. The game entered a weather delay and the stadium was cleared. Dad and I went to Bruno’s to wait for the game to start again, if at all. The lightning stopped although the rain persisted. The game resumed an hour later at about 10:45. The original record crowd of 4, 127 looked to be about halved but there was just as much enthusiasm. There was no scoring in the eighth or ninth inning, although it was rather exciting none the less. Tulane held the lead of 7-4 from before the delay and Tulane won the regional championship. The team jogged a victory lap around the field, greeting the fans on the rails. It was quite a sight. I was up for a while after getting home shortly before midnight. Kristopher needed some help with his website so I remained online for a while. I watched Reservoir Dogs this evening. I’ve been under the impression that Tarantino was a flash in the pan. I saw the opening scene in film class last semester, which contains some rather amusing and sharp dialog, so I decided to give the movie a viewing. Unfortunately, the opening scene in the restaurant was the only entertaining part of the movie. The rest was just a bunch of ridiculous violence that amounts to nothing. This movie sucks.