Georgia baseball: Three game series with Georgia Tech a series like no other
Friday through Sunday, Feb. – Mar. 1 will be a weekend to remember for the Georgia Baseball Team and fans. It might be a bit grueling, but it will sure be different.
Think the Cubs and White Sox playing at Wrigley one day Comiskey the next, and for no particular reason, Peoria on day three. Except in the case of the Georgia baseball series with Georgia Tech, there is a good reason, and day three ain’t Peoria.
Let’s first talk about Comiskey. Whatever some company wasted to put their name on that park, it is still Comiskey. (The flavor this year is “Guaranteed Rate Field”. You can thank me for sparing you from having to look it up). Just what is a “Truist” anyway? But I digress.
My friend Kessel Stelling calls that Cobb County facility Braves Stadium. I will make you look up the reason for why he calls it that. But I digress.
Weekend schedule
5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 28 at Foley Field, Athens
2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 29 at Russ Chandler Stadium, Atlanta
2 p.m. Sunday, Mar. 1 at Coolray Field, Lawrenceville
Let’s get the basics out of the way. Georgia baseball usually plays Georgia Tech home and away at varying dates during each season. The third game is typically wherever the Braves play before they tear down one perfectly functional stadium to build a newer, shinier functional stadium.
This year the current “Braves Stadium” is not available because some ski event tore up the field. They must make repairs so it can be in good shape by the Braves opening day game. Wouldn’t it just have been more expedient to build an entirely new stadium in, say, Coweta County? Maybe Guaranteed Rate or someone like whoever they are could be duped into paying for it. There I go digressing again.
One great concern is that the neutral field game is always the best attended, and proceeds benefit a very worthy cause, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. It’s the Annual Farmview Market Spring Classic Baseball Game.
Coolray Field seating capacity is 10,427, Braves Stadium is 41,149. You know one thing Georgia baseball fans can do to make the best of a less than ideal situation? Make sure Coolray Field sells out. Maybe Gwinnett fire marshals will even let in a few beyond that 10,427 for just that day.
Just think of it, you won’t likely see Georgia play Georgia Tech at Coolray again. And Coolray Field is indeed cool. Not a bad seat in the house, friendly staff, affordable concessions and excellent vibe.
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I took my adolescent son to a couple of great games at Coolray. He joked that the home Gwinnett Stripers should be called the Strippers. They get a lot of that. Stripers are a variety of bass that put up a good fight, and it’s a play on there being a sliver of Gwinnett County that borders Lake Lanier. But the lake is 10 miles away from Coolray as the crow flies, so only flooding way more severe than in recent weeks will bring a striper anywhere near a fan in the seats unless they used a 10 mile fishing line.
Don’t you wish you could say you attended the one Georgia-Florida game at Sanford Stadium? Oh wait, horrendously bad example. Florida won 52-17 in what is known as the “half a hundred between the hedges” game. Please forget I mentioned this. Take a powder. Please take a powder.
But back to Georgia versus Georgia Tech baseball. The Bulldogs have pretty much owned Tech in recent years, just like Georgia pretty much owns Georgia Tech in everything. We want our grandchildren and their grandchildren to own Tech.
Tech may have pulled off one rare baseball victory in 2019. But I won’t admit it. If they did I did not make like a Techie and whine about losing. I just forgot about it and immediately went back to thankfulness that I did not go to Tech.
Techies will surely chime in and remind me of that victory if it indeed happened. They may even sneak into Sanford and steal a branch from our hedges since none of them ever have a date or anything better to do than practice slide rule skills. Unless of course one of our kids is real smart and needs an engineering degree not yet offered at UGA’s increasingly stellar engineering schools. That gap will soon close.
And remember the old joke? What does a Georgia grad call a Tech grad 2 years after graduation? “Boss”. Well I got news for you. Those roles are now reversed. UGA grads are now just as bright as Tech grads. And there was a discovery in recent years that one quality is essential to success in life. “A personality”.
Back to baseball one last time. Friday’s game at Foley will take care of itself. If history holds there will be more Georgia baseball fans than Georgia Tech fans at Russ Chandler on Saturday. If history holds again the Bulldogs will sweep the 2020 series at Coolray on Sunday. Let’s make sure they do it before a packed house full of Red and Black. And let’s do it for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.