Fear the Beard

Believe it or not, opening day for the 2011 college baseball season is right around the corner. Finally being able to practice together as a team and prepare for the season is something that never gets old. From that first day of fall practice to the fall World Series through the winter lifting and conditioning period, the first day of practice is always highly anticipated. Coaches always try and do different things to get their teams ready and prepared for the long season that lies ahead. This year, at a pre-season team meeting our coach told us to simply just stop shaving and see what kind of beards we could have for our first series at East Tennessee State.
To be completely honest, I didn’t think many guys on the team would buy into this beard idea that coach proposed. I thought it would be hard for some guys (Gallic…) who always try and stay pretty and have never had any type of facial hair. However, about two weeks in now we got some pretty nice beards going, we look like an NHL team preparing for the Stanley Cup.
The beards have certainly been something that creates a lot of competition in the locker room, guys always competing for the best beard. Last year our team participated in the famous mustache March. This was my first experience of mustache March and some of the mustaches we had going were amazing as well as some that we had never seen before.
I will be capturing some of the beards we have going over the next couple days and posting them up on here. Stay tuned for the latest blog post and follow the page on Facebook, On the Bump: The Life of Two College Pitchers. We will be blogging all season long and will be featuring video interviews, pictures, and guest bloggers from teams across the country about their season and college baseball in general. Until then, stay classy Poughkeepsie.

The Beginning

Welcome to On the Bump!  The idea for us to start this blog came from a couple different directions.  Both being last semester seniors in college we were faced with the dreaded capping class.  Knowing that our final project was going to be something that compiled all of our study into one semester long project the ideas became overwhelming.  We wanted to incorporate three and a half years of study and athletic experience into this project and that was when On the Bump was born.  Both being Communication majors with a Public Relations concentration and having experience in writing we decided to start the blog, capturing our final semester in college as student athletes.

The fall of 2007 was when we first met on the campus of Marist College.  From the start we really could not escape each other.  Whether it was running around the McCann baseball field or in Lowell Thomas studying about the roots of Communication, we always seemed to run into one another.  Our college experience on and off the baseball field has been one that we wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.  The times riding the bus, early morning lifts, unforgettable games, and the friends we have made over the past three and a half years is something we wanted to share with everyone.  This is a unique look into the grind of a college baseball season and the last semester of undergraduate studies for two college pitchers. Enjoy!