Hey Abbott

TigerBlog gave up on "Mike and Mike in the Morning" long ago, choosing instead to split his morning commute between Imus and Boomer and Carton.

Usually, he'll linger more with Imus - unless he happens upon a pretty good guest on the Boomer and Carton show. When that happens, they're usually pretty good interviewers.

The Boomer and Carton show is at its best, by the way, when Carton is pretending that he was as good an athlete as Boomer and then Boomer dismisses him. That's a good dynamic.

Unfortunately, the show gets too silly sometimes, especially when women are the subject of some juvenile comments.

This morning, though, it was pretty good stuff.

TB was listening to a guest talk about the day he threw a no-hitter. As it was, the hosts didn't mention his name for awhile, which TB actually liked, since he was trying to figure out who it was.

The clues kept coming as he spoke and mentioned that he'd thrown:

* a no-hitter for the Yankees
* against the Indians
* not a perfect game

TB originally thought David Wells or David Cone, but it wasn't either of them.

Eventually, TB though he had the right guy, Dave Righetti. As it turned out, he had the wrong no-hitter.

Righetti threw a no-hitter against the Red Sox on July 4, 1983.

It was Jim Abbott who threw the no-hitter against the Indians, his on Sept. 4, 1993.

TB imagines that even the most ardent anti-Yankee fan still had root for Jim Abbott (TB-Baltimore, is this true?).

Abbott, for those who don't know, was born without a right hand. Despite that, he was a star high school athlete who went to the University of Michigan, helped the U.S. to the 1988 gold medal in baseball in the Olympics in Seoul and was a first-round draft choice in Major League Baseball.

He would tuck a glove under his arm when he pitched and then somehow get it on before the ball could be hit back to him. Teams that tried to bunt on him weren't usually successful.

Anyway, on the Boomer and Carton show this morning, Abbott was talking about the book he's written, about having only one hand, about his career. As when he had been a player, he came across as simply a nice guy.

And, when you're born without your hand, you never know any different, so to him, it was all very natural. Still, to reach the levels he did with only one hand is a tremendously inspiring achievement.

Abbott kept talking about trusting his catcher, and TB couldn't think who the Yankee catcher was in 1993. Eventually, Abbott said the name: Matt Nokes.

If throwing a no-hitter is a huge accomplishment, catching one is a huge thrill.

One person who knows the feeling is Princeton baseball coach Scott Bradley, who caught a no-hitter by Randy Johnson for the Seattle Mariners on June 2, 1990.

As an aside, TB can't remember the context of the conversation that he had with Bradley the day that Bradley said something along the lines of "hey, I was once traded straight up for Ivan Calderon," but TB remembers that it was pretty funny.

Bradley coaches the defending Ivy League baseball champion, and the Tigers opened the 2012 season with a 3-1 weekend, splitting with Dartmouth in a rematch of last year's Ivy League Championship Series and then sweeping Harvard.

It's a good thing for the Tigers that they went 1-3, because the other three Gehrig Division schools (Columbia, Cornell, Penn) matched it, leaving a four-way tie after one weekend.

The format for Ivy baseball has two cross-over weekends, where the teams play two games against each of the four teams in the other division, and then three weekends where the teams plays four games against the other three teams in its own division.

At the end of the 20 games, the two division champs play best-of-three for the Ivy title and NCAA tournament berth.

The Gehrig Division champion has hosted the ILCS the last two years. Before that, you have to go back to 2003 to find the last time that the Gehrig Division team was the host.

If the first weekend is an indication, then this year's Gehrig Division race figures to be fascinating. Also, it's possible that the Gehrig teams, if they really are better, will beat up on each other to the point where one Rolfe team ends up with a better record.

In the meantime, Princeton heads to Yale and Brown this weekend, the final one of the cross-over games.

One of the great events of last year was the 2011 Ivy League Championship Series Game 3, when Princeton defeated Dartmouth to win the title. It was on a perfect May Sunday at Clarke Field.

It'd be okay with TB if there was a repeat of that this year.

After Weekend 1 of Ivy baseball, though, it's obvious that there's a long way to go.