A First Home Run And A Second NCAA

Well, that's what TigerBlog gets for not staying up until 2 am or so watching the Yankees-Angels game Tuesday night.

TB wrote about Mike Ford, the Princeton alum and 2013 Ivy League Pitcher and Player of the Year who is in the early stages of his Major League career, with the New York Yankees.

When TB wrote that entry, the Yankees had not yet started their game in Anaheim against the Angels, and Ford had one Major League hit. To that point, he'd been walked intentionally twice and had one hit, which TB presumes is a rarity.

Anyway, TB went to sleep without considering what might happen in the game in California. When he woke up, he saw that he'd missed quite a lot for Ford.

First, he hit a single. Then he followed that with another hit, giving him his first multi-hit game, and he did it in style, smashing a home run over the centerfield fence.

You can see the home run HERE. For those who think John Sterling's home run calls are cute and clever and creative (as opposed to tired and irritating), you can hear what he came up with for Ford.

If you watch the video, you'll see how Ford is trying to play it cool, even though you know he just wants to smile 10 times wider than he's permitting himself to in the moment. 

Congratulations to Mike Ford on his first Yankees home run. How many undrafted guys stick it out for seven years in the Minors before getting their first shot and end up homering?

It's a great story, one that TB would have included yesterday had he stayed up much, much later than he did.

As for today, the big story in Princeton Athletics is the men's volleyball team's NCAA tournament opener at Barton College in Wilson, N.C.

TigerBlog didn't know much about Barton, so he looked on their website to see what he could learn about the Bulldogs. For starters, he found out that Barton is a Division II program in most sports.

He also found out that like Princeton, Barton didn't lose any football games last season. For that matter, Barton hasn't lost in a long, long, long time.

In fact, the last time Barton lost a football game, Princeton's best player was named Dick Kazmaier. It turns out that Barton is reviving football after dropping the sport in 1950.

If the football team is anything like the men's volleyball team, it'll be competitive in no time. This is Year 8 of the men's volleyball program for Barton, and the team will be making its second NCAA appearance. 

Like Princeton, Barton advanced to the NCAA tournament by winning its conference championship in five, defeating King 17-15 in the final game to take the Conference Carolinas title. Barton and King have tied for the regular-season championship three straight years.

Barton, who is 25-4, has played two EIVA teams this year, losing to George Mason and defeating Harvard. The Bulldogs have a 12-man roster, and five of those players are from Europe - three from Greece, one each from Norway and Serbia.

Of those 12 players, by the way, 11 are between 6-3 and 6-8 and half are either 6-4 or 6-5. The 12th player is 5-8.

Exactly half of Princeton's 18-man roster is from California. There are also 14 players at least 6-4, including 6-11 George Huhmann, the EIVA Player of the Year and tournament MVP (he's from Missouri).

There are also two players from Puerto Rico and two Texans. The rest of the roster is one player each from Hawaii, Florida and Pennsylvania.

The winner of this match heads to Pepperdine Tuesday for the next round in the seven-team event. Hawaii, the top seed, and Long Beach State, the second seed, have byes into the semifinals. You can watch Princeton-Barton HERE, with a 7:30 start time.

The entire tournament takes little more than a week, with the national semifinals a week from today and then the final a week from Saturday.

Princeton, by the way, has moved into the national rankings at No. 13 after it dominated the EIVA this year. It's Princeton's first appearance in the rankings since 2015.

It's Princeton's second appearance in the NCAA tournament ever and first since 1998.

It happens tonight.