Today's KU Baseball Games Canceled

Today's doubleheader with Iowa has been canceled.  For the latest information regarding schedule changes check kuathletics.com or follow @KUbaseballSID on Twitter.

Team Bonding on the Road to TCU

Senior outfielder Jimmy Waters is back with another update about the joys of traveling to the team’s first series at TCU last weekend.

The trip began by getting on the bus with our driver J.B. to take us to Kansas City Airport. With this being the first time the team traveled anywhere by bus, senior Wally Marciel, made sure to remind the freshman that they still had the freshman duties of staying on the bus and cleaning it when everyone else got off. It’s a pretty nice feeling not be a freshman anymore with those responsibilities.

It seemed like everything was going smooth until Ka’iana Eldredge, Wally Marciel, and myself tried to check in to receive our boarding pass. We had no idea why we were holding up the huge line behind us and then we started thinking what we all had in common. We realized the three of our names are juniors (James Waters, Jr.).

KU baseball players wait in line at KCI Airport

They ended up sending the three of us to the same counter to open up more counters for people to check in, instead of having three Southwest employees working on the same problem. Brilliant idea. The lady trying to solve the situation was on the phone figuring out why the computer system would not allow us to check in. Turns out that the system was reading the Jr. suffix as a last name and some how that erased our date of birth too.

After about 45 minutes of standing next to the counter with our bags and wondering if we were going to even be able to get on this first flight to Dallas/Fort Worth, the people at Southwest finally figured out how to resolve the issue. The Jr’s were finally able to check in.

While waiting to get on the plane, Nolan Mansfield thought it would be funny to prank one of the freshmen Tyler Smith. Tyler left his boarding pass under the seat and Nolan grabbed it when Tyler was not looking. When Tyler realized he was missing it he began secretly looking for it. He was moving chairs, checking his pockets, and dumping out everything in his bags. When we asked Tyler what he was doing he would not admit he lost his boarding pass. He was telling us he was not looking for anything. Nolan let him sweat it out for a while, but finally gave it back to him when we thought he was going to go tell Skip (Coach Price) he lost it.

The pranks were not over just yet. While at baggage claim in Dallas/Fort Worth, Wally Marciel and I thought it would be a good time to get freshman Frank Duncan with “The Bag Swoop”. Since all of our travel bags have our numbers on them, it is very easy to take someone’s bag without being too obvious. When Frank’s came out, Wally grabbed it and took it outside to the curb.

We then decided we would grab Alex DeLeon’s bag also. Alex was standing right behind us when we took it and was blind to what we had just done. Wally was able to sneak it out with out him catching on. About ten minutes later Frank and Alex were the only ones waiting for their bags to come out. They both finally figured out that they were being laughed at and came outside to find their bags waiting on the curb.

Pulling pranks like this are always good for getting a laugh at somebody else’s expense, but they’re also great for team bonding. With so many new faces this season, that’s something we really need to do to bring everybody together.

Jayhawks Postpone Friday Game with Saint Louis

Due to the winter weather expected to hit Lawrence Thursday evening, the Kansas baseball team has postponed Friday’s opening game of the Salty Iguana Jayhawk Classic at Hoglund Ballpark. KU was scheduled to take on Saint Louis University at 3 p.m.

Full Article Here

UPDATE

Due to the winter weather which hit the Lawrence area Thursday evening, the Kansas baseball team has cancelled both Saturday games of the Salty Iguana Jayhawk Classic. KU was originally scheduled to meet Saint Louis at 3 p.m., following SLU’s game with Iowa at 11 a.m.

Full Article Here

Kansas Baseball Promotions Update

The 2011 season has arrived and Kansas Baseball has several promotions planned for the season.  Here is a look at upcoming promotions.  We hope to see you at the ballpark.

Friday, February 25 and Saturday, February 26 vs. Saint Louis at 3:00 PM

Pick up your free Kansas Baseball Schedule Magnet

Sunday, February 27 vs. Iowa at 3:00 PM

Family Fun and Food Day: Bring the family to the ballpark.  For just $40 you get four tickets, four popcorns and four drinks!

Youth Baseball Day: Kids wearing their youth baseball jersey will be admitted for $3!

Every Sunday is Kids Day at Hoglund Ballpark.  Kids are invited to take the field with the team for the National Anthem and can run the bases and get autographs in the dugout after the game!

Tuesday, March 1 vs. Southern Utah at 3:00 PM

Take 2 Tuesday:  Purchase two tickets to Tuesday’s game and get one free general admission ticket to a Big 12 Conference home game of your choice!

View the complete list of Kansas Baseball promotions.

Meet the New Coaches

Senior outfielder Jimmy Waters is back with another update to introduce the newest members of the Kansas Baseball coaching staff.

Coach Price recently added Coach Jay Uhlman, formerly at the University of Oregon, to the coaching staff. I played summer baseball with several players from the University of Oregon and they immediately contacted me on Facebook or by text telling me how good of a coach we had just got and that they were going to miss him this season.

After being introduced to Coach Uhlman, players all started calling him The U. It comes from ESPN’s 30 for 30 series about Miami Football. From day one Coach Uhlman has brought enthusiasm, energy, attitude, expertise and swagger to the program in areas we needed it.  The U has only been a Jayhawk for a few weeks, but has made a tremendous impact in the way we do things and this will show during the course of the season. I’m looking forward to working with The U this season and I know everyone on the team is as well.

Coach Uhlman is serving as our recruiting coordinator, hitting and base running/short game coordinator, along with coaching the corner infielders and serving as the third base coach.

We also have added a new volunteer assistant to the staff. Coach Phil Thompson may be officially new to the staff but Jayhawk players are familiar with him. Coach Thompson actually played for Coach Price at Cal Poly and has coached several former Jayhawks in summer ball for the San Diego Waves. Having Coach Thompson on the staff is great and gives us another great resource to have and use.

Coach Thompson helps out with running camps, hitters, and coaches the outfielders along with serving as the first base coach

Kansas Baseball Update With Jimmy Waters

Welcome to the Kansas Baseball Blog.  In today's first entry senior outfielder Jimmy Waters gives us an update on the benefits of the new turf at Hoglund Ballpark and a quick preview of this weekend's series at #1 TCU.

Right now we are thankful for the renovations to Hoglund Ballpark. The new AstroTurf that was installed in the summer has already helped us in preparing to play this season. If you have been anywhere around the Midwest you know how miserable the snow and cold temperatures have been the past couple weeks.

In previous years there is no chance we would have been able to practice outside at all due to weather conditions causing the field to be wet and unusable. This new turf field has allowed us (mostly pitchers) to shovel off the infield and practice and play against each other. It is important for the hitters to see live arms and pitchers to face live hitters so that we are not behind other schools that have been outside in nice weather.

With that said, we have gone outside to practice the past three weekends, even with some of the temperatures in the 20’s. Even though it seems like playing baseball outside in that type of temperature would not be very nice, we actually prefer it to always practicing indoors in Anschutz Pavilion. Whenever we use Anschutz it’s usually at night because of the busy facility schedule with a lot of teams needing to practice indoors. Every practice we had in Anschutz was productive but we were limited in what we could do as a team.

We all have been waiting for this season to start for some time now. It only seems like a couple of days ago that everyone was reporting back to campus to start the fall semester and begin playing fall ball.  With the season just around the corner the team is excited to get the season underway.

This season will begin with a trip to Texas Christian University who is the pre-season #1 team in the country in several polls. This is a great challenge for us and we have been looking forward to playing TCU since the schedule was announced in the fall. This marks the second straight year we have gone on the road early in the season to face the #1 ranked team. Last season we took 2 of 3 from #1 LSU.

This series will help prepare us for the type of pitching we will face once Big 12 Conference play begins in March with the likes of facing TCU’s Matt Purke, Steven Maxwell, and Kyle Winkler, who all are All-American players. This should be a great weekend of baseball.

You can follow this weekend's games at TCU on Gametracker and listen to the audio broadcast with the Voice of the Jayhawks, Tom Hedrick on kuathletics.com. Mountain West Sports Network will be televising the Friday and Sundays games.  That network is available on Direct TV.  For those in the local area, Biggs BBQ will be showing those games.