Don’t worry, this article is about more than my baseball trivia prowess. Just seemed like an exciting title. There were four games over the past few weeks that I made it out to and scored, all of them being college ball.

The first was a non-league contest between Cal Poly and C.S.U. Bakersfield. It was a chilly Tuesday night my first week back at school from Spring Break. This game is noteworthy because, for the first time in the history of the blog, it included an inning where a team batted around. It’s something that I’ve dreaded happening since I started writing because I’ve never figured out nor seen a good way to score it. I kept the overflow and the following inning in the same column. I probably shouldn’t have, but it usually depends on how I’m feeling. The end of the third inning is marked by the single slash.

As noted in the scorecard, I was chosen to do a trivia game that they do in between innings at every Cal Poly baseball game. I was afraid it would be really hard or something really obscure, but I thought the question was really easy. It was, “Which pitcher has the lowest career ERA in the history of Cal Poly baseball?” Even before they read the multiple choice answers, I was pretty sure that it was Mike Krukow, and I ended up being right. I won a bag of Cal Poly stuff and my roommate Aaron was pretty impressed when I told him about it. It was a pretty mediocre game but trivia was fun. I got to sit right next to the dugout for about a half inning, which is usually blocked off for some season ticket holder club thing.

The second game was a Friday night game. Cal Poly hosted Long Beach State in the first game of three that weekend. ESPN was in town, and the game was televised on ESPNU, so the stadium was considerably fuller than usual. It was a pretty good game and a big league win for Cal Poly to stay alive in the Big West standings. It was also head coach Lary Lee’s 500th win with Cal Poly. One note about this game was that it marked the tenth game I’ve scored this season, and only the first that I’ve scored that featured a save.

This third game was some softball the following day. It’s considerably messier than the other softball games I did during the tournament. I had to make a “Not Hitting, Not Pitching” spot because I guess in softball you can do that. A lot of reentries on Cal Poly’s side, too. Also, following this game, Lindsey Chalmers had 19 wins as a pitcher and Cal Poly had 20 wins as a team; I think she’s pretty good.

Later that night I went and watched Cal Poly play Long Beach in game two of the series. I was excited for this one because the guy who played centerfield for Long Beach the night before was pitching. I thought I was going to get to score lots of fun pinch hitting and double switches and the like, but it turned out they could move Andrews to designated hitter after he was done pitching. Sad day. I thought Darren Nelson was going to throw a no-hitter, but it was broken up in the seventh. My dad texted me not long later to tell me that Sean Manaea threw a no-hitter that night, so maybe my intuition wasn’t completely off.

This weekend Cal Poly’s playing a non-league series against UCLA. I’ll probably make it out to at least two games, maybe all three. I kind of liked UCLA when I watched a lot of college baseball. They won a College World Series circa 2015. I’ll try to write about that sometime this week. As always, scorecards are from the Bob Carpenter Baseball Scorebook, Fan Edition. Thanks for reading.