• Twelve Days to Dirtbags

    by  • February 6, 2022 • LifeStuff • 0 Comments

    I was reminded today that on February 18th, the UNM Lobo baseball team will start their 2022 season- and I have a pretty good feeling COVID won’t decimate the season this year.

    Annually, when college baseball games start, summer always begins earlier for me than for most people, because for me, baseball is synonymous with summer. It’s not about the season- it’s more about the sport, really.

    This year, the Lobos start a new era with a new head coach. Ray Birmingham, who guided the program for fourteen years, stepped aside, and Tod Brown, head coach at ascendant North Dakota State University program for fourteen years (341-350), was invited to take the UNM club over.

    Brown seems pretty happy to be here, and it’s not too surprising it was a fairly easy decision for he and his family to make. Brown and his wife grew up in Tucson, and played his collegiate career at the University of Arizona there (89-94) as a left-handed starter and reliever, so coming to Albuquerque is a little like coming back home. In his junior and senior seasons, Arizona made the NCAA Regionals, and in 1992, Arizona was the PAC-10 champion.

    Coach Brown led NDSU to a 42-19 season last year and an NCAA Regional appearance- the second during his term as head coach there- and looks to transfer his drive to “win the right way” to New Mexico program.

    Brown is an advocate of having physically tough and tough-minded players on his rosters- “dirtbags”- and strives to build his teams with young men whoa aren’t afraid to grind it out to get things done.

    Joining Brown as pitching coach is Michael Lopez, a player-coach who has seen success in his young career. Besides attaining a 48-19 record the last two years as head coach at Howard Community College in Big Spring, Texas, as a player, Lopez was a captain on the U of A team in 2012 which won the College World Series that season.

    With Brown and Lopez having ties to Arizona, I would expect the recruiting pipeline to that state next door will continue to be good.

    I am excited to see what the first year of Lobo baseball under Brown will be like, and we’ll get a first east of it in 12 days.

    About

    A web programmer by day, I somehow still spend a lot of time thinking about relationships, God, and the significance of grace and love in daily events. I am old school in the sense that I believe in the reality of sin, and in the need of each human heart for deliverance to the Divine. I am one of those who believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that you can find most answers to life's pressing issues in Him and His Word, the Bible. I ain't perfect, and a lot of the time I ain't good, but by God's grace and kindness, I am forgiven and free.

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