With leap day just around the corner, my two, favorite harbingers of spring here in southern USA are upon us. The absolute onslaught of flowers (or flyers as Meme used to pronounce them) that poke through the soil announcing the end of winter and a shift to warmer daze always seem to come so early.
The other vernal event that jazzes me is the PLINK! PLINK! acoustics of aluminum bats launching pitched baseballs into the stratosphere – here, there and everywhere. Well, not right here in this town, exactly, but yes, in Carroll County they do practice a version of America’s favorite pastime, but you must head east and forge the waters of the mighty Kings River to see it for yourself.
That’s right. While Eureka Springs is flush with Ford trucks, moms and apple pies, there ain’t no baseball being played here on the westside, day or night; and consequently, no joy in what is quickly becoming Mudville 2.0.
There was a time, 10 or so years ago, when the joyful sounds of youth baseball filled the summertime air over on Stadium Drive at a hidden jewel of a diamond. Dr. Van Pelt, whose name adorns the now antiquated, rarely used and always-padlocked baseball field, must be rolling over in his grave at all the inactivity taking place at his namesake park.
And so, with the Razorback basketball team consistently underperforming and Mrs. Musselman absent from her perch behind the bench, it’s time to turn attention to the one, the only, Coach Dave Van Horn and his always-properly prepared and never controversial U of A Baseball team.
Returning for his 21st season on the Hill, his 2024 squad appears, once again, to be loaded for bear ranked in the top five of any and every NCAA poll you can find, and boasts the top-rated recruiting class in the country. That, my friends, is just how Van Horn rolls, year after year after year after year after year.
The man has won more than 1,400 games as a college skipper, nearly 850 of those at Arkansas, and is most certainly destined for the College Baseball Hall of Fame, whenever he decides to hang up his gilded spikes. All that remains for him to accomplish is to bring a College World Series trophy back to Fayettenam. He’s led seven Razorbacks teams to Omaha, Neb., and was oh-so close to winning the whole tamale in 2018.
He and his Hogs were one out away from dusting off Oregon State in the CWS finals that year. I mean one, misplayed, lazy, foul, pop up that managed to escape three Razorback gloves. I’m talking about a simple can of corn was all that stood between glory and woe. I can only chalk it up to the 100-year curse of Rip Van Broyles, cuz there is really no other way to explain how or why that ball wasn’t caught that day. Those of us who witnessed it still ache from the memory.
True to form, the highly ranked Razorback swatters opened their 2024 season this weekend, taking two outta three games from the Dukes of James Madison University, then the fourth game, 4-0, on Monday.
WPS!