Baseball
The Georgia Baseball team has seen most of its success in recent years, including winning the 1990 College World Series, as well as making the trip to Omaha in 1987, 1990, 2001, 2004, 2006, and 2008. The Diamond Dawgs, as they are called, are coached by David Perno.
In its history, the team has claimed five Southeastern Conference tournament titles, in 1933, 1954, 1955, 2001, and 2004, and five regular season conference titles, in 1933, 1953, 1954, 2004, and 2008.
The program dates back to 1886 and, according to former Sports Information Director Dan Magill, was once the most popular sport on campus. However, from the mid-1950s to the late-1980s, and then through most of the 1990s, there were only scattered bright spots as the team managed only a modicum of success.
Since 2001, however, the program has enjoyed quite a resurgence, winning three championships in the perennial stalwart Southeastern Conference and participating in the College World Series four times in those seven seasons.
The Georgia-Georgia Tech baseball rivalry is one of the South's most fierce, and the teams' annual Spring Baseball Classic at Turner Field draws some of the largest crowds in college baseball (the 2004 game was seen by 28,836 spectators, the second-largest crowd in college baseball history).
The team has seen several of its former players move on to successful professional careers, most notably former New York Yankees pitcher Spud Chandler. Also, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Cris Carpenter (not to be confused with current Cardinals pitcher Chris Carpenter), pitcher Derek Lilliquist, Chicago White Soxs batter Gordon Beckham, Seattle Mariners pitcher Dave Fleming, and Georgia high school football coaching legend Billy Henderson played for the Bulldogs.
The Bulldogs play in the 3,291-seat Foley Field stadium.
Read more about this topic: Georgia Bulldogs
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“One of the baseball-team owners approached me and said: “If you become baseball commissioner, you’re going to have to deal with 28 big egos,” and I said, “For me, that’s a 72% reduction.””
—George Mitchell (b. 1933)
“It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts.”
—Shirley Chisholm (b. 1924)
“The talk shows are stuffed full of sufferers who have regained their health—congressmen who suffered through a serious spell of boozing and skirt-chasing, White House aides who were stricken cruelly with overweening ambition, movie stars and baseball players who came down with acute cases of wanting to trash hotel rooms while under the influence of recreational drugs. Most of them have found God, or at least a publisher.”
—Calvin Trillin (b. 1935)