This blog post is not about taking photos. This blog post is about baseball, and boys I love.
Friday was likely Alex White’s final regular season home start as a Tar Heel — he’ll be drafted (very) high in the first round in June; some mock drafts project him as high as #2 behind SDSU’s Stephen Strasburg — and Saturday was Adam Warren’s final regular season home start, as he’s graduating. Today was the final (regular season) home game for seniors Warren, starting RF Garrett Gore, and back-up-back-up C Mike McKee. I am going to miss all three of them terribly, and I can’t even begin to comprehend the fact that we’re going to lose White, 1B Dustin Ackley, 3B Kyle Seager, and, in all likelihood, starting C Mark Fleury to the draft. I guess we lost as much last year — our entire outfield, our closer, our third baseman, our starting catcher — but, as with the basketball team, this year’s juniors and seniors on the baseball team almost mean more to me than other players we’ve lost to graduation and the draft over the last few years, because they’re mine. The ones who were freshman the first year I moved here (Warren, Gore, McKee), the ones who were freshman the first year I really paid attention to college baseball (Ackley, White, Seager, Fleury). Boys I’ve watched and loved for their whole careers at Carolina.
As long as they don’t get drafted by the Red Sox — Fedex, we are still mad at you — I’ll love them forever in the pros, too, but I’ll miss them wearing Carolina blue. I hardly know how a weekend rotation looks without Alex White and Adam Warren. It’s hard to remember how an infield looks without Dustin Ackley at first base.
So thank you, boys. For all the walk-off home runs and the clutch hits, and the strike outs, and 12-0 on Tuesdays in 2007, and the air guitar in the outfield during warm-ups, and being handsome and talented Friday starters and Sunday pinch runners and the artist behind abstract nudes (thank you for being handsome and talented renaissance men), and for stupid nicknames and chicken parm, and the new Bosh, and three straight years in Omaha. It’s been a great couple of years, and I’m going to miss all of you desperately, desperately, desperately.
brand new kind of photography 