The UCLA baseball team travels this weekend to play in the most
significant college baseball tournament of the year.
The tournament’s significance isn’t derived from who
wins or loses. In fact, the tournament doesn’t even have a
winner.
The San Diego State Tournament will open the doors to San
Diego’s brand new baseball stadium, PETCO Park.
“We’ve been looking forward to the park being built
for a long time, and with all the bad things that have happened in
San Diego recently, it couldn’t have opened up at a better
time,” sophomore Sean Carpenter, a San Diego native,
said.
Although built for the Padres, eight college teams, including
UCLA (11-6), have the honor of playing the first games there.
The city of San Diego appears to be eagerly anticipating this
tournament as well. The opener on Thursday night between Houston
and San Diego State has already sold 33,000 tickets, a number that
likely exceeds what the Bruins will draw in all 29 home games at
Jackie Robinson Stadium.
“Anytime you get to play in a stadium this nice in front
of such big crowds is great,” Carpenter said. “And
especially doing it in my hometown is like a dream come
true.”
UCLA has games Friday, Saturday and Sunday against No. 9 Long
Beach State (11-4), Nebraska (6-4) and Houston (5-10).
Junior Wes Whisler takes the mound Friday, senior Casey Janssen
on Saturday and sophomore Hector Ambriz on Sunday.
WEAVER: The Bruins will face quite possibly the best pitcher in
the country Friday in the 49ers’ Jered Weaver.
“Weaver is pretty awesome,” UCLA coach Gary Adams
said. “He’s not just one of the best pitchers on the
West Coast, he’s one of the top two pitchers in the United
States.”
In 2003, Weaver was a first-team All-American and named national
pitcher of the week four times.
Already this season, he has racked up two national pitcher of
the week honors on the way to a 5-0 record, 1.01 ERA and an
impressive 55 strikeouts in 35 and two-thirds innings. Twice this
year he has struck out the first 10 batters of the game.
Weaver is the brother of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Jeff
Weaver.