LH

The #2 ranking may not be where you want to start from a coaching/motivation perspective, but it is well deserved.  

After churning out the best record in NCAA baseball in over 30 years, finishing the season in 3rd place, and returning 7 of the top 9 batters (by ABs) and 6 of the top 8 pitchers (by IP), and I don't see how there's a lot of logic to rank them much lower.  Replicating a 56-6 record will be near impossible, but the Beavers certainly have to be looked at as one of the favorites to make it back to Omaha.  

Maybe this should be moved to the "Off Topic" board since it is strayed from the first couple of responses of the Diamond Dinner video. Just my 2 cents... Go Beavs!

The term "revisionist history" connotes that I am literally taking a hero and turning him/her into a villain or vice versa.  That is what you said.  Judging from your response, you probably meant to use a different term, unless you are using it in a context that I am unfamiliar with?

I love your response.  I really do.  You chose to denigrate actions taken by a Benton County Sheriff's sergeant for being too vigilant.  Why won't anyone consider the feelings of the poor registered sex offenders?  I am personally not going to second guess a Benton County Sheriff's sergeant for targeting registered sex offenders and trying to make sure that they comply with Oregon law.  And I would respectfully say that you should consider where you are, if you are currently arguing that the law treats registered sex offenders too harshly and that police officers should be more lax, when it comes to registered sex offenders at a college campus.

I did not equate Joel Courtney killing Brooke Wilberger with Luke Heimlich sexually assaulting a six-year-old.  It is telling, though, that you attempt to equate them.  It is also telling that Joel Courtney sexually assaulted his cousin and attempted to sexually assault his sister (she stopped him by hitting him with a clock), when he was a minor, and was a previously convicted sex offender at the time Brooke Wilberger was kidnapped, raped, murdered, and buried in a shallow grave.  Perhaps a more vigilant Sheriff's sergeant could have averted Brooke's kidnapping, rape, and murder?  We will never know.  But I will be damned, if I do not bring up Brooke, whenever someone starts spouting nonsense about the Benton County Sheriff being too vigilant in protecting the great people of Benton County from registered sexual offenders.  That is their job!  To protect us all from the worst of us.  If I had kids  or grandkids at Oregon State (or think that I might some day), I want that Benton County Sheriff rounding up all the registered sex offenders and making their lives a living hell pretty much 24-7.  Move out!  Leave Benton County.  Never return!  This is no place for you!  Appreciate that your actions will be under a microscope every second of every day.

It is "Twilight Zone s%#t" to equate talking with the press to texting with the press?  I guess I made a huge Twilight Zonesque leap with that one.  I should have realized that giving interviews to the press and texting the press were light years apart.

This all started because someone said that the crowd cheered harder for Heimlich than the other players.  That is the world turned upside down, right there, brother.  Heimlich is an Oregon State Beaver.  Cheer him on, because he is a Beaver.  But why single him out for additional praise?  What has he done that is deserving of that?  He put himself in a hole, a big hole, the Hell's Canyon of holes.  Then, he took additional actions that made the hole bigger.  Then, when his worst secrets were revealed, he quit on the team, when the team needed him most.  And now, everyone is cheering that?  Why in holy hell?  Please explain it so that I can make sense of it! 

I condemn Luke Heimlich's actions.  Pretty much all of them, since he was a 13-year-old.  Condemn.  Beneath what the average reasonable person should find excusable.  Heimlich paid no penalty for his actions, until the story broke.  His secret bad acts were then public bad acts.  (Is that a punishment?  I don't believe so.  Others might disagree.)  Then, he was not drafted.  Once again, 30 Major League baseball organizations determined what Heimlich did made him unfit to wear that organization's colors or even the colors of a minor league club associated with that organization.  Condemn.  Beneath what the average reasonable person finds excusable.  Heimlich's only punishment is another year at Oregon State.  Damn!  Talk about being punished!

Now, he's coming back, and Oregon State fans are cheering Heimlich for being Heimlich?  Why the hell for?  What has he done that is deserving of that?  If it can be explained, explain it.  Otherwise, I think less of people for singling out Heimlich for additional praise.

Clap clap clap.

The last two paragraphs.  Man.  The real victim here is and always has been a six-year-old, who had the poor fortune of being related to an all-around scumbag as a youth, Luke Heimlich.  So far as I can tell, the victim has suffered nothing by having this be public, as no one knows who she is.  However, this being public is the only way that relatives of that six-year-old feel like Heimlich will be punished.  I respect that.  I respect relatives of victims knowing far better than me or you or the States of Washington and Oregon, if an individual has been punished enough.  I respect relatives of victims knowing if this will harm the victim.  I respect that.  I do not call it into question.  You do.  Why?  The only reason that I can figure is that you feel like it has harmed something you care about, namely the Oregon State Beavers.  Strip everything else away, I feel like you and the yokels that cheered on Heimlich at the dinner are putting Oregon State above what happened to a six-year-old.  I feel like you and the yokels that cheered on Heimlich at the dinner are putting Oregon State above what is right.  Once again, respectfully, I would request that you consider where you are with regards to your position on this.  You are saying that you know better than a six-year-old's mom.  Respectfully, I profoundly disagree that you are in a better decision to determine what is best for that six-year-old than that six-year-old's mom. 

By any qualitative analysis of what has occurred here, you are in the wrong here, brother.  Respectfully, you are wrong.  You asked me who is "writing the rules."  You indicated that there was a great moral authority at play.  What is the great moral authority that says that you are in the right here?  What is it?  I think of God.  I think of Yahweh/Jehovah.  I think of karma.  I think of balance.  I think of what the great number of Americans think about this.  What side do they fall on?  I think of little girls and women looking at this.  What do they think of the yokels cheering on Heimlich?  I think of their fathers.  What do they think?  Where is the morality in cheering on a man, who as a minor sexually assaulted a child nine years his junior?  Who compounded that mistake with other mistakes?  Who, when his secret transgressions were outed, turned tail and ran, a disgraced coward?  Where is the morality there?  Where is the morality in cheering on Luke Heimlich?

Clap clap clap.

I will continue to say I hate what Luke Heimlich did.  Pretty much everything that he did.  I am waiting to hear how I can cheer him on.  A part of me wants to.  But a bigger part of me knows that that is wrong.  So, how do I square that?