Thursday, May 18, 2023

Bigger Echoes in Happy Valley


We're going to miss the powerful leg of Alex Felkins this fall as he has made his grad transfer to Penn State. 

One good thing about his move to a national program with a stadium that fills its 100K+ seats every game is that Alex now gets a larger platform for his message to help the people of Ukraine. 

I wrote a few times in 2022 about how Felkins must be going through a lot with a lot of his family still in the war-torn nation. 

Now, he is spelling that all out in a social media campaign you should check it out here

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Using this board to express my shock, sadness and dismay at the total collapse of Columbia baseball over the last 4 weeks of the season. I have never seen a Boretti coached team take such a pratfall. I always thought our pitching was suspect, but I never thought that it was barely above the high school level. We were pitching BP to our opponents over the last four weeks. and how can we be swept over four straight weekends since we had never been swept in a series since 2006? From a team which had three wins against ranked opponents early in the season to a dismal showing over 4 weeks—when we had been picked to win the league-requires some answers. One observation—I did not see the enthusiasm for self-confidence over this period which had been the hallmark of the /Boretti years..Any thoughts here? PS I do apologize for using the Felkins story to express my dismay.

Anonymous said...

Clearly a pitching issue brought on by the Columbia Athletic Department's failure to provide sufficient assistance to Coach Boretti in recruiting top quality healthy pitchers. With all the success Columbia Baseball had the last few year you would have thought that the Athletic Department would implement the necessary actions to capitalize on the team's success, i.e. better marketing to increase attendance at home games, and much better overall publicity. Also, the dumb anti-male gender ads on our video broadcasts on ESPN+ probably discouraged some prospects from attending Columbia.

Anonymous said...

The anti-male garbage is league-wide I assume. Also, the "eight-against-hate" nonsense is nauseating woke b.s. I'm not sure how the athletes manage to wear that message in warm-ups. It's painful to attend Columbia athletic events because of this messaging.

Anonymous said...

Normally coach Boretti sends out frequent letters to the supporters of Columbia baseball. The last such letter was very optimistic about the IL series. Putting aside the uncharacteristically poor fielding, we have not developed any consistent starting pitching staff; our three man rotation consists of two sophomores and a committee for game 3, which we never reached this weekend of course. Opposing batters have been teeing off against us beginning with the first inning. I think it’s time for Coach Boretti to take a good Loring look at why we have not been able to develop any upperclassmen as starting pitchers.

Anonymous said...

Meant long look of course

Anonymous said...


I was puzzled by the term "Loring look." I thought at first it had something to do with the Columbia Men's Basketball Program and particularly Pilling's star coach, Jim Engles. Thanks for the clarification.

Anonymous said...

Penn walloped Princeton 16-3 earlier today to win its first Ivy League Championship in 28 years. Obviously, the Quakers are a very good baseball team. Interesting that Princeton improved dramatically this season from winning just three Ivy League games last year.

Anonymous said...

Pitching, pitching and more pitching. It always stops good hitting; always has and always will. Too many Ivy games wound up with one or both teams scoring in the double digits this year. 85-88 mph fastballs are the equivalent of BP at this time, unless the pitcher has exceptional control and at least two other pitches he can throw for strikes.

Anonymous said...

According to the Perfect Game website, Boretti is bringing in 8 recruits including 6 RHP's, 2 C's and a SS ....

Anonymous said...

Numbers alone don’t tell me anything; it’s like saying Engles is bringing i 4 recruits. wat I want to know is if he is bringing in front end starters.

Anonymous said...

I agree that numbers alone do not mean much without knowing the quality of the recruits. It's also more difficult to assess the quality of incoming baseball players than in other sports for many reason including most obviously the lesser publicity given to baseball recruits. However, if you have the time and the patience to scan various websites you can get a feeling who is most likely to succeed. Bottom line is I would never bet against Coach Boretti. He's too good a coach. My bet is on him and his players returning to the NCAA Tournament in 2024.