If the girls win today, they’re off to Oklahoma City. You should watch them. They’ll be playing again at 1:30 PM PST, which means 4:30 PM for me.

Toby Gerhart’s sister Teagan pitched yesterday, by the way. She was brilliant.

The baseball team, by the way, is just finishing up their regular season today and tomorrow, which they will hopefully do by beating Cal. Contributor Mac will be at the doubleheader tomorrow and will be tweeting updates from the @NineShotFirst Twitter account. Keep in touch, all!

And yeah, we did lose to a team that has only existed for two years or so now. So…not sure what to say about that.

• Friday: We lost 6-2. Granted, we lost to a pitcher likely to go in the first round (Tyler Anderson), but we lost because we made four errors. Not okay.
• Saturday: We were losing 8-1 and somehow won 9-8. Such is the world of college baseball. You really don’t see games like this too often anywhere else, but in college ball they’re far more regular. Hm.
• Sunday: 6-5 seesaw loss. Kenny made an error which eventually led to the game being tied up, too. Poor Kenny.

Now, I’m fairly concerned here because we’re running out of time – there are seven games left in the regular season, and we’re facing Arizona and Cal in that span. Here’s what we’ve got left on the docket:

• Tuesday, May 17: Home vs. San Francisco
• Friday, May 20: Home vs. Arizona
• Saturday, May 21: Home vs. Arizona
• Sunday, May 22: Home vs. Arizona (my graduation date from Gettysburg College)
• Tuesday, May 24: Home vs. Cal Poly
• Friday, May 27: Away at UC Berkeley
• Saturday, May 28: Doubleheader away at UC Berkeley

Yeah, that’s mildly concerning. We haven’t lost to Cal yet this year, so I’m more worried about Arizona, but still. We seriously need some gains in the conference just for some extra reassurance – we’re in fifth right now, right behind the hated Cal. Arizona’s right behind us in sixth. Wins are crucial at this point. So let’s get some, okay? I like wins, you like wins, everybody likes wins. Especially against Cal.

At least we’re not ASU. They’ve got even bigger problems right now.

Closing notes:

1. John Mayberry Jr. owns Tim Hudson. In two career at-bats against Hudson, Junior has two homers. EPIC.
2. If you missed the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavor this morning, you missed something beautiful. This is the second-to-last shuttle launch in NASA’s program right now (we need more funding, damnit!). I took some screencaps for you, though.

That second shot especially awes me because that glowing thing in the background with the blue ring around it is Earth. Really. Sometimes, you just have to keep things in perspective.

Okay, here’s your Stanford news roundup, since Steph has been a very busy girl as of late because she’s almost done with her undergraduate studies (nooooo, the real world is scary!):

• So we lost the second game against UCLA. Oh, well, because…
• WE WON THE THIRD GAME. AND THEREFORE TOOK THE SERIES. HAHAHAHAHA. IT WAS A WALK-OFF, TOO. OWNAGE.
• Then we BEAT CAL ON MY BIRTHDAY. Thanks for the present, boys! (We’re really good at midweek games for some reason this year.)
• Then we actually lost a midweek game. Dangit. Saint Mary’s beat us 3-2 in the ninth. Argh.

Now we’re going to be playing ASU this weekend, so I will probably scream things at Dustin Pedroia and Ike Davis about how they will behold our victory. They’d better behold our victory. Of course, they’re doing well in conference games, with the exception of being swept by Oregon State. Let’s all go and mock-hate on Ellsbury now. Argh, Jacoby.

For something neat and Stanford-related, by the by, remember those folks who were doing the Legend of Jed Lowrie site and raising money for the Jimmy Fund? We’ve teamed up! I’ll be doing some limited-edition prints for them to sell (which, of course, will be Jedtastic) and the money will go to helping the Red Sox’s favorite charity. Check it out here and feel free to commission me! I’m especially fond of drawing my Stanford boys, as you know.

UCLA is ranked 11th in the country right now. ELEVENTH. And we beat them.

7-4′s your final. That’s because we hit a few homers the other night. We got ‘em from Jones and Piscotty and Gaffney. And then Mark Appel went seven innings and only gave up three runs. So basically we played really good baseball and beat the team we were supposed to lose to.

Check out what Nine had to say about it, courtesy of College Baseball Daily:

Also worth mentioning – Arizona State beat Cal in seventeen innings last night. Read up on that here. Sounds like it was a game for the ages and I really wish we had an ASU baseball writer because she and I would have lots of Pac-10 fun.

You’d think I wouldn’t be that happy about this, but I think it’s important that Cal’s baseball team is going to be reinstated after all. I mean, we need someone to beat, right?

In complete seriousness, this is a very nice story, and it’s so good to know that all of the underclassmen on the team will get to continue their baseball careers without transferring to a different school. You shouldn’t have to give up your loyalties just to play the game you love.

Congrats to you, UC Berkeley. We’re tipping our button-laden fishing hats to you today.