Important conference call

They need to quote fricking around and play some serious baseball.

Chad better get his act together. This team is starting to look eerily similar to some of the teams June Raines fielded in his final years.

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They need to quote fricking around and play some serious baseball.

Chad better get his act together

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I agree that we've been fairly average under Chad but I'm not concerned about the seriousness. Those 2 national title teams were some of the weirdest and loosest teams I've ever seen. They showed Roth himself screwing around in dugout several times during those last 3 Omaha appearances.

Loose is good ... and I agree 100% once you've got the confidence to play loose.

Remember how the looseness developed under Ray ... after years of hard-assedness Ray finally backed-off just enough to give the team some breathing room and allowed them to have some fun, but he still kept them focused and on a tight leash.

After the 2010 season he knew he had developed the right chemistry and leadership that he could give them even more room to play-around.

But you gotta be a coach, you gotta be a leader, you gotta find leaders and you gotta get the chemistry right and some of us are not seeing-it in this team.

I've been watching Gamecock baseball for forty-plus years. The guys I sit with at the games have been watching it for almost as long ... one 35 years and one 32 years. We're all seeing the same thing.

Ray spoiled us to some degree. I used to think it was uncanny how Ray had a feel for things - how he would fly by the seat of his pants, particularly with lineup changes.

Chad needs to make sure he is a coach with these guys before he is a friend with these guys. He's always been a great recruiter because he is a great friend to these guys ... but now he's got to learn to be a great coach. He's got to learn how to pull the right strings at the right time. That's the difference between good baseball teams and great baseball teams ... the skipper in the dugout.

Right now what Chad needs to do is tighten his grip - get'em back on track focused and crazy mean competitive. Once you do, then you make sure you are making the right calls in the lineup, in the right order if nothing else ... and then, little by little you loosen-up a bit until you hear the engine purring.

We've got a 350 four-bolt main engine right now running on cheap gas and the mechanic is showing signs of not being able to tune it properly. He's gotta find the right spark plug and get the other seven cylinders firing in proper order behind that guy and let Jerry deal with the pitchers.

Sorry for the mechanical metaphor but now you know where the spark-plug analogy in sports springs from. Eight cylinders ... pitcher don't count. Pitcher is a separate issue all-together and has to be treated differently, as a separate entity.

We've made too many fricking errors this season already. That's our major malfunction. Hitting is one thing, but our fielding is atrocious these past few seasons compared to our previous fifty except for those shitty fielding years during June's last few seasons before Ray replaced him.