What Just Happened?

In the immortal words of Hall-of-Fame broadcaster Jack Buck, “I don’t believe what I just saw.” Buck made that historic call when Kirk Gibson came off the bench to belt a game-winning home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.

After watching NC State throttle Clemson last weekend at Doak Field, we can all identify with Buck’s epic call. No matter your expectations of the Wolfpack-Tigers series, what actually transpired on the field almost certainly wasn’t it. And don’t think that the series was somehow close because Clemson won the first game of the weekend. Yes, it was two games to one, but that only disguises the magnitude of the Wolfpack’s beatdown of its former nemesis.

NC State outscored Clemson 26-15 for the series, but all six of the Tigers’ runs in their 6-4 series opener were giftwrapped, and their last four runs in the Wolfpack’s 14-6 blowout in the finale came with a lost freshman on the mound struggling to find himself in a mop-up role. The Tigers scored five runs in the top of the seventh inning of the opener on four walks, four wild pitches, a balk and just two hits. The last of those wild pitches was so wild that two runs scored. From that point until that four-run ninth inning on Sunday, the Pack outscored Clemson 26-5.

State outhit the Tigers .311 to .260 and did so with the kind of power not seen in these parts in many a year. The Pack hit four homers in the second game of the series, the first time in the BBCOR bat era (since 2010, in other words) that the Wolfpack hit four or more long balls in one game. If that seems like a long time, try this one on for size. NC State outhomered Clemson for the series 8-2. The last time the Wolfpack hit eight or more home runs in an Atlantic Coast Conference series was 12 years ago — April 12-13, 2003, when the Pack hit nine bombs in a three-game series at Wake Forest. Seniors Logan Ratledge and Jake Armstrong led the long-ball parade with two homers each, and Preston Palmeiro, Andrew Knizner, Ryne Willard and Jake Fincher hit one apiece.

Wolfpack pitchers played a role in the beatdown as well. The staff posted a 4.33 ERA for the series to 9.36 for Clemson. More to the point, NC State’s three starting pitchers — Cory Wilder, Brian Brown and Johnny Piedmonte — combined for a 2.51 ERA in 14 1/3 innings, holding Clemson batters to a .235 batting average and just five runs. Wilder and Piedmonte, in particular, were excellent, both pitching into the sixth inning and allowing just two earned runs and striking out 12 between them in 11 1/3 innings.

NC State now has won the regular-season series from Clemson four times in the last five years, the first time that’s ever happened. Prior to 2011, the Wolfpack had won back-to-back regular-season series from the Tigers just once, 1996-97. From 2000-10, Clemson won the regular-season series from NC State eight times in 11 years, including three years in a row from 2000-02 and 2008-10. Clemson holds the longest series winning streak between the two since the ACC went to three-game weekend series in 1987. The Tigers beat the Wolfpack four straight years from 1989-92, and six times in seven years from 1989-95.

CWS Seniors Providing Leadership: NC State has gotten contributions from numerous players in its 9-4 start, but the senior trio of Logan Ratledge, Jake Armstrong and Jake Fincher, all veterans of the 2013 College World Series team, have been especially productive, combining to bat .371 (43-for-116) with seven doubles, two triples, six home runs and 29 RBIs.

Ratledge is hitting .391 (18-for-46) with two doubles, a team-best three home runs, and 13 RBIs. Armstrong is hitting .333 (12-for-36) but seven of his 12 hits are for extra bases (4 doubles, 1 triple and 2 home runs), allowing him to drive in 12 runs. He enters play this week against Florida Atlantic and Miami on a five-game hitting streak and is hitting .500 (7-for-14) with three doubles, two homers and six RBIs during the streak. Fincher, who began the year hobbled with a groin pull, is hitting .382 (13-for-34). He begins play this week on a six-game hitting streak, tied for the team’s longest this season, and is hitting .500 (10-for-20) with six runs scored during the six-game streak.

Armstrong (.667) and Ratledge (.630) lead the team in slugging percentage, and Ratledge (.508) is second only to freshman leadoff hitter Brock Deatherage (.516) in on-base percentage, but has nearly twice as many plate appearances as Deatherage, 62-32.

Palmeiro For Most Improved Wolfpacker: There’s an old adage that college players often make their biggest improvement as sophomores, and that makes sense for a number of reasons. Wolfpack first baseman Preston Palmeiro was impressive as a freshman a year ago, but seems like a different player in 2015. Palmeiro grew up in big league clubhouses, so he knows the game and came to Raleigh as maybe the least-likely guy to let the game speed up on him. He played 39 games and made 24 starts a year ago, batting .284, driving in 14 runs, and playing flawless defense.

Fast forward a year and Palmeiro has gone from solid freshman to star-caliber sophomore. Palmeiro has added some oomph to that sweet lefthanded swing, boosting his batting average and moving him among the ACC’s RBI leaders. In addition to hitting .396 (19-for-48), he has three doubles and two homers, and ranks fifth in the conference with 20 RBIs. He drove in 14 all of last season.

Palmeiro enters play against Florida Atlantic and Miami riding a five-game hitting streak and is batting .389 (7-for-18) with two doubles, a triple and 10 RBIs during the streak.

Power Surge: As mentioned previously, NC State is hitting with more power than any Wolfpack team in recent memory. Through 13 games, the Pack has blasted 11 home runs, more than three of the last four NC State teams hit through 13 games, and more than six of the last 12. Since the NCAA adopted the BBCOR bats beginning with the 2011 season, the last four NC State teams hit six, six, 13 and seven home runs, respectively, in their first 13 games. The 2013 team hit 13 homers in its first 13 games, but then more or less forgot how to go deep, finishing the year with 29. Not that it mattered since that team wound up at the College World Series.

Comparisons using such a limited sample size are, of course, meaningless. The Wolfpack has 11 homers through 13 games, and that’s the only conclusion we can draw form the available data. The 2004 team and the 2008 team both hit nine homers through 13 games. The ’08 team finished with 66 homers. The ’04 team finished with 28. Go figure.

Deatherage Kick Starts The Offense: Freshman outfielder Brock Deatherage moved into the leadoff spot in the NC State batting order on Feb. 28 against UNC Greensboro in Savannah’s cavernous Grayson Stadium. In six games as the Wolfpack’s leadoff hitter since then he is hitting .458 (11-for-24) and has scored eight runs. In those same six games, NC State has batted .311 (61-for-196), winning five of the six in that span. More significantly, the top five spots in the lineup all have been ablaze with Deatherage igniting the offense, batting a collective .368 (43-for-117) with seven doubles, six home runs, 25 runs scored and 32 RBIs.

NC State Opens ACC Play

Ever since he arrived at NC State in the fall of 1996, head coach Elliott Avent’s teams have generally played their best baseball at the end of the season, when it matters most. His best teams have almost all played their best late in the season. His best team, the 2013 College World Series team, started slowly but was almost unbeatable by season’s end.

This also means that Avent’s teams tend to start the conference season at less than their best, which brings us to the subject at hand. NC State hosts Clemson this weekend to start the conference season for both teams, and the fact is that opening weekends in particular have not been good to Avent and the Wolfpack.

Under Avent, NC State has won just seven of 18 season-opening conference series, the last of which was a year ago, when State swept Notre Dame at Doak Field before embarking on a 10-game ACC losing streak. Avent’s teams won their opening league series in 2000, 2001, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2014.

Even more disturbing, regardless of who wins the opening series, history says NC State is likely to come out on the short end in the first game of that series. The Pack won its first conference game a year ago, the first time since 2011, and has won just six of 18 ACC opening games under Avent — 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2011 and 2014. The 1998 opening series at Florida State was reduced by rain to just one game, which the Wolfpack lost.

None of this is meant to bury Avent. As stated above, his teams tend to play their best when the games count the most, an underrated trait that should be commended. Digging an early-season hole is not always fatal, but losing the first series does put added pressure on ensuing weekends.

The Wolfpack has had to overcome early-season conference hiccups on numerous occasions. The 2005 team opened the year 3-6 in the league and rallied to a 17-13 conference finish. Three years later, the ’08 squad opened 4-5 after three series and finished 18-11. Avent’s first team, in 1997, opened the conference season at 4-5 before winning 13 ACC games in a row and finishing with a 15-7 ACC mark. The Wolfpack’s biggest turnaround came in 2013, when it opened conference play 3-6 before rallying to finish 19-10 en route to the College World Series.

On the other hand, a few of Avent’s teams did get off to hot starts in conference play, but with mixed results. The 1998 team was 5-2 after three weekends, with a pair of rainouts at Florida State, but went 7-7 the rest of the way to finish 12-9. The 2003 team, one of Avent’s greatest squads, jumped to a 7-2 ACC record after three series and finished 15-9, meaning they went 8-7 over their last five series.

The 2012 team, with freshmen Carlos Rodon, Trea Turner, Brett Austin, Logan Ratledge, Logan Jernigan, Jake Fincher et al surrounded by a tough, talented and seasoned group of upperclassmen, opened the conference season 6-3 and never looked back, finishing 19-11 and setting a school record for ACC wins.

So an early-season hole is not a death sentence and a hot start does not guarantee a great finish. Every conference series matters. Still, based on how well Avent’s teams tend to play in April and May, it makes you wonder what it might be like to get off to a hot start a little more often.

Head To Head Vs. The Tigers: If NC State baseball could answer the question, Who’s your daddy? the answer almost certainly would be Clemson. The Tigers hold a healthy 113-77-1 advantage in the series vs. the Wolfpack, with Death Valley being a most fitting and descriptive name for State’s semiannual and frequently nightmarish trips to Doug Kingsmore Stadium in Clemson.

The two teams are dead even the last five years, however, splitting 18 games dating back to 2010. More good news for the Pack, this year’s series is at Doak Field at Dail Park and not in Death Valley, although home-field advantage has been something of a rumor the last three years. NC State won two of three in Death Valley in 2012 and 2014, and Clemson won two of three at Doak Field at Dail Park two years ago.

The last time the home team won in this series was when State took two of three from the Tigers in 2011 at the Doak, meaning the Wolfpack has won three of the last four series. For the record, however, prior to 2011-12, the last time NC State won back-to-back regular-season series from Clemson was 1996 and ’97. The Pack won two of three at Clemson in ’96, then swept the Tigers in ’97 at Doak Field.

Palmeiro’s Hot Start: Sophomore first baseman Preston Palmeiro got his 2015 season started in style, collecting eight hits — including his first collegiate home run — and driving in nine runs in the season’s first three games. He had two hits and four RBIs in the season opener against Villanova, five hits and an RBI later that day against Davidson, and four RBIs on Feb. 21 vs. Albany at Myrtle Beach, S.C.

More Palmeiro — A Season In 10 Games: A year ago, Preston Palmeiro batted .274 (29-for-102) with four doubles, a triple and 14 RBIs in 39 games. Through the first 10 games of 2015, Palmeiro is hitting a loud .395 (15-for-38) and already has matched his RBI total for the entire 2014 season with 10. With two doubles, a triple and a home run, he now has just one fewer extra-base hit than he had in all of 2014, as many triples as 2014, and one more home run.

The Last Time: Speaking of Palmeiro’s nine-RBI/three-game start, the last time a Wolfpack hitter drove in that many runs in so short a span was Feb. 24, 2013, when Brett Williams drove in five runs in both games of a doubleheader bloodletting vs. Wagner, which NC State swept by scores of 18-0 and 25-4.

In the first game, Williams, batting in the second spot in the lineup, went 4-for-5 with two doubles and two home runs. Grant Clyde subbed for Williams in the eighth inning and belted a grand-slam home run, meaning the second spot in the Wolfpack batting order went 5-for-6 with three home runs and nine RBIs.

In the second game of the twin-bill, Trea Turner led off for State and went 3-for-5 with a home run and six RBIs. Williams batted second and was 3-for-4 with a homer and five RBIs. John Mangum pinch-hit for Williams in the eighth inning and hit a sacrifice fly, meaning the top two spots in the lineup were 6-for-9 with 12 RBIs.

Racking Up The K’s: NC State may have limped home with just one win in three games in the Baseball At The Beach Tournament the weekend of Feb. 21-22 at Myrtle Beach, S.C., but the Wolfpack pitching staff made an impression, recording 40 strikeouts in 25 innings over the three games. The highlight of the weekend was a combined 15-strikeout performance by freshmen Brian Brown and Tommy DeJuneas in a 3-1 victory over a very solid Florida International team. Brown and DeJuneas combined to allow a run on two hits in nine innings of work.

Prior to this year’s trip to Myrtle Beach, NC State pitchers had not totaled 40 or more strikeouts in a span of three games since April 2-5, 2013, when they fanned 41 in 32 innings against East Carolina, Elon and Virginia Tech, the last of those an 8-7 victory in 14 innings. The last time State pitchers struck out at least 40 in three consecutive regulation-length games was Feb. 24-26, 2012, also during Baseball At The Beach. That weekend, the Pack notched 10 strikeouts in an 8-5 win over George Mason, 16 in a 16-0 rout of West Virginia, and 17 in a 3-2 loss to Coastal Carolina, a total of 43 K’s in 26 innings. In that win over West Virginia, freshman Logan Jernigan struck out nine in five innings to get the W. The next day, fellow freshman Carlos Rodon struck out 10 in four typically dominant innings in the loss to Coastal, but did not figure in the decision.

Wolfpack pitchers have averaged at least one strikeout per inning pitched in every game so far in 2015 except for eight K’s in nine innings of a 1-0 loss to Charlotte on Feb. 27. NC State enters the Clemson series with 108 strikeouts in 88 innings, an average of 11.05 strikeouts per nine innings.

The Unfriendly Confines: The last time NC State played at Savannah’s Grayson Stadium, in 1996, the Wolfpack scored 37 runs in three games, wins over Mercer (18-0), Howard (12-4) and Armstrong State (7-4).

Whether it was different bats, better competition, stadium renovations or what-have-you, the old ballyard wasn’t nearly as hitter-friendly this time around. In splitting two games at Grayson the weekend of Feb. 27-28, the Wolfpack batted .177 (11-for-62) and scored four runs on 11 hits with a .250 on-base percentage and a .258 slugging percentage.

Tommy DeJuneas, Logan Ratledge, Chance Shepard and Jake Fincher managed two hits apiece during the two games. The rest of the team batted a piddling .079 (3-for-38) with one extra-base hit and one RBI.

In six games before the journey to Savannah, the Pack batted .305 (62-for-203) and averaged 7.2 runs per game. And yes, these are all tiny sample sizes, so deriving any kind of meaning from them is a fool’s errand.

At the same time, though, the Wolfpack wasn’t the only team that struggled offensively in Savannah. The three teams combined to score 10 runs in four games played, so maybe the pitching played a role in the offensive shortcomings. NC State’s pitching definitely sparkled in its two games, allowing just two earned runs on eight hits in 18 innings for a 1.00 ERA. Wolfpack hurlers walked five and struck out 18. Opposing hitters batted a meager .140 with a .234 on-base percentage and a .158 slugging percentage.

Freshman lefthander Brian Brown turned in his second impressive performance in as many appearances, allowing two runs, one earned, on three hits in six innings. He got the win in a 4-2 victory over UNC Greensboro. Cory Wilder was impressive in five innings of a 2-0 loss to Charlotte, allowing a run on five hits in five innings. Relievers Curt Britt and Jon Olczak combined to allow one hit and one walk while striking out 10 in seven innings of shutout ball.

Slaying The Pirates: NC State’s 7-0 victory over East Carolina on March 3 extended the Wolfpack’s recent dominance in the series with the Pirates. The shutout was the Pack’s fifth win in the last six meetings with ECU. Dating back to 2003, NC State is 18-8 vs. East Carolina.

Overcoming A Slow Start: Relief pitcher Curt Britt had a rocky first two games for the Wolfpack, allowing seven runs in four innings, although in fairness to Britt, four of the seven runs were unearned. He recovered nicely, tossing 5 1/3 shutout innings in his next two appearances, Feb. 27 vs. Charlotte and March 3 vs. East Carolina. Britt has allowed just one earned run in his last 7 1/3 innings.

Driving Them In: Freshman third baseman Joe Dunand has battled a period of adjustment to college pitching, but he has delivered on the scoreboard, driving in eight runs in 10 games, including three multiple-RBI games of two RBIs apiece. Dunand, tied with Preston Palmeiro for the team lead in multiple-RBI games, also owns the team’s longest hitting streak, which lasted six games.

Hitting In Bunches: Logan Ratledge had 14 hits through the Wolfpack’s first 10 games, and hit safely in seven of the 10, with six of the seven games in which he hit safely being multiple-hit games, two more than any of his Wolfpack teammates. Ratledge had two hits against Villanova and three hits against Davidson in a season-opening doubleheader Feb. 13, and then had two hits each against Coastal Carolina on Feb. 22, North Carolina A&T on Feb. 25, UNC Greensboro on Feb. 28 and East Carolina on March 3.

Shutting ’Em Down: After getting routed 12-3 on Feb. 22 at Coastal Carolina, NC State was 3-2 with a staff ERA of 5.02. In five games since then, through March 4 vs. Appalachian State, Wolfpack pitchers allowed eight runs, five of them earned, for a 1.00 ERA in 45 innings. Wolfpack hurlers allowed just 28 hits and walked 13 in that span while striking out 50, dropping the staff ERA for the season to 2.97 in 88 innings. When Appalachian State scored an unearned run in the third inning March 4, it snapped the Wolfpack staff’s scoreless-innings streak at 17.

Lineup Construction: Any well-designed lineup should be a little top-heavy, and through nine games the top four spots in NC State’s lineup were belting the cover off the ball. Batters hitting 1-2-3-4 for the Wolfpack combined were hitting .364 (56-for-154) with eight doubles, two triples, two home runs, 34 RBIs and seven steals in eight attempts. At the bottom of the lineup, meanwhile, the No. 9 hitters were batting .300 (10-for-33), so when the lineup rolled over from the bottom back to the top, the 9-1-2-3-4 hitters were batting a combined .353 (66-for-187).

Brown-Out: Freshman lefthander Brian Brown had a quiet fall and an equally quiet preseason, but once the games began, the rookie from Glenmore, Pa., wasted no time establishing himself as one of the team’s early pitching leaders. Brown went six innings in each of his first two starts, allowing a run on two hits Feb. 21 against a strong Florida International squad, and a run on three hits Feb. 28 vs. UNC Greensboro. He struck out nine FIU batters and four UNCG hitters. He walked one in each game. At 2-0 with a 1.50 ERA, Brown led the staff with two wins, 12 2/3 innings pitched and a .135 opponents’ batting average. He was second in ERA and was tied for second with 13 strikeouts.

Baseball In February: Who Thinks This Is A Good Idea?

Sitting here at the computer on March 1 and looking out the window at the snow and ice still covering the front yard, it’s no surprise the first two weeks of the 2015 college baseball season have been marred by an epidemic of changed venues and cancelled games.

Even moving games hundreds of miles to the south has not kept the weather from wreaking havoc. With the Notre Dame Invitational in Cary, N.C., cancelled the weekend of Feb. 27-March 1, NC State jumped on a bus and traveled to Savannah, Ga., 322 miles away, to play two games each against Charlotte and UNC Greensboro. It wasn’t far enough. The Wolfpack’s Sunday doubleheader was washed out by heavy rain along the Georgia coast, sending the three teams home early after playing just two games apiece.

Much noise has been made in recent years about moving the start of the college baseball season back to coincide with warmer weather. The carnage Mother Nature has caused the last two weeks has only intensified that talk. Several years ago, West Virginia coach Randy Mazey proposed moving the start of the season to late March or even early April. Under Mazey’s plan, the regular season would end in July, with the NCAA tournament and College World Series stretching into late July or early August. No doubt, many coaches agree with Mazey’s proposal, and the intent of that proposal is good. The proposal itself, however, is wrong. At least by a few weeks.

On each and every campus in this country, the baseball program is part of the department of athletics, which is part of the greater university. And the greater university is there for the student body, first and foremost. No one working on any college campus — especially those working in athletics — should ever lose sight of that. Moving the start of the baseball season back to late March or early April could mean playing up to two-thirds of the regular season after the school year has ended and the students have gone home for the summer. That is not acceptable.

Students lack the financial sway (and the accompanying sense of entitlement) of wealthy boosters, and they don’t attend baseball games in significant numbers the way they attend football and basketball games. Doesn’t matter. They’re still the single most important constituency group in any college team’s fan base, including the baseball team’s. Denying students, no matter how few of them actually show up, the opportunity to see a significant portion of a team’s home schedule is wrong.

So what to do instead? Well, just because we shouldn’t move the start of the season all the way back to April doesn’t mean we shouldn’t move it back at all. And there are several other changes to the calendar we can and should make while dealing with the start of the season.

Instead of late March or April, let’s move opening day to the second full weekend of March, meaning no sooner than March 8 and no later than March 14. This would enable most schools to play the bulk of the regular season before exams and the end of the spring semester. Yes, there still would be a number of games played after students have gone home, but not nearly as many as if the season started in April and only a handful more than we’re currently playing.

Coaches from cold-weather schools will complain that a mid-March start to the season does nothing to help them, and that’s true. Unfortunately, there’s no reasonable solution to that problem. Anyone who’s ever been to a series at Boston College —  even a series in mid-May — knows that the only way schools in that part of the world can play in warm weather is to move the start of the season to mid-June. That definitely will never happen. You can’t change geography. Northern schools have a big advantage in ice hockey. Southern schools have a big advantage in baseball. Nothing can change that. So deal with it.

Moving the start of the season back to mid-March gives us the opportunity to expand preseason practice to a full month, starting the second weekend in February. Fall and winter sports get at least four weeks of full-squad practices before their seasons begin. College football players report to campus the first week of August and practice for a month before the season kicks off. College basketball begins practice on Oct. 15, with the regular season cranking up about a week before Thanksgiving.

College baseball teams report to campus after Christmas break and go through about a week of conditioning, followed by two weeks of “skill work,” which is drills in groups of four or fewer players for up to eight hours per week and not more than two hours per day. That’s not practice. Full-squad practices begin about two weeks prior to the first game of the season, which is not enough time to prepare a team for anything, especially when the weather conditions those two weeks are often miserable. So move the college baseball season back a month and let teams have a full month to get ready for opening day. Just like every other sport on campus.

With the regular season moved back a month and four full weeks of preseason practices allowed, the next move should be to cut the length of the regular season to 50 games and 11 weeks. Most coaches will scream bloody murder at this one. Get over it, already. We’re talking about six games, not six weeks of games. Thanks to the weather, most of you will play closer to 50 than 56 games this season anyway, and many of you will be damned lucky to play 50. The postseason is what really matters, and shortening the regular season dovetails with a corresponding idea to improve the NCAA Tournament.

The regular-season schedule centers around three-game weekend series, both for non-conference and conference games. Coaches build their pitching staffs accordingly, centered around a three-man starting rotation. Then they get into the NCAA regionals and everything changes. The regionals are four-team, double-elimination tournaments. Go through a regional unbeaten and you’ll only need three starting pitchers. Fall into the losers bracket and you may need five starters in a span of four days. Clearly, the moral of the story is not to fall into the losers bracket at all, but the punishment for losing, especially early in the tournament, does not fit the crime.

The rest of the NCAA Tournament is pretty much like the regular season and fits a three-man rotation. The super regional, in fact, is a best-of-3 weekend series. The College World Series is two brackets of four teams each, double elimination, just like the regionals, but with one huge difference. Because of TV scheduling, teams in the CWS get a day off between games, sometimes two days off between games. Three starting pitchers is more than enough through bracket play, even if you lose early. The two bracket winners then advance to the CWS championship series, which is another best-of-3 series.

So the entire college baseball season is built around a three-man pitching rotation, except for the NCAA regionals, a rather glaring and important exception to the rule. This makes no sense at all. Let’s change the “Road To Omaha” and make it three consecutive weekends of three-game series. The first weekend will be 64 teams and 32 series. The winners of those 32 series will advance the following weekend to the second round, which will be 16 series. Those 16 winners will move on to the next round of eight best-of-3 series, with the final eight series winners advancing to the College World Series. This format was proposed several years ago and went nowhere. It only lasts one week longer than the current postseason format, hence the logic behind cutting the regular season by six games. It makes perfect sense, so of course the NCAA never seriously considered it.

The best thing about making these changes is that in future seasons these early-season blog posts will be about baseball games and not about bad weather. The fact that college baseball will stand to benefit from the changes, well, that’s just icing on the cake.

Album Review: 6 String Drag Embraces Its Roots

During a recording life that dates back to 1994 — with a 17-year hiatus right in the middle — 6 String Drag now has produced a four-album body of work that’s as good as it is slim. The latest addition to the 6 String Drag catalogue is the aptly titled Roots Rock ’N’ Roll on the exclusive and prestigious Royal Potato Family label, available in stores in both vinyl and CD formats on Feb. 10, or through the band’s website, 6stringdrag.com.

Built around the musical vision and literary songwriting of lead singer Kenny Roby, 6 String Drag burst on the scene as sort of a punk/alt.country outfit in the early 1990s, in Clemson, S.C. The band quickly established a well-deserved reputation for its electrifying live performances, and in 1994 released its first album, the raw but highly energetic and entertaining Six String Drag. Three years later, having relocated to Raleigh, N.C., the Dragsters released a more accomplished and polished, but ultimately frustrating, album, the critically acclaimed High Hat, produced by Steve Earle for his E-Squared label. High Hat features a loose, almost messy sound that rocks and rolls and is lots of fun, but isn’t the sound the band had in mind for its major-label debut. To paraphrase Mark Twain, High Hat is better than it sounds. The problem, though, is that High Hat doesn’t really sound all that much like 6 String Drag.

Roby began to set the record straight in 2014. First, the band reunited for a spellbinding live show Jan. 4 at Raleigh’s Pour House. Over the following weeks, 6 String Drag convened at Fidelitorium in Kernersville, N.C., and recorded a new album, which at the time was scheduled to be released this past fall. With the new album completed and in the can, Roby visited the band’s vaults last summer and released The Jag Sessions, a superb collection of previously unreleased studio work from 1996-98. The Jag Sessions definitely sounds more like 6 String Drag than High Hat and was a big first step in establishing a signature 6 String Drag sound on record.

In the meantime, the new album was pushed back until this month, and it was well worth the wait. Recorded by a much more mature and disciplined group of musicians than any of 6 String Drag’s previous recordings, Roots Rock ’N’ Roll is easily the group’s best record to date. While not intended as a song cycle as such, Roots Rock 'N' Roll does evoke images of rock ’n' roll’s small-town and rural roots, and those roots are far-reaching. There are shades of the early rock ’n' roll of Little Richard and Chuck Berry. Ditto for the Muscle Shoals R&B of Stax and Atlantic Records circa the 1960s. Go west along the Gulf Coast and you’ll find more 6 String Drag roots in the Texas and New Orleans music of Roy Orbison, Doug Sahm, Freddy Fender, Fats Domino and Huey Piano Smith. And that’s just a sampling. Roots Rock ’N’ Roll embraces its many influences openly and proudly.

The album jumps starts with the bouncy cruising anthem "Drive Around Town.” The joyous New Orleans gumbo of “OOOEEOOOEEOOO” is up next, and we’re off to the races. From that rousing, double-shot kick in the keister of an intro, Roots Rock 'N' Roll careens merrily through its 11-song course. There’s the subtle (and occasionally not-so-subtle) humor of "The Kingdom Of Gettin' It Wrong" and "Me And My Disease.” At the other end of the emotional spectrum, we have troubled relationships in "Precious Things” and "High Times, Hard Times.” A pair of 6 String Drag holdovers from the 1990s — “Choppin’ Block” and “Sylvia” — provide bluesy swing and sway. The former showcases the underrated and raucous 6 String Horns while the latter provides an excellent vehicle for the tastefully understated slide guitar work of Scotty Miller.

Roots Rock ’N’ Roll was recorded live in the studio direct to analogue tape. The musicians were in close quarters in the crowded studio, and instruments and voices frequently bled from channel to channel in the mix, adding to the old-school vibe. The arrangements often were done on the fly in the studio, and creative ideas were exchanged freely. In other words, the musicians were loose, but the music was tight. The recording techniques reinforce the album’s title/mission statement, and the final result is a vintage rock ’n' roll sound that is all too absent in today’s popular music. Combine the record’s sonic qualities with precision performances and well-crafted material, and you have a genuinely satisfying album that sounds the way rock ’n' roll was intended, the way 6 String Drag intended.

6 String Drag is currently on a mini-tour of the Carolinas and adjacent states to promote the new album, and it’s highly likely they’re recording the shows. After the release of Roots Rock ’N’ Roll, about the only thing missing from the slender 6 String Canon is a live album, maybe something from the current tour and/or that incredible Jan. 4 blast-off from the Pour House. Just in case no live record is forthcoming, however, go see them yourself, and in the meantime, check out Roots Rock ’N’ Roll. In reality, it was 17 years in the making. Few records can live up to that. This one does.

Book Review: The 1974 Wolfpack Gets Some Love

Go to Google sometime and look up “NC State basketball national championship.” You’ll get link after link about the Wolfpack’s magical run to the 1983 NCAA championship, an event that has come to define NC State’s postseason history.

You’ll have to look much deeper than a cursory Google search to find coverage of NC State’s 1974 national championship, and that’s too bad because — and make no mistake about it — the 1974 Wolfpack was easily the best team in NC State history and maybe the best in Atlantic Coast Conference history. The 1974 Wolfpack’s best player, David Thompson, is still regarded as the greatest player in ACC history.

There are reasons the ’83 team gets all the love while the ’74 team falls through the cracks. A lot changed between 1974 and 1983. First of all, media coverage went from local to global. ESPN came into being in 1978, and began televising early-round NCAA Tournament games two years later. Within a few years, thanks in large part to the “Worldwide Leader,” the tournament morphed into “March Madness,” captivating the nation’s attention every spring. NC State’s 1983 championship run was a huge part of that transformation. 

Then there is the use of videotape, which goes hand in hand with the evolution of ubiquitous TV coverage. The ’83 team taped all of its games, many of them directly off the television. Within a few years, the bulk of that videotaped footage had been digitalized and stored on computers for easy access and replay. The ’74 team had to record its games on 16 millimeter film, a much more difficult and cumbersome medium. In the ensuing years, much of that footage has been lost or destroyed, or deteriorated so badly in storage as to be rendered useless, leaving precious little video history of NC State’s 1974 national championship.

Topping it all off is the improbable nature of NC State’s 1983 national championship. America claims to love underdogs — the popularity of the New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys notwithstanding — and it got two of the all-time greatest underdog stories in a span of three years with the 1983 Wolfpack and the 1985 Villanova Wildcats. Couple that with the presence of Jim Valvano, arguably the most irrepressible and charismatic coach in the history of the sport, and it’s little wonder the Wolfpack’s 1983 championship became one of the greatest stories in the history of college basketball. No one should be surprised, then, that the 1983 team towers over the rest of NC State’s storied, if distant, basketball tradition.

Jim Pomeranz, who worked for the NC State sports information office and for the Wolfpack Club from 1977-87, has taken a most welcome first step towards bridging the appreciation gap between NC State’s two national championship teams. His new book, 1973-74, Reliving the NC State Wolfpack’s Title Run, captures the 1973-74 basketball season from the eyes of NC State’s student newspaper, the Technician. Pomeranz was sports editor for the Technician in 1974 and covered the ’74 Wolfpack as closely as anyone in the media that year. His book reprints most of the day-to-day coverage of that incredible season directly from the pages of State’s student paper.

A confession up front here. Prior to publication, I proofread and critiqued 1973-74 for Jim, offering a.) encouragement, but also b.) constructive criticism and suggestions that I thought might help make the book tighter and more cohesive. Some of my suggestions he accepted, and others he rejected. Fair enough. It’s his book, after all. Former Technician sports editor Ken Lloyd and Technician staffers Bill Moss, Steve Baker, Ray Deltz, Jim Brewer, Steve Wheeler, Howard Barnett, Louise Coleman and Jeff Watkins all made contributions, but Jim was the sports editor and did the bulk of the coverage himself. I made at best a modest contribution to this book, very modest. One hundred percent of the credit should go to Jim Pomeranz. The book was his idea, his own labor of love, and he alone brought it to fruition.

The entire text of this book came from a student newspaper, so be prepared. Jim was 22 in 1974. He and his fellow Technician staff members were inexperienced writers at the time. That’s why they were working for a student newspaper, after all, to learn. If you’re expecting Frank DeFord or Grantland Rice, they’re not here. With that said, however, as student newspaper writing goes — and this comes from someone who’s read a lot of student newspapers — the 1973-74 Technician staff was pretty good. Jim Pomeranz was very good. And the story they were chasing was off-the-charts good.

By 1974, NC State basketball was wrapping up a two-year run that went unrivaled in ACC annals until Duke’s back-to-back national championships in 1991-92. The 1972-73 and 1973-74 Wolfpack teams — led by the core nucleus of David Thompson, Tom Burleson, Monte Towe and Tim Stoddard — went an astonishing 57-1, won two ACC championships and a national championship. The ’73 team, on probation and ineligible for postseason play, was a perfect 27-0 and finished the year ranked No. 2 in the nation behind perennial national champion UCLA.

With the nucleus of that team back in 1973-74, anticipation built, especially when a neutral-site game between the Bruins and Wolfpack for early December was a late addition to the schedule. UCLA won that game in a blowout, 84-66, but the loss fueled NC State’s resolve. Led by the incomparable Thompson on the wing, Towe at point guard and Burleson in the paint, the Wolfpack did not lose again, despite a grueling schedule and many close calls.

Following that loss to the Bruins, NC State played 11 games against nationally ranked opponents, nine of them against teams in the top 10, eight of them against teams ranked in the top 5, and won them all. Over the course of the 1973 and ’74 seasons, NC State was 17-1 against ranked opponents: 14-1 against the top 10, 10-1 against the top 5, and 5-1 against teams ranked Nos. 1, 2 or 3.

The 1973-74 campaign was the next-to-last season when only conference champions went to the NCAA Tournament. The ACC boasted three legitimate national championship contenders in 1974. Only one of them would have a chance to play for the national championship, which is unthinkable today but a reality that only added to the pressure in 1974. You could make a strong argument that Maryland’s 1974 team was the greatest in that school’s history, while 1974’s North Carolina squad has to go down as one of Dean Smith’s best and most underrated teams. Maryland and UNC spent most of the 1974 season ranked in the national top 5. NC State beat them both three times in some of the greatest college basketball games ever played.

Most importantly, though, in 1974 NC State ended UCLA’s national championship dynasty, the greatest domination of any sport in the history of college athletics. The Bruins won the national championship in 1964 and ’65, then won seven national championships in a row from 1967-73 before falling in double-overtime to NC State in the 1974 national semifinals. ACC teams challenged UCLA several times during the dynasty and failed every time, until the Wolfpack finally broke the spell. The Bruins won one last national championship in 1975 — their 10th in 12 years — but the dynasty was broken the year before.

As 1973-74, Reliving the NC State Wolfpack’s Title Run shows, Pomeranz and his Technician staff covered the 1974 basketball season in depth, writing detailed game advance stories and recaps, player profiles, features and notes columns, capturing not just the nuts and bolts of the Pack’s national championship, but also setting the scene and providing context, both on and off the court.

As time rolls by and the 1983 team grows in stature and legend, the 1974 teams seems to shrink further and further from the public view, and that’s a terrible shame. No disrespect intended here for the 1983 team, which deserves all the attention to come its way. The 1974 squad was the best in school history, the best by a wide margin, and deserves its day in the sun. 1973-74, Reliving the NC State Wolfpack’s Title Run may not balance the scales, but it’s a great first step, and highly recommended.

Great Expectations? For NC State Baseball, Thanks But No Thanks

Forget about pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training. College baseball season begins in less than a month. For NC State, the 2015 season means that the Wolfpack’s Gold Dust Era is finally in the rear-view mirror. Good riddance.

With apologies to Charles Dickens, the last three years were the best of times and the worst of times for NC State baseball. With future first-round draft picks Carlos Rodon and Trea Turner constantly in the headlines, the Wolfpack found itself front and center in the national spotlight for the first time, with very mixed results. For three years, NC State experienced euphoric highs and disappointing lows. Now, the lights are off and everyone seems to be breathing a sigh of relief.

The Gold Dust Era began well enough. The Pack caught a lot of people by surprise when Rodon and Turner were freshmen in 2012, winning 43 games and advancing to the NCAA Super Regional before falling on the road to top-ranked Florida. Expectations ratcheted up significantly a year later, and NC State rode a razor’s edge of excruciating, low-scoring thrillers all the way to Omaha and the 2013 College World Series, ending a 45-year CWS drought. Rodon and Turner returned to headline a heralded junior class a year ago, and for a number of reasons the expectations became completely unrealistic. NC State found itself ranked No. 6 in the nation in the preseason, then barely limped into the play-in round of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament before failing to earn an NCAA regional bid for the first since 2009.

The glare of the spotlight brings unavoidable and unwanted distractions. With Rodon and Turner eligible for the 2014 draft, weekends at Doak Field became a side show. On many a Friday night at the Doak, fans rubbed elbows with national media members; major league scouts, cross checkers and scouting directors; MLB general managers and team presidents; and high-profile player agents along with their sycophants and entourages.

Those types of distractions are tough enough for good teams to overcome. For a struggling, overmatched and pitching-challenged team like the 2014 Wolfpack, those distractions added a surreal, almost science-fiction-like quality to what already was a nightmare of a season. A three-year era, one that began with such promise and included so many thrills, ended with a thud and a 32-23 record.

Although he’d never say so for public consumption, it’s a safe bet that no one was happier to see 2014 end than NC State coach Elliott Avent. Heading into the season, Avent had to know the preseason expectations for his team were absurd. While then-sophomores Rodon, Turner, Brett Austin, Jake Fincher, Logan Ratledge and Logan Jernigan got all the attention on that 2013 CWS team, Avent knew better than anyone that it was his senior class, not his sophomores, who were most responsible for the trip to Omaha.

It was seniors Tarran Senay, Brett Williams, Grant Clyde and Bryan Adametz who provided the grit, toughness and leadership — along with much of the production — in the everyday lineup. It was seniors Grant Sasser, Chris Overman, Josh Easley and Ethan Ogburn who pitched the bulk of the innings out of what was probably the best bullpen in the country, a bullpen that saved an underwhelming starting rotation over and over again.

With those seniors gone, Avent knew that 2014 was fraught with peril. Leadership proved to be an issue all season. The everyday lineup was top-heavy with Austin, Turner and freshman wunderkind Andrew Knizner doing almost all of the heavy lifting. The senior-laden bullpen of 2013 gave way to a patchwork of transfers, bandits, unproven underclassmen and true freshmen who threw hard but couldn’t throw strikes. It was a disaster waiting to happen. At times Avent did his best to downplay the expectations, but at other times he yielded to his inner child and boasted of possible parades in downtown Raleigh come July. That didn’t help, to understate the obvious.

And so the Wolfpack and its beleaguered head coach enter 2015 with a sense of relief and anticipation. Those who expected fall practices to be a train wreck had to have been pleasantly surprised. The 2015 Wolfpack will not feature the front-line talents of a Rodon or a Turner (although as Knizner’s transition to catcher continues, he could be a huge attraction a year from now). Instead, the Pack will be young, hungry and coachable, and will play with an energy and passion that fans should quickly recognize and appreciate. A promising but unproven pitching staff could be a work in progress deep into the season as new pitching coach Scott Foxhall sorts out the many talented arms at his disposal. The lineup won’t have an Austin or a Turner at the top, but should be deeper and feature more power, something Avent will welcome with open arms after the speedy but offensively challenged Punch-and-Judy offenses of the last two years. And this Wolfpack team should be one of Avent’s best defensive units.

Expectations, of course, will be the key. A year ago, the world expected nothing less than a return trip to the College World Series. For that team, 32-23 was a realistic but bitter disappointment. This time around, the Wolfpack may not be picked as high as No. 6 in the ACC’s Atlantic Division and definitely won’t be in anyone’s preseason rankings. Given those expectations, 32-23 might look pretty good.

Historically, Avent’s teams have performed best and overachieved when little was expected. That’s not to say this team will be in the NCAA Tournament come June, or even on the bubble when the tournament pairings are announced. There are far too many unanswered questions to make such assumptions at this point. But don’t be too quick to write this team off. After last year’s Fun Bunch, in many ways this team will have an easy act to follow.

Springsteen At The Agora Goes Over The Counter

As someone noted some time ago, the Grateful Dead had it right all along. We’re talking about bootlegs here, and the only surprise is that it took other artists so long to figure it out.

Bootleg recordings, especially jazz and classical bootlegs, have been around forever. Rock bootlegs came onto the scene in the late 1960s with Great White Wonder, a now-legendary Bob Dylan bootleg LP, and soon became a booming (if illegal) industry and remained so until the internet made free bootlegs downloads as easy as a couple of keystrokes.

While most artists cried foul and screamed bloody murder at the mere thought of bootleg recordings, the Grateful Dead quickly recognized that bootlegs weren’t going away and instead got ahead of the curve. The Dead not only encouraged their fans to tape their shows, but the group’s sound engineers often aided fans by showing them the optimal locations for microphone placement and the proper settings to get the best possible sound.

The Dead took matters a step further by releasing an avalanche of concert recordings from their own vaults, starting in the early 1990s with One From The Vault and following that with the highly successful Dick’s Picks series. The Dead’s back catalogue now features several lines of great sounding concert recordings.

It took a while, but other artists finally began to follow the Dead’s lead. Bob Dylan’s outstanding bootleg series is now up to 11 essential volumes with the official release of The Basement Tapes, recorded in 1967 with the group that eventually came to be called The Band. Beginning in 2002, the Allman Brothers Band started releasing several of their classic performances from the early 1970s, then began collaborating with Live Nation to make Instant Live recordings of their concerts available to fans shortly after the completion of each show. Neil Young began emptying his archives for commercial release about 10 years ago. There are many others.

Free online bootleg downloads altered the equation a bit, but the fact remains that bootlegs are still bootlegs. Whether purchased surreptitiously at a hip record store or downloaded for free online, lack of proper engineering means sound quality will always be an issue with a bootleg, even with a soundboard concert recording.

That was the thought that prompted Bruce Springsteen to start his own live download site — live.brucespringsteen.net. A vocal opponent of bootlegs in his younger days, Springsteen apparently mellowed his stance over the years, and when a staff member pointed out to him the number of his live shows available on YouTube alone, Springsteen’s very admirable response was, “Well, we can do it better than that.”

And indeed they have. Springsteen began by selling fully mastered downloads of his 2014 world and U.S. tour shows on his own website, brucespringsteen.net. Those links were removed late last summer, but they’re back, now available for purchase on live.brucespringsteen.net. The 2014 tour recordings are, in fact, the backbone of the site’s available downloads, at least for the time being.

In time, we’re told, live.brucespringsteen.net will feature a wealth of classic Springsteen concert recordings, and there is a bountiful body of work to pick from, judging from the multitude of Springsteen bootlegs long in circulation. The first archived show made available was the March 9, 2012, show from the Apollo Theater in New York City, an excellent show broadcast live on satellite radio, but hardly one of Springsteen’s many essential vintage performances.

The second release, however, Aug. 9, 1978, from the Agora Theater in Cleveland, Ohio, is an all-out classic, a legendary performance from what many believe to have been Springsteen’s best and most musically intense tour, the Darkness On The Edge Of Town tour. The show from the Agora was one of five shows from the ’78 tour broadcast live on a regional network of FM radio stations. Not surprisingly, all five have been heavily bootlegged over the years. The others, for the record, were July 7 from the Roxy in Los Angeles; Sept. 19 from the Capitol Theater in Passaic, N.J.; Sept. 30 from the Fox Theater in Atlanta; and Dec. 15 from the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. Look for some or all of those to make it to the live site at some point.

The Agora show originated on Cleveland’s WMMS-FM as part of the station’s 10th anniversary celebration and was simulcast all over the Midwest, as far south as St. Louis, as far west as Chicago and as far north as Minneapolis. Unlike the available bootlegs of this show, this official release is the pre-FM master, taken from seven 15-IPS reel-to-reel half-track tapes, transferred and engineered digitally using the same Plangent mastering process used on the recent The Album Collection box set.

The various Agora bootlegs were among the cleanest-sounding Springsteen boots in circulation. The sound was a bit thin, perhaps, and the organ and piano were mixed more prominently in places than the guitars and saxophone, which sounds a little weird, but the overall sound quality was extraordinary for a bootleg. The newly released version retains and even improves the clean sound from the bootlegs. The tapes were corrected for speed variation to eliminate any wow and flutter. The sound has more heft to it, and the stereo separation is much sharper with a wider soundstage. The keyboards still tend to stand out over the strings and reeds, but that’s the way the show was recorded. Not much can be done to fix that.

While the sound quality of this recording is excellent, the performance is nothing short of stunning. Cleveland, a hard-core blue-collar town, jumped on the Springsteen juggernaut early on, and the Boss played there frequently throughout the early and mid-1970s, developing a huge and devoted following. That following turned out en masse for the Agora show, and the chemistry between artist and audience is obvious.

Darkness On The Edge Of Town ranks with Springsteen’s greatest albums, a lyrical masterpiece by a lyric-driven artist. Yet over the years, Springsteen has expressed regret at the way the album turned out, saying that it wasn’t until two years later with The River that he and the E Street Band actually figured out how to navigate their way around the studio and get the same sound on record that they produced onstage. Springsteen insisted that the songs on Darkness turned out much better live on the ’78 tour than they did on the album itself. The band played six of the 10 songs from Darkness at the Agora show, and all six just sizzled with intensity. E Street drummer Max Weinberg said in later years that in his mind, the Agora concert was the best show the E Street Band ever played. That’s saying a mouthful, but there is no disputing that this was an electrifying performance.

Most bootleg download sites will pull the links to performances that are available commercially, thus avoiding legal hassles over mechanical royalties. Just as well, because the version of the Agora show now available on Springsteen’s live site is a considerable improvement over the bootleg versions in circulation.

All live downloads on live.brucespringsteen.net are available as standard mp3 (256 kbps for $9.95) and FLAC ($12.95) digital files, high-quality CDR pressings ($23), and state-of-the-art 24-bit/192 KHz high definition audio (24.95).

It’s also worth noting that all of Springsteen’s commercially released albums are available as digital downloads on live.brucespringsteen.net, including the remastered versions of his first seven albums, which debuted in The Album Collection box set last fall.