The Dam Links 7/15/2013

47 days until kickoff vs. Eastern Washington...

First, thanks to Matt Daddy for suggesting the winning column title in our poll last Monday. Glad I didn't throw out a prize suggestion like "Front Page Post" since he's an AtQ guy and we'd probably be reading an in depth analysis of the 2008 Civil War. He gets the satisfaction of believing it's just one more good thing we got from Eugene. You know, kind of like they did with our baseball program. Seriously, though, good suggestion, Matt. As soon as I saw it, I knew it would be the winner.

The weekend got off to a rousing start Friday with Ben Wetzler and Scott Schultz both announcing they were returning to OSU for their senior seasons. Any trepidation about who the #3 starter was going to be next year is now gone. Steve Gress of the Gazette-Times has some further analysis.

Watch lists: They're Here! Trevor Romaine is on the Alex Serna Lou Groza Award Watch List for best kicker, and Keith Kostol is on the Ray Guy Award Watch List for best punter. Isaac Seumalo is on the Watch List for the Outland Trophy, Scott Crichton on the Bronco Nagurski list, and Rashaad Reynolds got is on the Thorpe Award Watch List. Hope you got all that, because there will be a test later.

OSU Athletics made a brief video about Oregon State athletes transitioning from high school to college, focusing on the academic portion of their life:

Former Beaver and native Canadian Jordan Lennerton (2007-2008) is having some success in Triple A for Detroit, and played in Sunday's Futures Game on the World team. He is only the second Beaver to have played in the game, after some guy named Ellsbury. Although the US team won 4-2, Lennerton had a sacrifice fly and an RBI on this play.

In other baseball alumni news, Max Gordon caught on with the White Sands Pupfish, a member of the independent Pecos League in New Mexico. Another former Beaver, Cole Gillespie, got waived by the Giants but immediately picked up by the Cubs, where he joined the team Sunday. Since he joins Darwin Barney on the Cubs, that puts two Beavers on the same major league team for the first time that I can recall, and may be the first time ever. If anyone knows of another time this occurred, I'd like to hear about it in the comments. In his first game as a Cub on Sunday, Gillespie pinch hit, got a hit and scored a run. In the same game, Barney hit his sixth home run of the year.

Best of luck to all of these Beaver alumni.

The University of Tennessee put together a list of a variety of athletic program's twitter account followers. Oregon State baseball is the highest ranked program on the west coast at #14 nationally. Unless I missed it, the Beavers don't appear on any of the other Top 25 lists, but that's not terribly surprising.

Flashback link to the most recent signing class. New member of OSU's all-name team: Logan Ice. If baseball doesn't work out, he has a future making Canadian beer. As near as Connor could tell, none of the incoming freshmen listed there signed professional contracts, so they should all be in Corvallis next fall. Tyler O'Neill, not named in the Oregonian piece, was selected in the third round by the Mariners and eventually signed with Seattle. JC transfer Justin Bohn (7th round, Marlins), also signed a professional contract. While that's sad, it's certainly not unexpected.

Makauley "Mak" Fox of New Zealand turned down six major league baseball teams and a number of other high profile schools for Oregon State. At 17, he is one of the biggest baseball prospects in the history of the country, pitching for them in the World Baseball Classic last spring. He and the New Zealand Baseball CEO had a conversation on Youtube that's interesting, if for nothing else having the weird experience of listening to someone explain to someone else what the Pacific-12 is. He'll be in the orange and black next spring.

Canzano finishes his top 25 most influential figures in Oregon sports. He's got Pat Casey on the list, with Bob DeCarolis and Mike Riley just a little further ahead. I always find this list interesting and stupid at the same time. At the very least it's an interesting topic of conversation. His #1 choice is someone you've probably never heard of, but will make at least some sense once you read about him. I still wouldn't have put him at #1 ahead of Phil Knight, Paul Allen, and even Merritt Paulson in some order. But Canzano's job is not to be logical, it's to get people to read his column, which he does very well by generating discussion with opinions of debatable merit.

Cory Mandina of OregonLive compiles a bunch of links and quotes on the Atlanta Falcons' Beaver Backfield Tandem of Jackson and Rodgers. It's a link on a links page to a links page. It's a Linkception.

Non-Beaver related link: the next time I make a proof-reading or editing error, I'm going to remind myself of this news story and feel better about myself.

If I missed anything, put it in the comments below, and make sure you vote in the poll.