Oregon Football Practice Report: Oct. 30
By Rob Moseley
Editor, GoDucks.com
Venue: Moshofsky Center
Format: Walk-through
Full disclosure: Your humble reporter is a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers, thus it was difficult to write this report, and nauseating to conduct interviews for it with the particulars.
Assistant coaches for the Oregon baseball staff were in the Mo Center watching the football team warm up for their walk-through Thursday. With music blaring, there was no use yelling, so UO special teams coordinator Tom Osborne simply looked over to baseball assistant Jay Uhlman and held up three fingers.
The gesture needed little explanation. Osborne, a San Francisco Giants fan, was having some fun with Uhlman, a Dodgers fan, the morning after the Giants wrapped up their third World Series title in five years Wednesday.
“Three World Series in five years?” Osborne asked rhetorically in a brief chat after practice. “I’ve been a fan for 50 years. There were times I just hoped they’d make the playoffs once before I die.”
The No. 5 Ducks (7-1, 4-1 Pac-12) remain supremely focused on Saturday’s showdown with Stanford in Autzen Stadium (4:30 p.m. PT, FOX). But there may have been a little extra pep today in the steps of a small but jubilant pack of Giants fans peppering the staff and roster.
Like Osborne, UO head coach Mark Helfrich has been a fan of the team since he was a boy. Equipment manager Kenny Farr is a diehard, as is athletic trainer Travis Halseth. Backup quarterback Jeff Lockie is the most rabid fan among a contingent of players that includes fellow Bay Area natives Morgan Mahalak, Mike Garrity, Chris Tewhill and Matt McFadden.
Lockie took advantage of Oregon’s Friday night game against Cal last week to stay in the Bay Area and attend Game 4 of the World Series with his dad. He got to see the Giants win 11-4, and even the series at 2-2.
“It was definitely a nice getaway, being with family, going to a ballgame,” Lockie said. “Definitely a different atmosphere than any other baseball game I’ve ever been to.”
Garrity said Lockie is the UO player who goes beyond scores and standings and knows all the individual statistics and such. Lockie gets score updates on his phone, and will have a game muted on TV while watching practice video on his iPad at night.
Osborne said the biggest chunk of Game 7 that he got to watch was while eating dinner in the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex dining hall. Each morning he opens a Web browser that has a page bookmarked to check the previous night’s score, but most days that’s the extent to which he can keep up with the team.
It was a different story when Osborne was growing up in Longview, Wash. He’d listen to guys like Willie Mays and Willie McCovey on the radio, and keep score in a scorebook. Helfrich, who grew up on the Oregon coast, also has been reduced to a casual fan these days but was a diehard as a kid.
“I could tell you the relief pitchers, all that stuff,” Helfrich said, of an era when maybe one game a week was televised. “But now it’s zero. I’m just not used to them being this good. It’s still hard to believe. It’s cool.”
The Giants fans on the staff and roster greatly outnumber the poor Dodgers fans, which include Hroniss Grasu, Byron Marshall (a South Bay Area native who grew up rooting for L.A. teams) and graduate assistant coaches Joe Bernardi and Mike Keldorf. “Oz and Helf kill me,” a chagrined Bernardi said. “I’m the GA, I take a beating. I got no chance.”
Observations: With this a walk-through of the plays Oregon will run against Stanford on Saturday, no true “highlights” to offer. … Matt Wogan did get the chance to attempt a couple field goals right off the bat. The net with the goal post printed on it wasn’t in place for the first, but it looked like he tucked the second one inside the right upright. … Happy 21st birthday to Marcus Mariota, and a happy birthday as well to Kenny Bassett and Juwaan Williams. Those three had the honor of breaking the post-practice huddle today.
