Know your opponent: Cornell

5,814 Views | 37 Replies | Last: 6 yr ago by Adam87inSA
Ag2012
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Hey guys,

Really looking forward to this weekend's series against Cornell and thought I'd share my insights. I'm c.o. 2012 and was a diehard Raggie when I was in school, and now I'm in grad school at Cornell.

The first thing to know about Cornell baseball is that they are BAD. Like really, really bad. The program is about 200 games below .500 over their ~150 year history. The program has had 14 players drafted since 1965. Three of those were drafted last year, the most in school history (the earliest of those picks was in the 26th round and the only junior drafted opted to forego his senior season). Cornell has been to the NCAA tournament twice in its history (1977 and 2012) and the most recent appearance was as a 4 seed and they were bounced in two games.

Baseball is a complete afterthought as an athletic program. Actually football is an afterthought and baseball is somewhere well down the ladder from that. Hockey is the only sport people care about here, and the team is admittedly very good. They locked up their 22nd Ivy League title this year with over a month left in the season, swept bitter rival Harvard and are in the driver's seat to win the ECAC (the larger conference that all the Ivy schools are in). They're #4 in the country receiving votes for 1st, and will hopefully get a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament. The hockey fans are actually very similar to our Raggies in that they heckle mercilessly (opposing goalie gets it the worst) and there are several fun chants and traditions like letting the goalie know that a goal scored on him was all his fault, throwing fish at Harvard, and serenading the opposing goalie before the 3rd period.

The home ballpark for Cornell (Hoy Field), is a little field squeezed between a parking garage and Bill Gates Hall, and it seats fewer people than most Texas high school JV fields. To be fair though they just installed some nice new field turf.




Some more fun facts about Cornell:

Cornell is the biggest Ivy League school (enrollment just north of 20k) and the newest by almost 100 years (founded 1865)

Cornell is actually New York's Morrill Land Grant school (same reconstruction-era act that led to A&M's founding) and the school is part private and part public, with outstanding veterinary and agriculture programs

Cornell is located in Ithaca, NY which is a little hippie town on Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes region about an hour south of Syracuse

The town motto is "Ithaca is Gorges" because of all of the gorges cut out of the shale rock in the region, including two on either side of campus. The bridges that span these gorges have suicide nets because apparently there used to be a bad problem with overwhelmed engineering students suffering from seasonal affective disorder during the brutal winters...

Ithaca was the starting point of the movie Road Trip, where a group of college friends start at their fictional university (modeled after Ithaca College) and drive to Austin to intercept a package sent to one of their girlfriends

Lastly, you may have heard of Cornell in the news lately, as one of our fraternities had a "pig roast" that didn't go over so well...

Enjoy the series, Ags! I'll be watching from afar.

jkag89
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Quote:

To be fair though they just installed some nice new field turf.
That is a negative IMO. On the other hand, to their credit it appears that they have a dirt pitchers mound and dirt circle around home which is not the case with many programs that have opted for Field Turf.
Ag2012
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I absolutely agree, but we're gonna be getting snow for another month or two up here so real grass just isn't practical.
jkag89
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I understand for Northern climes Field Turf is practical, still hate that many programs use the damn stuff on the entire field. Have dirt where there should be dirt, the mound, around the plate & bases, and the warning track.
Farmer1906
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When I read finger lakes

Farmer1906
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I would highly enjoy if we could get a Rit Dit Dit Dit Do chant going.

Ag2012
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Our hockey team gets that treatment a lot. Apparently Dartmouth plays Andy Bernard clips during practically every break in play when we visit Hanover. Another fun fact: Ed Helms actually did (not) go to Cornell (but he gave the commencement speech a few years ago so we all think erroneously that he did).

fightintxag13
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I thought the same thing when I read the Finger Lakes part.
TempleAg97
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Outstanding work OP including the pics. That's a unique little set up for a field. And congrats on making it into Cornell. My son is getting a little bit of interest in basketball from Ivy League Schools and it's crazy the competition to get in to most.
ensign_beedrill
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Hope that garage has a net.
Ag2012
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It doesn't.
ensign_beedrill
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BenFiasco14
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Bad, you say? Sounds like the perfect series to drop one.
CNN is an enemy of the state and should be treated as such.
Spyderman
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Hockey
RedlegAg21
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Solid post OP! Very inciteful. Love The Office reference too.
VegasAg86
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jkag89 said:

I understand for Northern climes Field Turf is practical, still hate that many programs use the damn stuff on the entire field. Have dirt where there should be dirt, the mound, around the plate & bases, and the warning track.
Absolutely.
AgEng06
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Ag2012 said:

Our hockey team gets that treatment a lot. Apparently Dartmouth plays Andy Bernard clips during practically every break in play when we visit Hanover. Another fun fact: Ed Helms actually did go to Cornell.
This is a lie! I mentioned this fact today to an ACTUAL Cornell grad and he didn't think it was true.... because it isn't.

Quote:

Three actors on "The Office" attended Ivy League schools: B.J. Novak (Ryan Howard) went to Harvard, Mindy Kaling (Kelly Kapoor) went to Dartmouth, and John Krasinski (Jim Halpert) went to Brown. This may explain why Cornell is quite hilariously hated upon in the show.
https://www.ivygateblog.com/2008/11/those-colors-are-sacred-if-youre-not-a-cornell-man/index.html
AgEng06
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spanky
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I love the mirror-out they have in the last pic
Farmer1906
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AgEng06 said:

Ag2012 said:

Our hockey team gets that treatment a lot. Apparently Dartmouth plays Andy Bernard clips during practically every break in play when we visit Hanover. Another fun fact: Ed Helms actually did go to Cornell.
This is a lie! I mentioned this fact today to an ACTUAL Cornell grad and he didn't think it was true.... because it isn't.
Quote:

He graduated from The Westminster Schools one year after The Office castmate Brian Baumgartner in 1992. Helms entered Oberlin College as a geology major, but ended up graduating in 1996 with his B.A. in film theory and technology. He spent a semester as an exchange student at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Helms#cite_note-HelmsAV-6][6][/url][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Helms#cite_note-TV_Guide-7][7][/url][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Helms#cite_note-Kimmel-8][8][/url]
[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Helms#cite_note-Kimmel-8][/url]
spanky
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He actually went to Cornell...to give that graduation speech
Ag2012
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Son of a *****. I'd always heard he did and I never verified.
HoustonAg2106
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Ag2012 said:

Son of a *****. I'd always heard he did and I never verified.


He gave a convocation speech at Cornell one year so that is probably how the rumor started
SchizoAg
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Ag2012 said:

Son of a *****. I'd always heard he did and I never verified.
You are Fake News!
Ag2012
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Original post corrected
NorCal
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Cornell. Ithaca, NY. May 8, 1977. What a show!
yemtig
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NorCal said:

Cornell. Ithaca, NY. May 8, 1977. What a show!

You got that right!! Classic
Sean98
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My confusion required me to google that. I'll take your word for it.
W
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no one should complain about ticket prices or ticket availability for this series.

Scores of reserved seat tickets on Flash at or below face value...for all 3 games
Ag2012
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NorCal said:

Cornell. Ithaca, NY. May 8, 1977. What a show!
FWIW Barton Hall is across the street from the ballpark. It's probably taken its fair share of foul balls in its day.

The best concerts on campus happen on Libe Slope these days though. The school puts on what is essentially an Ivy League Chilifest every spring and it's freaking awesome. The Ramones, Kanye, OAR, Snoop, Drake, Nelly, Kendrick Lamar, Ludacris and Chance the Rapper have all played Slope Day.



Ag2012
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Howdy from Ithaca
ClassOf17
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Love the Ivy's campuses. That field looks nice too. Although this you can't see much of it
Ag2012
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UPDATE: the Cornell Daily Sun finally put out their season preview if you want a little more background into the personnel we'll see.

Spark notes: totally new weekend rotation and reshuffled bullpen, best hitting team in the Ivy League last year (.296 BA) returning its two best hitters.

http://cornellsun.com/2018/02/22/thrown-into-the-fire-with-staff-questions-lingering-baseball-faces-early-test-against-no-10-texas-am/
Whens lunch
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Let's all sing along for the OP:

Far above Cayuga's Waters, with it's waves of blue,
Stands our noble Alma Mater, glorious to view.
Lift the chorus, speed it onward, loud her praises tell,
Hail to thee our Alma Mater! Hail, all hail, Cornell!


explanation:

When I was a kid, 1950ish, my dad had an album that had collegiate fight songs and alma maters. Now this will be rattling around in my head all weekend. So I've got that going for me.

There are apparently countless other versions, such as:

Far above Cayuga's Waters, rises such a smell
Some say it's Cayuga's waters, I say it's Cornell

Olsen15
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Quote:

The first thing to know about Cornell baseball is that they are BAD. Like really, really bad
Welp...

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