After covering sports for most of the past 20 years, it was kind of hard to settle into a job that called for more time at a desk than out in the field.

Now I don’t miss being gone nearly every night and most every weekend covering one game or another all year long. That is especially true during the summer when heat and humidity can combine into a powerful force for wilting formerly young and hardy reporters.

 When I arrived in Baldwin County last year, I helped out the sports department by covering a handful of football games. Bored one night, I even ventured out to a basketball game. But other projects at work and home kept me occupied during the spring, so sports sat on the back burner.

At least until my alma mater reached the College World Series. I knew I wanted to follow Mississippi State as far as they went in Omaha. Now watching sports at home is an adventure when you have a 100-pound dog who wants to chase the ball and starts barking and jumping at the screen when the announcers’ voices get excited.

The Bulldogs rolled through the bracket unscathed, thanks to a pair of eighth-inning rallies, and suddenly found themselves in a position they had never faced. Even as good as the 1985 squad (Bobby Thigpen, Will Clark and Rafael Palmero) was, the Bulldogs had never reached the championship game before.

The finals had a strange connection with Gulf Coast Newspapers. And I’m not just talking about Fairhope alumni Daryl Norris who is a junior on the Mississippi State squad. I matriculated in Starkville and have been wearing a MSU belt and assorted Bulldog shirts on select days for the last two weeks. Advertising salesman Bruce Cuddy is a former Bruin so, needless to say, he was pulling for UCLA. (And my wife decided she liked the Pacific Blue in the UCLA uniforms more than maroon so she favored the Bruins as well.)

We lost and I have two schools of thought on the issue.

First, we just got beat. I have always been a fan of small ball and the Bruins adjusted and did whatever they had to do to get on base and generate runs. State tried to continue being a power hitting team. They tried to adjust in Game 2 but it was too little, too late.

Second, the field is just too big. I know this might seem like sour grapes, but if a team plays on a regular size field all season long, why switch to a jumbo size job where the wind blows in all week? (I can’t complain too much, that’s the reason we beat Oregon State in the opener.)

I’ve seen this switcheroo done in the past in Mississippi where girls softball teams played all year on 225-foot fields. But when it came time for the state finals, they played on fields designed for adult men, where the fence was 300 feet away from the plate. It altered the whole dynamic of the game. Power hitting teams watched outfielders back up and catch what should have been home runs like they were cans of corn. On the other hand, any thing hit into the gap would roll forever turning a simple single into multiple base hits.

I would prefer to see some consistency. But again, every team has the dream to make it to Omaha and they all know just how big TD Ameritrade Field is. So I guess folks will just have to deal with it.

Despite losing in the finals of the CWS, the Bulldogs were one of just two college teams in the entire country still playing baseball this week. It has been a great year, one to hang our hats on. Of course, making it this fire will show the underclassmen just what else needs to be done to make it that one more step to the pinnacle.

William Moore is the Senior Editor at Gulf Coast Newspapers. He can be reached at wmoore@gulfcoastnewspapers.com