LJ baseball: Good sign

Two tiny eggs in a nest at the end of the

visitors dugout at Valhalla.

(Photo Ed Piper, Jr.)

By Ed Piper, Jr.

There was a discovery when the Vikings walked into the visitors dugout before their game at Valhalla Thurs., March 23.

Someone spotted what seemed to be a bird's nest currently in operation, though the owner was absent. It was located atop the cinder block wall that forms the end of the dugout.

Inside were two tiny eggs, unharmed, sitting in the back of the next.

To the mother bird's credit, though she was AWOL, the nest was built high up where no cat could reach it. One wonders how this nest got built with Valhalla's baseball team practicing on the field.

Anyway, someone said something about the intact nest with eggs being a good sign for the La Jolla baseball team this day.

Head coach Gary Frank recounted last year's encounter at Valhalla, a debacle which started well, then unraveled courtesy of an error. Riley O'Sullivan, latest heir in a professional-baseball-playing family, hit a long home run to bury the Vikings on that fateful day about 365 days before.

O'Sullivan, then only a freshman, came back Thursday to hit another long home run, this one beyond the 361-foot sign in left field. The tall sophomore put the Norsemen up 4-1 in the third, and occasioned some Domesday comments in the birded dugout.

But good things were to come for the visitors, and the eggs remained untouched and apparently healthy through the extra-inning conclusion.