University of Arizona’s baseball season home opener was yesterday and things started with a bang. Thanks Wes, Nate, Benny and Jay for coming down. Unforgettable evening with family, big crowd and great weather. Congratulations to Coach Andy Lopez who picked up his 900th win.

Baird’s grand slam lifts No. 1 baseball; Lopez earns win No. 900
Arizona Daily Wildcat – Tucson,AZ,USA

Arizona (3-1) clinched the first game of the series over Sacramento State 9-3 after third baseman Dillon Baird crushed a two-out grand slam onto 6th Street …

The charter members of the Dillon Baird Fan Club traveled all the way from Prescott on Friday to watch Arizona’s new third baseman play his first game at …

If Dillon Baird’s three years of college career play out like his first three games, he’ll be a star. The Arizona third baseman went 5 for 13 with a double …

Baird’s Bomb of a grand slam lifts, etc.
Tucson Citizen

Postscript: Even though the University of Arizona’s teams are called the Wildcats, their school motto and song are “Bear down.” When I first saw that everywhere, I thought it was some kind of mixed metaphor. I was wrong. Here’s a little bit of inspirationâ€â€?the story of how that motto came to be (courtesy of Wikipedia):

The battle cry was created in 1926 by a popular student athlete, John “Button” Salmon. Salmon was the student body president, as well as the starting quarterback for the Wildcat football team and the catcher for the Wildcat baseball team.

The day after the first game of the 1926 football season, Salmon and two others were involved in an automobile accident, in which their vehicle flipped over in a ravine. Although Salmon’s friends were not injured, Salmon suffered a severe spinal cord injury. In the aftermath of the accident, football coach Pop McKale visited him in the hospital every day. During McKale’s last visit, Salmon’s last message to his teammates was, “Tell them… tell the team to bear down.” John Salmon died on October 18, 1926.

The following year, the University of Arizona student body approved that “Bear Down” would be the new slogan for all Wildcat athletic teams. That year, Chain Gang, the junior honorary organization at the UA, held a dance in the newly-constructed university gymnasium to raise funds to paint the slogan on the roof of the building. The words are still featured on the roof of the gymnasium, now known as “Bear Down Gym.” In 1939, the Arizona state legislature issued a decree that “Bear Down” would be the exclusive property of The University of Arizona.