THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 2015 I SERVING TEXAS A&M SINCE 1893 I © 2015 STUDENT MEDIA I ©THEBATTONLINE
Vanessa Pefia —THE BATTALION
GAMING
No. 2 A&M to meet
now-No. 1 LSD in series
showdown Thursday
By Andre Perrard
fter winning its mid-week
contest against UT-Arling-
ton on Tuesday afternoon,
I the Aggie baseball team now
faces its tallest task of the season thus
far.
No. 2 A&M will travel to Alex Box
Stadium in Baton Rouge, La. to take
on the newly appointed No. 1 LSU Ti
gers in a pivotal SEC weekend series.
The Aggies and Tigers are tied atop the
SEC, and the winner of this series will
have sole possession of first place in the
VIEWS
conference.
Also, the winner will likely garner
the No. 1 ranking in the country come
Monday morning. LSU has won 10 of
the last 13 meetings, but the series is
tied 3-3 since A&M joined the SEC.
The Tigers (35-6, 12-5 SEC) have
one of the league’s most prolific offens
es. Connor Hale leads the team with
36 RBIs, but three other players in the
lineup also have well over 30 RBIs this
season. Alex Bregman and Jared Foster
are threats at the plate, both tallying
eight home runs this year. Bregman
is also a potential problem on the base
path, going 24-for-28 on stolen base
attempts this season.
LSU leads the conference in batting
average this season, posting a .320 team
average so far. The Tigers have won
12 of their last 13 games, including a
three-game sweep at Alabama.
Texas A&M (36-5, 12-5 SEC) has
an offensive powerhouse of its own.
The Aggies lead the league with 47
home runs, and leading that charge is
the hottest bat in the Aggie lineup, Lo
gan Taylor. He has 10 home runs this
year, but did not register a hit in the
Tuesday win. A&M will need Taylor
to keep hot in this series.
Also on a streak is Nick Banks. The
All-American has lived up to the hype
this season, reaching base safely in all 40
games he has played, and has a pair of
13-game hitting streaks.
Thursday evening, Aggie ace
BASEBALL ON PC. 3
Vanessa Pefta — THE BATTALION
Stephen Callaghan reviews previous League of
Legend matches with teammates.
League of Legends team
LA. bound for finals
'The least I had, the
most I could do'
Muster takes on a deeper meaning for Hosts
By Josh Hopkins
Texas A&M’s League of
^ Legends team is poised
to face off against three other
North American teams in a
battle for $180,000 in schol
arships.
After winning eight straight,
Texas A&M’s League of Leg
ends Team, Team Maroon,
will be flown out to Los An
geles to compete in the finals
and given a chance to secure
first place along with $30,000
in scholarships per player.
League of Legends is a vid
eo game in which two teams
of five players battle across a
map in a quest to destroy the
opposing team’s base. Re
leased in 2009, the game now
boasts over 27 million players
daily.
This year, Riot Games,
the developers of League
of Legends, sponsored a
North American collegiate
tournament that awards the
first-place team $180,000
in total scholarships. The
second-place team will earn
$15,000 per player, with the
third and fourth place teams
receiving $7,500 per player.
The A&M team, Team
MarSeoon, went undefeated
through four rounds. Now
the team is flying to Los An
geles, the headquarters of Riot
Games, to compete against
three other schools on the big
stage.
Grant Hewitt, industrial
engineering senior and team
captain, said while the team
is excited about going to Los
Angeles, it intends to concen
trate on winning.
“Honesdy, we are going to
have fun at the event, but we
are there to play so that’s go
ing to be our focus,” Hewitt
said. “Playing on stage is go
ing to be amazing, there is
going to be a big crowd, and
obviously there is going to be
a big stream.”
Stephen Callaghan, Eng-
lish senior and coach, said
the A&M League of Legends
LEAGUE ON PG. 2
ADMINISTRATION
Chancellor: VP
resignation is
extension of
current protocol
Vanessa Pefta — THE BATTALION
Handwritten letters to families are a Muster Host's responsibility.
John Rangel
(S)johnrangell6
owdy, my name
is John Rangel.
I’m honored to be
your Muster Host
tonight.”
The grieving family stared
back at me and shook my hand.
A few pleasantries were ex
changed, tissues were fetched
while a member cried, and we
walked silendy to their seats. It
wasn’t until I was back in the
Muster Host room that I noticed
my hands were shaking.
It was the hardest 15 minutes
of my college life. It also capped
the best experience I could have
as an Aggie.
I applied to be a Muster Host
out of a desire to give back to
Texas A&M, but a large part of
my application was also moti
vated by simple curiosity. I had a
personal link to each of A&M’s
other traditions, but Muster
remained a mystery; I’ve stood
and swayed with the 12th Man
at football games, grieved with
friends at Silver Taps and dug
MUSTER ON PG. 2
Q&A: Granger Smith talks music, A&M
If you’ve heard of “We Bleed Maroon,”
then you’ve heard of Granger Smith. The
independent country musician, Class of
2002, has built up a large following unusual
for unsigned artists. The Battalion’s Life &
Arts editor Katie Canales spoke with Smith
about where he’s headed with his music, his
work with American soldiers and what it’s
like being an Aggie in the country music
world.
THE BATTALION: What's next for you at the
moment?
SMITH: I have an EP coming out on
May 4, which is the first time I've ever
put out an EP, and then it's going to
be followed by the fulMength album
in the fall. So of course the album will
include the songs from the EP but it
kind of gives us the chance to do a long
release and then also for me to con
tinue to write songs and kind of tweak
them for the album that comes out this
coming fall.
THE BATTALION: Your alter ego, Earl Dibbles
Jr. — Is that just a stage name or is it another
facet of yourself that you've brought to your
music?
SMITH: It's kind of both of those. For a
while, we were making different videos
to kind of show different exposures of
the band and bring more people around
to the music and there were several
characters that I was putting on at the
time and Earl Dibbles was just another
one of these characters on YouTube
Granger
Smith, a
country
musician, is
well known
for his song,
"We Bleed
Maroon."
and it went viral. And so we started
chasing it, it started getting millions of
views and I wanted to write a song for
it and so I wrote a song called "The
Country Boy Song" and then released
a music video at the same time as the
song came out and then that went viral.
So by this time I figured this is some
thing that's going to have to live on the
stage and something that we're going
SMITH ON PG. 4
University System Chancellor John
Sharp speaks at the Feb. 12 Board of
Regents meeting in College Station.
By Bethany Irvine
^ In a move traditionally limited to uni-
^ versify provosts, Chancellor John Sharp
has requested resignations from all A&M
vice presidents and special advisers ahead of
incoming A&M president Michael Young’s
term.
In a memo released Thursday, the vice
presidents were asked to submit their resig
nations to Young by May 1, 2015. In turn.
Young is expected to accept or decline them
by May 1, 2016.
“Michael Young will get to spend a year
or less, however long he feels he needs to,
to work with all of these folks, and he might
very well decide, ‘I love them all and I am
going to keep them all,”’ Sharp said.
Sharp said provost resignations are com
mon before a new president comes into of
fice. Sharp said his request for the resigna
tion of vice presidents is an extension of this
frequent action.
“All of the vice presidents know that the
new president could dismiss them on day
one, not only by state, but by university
rules, but by state laws,” Sharp said. “I don’t
know if the vice presidents have been asked
to formally offer their resignations, but I
know that future presidents will hope that
this will continue, formalizing a process that
already exists.”
Shane Hinckley, vice president of mar
keting and communication and university
spokesperson, said this decision is some
thing expected among the president’s ex
ecutive team.
“It is generally understood that members
of the president’s executive team — ex
ecutive vice presidents, vice presidents and
special assistants to the president, et cetera
— serve at the pleasure of the president of
Texas A&M,” Hinckley said.
Hinckley said shifts in administration are
VP RESIGNATIONS ON PG. 2
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