The Week of the Guest Appearances

It has been a wild week for the Concordia Golden Bears, including many celebrity guest appearances to close out our spring break trip to Florida.

              

Our new friend "Juan Carlos"

When I last left off we were heading into our off day in Florida, which meant the Phillies-Tigers spring training game in Lakeland, Fla. Insert first guest appearance, J.C. Romero. Our team took our spots just behind the left field fence at Joker Marchant Stadium as the Phillies were taking batting practice. As is custom, the pitchers were doing their running in the outfield, this included the previous mentioned J.C. Romero, whom our pitching staff would later address as “Juan Carlos” as we engaged him in conversation. Some of our more outgoing players started to yell to Juan Carlos if he remembered his times with the Minnesota Twins. Juan Carlos responding by saying in a thick Latin accent, “I never forget them.” That was all the Golden Bears needed to spend the next half hour asking questions of the left-hander as he caught fly balls. The Q&A would not be complete without one of our players continuously asking, “Dude, can I get that glove?”

               

Bull Durham, Ganz played 3rd baseman Deke

The sunshine of the spring training game would not last, as a prophetic young Danny Gans a.k.a Deke in Bull Durham showed up with, “We need a rain out.” The day after the spring training game I was scheduled to make my first college start in two seasons since my freshman year at North Dakota. As luck would have it we woke up a down pour, the game cancelled due to rain. Little did we know that the rain out would play a role later on in our trip.

                

Real Keifer

Fake Keifer

 After a second consecutive day off, the second being a little less sunny and a little less fun, we were set to put back on the uniforms against Northwood (Mich.) University. We were feeling confident going into the game with ace Ben Lemke on the mound. Up 3-2 in the top of the second inning Lemke strained a muscle in his leg and had to be removed from the game. As luck would have it, since I had not started the day before I was available to make a long relief appearance and eat up some innings. I would pitch 3.1 innings in the contest to get us into the 5^th inning. Tied 5-5 in the 5^th things started to come apart a little bit. With one out and nobody on base they were able to drop down a perfectly placed bunt for a single. After a walk to make it 1^st and 2^nd with one out, a single plated a run for Northwood, and another walk and another single later Northwood had a 7-5 lead with the bases loaded. I was removed from the game having kept us in it through five. Four consecutive hits later and Northwood had a commanding 13-5 lead. Insert Keifer Sutherland, okay he is not really Keifer, but freshman T.J. Obermyer (who goes by pretty much any name but T.J.). Keifer was sent in to eat up some innings and save our bullpen for the following day. He would throw two solid innings as Northwood would push their lead to 15-5. Just three outs from being run-ruled suddenly, Our Bats showed up. Over the final three innings we were able to push across 11 runs on nine hits for what might be the most dramatic comeback in the history of Concordia baseball. Redshirt freshman Drew Turk who came in as a defensive replacement in the 8^th inning would embody Jim Edmonds as he made a full extension superman catch to send the game into the bottom of the ninth with the score 15-12 Northwood.

                 

Jim Edmonds has nothing on Drew Turk

Eight batters after Bryan Lippincott reached on an error to start the 9^th inning, sophomore J.T. Schneider walked on four pitches to plate the winning run in walk-off walk fashion. He was promptly mobbed as he touched first base. It was great to be on the other side of a walk-off. It was one of the most exhilarating up-and-down games I have ever been a part of.

                

 The momentum did not stop there. The bats decided to hang around the next day against Minnesota, Crookston as we would slug out 41 runs on 37 hits in the double header. Sophomore Andy Fagely toed the rubber in game one against Crookston. He would be flawless into the 4^th inning before none other than Jim Joyce showed up. A soft roller towards our second baseman was smoothly fielded and flipped to our first baseman beating the runner by what appeared to be a solid step and a half. The field umpire flung his hands to the side and yelled safe, the dugout erupted in disagreement. Andy would retire the next six hitters before giving up a pair of singles in both the 6^th and 7^th innings. While Andy ended up getting credit for a 5-hit complete game 68-pitch shutout performance, had the runner been called out he would have been just five outs from the first DII-era perfect game in Concordia history by the time he surrendered a hit.

                 

Jim Joyce, notorious for his epic "safe" call last summer

In game two Crookston came out swinging, putting up three runs in the first inning, before Concordia struck back for 21 unanswered runs. In the last 18 innings of baseball in Florida we outscored our opponents 52-3. We ended the trip 4-3 with a four game winning streak to carry in to conference play. Our coaches and players found out a lot about the team we have this year, and we are confident we can compete.

                

 Our solid play led to one more guest appearance, The Concordia, St. Paul Golden Bears appearing 10^th in the NCBWA Central Regional Poll, but we are going to try and make that a more permanent role. We will continue our season with our first conference series March 26-27 against Southwest Minnesota State.

-Go Golden Bears-

Starting the new week strong

After a weekend that saw two losses for the Concordia Golden Bears, including an opening day blown save for myself, we have new life this week. We put Saturday’s extra innings loss and Sunday’s blow out behind us and went to work on Monday with junior righty Chris Peterson on the hill.

Peterson gave us four strong innings before turning things over to our bullpen. In this case that was me. Making my second appearance of the season I took the mound to start the fifth inning. It took a batter to figure out the umpire’s strike zone, as I walked the first hitter throwing fastballs that I thought were waist high in the middle of the plate. Realizing the umpire would not call high pitches I started to work the knees. The next hitter ground into a 4-3 double play erasing the lead-off walk. After an inside fastball clipped the next hitter to put him on first base with two outs, the last hitter of the inning grounded out to shortstop to end the inning.

It felt good to put up a shutout inning after blowing a save in my first outing. In my second inning of work I got two outs on two pitches before striking out the third hitter for my first 1-2-3 inning of the season. My third and final inning including giving up one run on three base hits, while striking out the side in the process. My day ended with three full innings of work, one run on three hits, with one walk and four strikeouts.

But in the end we could not overcome our early deficit and fell to Mansfield (Pa.) University 7-6 to push our record to 0-3.

Henley Field in Lakeland, Fla.

Today was a new day though. We came out with a better mentality than we had in each of our previous three games. We were facing Wheeling Jesuit (W.V.) University at historic Henley Field, home of Florida Southern College, and the former spring training home of the Detroit Tigers.

We got a great start from freshman Adam Kramer; making his first collegiate start on the mound he kept us in the ball game long enough for our bats to come alive against WJU’s pitching staff. Adam worked into the sixth inning allowing just one big inning when he surrendered five runs in the third inning. After reliever Ty Hall closed out the sixth inning, the Concordia bats came alive. CU hitters generated seven runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to take a 7-5 lead.

Making his first collegiate start, first baseman Elliot Powell led the offense with a 2 for 4 day. Powell electrified the dugout with his drag bunt for a base hit in the second inning. Hall threw the final three and one-third innings of the game to pick up the win for Concordia. Hall would allow just one run over that time while allowing four hits and striking out three. He really stepped up for the team and delivered a clutch performance.

In the eighth inning the coaches sent me to the bullpen to get my arm loose to possibly throw the ninth inning. I was excited to get a second save opportunity and to close out the first win of the season for the team. After throwing just a few pitches in the pen, the coaches made the decision to sit me down and go with Hall for the ninth inning. This turned out to be a great decision as he kept rolling through the WJU lineup and finished the game with a big time strikeout.

For the first time this season we were on the winning side of the post game handshakes, all the guys were happy to finally get the first one out of the way. Now we just have to keep the good momentum rolling into our next game on Thursday against Charleston (W.V.) University

Tomorrow’s day off will provide some much needed rest, especially for senior Sam Fagely who has caught on four consecutive days now. We are going as a team to the Tigers-Phillies spring training game in Lakeland, Fla., after a light morning practice. It should be a fun day to kick back and relax at a professional baseball game. It will give all the guys a chance to enjoy the win from today and keep improving so we can be in top form the rest of the week and on into conference series which start March 26-27 against Southwest Minnesota State, who just happens to be staying at our resort here in Florida.

For more information on the Concordia Golden Bears including bios, schedule, and statistics go to www.cugoldenbears.com

-Go Golden Bears-

A tough one on day one

This year’s blog is intended to be on a more personal level, rather than my personal journalistic take on the game.

After a hot start, things took a tough turn for the Concordia Golden Bears today. Facing the 15^th ranked West Chester Rams we jumped out to an early 1-0 lead in the top of the first. After pitchers from both schools exchanged zeros inning after inning we found ourselves in a 3-0 lead and into their bullpen.

It was exciting to get our season started, and starter Ben Lemke set the tone putting up zero after zero for us on the mound. In the end Lem through six innings allowing just one run on five hits while punching out five. It was great to get such a great performance from our number one on opening day. It will give us a lot of confidence as we go through the season that we have a chance to win every single time we send him out there.

In the seventh we brought in Nick Anderson, our senior reliever/starter. He got us out of a big jam. It was at this time that I went down to the bullpen to start stretching and getting loose for a possible relief appearance.

We took an 8-1 lead into the bottom of the ninth. A couple of unlucky bounces and close calls later we were in an 8-8 tie. After Anderson shut the door to send the game into extra innings things got interesting.

We were double-barrel in the bullpen, a righty and me, a lefty. The coaches told us the righty, Zach Goodwin would go in the game if it was tied, and I would take the mound if we had the lead.

After a wild top of the tenth which included a hits batter and the go ahead run being balked in, we had the 9-8 lead.

I took the mound and threw my warm up pitches. I was nervous but maintained my composure. The first hitter was a right-handed hitter, a combination of fastballs and cutters got me to a 3-2 count, before punching out the hitter on a fastball. The second hitter walked. The third hitter also struck out on a 3-2 fastball. That gave us two outs with a runner on first. The next hitter hit a cutter on the outer half towards left center. My first thought was that it was an easy fly ball and that we had just capped off a wild win. But the ball continued to carry and landed just out of the reach of our left fielder for a game-tying RBI double. With two outs and a runner on second their hitter swung at a fastball at the hands. The ball dribbled just past the outstretched glove of our shortstop for a walk off single.

It was a tough way to lose. The loss on opening day stings a little, but the good thing about the spring trip is that we get to come back to the ballpark for seven more games over the next week. One of our top arms from last season Andy Fagely will start against Ashland (Oh.) University. Game time is at 4:30pm EST again tomorrow.

We will have to come out swinging and pitching again. We played the best eight and half innings of baseball the Concordia has played in a long time, we just have to finish games off when we have the chance.

 

-Go Golden Bears-

Finally, it’s here!

Snow covered dome that we have been practicing in

After what seemed like the longest six weeks of practice ever, the Concordia University Golden Bears are finally ready to take the field. We battled the blistering weather throughout January, February, and in to the first couple of days of March, but finally we made it to sunny Orlando, Florida. It was a long day to get here, starting with check in at the airport at 5:45am. Our flight from MSP took off at roughly 7:50am and three hours later we touched down to 78 degrees and sunny.

We collected our bags, packed the vans, and headed to Bahama Bay Resort to get settled in. After lunch we had our first outdoor practice since the month of October. It was just a quick infield-outfield and on-field batting practice, but it was great to be outdoors under the sun. Practice today was at the Chain of Lakes baseball complex, the former spring training home of the Cleveland Indians, and before the Indians, the Boston Red Sox.

The season kicks off tomorrow against the 15^th ranked West Chester (Pa.) University at 4:30pm EST. It should be a great matchup as we both have infielders on the Tino Martinez National Player of the Year watch list. Tomorrow is the season opener for both squads as we both had weather-related cancellations in our February games.

To update readers on what we have been doing in preparation for the season, we have continued to have our pitchers face our hitters in our indoor facility. Pitchers have stretched out their arms with our five main starters throwing six sets of 15 pitches (90 pitches) on multiple occasions to prepare for their starts. Relievers, including myself, have thrown varying sets of 1x15, 2x15, or 3x15 depending on the day. This has given our hitters ample opportunity to see live pitching and get their timing down.

The season will start in a hurry with eight games in eight days, including a day off on Wednesday, and a double-header against in-conference foe Minnesota Crookston on Saturday before we head back home.

Now that the season is here, I will be able to put up more frequent posts about what is going on with Golden Bear baseball. We came to Florida to win games and get ready to go back to compete for an NSIC championship.

With the first trip of the year I wanted to debut a new section to the blog, the travel reading. I enjoy reading as a way to pass the time, so each trip I will feature a new book I have read and that I would suggest.

Travel Reading:

This week’s selection is The Bullpen Gospels by Dirk Hayhurst. Hayhurst is a pitcher in the Blue Jays organization that has logged big league time. Hayhurst recorded his journey through the minor leagues in the book. It is one of the best baseball books I have ever read. The stories are things that all baseball players can relate too. He discusses his own personal battle with the fear of failure, and how he overcame self doubt. The book is also full of funny stories from the life and rituals of minor league baseball. I definitely suggest this book. I read this while flying to Hawaii this summer for summer league, and ended up passing it around to my team, and all of them thoroughly enjoyed it.

Shout Out of the Week:

Summer teammate Dan Simmons of UC-San Diego was named conference pitcher of the week

-Go Golden Bears-