This was the season that didn’t want to end.
On Tuesday, even with the rain seemingly bearing down and needing just one game to finish the season, we ended up with 21 innings — in fact, 21 innings of well-played baseball.
I’ve now been to 10 Stagg Bowls, 10 men’s basketball final fours, one women’s basketball final four, a men’s lacrosse title game and now, a Division III baseball championship. And this was just the second time in the 23 Division III championships I’ve attended that the title was decided on the very last play of the game. (The other was the 2006 men’s lacrosse championship, an overtime win for Cortland State over Salisbury.)
The tournament was about what I’d expected, though I had never sat through an entire eight-team, double-elimination tournament before.
I want to make sure Mark Miller’s clutch pitching performance doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, and with more than 50 percent of people choosing his Tuesday line as the best of the day, I think the mission has been accomplished. But there were many other sidelights and notes from the long weekend in Appleton that merit mentioning:
Tuesday was a tense day, especially if you were a Wooster fan, apparently. Former Scots player Pat Christiansen, for example, stood in the stands and paced back and forth for the entire first game and most of the second game before taking a seat for the final couple of innings.
Was it just me, or did every bang-bang call at first base seem like a 50-50 proposition? I included a photo with this blog post of a call clearly missed at first — Wooster’s Matthew Pierce is safe because you can see he’s on the bag while St. Thomas first baseman Tom Wippler has yet to land. (The photo is crooked because he’s saving Dan Leslie’s throw from flying straight over my head in the right field bullpen.) Umpiring is inconsistent everywhere, this I know, and I wouldn’t argue balls and strikes, but it didn’t seem like close plays at first base were getting called correctly with any regularity.
In talking with the NCAA’s director of umpires, George Drouches, I learned that the eight umpires selected are taken one from each region, and while in other Division III championships events some pains are taken to make sure a neutral crew works championship games, the only precaution here is that an umpire doesn’t work behind the plate in a game involving a team he’s called games for before. But while Carlos Guzman (who worked the Mid-Atlantic Regional) wasn’t calling balls and strikes when Kean played in Appleton, he worked third base, and was involved in the most controversial call of the tournament.
After the first two days, Drouches told me, umpires were re-evaluated and scheduled for the final seven games, including the six-umpire crews for the championship games.
Carthage and Shenandoah should be given credit for having the best fans. In fact, Carthage had avid tailgaters, who were there when we arrived for the tournament’s opening game at 8 a.m. last Friday. Not that I was surprised: I’ve seen it before, when Keith McMillan and I traveled to Chicago a couple of years ago for D3football.com. Before heading to our 1 p.m. game, we drove by and saw some of the other stadiums in the area, including North Park, where Carthage was playing that afternoon. We got there three hours before the game. Brats were on the grill. The Carthage-Shenandoah game was the best of the tournament that didn’t involve St. Thomas and Wooster, so it was nice that it was played in front of the largest actual crowd.
I commented on yesterday’s blog post about the St. Thomas and Wooster players standing in line at the concession stand between games buying hot dogs, etc., for their pregame meal. But it wasn’t the meal of choice most days. I saw far more ice cream being consumed by players than any other food stuff. But the brats were my waistline’s weapon of choice.
St. Thomas and Wooster also had two-sport athletes play prominent roles this week. Ben Wartman, a D3football.com All-Region running back for St. Thomas, played catcher and started in the second championship game. We wrote about Matt DeGrand, who plays outside linebacker and threw the game of his life for Wooster in the win against St. Thomas. Also, Tyler Hadzinsky plays goalie and second base for Chapman and was an Academic All-American in both. I know these are not the only two-sport players at the tournament, but these were the ones that stuck out.
I was disappointed that there were only three radio crews among the eight schools, though I know that’s about par for the course. But the most interesting broadcast, in my mind, was Shenandoah’s, with a player on color (Bryan Claudio) who had done play-by-play for the team for some games online. We shared a press box room with them for one game and it was well done.
Chapman’s Wayde Kitchens told us he didn’t even bring his cleats to Appleton, but he didn’t tell us what his injury was. We found out after the tournament that it’s a tendon in his pitching arm that’s causing him trouble.
We’ll have more coverage still to come. Keep an eye out for the audio from the postgame news conference with St. Thomas, so you can listen to the coach and player’s first public reaction to winning Walnut and Bronze.
Well, at least the first one after the shouting and the piling.
