Serious Play the Book

7.1.07 Not about baseball

Mike Nelson — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 17:52:11 GMT

Please forgive me for blowing my own horn this time instead of the team's. By happy coincidence, I have three books coming out within the new several weeks. Here are the titles along with links to the publishers' descriptions of each one.

The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776-2007, with my friend and University of Virginia colleague Sid Milkis. This is the fifth edition of a book that is assigned in many college courses on the presidency: www.cqpress.com/product/American-Presidency-Origins-3.html

How the South Joined the Gambling Nation: The Politics of State Policy Innovation, with my friend and former student and colleague Jay Mason. This book was nine years in the making, with chapters on seven southern states: http://s50780.sites40.storefront-hosting.com/detail.aspx?ID=1634

Guide to the Presidency. This two-volume set, now in its fourth edition, is a standard reference book on the American presidency found in most libraries (and priced accordingly!) http://www.cqpress.com/product/Guide-to-the-Presidency-4th-ed-SET.html

6.20.07 Our 10,000th visitor

Mike Nelson — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:05:11 GMT

Today seriousplaythebook.com received its 10,000th visitor in the eight weeks we have been up and running. I wish there was a way to identify the visitor and give him or her a free . . . something. In any event, great thanks to all for your interest in this site.

6.11.07 Book Blog II: A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti

Mike Nelson — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 14:34:50 GMT

I have been reading as many books as I can about Division III sports (there are just a few), about college baseball (even fewer), and about baseball in general (many). Every once in a while I will post something in this space about a book that I think is interesting. Today's entry is the second in an occasional series.

A. Bartlett Giamatti was famous for many things. A literary specialist on the English Renaissance, he became president of Yale University in 1977--at age thirty-nine he was the youngest president in Yale's history. Nine years later, in 1986, Giamatti was named president of the National League and three years after that as commissioner of baseball, not the usual career path for a scholar but one that accorded well with both his lifelong love of baseball and the ability to lead difficult people (like team owners and tenured professors) that he developed as president of Yale. It was Giamatti's misfortune to inherit the crisis created by baseball legend Pete Rose's gambling on games involving his own team. As recounted by James Reston Jr. in his book Collision at Home Plate: The Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti, the crisis culminated in Giamatti's decision to ban Rose from baseball for life. Perhaps not coincidentally, Giamatti died of natural causes in 1989.

A Great and Glorious Game, a posthumous compilation of various writings on baseball by Giamatti, is a small book with big print--and even at that it's padded with some marginal works, such as the full text of Giamatti's ten-game suspension of Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Kevin Gross for attaching a piece of sandpaper to his glove.

But the book contains two glorious essays that repay careful reading. One is called "Baseball as Narrative." It compares the game to Homer's Odyssey and other epic tales of difficult, heroic journeys to reach home. "All literary romance derives from the Odyssey," writes Giamatti, "and is about rejoining." Noting that "the concept of home has a particular resonance for a nation of immigrants, all of whom left one home to seek another," he adds: "the route [home] is full of turnings, wanderings, danger. . . .

"In baseball, the journey begins at home, negotiates the twists and turns at first, and often flounders far out at the edges of the ordered world at rocky second. Whoever remains out there is said to 'die' on base. . . . And when it is given one to round third, a long journey seemingly over, the end in sight, . . . [o]ften the effort fails, the hunger is unsatisfied as the catcher bars fulfillment, . . . [and] the impossibility of going home again is reenacted in what is baseball's most violent physical confrontation, swift, savage, down in the dirt, nothing availing.

"Or," he continues, "if the attempt, long in planning and execution, works, then the reunion and all it means is total--the runner is a returned hero."

I like that, and I also like the essay called "Baseball and the American Character." Once again I quote Giamatti at length.

Baseball "fits America," Giamatti claims. "Above all, it fits so well because it embodies the antithetical, complementary interplay of individual and group that we so love, and because it conserves our longing for the rule of law while licensing our resentment of lawgivers." (Think of how much we value the Constitution and despise the politicians who hold the offices created by the Constitution.)

Baseball "is primitive in its starkness. A man on a hill prepares to throw a rock at a man slightly below him, not far away, who holds a club. . . . The batter is, they say, on offense yet batting is essentially a reactive and deeply defensive act. The pitcher is, they say, on defense yet the pitcher initiates play and controls the game. . . . The individual at the plate takes on, alone, the entire team on the field, including the catcher. . . . The catcher is the only defensive player in any sport I know of whose defined position requires him to adopt the perspective, if not the stance, of the player on offense."

Giamatti fell in love with baseball long before the designated hitter rule was adopted by the American League and, subsequently, by college baseball. He abhorred it and as the NL's president was free to vent his disdain. Baseball "places a tremendous premium on the individual, who must be able to react instantly on offense and defense and who must be able to hit, run, throw, field. . . . The 'designated hitter' is so offensive because it violates this basic characteristic of the game."

6.1.07 Postseason honors and issues

Mike Nelson — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:53:37 GMT

Honors first, then issues.

In case you haven't visited the Rhodes athletics website recently (www.rhodes.edu/athletics), the hits keep rolling in terms of honors for members of the baseball team. Junior first baseman Daniel Vanaman was named a second-team All American by the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA). Vanaman was also honored as a member of the All South Region's first team and the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference's first team. He is the first player in SCAC history to lead the league in hitting two seasons in a row.

Robert Flanagan, a junior pitcher, was named third team All American by the ABCA, as well as first team All South and, for the second consecutive time, SCAC Pitcher of the Year. Catcher Matt Beesley, left fielder Richard Hurd (both juniors), and sophomore right fielder Mason Mosby earned second-team All South honors, and shortstop John Robert Bizzell and pitcher Andy Holt, both sophomores, received honorable mention. Beesley, Hurd, Bizzell, Mosby, and Holt were also first team All Conference, along with junior pitcher Chris Catalanotto and, as mentioned, Flanagan and Vanaman.

In all likelihood, every one of these players will be back in 2008.

The "issues" involving this year's postseason include, obviously, why Rhodes did not receive a national championship bid despite its 36-10 record, which included five wins and only two losses in games with other nationally-ranked teams. That bone has been gnawed pretty thoroughly. Clearly, if a national championship is out there to be won, Rhodes is going to want to win it. One need only recall British mountain climber George Leigh Mallory's reply when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest: "Because it's there."

The issue I want to put on the table is a much broader one: Should there be a national championship at all in Division III? And I want to answer that question by saying that, just maybe, the answer is no.

Why even suggest something so heretical? Several reasons. First, national championships are an artifact of big time Division I athletics that, like other maladies of DI sports such as longer schedules, nontraditional practice seasons, and a focus on winning over participation, have trickled down to DIII. Standing vigil against creeping DI-ism is something Division III should do more of, not less.

Second, when national championships exist, they may warp the thinking of DIII conferences. An example: in preparation for the 2007 season, SCAC made a thoughtful decision to go from the previous regimen of teams playing two series, totaling five games, against each division rival in favor of single four-game series. The decision made sense because it reduced travel costs and, even more important, travel time away from campus and classes.

But check out the SCAC message board at www.d3baseball.com to see how the national championship tail is threatening to wag the scheduling dog. A major theme of recent posts has been how to get more than one SCAC team into the national championship. One culprit that has been identified is the four-game series, because it forces teams to use up a starting pitcher who might otherwise throw in a midweek nonconference game. So for the sake of winning more midweek games, some are arguing, the old system needs to be restored. That argument, and the threat to a good reform that it poses, wouldn't even arise if the national championship tournament did not exist.

Third, individual colleges also may be tempted to succumb to this kind of thinking. Once a team catches the scent of a national championship, winning can become, well, the only thing. Coaches may be judged not by how well their students do in class or develop as individuals but rather by how many wins the team posts against prominent regional opponents. Scheduling may be driven, even at the risk of unnecessary missed-class time, by the need to make sure those big games that count so much in postseason bids get played. The pressure on players to spend ever more time on the game, at the expense of other valuable activities of college life, may get ramped up. And so on.

One DIII athletic director, quoted in William G. Bowen and Sarah A. Levin's Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values (Princeton University Press, 2003), writes: "The pressure to reach the postseason--and in some cases to compete for a national championship--often leads to many of our most serious problems: excessive practice time, missed class time, overemphasis on winning, limited time to pursue intellectual and/or cocurricular pursuits." Another warns: "Once a Division III team has tasted success at the national level, anything less becomes difficult to swallow."

Fourth, according to Bowen and Levin, 85 percent of the NCAA's budget for Division III is spent on national championships. You don't have to think hard to think of other good uses that could be made of that money in DIII.

Finally, it's worth noting that over the years Division III has become a hodgepodge of 424 colleges and universities, some of which are small liberal arts colleges like Rhodes and some of which are large state universities. Bowen and Levin report that if you just look at the DIII schools whose name begins with the letter C, you find institutions with undergraduate enrollments ranging from 529 to 11,997. Liberal arts colleges that decide to chase a national championship face the reckless challenge of competing with institutions many times larger, and thus the added temptation to turn their programs into something even more DI-like than they should be.

Far be it from me to suggest that Coach Jeff Cleanthes and the Rhodes athletic department have succumbed to any such temptations. I am confident they haven't. But as long as national championships exist, the incentive will be there for DIII schools to do whatever it takes to pursue them, and some of those things may involve compromising the healthy balance between athletics, academics, and the other important aspects of college life.

5.14.07 Godspeed 2007 Lynx

Mike Nelson — Mon, 14 May 2007 16:40:18 GMT

The NCAA has brought an end to the Lynx baseball team's 2007 season. Thirty-six wins, a 5-2 record against nationally ranked teams--go figure. Before signing off for a while, let me add my voice to the chorus of praise for the coaches, families, and especially the students who make up this team.

Coach Cleanthes and his assistants, Rob Schrier and Steve Wright, among their many virtues, are great teachers and motivator of young men. The families have become a community of steadfast and loving supporters, not just of their own sons but of the team as a whole.

As for the players, they embody much of what we value and honor most at Rhodes College. As I have told them and others on several occasions, I don't know of a more impressive group of students--of any kind--on our campus. I hope you will find time at some point to scroll down all the posts below and refresh some of your best memories of the 2007 season.

5.13.07 Voices of the Lynx IV: Daniel Killary

Mike Nelson — Sun, 13 May 2007 13:42:15 GMT

Daniel Killary, 3B, class of 2007

I have been sitting and waiting this last week hoping to hear good news on Selection Sunday so that I can have just a few more days of playing the greatest game on the planet. While this anxious time has been passing, I have tried to reflect on this unforgettable season and my career as a Rhodes baseball player. I have been given the valuable gift of being a part of the very worst and the very best baseball teams of my life in the last four years and seeing the change occur before my eyes. In my first two seasons our record totaled 24-51; in the last two we have been 64-25 (with hopefully a chance to improve this record even more).

I came to Rhodes to be play baseball and get a great education. The first couple years I contributed to the team by starting at shortstop, but the frustrations came from the numbers on the scoreboard. I came from a large baseball program in Houston and was used to winning more than losing. The remarkable thing throughout even these lean years was that the coaching staff remained so amazingly close to all the players, which helped to build this program. As I have read the underclassmen’s posts, I’ve realized that they made no negative remarks at all about the team, which shows how much the team has progressed.

Moving to this season, I knew that as a senior captain, I had a major responsibility to motivate this highly talented team to achieve even more than last year’s accomplishment of having the best turn around season in DIII. Throughout this season we not only achieved greatness on the field, but also had a bond among teammates which was like no other team on which I have played. Many teams have guys who just look out for #1, but playing DIII baseball means everyone on the team has an important role. Maybe the best thing about our team this year was that we always seemed to be the underdog. Even after beating many ranked teams and having a sixteen-game winning streak, we were left off the national polls and rated low in regional rankings.

There are two ways a team can respond to lack of recognition and we took the right path by making a negative into a motivating positive. We ended the regular season with the most wins in Rhodes history (thirty-six) but had a tough SCAC tournament and did not receive an automatic bid. Many great teams have off days (#1-ranked Wooster lost their conference tournament yesterday) but still deserve to play more baseball. Now just hours remain before we find out if our season will continue. No matter the outcome I know that this team has achieved something that deserves to be rewarded and if we get the bid WE WILL BE READY.

I will not be drafted by a major-league team in June and thus will be moving back to Houston to pursue a career in banking. These four years I fell so fortunate to have had a top-class education that has prepared me for the future and to play a high level of baseball. I am confident that the Rhodes baseball team can accomplish even more next year and finally become recognized as one of the premier programs in DIII. I will cherish forever the countless friendships and memories I have made with my teammates these last four years and I wish them good luck for what lies ahead.

5.12.07 Voices of the Lynx III: Richard Hurd

Mike Nelson — Sat, 12 May 2007 18:19:43 GMT

Richard Hurd, LF, class of 2008

Before I came to Rhodes College I played very competitive baseball on my high school and summer league teams--every year the metro-Atlanta area produces some of the finest baseball talent in the nation. Nearly all of my teammates, or at least those who shared my dedication and passion for the game, saw themselves as Division I-caliber ballplayers. Like most of my friends and teammates, I too hoped for nothing less. The way I saw it, because Division I baseball would be the most competitive, that’s the road I wanted to pursue.

When I decided to come to Rhodes, I had some concerns, although overall I felt good about my decision. After all, I knew that Rhodes would be able to provide me with a perfect environment to get a great education, both in academics and in adjusting to college life. I was and always have identified myself as a student who plays baseball, and not the other way around. But, it was not Rhodes’s academic reputation but rather Coach Jeff Cleanthes that attracted me to the school. He went out of his way to see that I came to Rhodes to be his centerfielder and leadoff hitter, and that is exactly what happened. Coach Cleanthes and the assistant coach, Rob Schrier, were both centerfielders, leadoff hitters, and prolific base stealers during their collegiate careers, and so I knew that Rhodes offered a perfect situation for me to learn the game and develop as a player.

Still, I felt that in a way I had made a kind of a tradeoff. I assumed that I would be trading a great education and college experience for a team that would truly be able to compete and strive for excellence on the field. I was coming into a program that went 13-23 in 2004 , the year before I came, and by the end of my freshman year our 11-28 record hardly seemed an improvement. Coach Cleanthes wasn’t fazed, however. He emphatically stated at the end of the 2004 season that “we have what it takes” to be one of the best Division III teams in the country. I think that our 2006 and 2007 seasons have proved him right.

I remember talking with Coach Cleanthes over the phone as a senior in high school. He told me that his goal was to turn the Rhodes baseball program around to the point of being able to compete for a national championship. As my teammates and I wait to see whether or not we will get a bid to the NCAA Division III regional tournament, we are confident. We are confident that we deserve to go to the tournament. We are confident that we have a legitimate shot at winning the region and going to the World Series in Appleton. During the entire season I have yelled, “The road to Appleton!” in our team huddles. I say it in jest, but we are all confident that we have what it takes to compete. In fact, we know we do, but for now, it’s time to just let the chips fall where they may.

5.11.07 Voices of the Lynx II: John Robert Bizzell

Mike Nelson — Fri, 11 May 2007 18:23:32 GMT

John Robert Bizzell, SS, class of 2009

When I decided to come to Rhodes, baseball was not on my mind. Initially I planned to play soccer, but a week before Orientation Coach Rob Schrier called and invited me to participate in the fall baseball tryouts.

One of my initial doubts was about the quality of play in DIII. But I found out very quickly that the talent level is really high in DIII baseball. When I was in high school, I looked down on DIII. I wondered who would want to play at that level. But now that I'm here I want to tell everyone what I've learned from my DIII experience.

First, DIII athletes are true student-athletes. One is able to receive a world-class education while playing on a team. Second, freshmen really get a chance to walk on the field and play a major role, which is one of the main reasons I decided to play. Third, every player is here for the love of the game--period. Not one guy on the team has an athletic scholarship. Compared to DI and DII scholarship players, DIII athletes play for the same reason they played Little League.

Switching gears from past to present, our season has been very memorable, and within a few days we will find out if more memories will be made. Coming off last year's season and losing only one starter, I had high expectations for this year. In spring practice before the season started, I noticed one thing above all: that we were a young and hungry team. We had the talent to make a major splash in the DIII ranks. We came out of the gates in a fury and won twenty-two of our first twenty-four games. We have gone on to win thirty-six games so far and have broken the Rhodes record for wins. We have been ranked as high as twenty-fifth in the nation and fifth in the South. We won the SCAC Eastern Division title but in a very disappointing weekend let the conference championship slip through our fingers, leaving us in a state of limbo waiting for the at-large bids to come out for a regional tournament. I have no doubt--none--that if we receive a bid we will win the region and head to Appleton, Wisconsin, for the DIII World Series. All we can do now is wait and hope for the fair shot that we deserve.

5.11.07 Voices of the Lynx I: Andy Boucher

Mike Nelson — Sun, 13 May 2007 13:40:35 GMT

I asked four students who play for the Lynx to write brief personal essays reflecting on their experience with the team. I could have asked any four of the thirty-three men on the roster--that's how thoughtful and articulate our players are. But, based partly on who I ran into at the Rat on Wednesday and partly on my esteem for these four, I invited Andy Boucher '10, John Robert Bizzell '09, Richard Hurd '08, and Daniel Killary '07. I'll be posting their essays as they come in.

Andy Boucher, 2B, class of 2010

When I decided to come to Rhodes, I didn't quite know what to expect from Rhodes baseball. I did not know what DIII baseball was all about, and I thought it might be a step down from high school. I was wrong. The competition has been very strong, and the games are much more competitive than I ever expected. This makes it that much more satisfying that we have had such a successful season.

I had other worries about moving from high school to college baseball. I was especially worried about making the adjustment from leading a team as a senior in high school to being the lowest on the totem pole as a freshman in college. It could have been a hard pill to swallow. But the upperclassmen and coaches really made the adjustment manageable. Coaches give freshmen a legitimate opportunity to play, and the upperclassmen show the freshmen due respect. The things I am most appreciative of this year are the relationships I have with the older guys on the team. After road trips, spring break, and (so far) forty-six games, I have had some absolutely unforgettable experiences with these guys.

Overall, my first year as a DIII baseball player has been incredible. I have learned a great deal about what it means to be a true student-athlete. I have also experienced a sixteen-game winning streak that included a ten-day road trip. Best of all, I get to say that I am part of what could be the greatest team in Rhodes history, and that is something irreplaceable.

5.10.07 Book Blog I: Pray for Rain: A College Baseball Story

Mike Nelson — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 11:52:35 GMT

I have been reading as many books as I can about Division III sports (there are just a few), about college baseball (even fewer), and about baseball in general (many). Every once in a while I will post something in this space about a book that I think is interesting. Today's entry is the first in an occasional series.

Jason Wuerfel is vice president and director of baseball operations for the Traverse City Beach Bums, a Frontier League team in Traverse City, Michigan, that plays in Wuerfel Park and whose two chief officers are John (CEO) and Leslye (CFO) Wuerfel, Jason's parents. An English major at the University of Michigan, Jason pitched for the Wolverines from 1999 to 2003. A couple years later he published his debut novel Pray for Rain: A Baseball Story.

I stumbled across Jason's book while searching Amazon for something else. Nothing about the book is auspicious. It was written by, well, a kid. The name of the publisher appears nowhere on or in the book. (Amazon says it was published by Lulu.com--is that better or worse?) No blurbs from other authors or baseball players anoint the back cover. I bought the book because it was the only contemporary college baseball novel I could find.

And it turned out to be terrific--wonderful dialog, interesting characters, and a good enough plot hung on the scaffolding of an academic (that is, baseball) year. I really do recommend it.

Pedant that I am, I found myself focusing on the ways in which Division I baseball at Michigan (as portrayed in the novel) differs from Division III baseball at Rhodes.

A few examples:

>Coop, a star pitcher, says to Sam, a freshman without a baseball scholarship: "Coaches have to justify their decisions about who they give these scholarships to, and they can't do that and give a ton of playing time to walk-ons. The athletic department would be all up in their ass with questions like, 'why the hell did you give that kid a fifty percent scholarship to sit on the bench?' . . . You'll have to be one and a half times better than a scholarship player . . . if you want to make the team."

>Benny, a player who gets by more with grit and hard work than with talent: "I take easy classes and I do the bare minimum to stay eligible. I consider baseball my major, and I need all the time I can to study. If I worked harder in class, stayed up late at night studying, or sacrificed my good eating habits to stuff in time to meet with professors, how would that affect my baseball performance?"

>Pete, on one of the team's rare bus trips: "I can't believe we have to play the day after we sit on a bus all day."

>"Scout Day was an entire day during Fall Ball reserved for scouts to come in and take a look at some of the squad's top prospects. Nearly every major league organization would have a scout in attendance . . . to rate: speed, throwing, fielding, hitting, and hitting for power." Elsewhere in the book, the narrator, a fourth-string catcher named Squat, complains on behalf of his friend Benny, "The scouts are too stupid to see who's a baseball player and who isn't. The only reason they draft anybody these days is based on raw talent, which is bullshit anyway. I would take real talent over raw talent any day; there is a big difference between an athlete and a baseball player."

One other thing about Jason Wuerfel's Pray for Rain that I really appreciate is the collection of well-chosen epigraphs that open each chapter. Here are my favorites:

Whitey Herzog: "A slick way to outfigure a person is to get him figuring you figure he's figuring you're figuring he'll figure you aren't really figuring what you want him to figure you figure."

Gene Mauch: "I'm not the manager because I'm always right, but I'm always right because I'm the manager."

Lefty Gomez: "I was never nervous when I had the ball, but when I let it go I was scared to death."

Vernon Law: "Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, and the lesson afterward."

Roger Kahn: "Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of the saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it."

Harold Wilson: "Courage is the art of being the only one that knows you're scared to death."

5.9.07 More records

Mike Nelson — Thu, 10 May 2007 05:12:47 GMT

In yesterday's post, I mentioned a couple Rhodes records that team members set this year. Here is a complete list, courtesy of Coach Rob Schrier, based on games played thus far in 2007:

Single season at-bats
     Mason Mosby, 178

Single season hits
     Mason Mosby, 73
     Daniel Vanaman, 73

Single season doubles
     Daniel Vanaman, 20 (tie)

Career doubles
     Matt Beesley, 44

Single season triples
     Mason Mosby, 7 (tie)

Single season RBIs
     Daniel Vanaman, 62

Single season runs
     Mason Mosby, 62

Single season strikeouts
     Robert Flanagan, 100

Single season wins
     Robert Flanagan, 12

5.8.07 Nineteen sixty-one

Mike Nelson — Wed, 09 May 2007 13:55:50 GMT

This has been a remarkable year for the Lynx by any standard. Individual records were set by Robert Flanagan with twelve wins and Richard Hurd with thirty-eight consecutive games reaching base, usually more than once. Hurd was also named hitter of the week for all of Division III and, along with first baseman Daniel Vanaman and pitchers Chris Catalanotto, Andy Holt, and Flanagan (twice), he was a SCAC player of the week. Building on the 2006 season, in which Rhodes was named the most improved DIII team in the nation, the Lynx won a record thirty-six games this year and are nationally ranked. The only suspense now is whether the team will receive a bid to the NCAA DIII championship.

All this brings to mind the 2007 team's sole peer in national excellence: the 1961 Lynx of Southwestern at Memphis. Based on research in the Rhodes archive and a sneak peek at an article by pitcher/outfielder Charles Killinger '64 that's coming out in Rhodes magazine, here's what I have learned about that team, which was admitted last fall into the Rhodes College Athletic Hall of Fame, the only team ever to be so honored.

By 1961 baseball already was a long tradition at Rhodes--indeed, it was the college's first sport, started in 1879 when the school was still called Southwestern Presbyterian University and its campus was in Clarksville, Tennessee. Despite occasional long-ago victories against Vanderbilt, Alabama, and Ole Miss, however, winning baseball was not a tradition. Five years after moving to Memphis, Southwestern actually dropped the sport from 1930 to 1948.

The team assembled by Coach Woody Johnson in 1961 included a number of returning baseball players as well as several fine athletes from the football and basketball teams. After running off a 14-0 winning streak, including an 8-5 defeat of nationally ranked Arkansas State, the team finished the regular season 19-5--good enough to secure an invitation to the Mideast college championship on the DePauw University campus in Greencastle, Indiana. The Lynx made it to the Mideast finals and defeated Ball State 5-3 to win the region, thereby qualifying for the national college championship. In the pre-Division I-II-III era, the NCAA's college championship was roughly the equivalent of the modern Division III championship.

Fortunately or unfortunately, none of the other regions managed to organize tournaments in 1961, which meant that the Lynx were the only team that could plausibly claim to be the national champion. It's not clear that the NCAA agreed--the only plaque that the Rhodes archive has even a photo of says we're the Mideast champion--but no other team in the country made it even that far.

The 1961 team was led by senior cocaptain and second baseman Billy Landers, whose .476 batting average is still the record for a Rhodes player. (He also stole thirty-eight bases in the first twenty-two games of the season.) Landers and shortstop Buddy McAfee both signed professional contracts, Landers with the Cardinals and McAfee with the Houston Colt 45s, as the Astros were then called. The team's leading pitcher was Bob Moseley, who beat Arkansas State for his eighth win of the season and then picked up wins nine and ten in consecutive-day victories against Mississippi College. Other standout players include cocaptain Robert Echols, catcher Jerry Manley, first baseman David Miles, pitcher Larry Thomas, and outfielders Lou Johnson, Tommy Johnson, and Pat Burke.

P.S. You can now connect to http:seriousplaythebook.com from www.d3sports.com/dailydose/ and also from www.rhodes.edu/athletics and www.rhodes.edu/athletics/baseball.

5.5.07 Visiting with Coach Jim Page

Mike Nelson — Thu, 10 May 2007 05:13:45 GMT

I'm down at (gulp) Millsaps helping my son Sam get situated for the fall semester. On Friday afternoon, while Sam was hanging out at the SAE house, I stopped by to introduce myself to (double gulp) veteran baseball coach Jim Page. He's a huge admirer of the Rhodes baseball team (and, of course, of his own), which made it easy for us to fall into conversation.

We spent a good bit of time bewailing (a) some serious flaws in the Quality of Wins Index (QOWI) that the NCAA uses as its primary criterion for determining which fourteen teams will receive "Pool C" bids to the NCAA tournament despite losing their conferences; and (b) the NCAA's reluctance to go beyond this primary criterion and consider its own "secondary" criteria of excellenece

An example of (a): Every team is assigned a certain number of points per game played in its region, depending on whether it's a win or a loss, home or away, and the opponent's end-of-season record. As a member of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference, Rhodes had to play four-game series against Eastern Division rivals Sewanee and Oglethorpe this year. We swept all eight games. But because both teams ended the season with such poor records, we received just eight points per win against Sewanee and nine points per win against Oglethorpe: an average of 8.5 points per victory. The rule of thumb for postseason bids to the NCAA is that a team must average 9.5 to count on getting one. So in sweeping two conference rivals that we had no choice but to play, Rhodes's chances of getting an NCAA bid actually went down. What a system!

An example of (b): For fear of appearing subjective the NCAA hardly even looks its own secondary criteria. As a result, even though Rhodes won thirty-six games (the most in Division III) against only ten losses and went 5-2 against the nationally ranked teams we played (the Lynx split with Emory and Millsaps and beat Washington University, Illinois Wesleyan, and Methodist)--there's a real risk that these successes will simply be overlooked.

Are national championships a good idea, or are they a distortion of what Division III is supposed to be all about, a kind of mindless aping of Division I? Coach Page and I did not discuss this question, but it has come up in discussions among national liberal arts college presidents and at gatherings of the Mellon Foundation's College Sports Project. I'll try to get my own thoughts together on the matter and post something when the dust settles after the season is over. Until then, I'm just Go Lynx all the way.

The NCAA still has time to do the right thing this month. No decision will be announced until after midnight on Sunday, May 13. Unlike Millsaps, where Coach Page has closed up shop for the year, Rhodes will start practicing again on Tuesday, just in case.

By the way, thanks for the cool cap, Coach Page.

5.4.07 Nicknames

Mike Nelson — Fri, 04 May 2007 03:21:57 GMT

George Gmelch, a cultural anthropologist at Union College and a former first baseman in the Detroit Tigers organization, was enormously impressed by the quality of questions he got during a thirty-minute session with the Rhodes baseball team when he was on campus last month to speak in the Sports and Society series. The team liked him, too, and more than one player bought Gmelch's wonderful book, Inside Pitch: Life in Professional Baseball.

In a section of Inside Pitch called "What's in a name?" Gmelch writes, "Acquiring a nickname is part of becoming a member of the team."

By that measure, the vast majority of Rhodes players are full members of the team, and in ways that conform to Gmelch's research on modern professional ballplayers. "The most common nicknames come from a player's surname," Gmelch finds--for example, "Ash for Ashford, Chad for Chadwick, Doobie for Duboise."

The same is true at Rhodes--Biz for John Robert Bizzell, Beez for Matt Beesley, Kill for Daniel Killary, Mule for Jeff Mueller, Pipes for Robby Piper, Cat for Chris Catalanotto, Boo-Boo for Andy Boucher, Flanny for Robert Flanagan and, in a style that's become popular since Gmelch did his research in the 1990s, B-Val for Brandon Valentine and D-Hubb for Drew Hubbard. Some first names at Rhodes also lend themselves to nicknames: Gordo for Gordon Chadwick and Kevvo for Kevin McAlpine. PT, for Patrick Tolivar, straddles both categories. Then there's Richard "Buffalo" Hurd, a.k.a. "Hurd man."

"Other nicknames," Gmelch reports, "are based on a prominent personal trait, often relating to appearance." That clearly describes beefy Mason "Meat" Mosby and weight-room denizen Brad "Terminator" Atkins, but what about Daniel Vanaman, sometimes known as "Snake" and sometimes as "Booger"?

Gmelch offers a third category of common nicknames and places himself in it: names "that stem from a player's weakness." In Gmelch's own case, "I-beam" (for his initially clunky fielding at first base) became "Moonbeam" when he was seen visiting a library and reading a book. The only game-generated nickname on the Rhodes team that I know of is more positive in origin: "No Chance Chuck" Simmons, who has been known to declare, "They have no chance" when sent into a game as a closer.

Finally, Gmelch reports on a finding by sociologist James Skipper that the use of colorful nicknames (that is, those not based on someone's given name) in the major leagues peaked in the 1920s. My own research in the Rhodes archive suggests that the 'twenties were also a golden decade of nicknames for the Lynx. Among those on the roster at one time another were "Ooley" Wilson, "Nubbins" Cobb, "Hobby" Therrel, "Scaevola" Stringer, "Nimble Finger" Moore, "Fanny" Thomas, "Squeedunk" Newton, "Darlin'" Baine, "Cotton" Thomas, "Shorty" Craven, "Deacon" Buchanan, "Brick" Viers, "Lefty" Garrott, and "Snookums" Hightower.

Boys, we've got some work to do.

P.S. As promised, the Rhodes home page is featuring a story about seriousplaythebook.com this week. You can find it at www.rhodes.edu under "News."

5.3.07 Glory then and now

Mike Nelson — Thu, 03 May 2007 03:36:57 GMT

Some weeks ago, as part of our research for the book, Matt Jack and I interviewed Mike Cody, a student leader and track star of the 1950s who has gone on to build a distinguished career in law and politics. We were interested in learning what varsity athletics were like at Rhodes, er, Southwestern at Memphis, when he was a student.

One thing that astonished us was how big a deal Southwestern sports used to be. Consider the times: University of Memphis (Memphis State) athletics were still small bore, the city had no professional teams, and even big-time national and regional contests were hardly ever televised. As a result, both daily newspapers, the Commercial Appeal and the now-defunct Press-Scimitar, typically would print a story on the day of a game, and then another story the day after. Most students were from Memphis and many lived at home, which meant that they would read these stories. So did their professors, their parents, and their neighbors. Because the college had fewer teams, there was usually only one game going on at a time on campus, attracting whatever crowd of spectators there might be from campus and community.

In sum, if you played for the Lynx fifty years ago, there was glory to be gained. Your classmates knew what you were doing, and so did your professors and a fair share of your neighbors. Your parents memorialized your efforts with a scrapbook of clippings from the local newspapers.

Glory is no small thing. When Achilles was offered the choice of a long, peaceful, prosperous life or a short, glorious life it was a no brainer. He chose glory (and got it--we still celebrate his exploits) but he never dandled grandchildren on his knee.

Lynx sports are different now from what they were a half-century ago. The local sports scene is much more crowded--big-time football and basketball at the U of M, the NBA Grizzlies, and the Triple-A Memphis Redbirds. Major athletic contests are available on television 24/7, and on campus a baseball game is likely to coincide with a softball game, a tennis match, a track meet, or all three. The Commercial Appeal barely acknowledges the existence of Rhodes sports, which is more than the local television and sports radio stations do. Rhodes students come from all over, and they arrive on campus with long-established loyalties to college and professional teams at home. Even the Sou'wester is capable of ignoring Rhodes baseball for most of the season and then, when it does run a story, of overshadowing it with a photo of the students who play pick-up Ultimate Frisbee on Friday afternoons.

As a consequence, most professors don't know how the baseball team is doing, and neither do most students. Last year one player told me, "We could go to San Antonio for the weekend, sweep Trinity, come back to class on Monday, and nobody would even know we'd been gone, much less what we accomplished!"

Why do I mention all this? Not, as it might seem, out of nostalgia for the good old days. Just the opposite, in fact. I find something much more admirable, much nobler, about students who compete in a sport for the intrinsic satisfaction of playing and being part of a team rather than for any glory they might receive from others.

A couple other things Mike Cody told me and Matt that only underscore my admiration for today's team. One is that the demands on the players are much greater today than back in the day. According to Mike, when he played there was no conditioning or fall practice, and the season itself was much shorter with many fewer games.

The other is that the tangible rewards for being a player are much fewer. Rhodes has never given athletic scholarships, but it used to give "leadership" scholarships to certain students as an incentive to play on a team. Those days are no more too.

5.2.07 Traveling men

Mike Nelson — Wed, 02 May 2007 11:00:55 GMT

Travel is supposed to be broadening but all too often isn't for varsity athletes. A weekend road trip usually involves riding the team bus to a motel just off the interstate, then going back and forth from motel to game to motel and so on until it's time to go home. What team members generally see of the town they're in is the local Ryan's, Golden Corral, or other mega-buffet. What they see of even the home team's campus is often little more than the playing field and the visitors' locker room.

Sometimes that's all there is time to do. But with support from Coach Jeff Cleanthes, the Rhodes baseball team has made at least one road trip-related visit to an important local site in each of the last three seasons. As the team's Faculty Associate (and, in my day job, as a presidential scholar), I was able to work a connection and arrange for the team to visit the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock after hours when the team played nearby Hendrix College in 2005. The visit was an experiment. Coach C and I both wondered how much interest the team would have in touring a museum just two hours after playing a doubleheader. The truth was that team members--solid students to a one--were fascinated by what they saw. At 9:00 PM, the museum guards actually had to round us up and shoo us out.

In 2006 we went back to the Clinton library. One reason was that the team had a lot of new members who hadn't seen it before. The other was that I was able to work that same connection and arrange a few minutes with President Clinton himself, who was in town for the weekend.

This year the initiative for a site visit came from team members. Two juniors, pitcher Chris Catalanotto and outfielder Richard Hurd, mentioned that they were taking a history class on the civil rights movement and asked if it might be possible to visit some historic sites while the team was in Montgomery, Alabama, for a series against Huntingdon College in February. I cleared it with the coach and, as a result, the team bus stopped at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. coordinated the year-long Montgomery bus boycott sparked by Rosa Parks's arrest for refusing to move to the back of the bus. The church is across the street from the state capitol, which was the destination of the massive voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Chris and Richard briefed the team on the significance of the sites.

Reboarding the bus for the six-hour ride back to Memphis, freshman outfielder Derek King told teammates that his grandmother had marched with King. He and several other players sent their parents photos of the sites that they had taken with their cell phones.

Rhodes's commitment to integrating athletics and academics is longstanding, but in recent years that commitment has been strengthened by the involvement of the president, the provost, the athletic director, the coaches, and the faculty.

In 2002, at President Bill Troutt's request, I chaired the task force on the future of varsity athletics at Rhodes discussed in my 4.24.07 entry below. Our headline recommendation was to launch the Faculty Associates program, pairing at least one professor with each team. In 2005 a Rhodes delegation headed by President Troutt attended the first Integration Institute (integration, that is, of athletics and academics at Division III colleges) sponsored by the Mellon Foundation's College Sports Project. We came back fired up to transform the very good situation at Rhodes into a national pace setter. This August Rhodes will host an Integration Institute for the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference.

In fall 2006 Rhodes launched a new annual speakers series on Sports and Society to focus on sports-related topics in a serious (but not grim) way. The speakers were New York Times reporter Warren St. John, author of the splendid Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Road Trip into the Heart of Fan Mania; Rhodes historian Russell Wigginton, author of The Strange Career of the Black Athlete: African Americans and Sports; and Union College anthropologist George Gmelch, a former professional baseball players and the author of Inside Pitch: Life in Professional Baseball. All three of this year's lectures were well attended and, I am proud to say, the baseball team outshone every other student group on campus in their attentive presence.

5.1.07 Family notes

Mike Nelson — Wed, 02 May 2007 11:01:46 GMT

If you are a first-time visitor to http://seriousplaythebook.com, you may want to scroll to the previous entries. This one consists mostly of random thoughts about the team and its supporters that I jotted down during Sunday's bus ride from Georgetown, Texas, to Memphis.

The best thing about the bus ride was that we got home at a decent hour. That was also the worst thing about the bus ride because of the circumstances that prompted our early departure. One synonym for resilience--a word I have used to describe the Rhodes baseball team all season long--is elasticity, the ability to bounce back. But even elastic loses its spring if it's stressed too hard. Having to play two consecutive games against two well-rested teams on Saturday was exactly that kind of stress. If there was any benefit at all to being the No. 1 seed in the tournament, I can't imagine what it was. We received no bye, were the visiting team in two of the three games we played, and were the only team that had to play back-to-back games.

This is an especially challenging time for seniors Daniel Killary, Robby Piper, and Patrick Tolivar. For each of them the question hangs in the air: Have I played my last game? With any luck, they (and we) will get an indication soon about whether the team will advance to the NCAA regional.

On a more positive note, I counted parents, siblings, and friends of fifteen players in Georgetown--along with the ever-staunch parents of Coach Rob Schrier. Many others have been at other games during the season. You just can't say enough about how much support these good folks have given not just to their own sons on the team, but to everyone's sons .

We had some real twenty-first century moments when the Gametracker webcast of the game went down during Friday's game against Southwestern. Among the stories I heard were these: Daniel Vanaman's girl friend called our trainer with the track team at Trinity on her cell, who then called our other trainer in the Rhodes dugout on his cell to find out the score. Drew Hubbard's mom in North Carolina called John Robert Bizzell's mom in the stands at Georgetown to ask her to let the folks in the Southwestern press box know that Gametracker wasn't working. Bill Jack told me that his son's mom called him "forty times" during the game to keep up with the score.

I personally had a great nineteenth century moment when Arnold H. Hurd III (yes, that's Bubba) gave me an autographed copy of his new book, Tears on the Bluestone: A Civil War Portrait of Mercer County, Virginia.

Finally (almost), a few words of thanks to some good people. Evan Elliott, a Rhodes senior, was instrumental in getting this web site up and running. (Those of us with gray hair will always speak computer as a second language, like immigrans who never lose their accent. Those of Evan's generation speak computer as their native tongue, which is why we turn to them to help us navigate this new country.) Frank Ezelle, the senior statesman of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference message board at www.d3baseball.com, has been kind enough to give this web site a couple plugs, which has drawn visitors from around the conference. Thanks, too, to the writer of the Daily Dose blog at www.d3baseball.com for posting a permanent link to the site. And thanks to all of you who have posted comments, both pro and con.

Finally (really), on Thursday the Rhodes College home page will feature a story about http://seriousplaythebook.com (go to www.rhodes.edu on Wednesday and look under "News" in the lower right-hand corner of the page). Also, a link to the web site will soon appear on the Rhodes athletics page and the Rhodes baseball page.

4.30.07 The art of chatter

Mike Nelson — Tue, 01 May 2007 05:52:48 GMT

The Rhodes baseball team is renowned for the volume and the positive character of its dugout chatter. Most other teams tend to be quieter or, when they get noisy, are as likely to be abusive as encouraging. This makes me a huge fan of Rhodes chatter.

What have I learned about chatter from my time in the Rhodes dugout, both on good days for the team (of which we have had many this season, with more to come) and on other days?

First and foremost, good chatter is hard. I know because I've been trying. As someone from the era when "Hummmm babe" and "Swing batta batta batta" constituted the soul of dugout wit, it's been a struggle trying to catch up.

For a while this season I tended toward overelaborate sentences that typically trailed off into quiet incoherence. Then I realized that good chatter is like Homeric poetry--it relies on the frequent repetition of tropes (for example, "wine-dark sea" and "swift-footed Achilles" in the Iliad and the Odyssey; "whaddya say" and "hey now" for chatter). Eventually it dawned on me that all I needed to do was string together a few of these catchphrases to come up with a line of serviceable chatter. To pitcher Chris Catalanotto, for example: "Hey now, one-eight, whaddya say, whaddya say, eighteeeen." To hitter Matt Beesley, "Good take, two, whaddya say, two-man." I've been trying to work "Big Train" into as many lines about Robert Flanagan as possible, but so far it hasn't caught on.

I know I'm sounding too academic about all this but bear with me a little longer, I'm not through yet. Positive chatter, I have noticed, tends to sort itself into four categories. One, the stock of my trade, is upbeat but essentially mindless noise: "Hey now, double-two, come now, kid" (to John Robert Bizzell).

Another is encouragement to do something specific, as in "Base hit, PT, whaddya say, eleven" (to Patrick Tolivar), or "Lot of confidence, eight, win the battle" (to Daniel Vanaman).

The third is conveying useful information in upbeat form: "Keep it up, baby, you've got that 0-2 count" (to a pitcher) or "Baaaaacckk" (to a runner when the pitcher tries to pick him off).

Finally, there's chatter whose purpose is to activate more chatterers: "Let's get it up, boys--lot of chatter."

In jotting down examples of chatter as I heard ithem during today's first game against Austin, I realized that my notebook had developed the look and feel of free verse. And so, with apologies to every doe-eyed poet who ever walked the earth, I offer the following. Call it "Baseball: Rhodes vs. Austin, April 28, 2007," by the Rhodes Baseball Team:

Whaddya say, whaddya say now, kid,
Have an at bat, baby.
Working hard, working hard, come now, kid.
Own it, baby, own it.
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
All you, all game--hey now, kid.
Let's go, lots of life, baby.
Right guy at bat, now win the battle.
Hey, right man for the job, lot of confidence.
Have a day, baby, have a day.
Comeonbaby, comeonbaby, come on babyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

The End.

4.29.07 The team in the dugout

Mike Nelson — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:57:35 GMT

Today was a brutally tough day for the Lynx. A 6-2 lead against Austin after five-and-one-half innings turned into an 8-10 defeat. Forty-five minutes later, a tired and hungry Rhodes team faced the rested and well-fed Millsaps Majors. The game spiraled slowly, then rapidly downward, ending in a 1-11 defeat for Rhodes after seven innings.

Rhodes has, in effect, two teams: the team on the field and the team in the dugout. The team on the field makes it into the box scores and record books: it has already done great things this year. But the team in the dugout is bigger and nearly as important in explaining the Lynx's success in 2007. Understand, these players aren't just watching the game like the rest of us. They are making major contributions in a variety of small ways.

During today's games against Austin and Millsaps, for example. here is what various guys were doing:

--Brandon Valentine and Evan Malone kept the spray chart: one page for each opposing hitter showing where he hit the ball in each at bat

--Robert Flanagan and Corey Dardennes kept the pitching charts on Rhodes and the other team, respectively: a running tally of balls, strikes (called and swinging), and types of pitch.

--Carter Ragan scored the game in the game book, then passed it on to Brooks Royer or Patrick Tolivar when he went in to pitch.

--Max Gertz, Kevin McAlpine, Gordon Chadwick, and Brad Atkins kept pitch counts on the Rhodes and other teams' pitchers, using clickers to keep up.

--Charles Simmons warmed up right fielder Mason Mosby between innings, partly to loosen up his own arm but mostly to help out.

--Stephen DelBello, Brooks Royer, and Brandon Valentine warmed up various pitchers in the bullpen or, in DelBello's case, between innings when catcher Matt Beesley needed time to get into his gear.

--Not today, because it was so hot and every pitcher potentially was needed, but during most games, Andy Holt, Gordon Chadwick, Robby Piper, Brad Atkins, Max Gertz, Chris Catalanotto, Kevin McAlpine, and others take turns sitting behind home plate training the radar gun on the pitcher and recording the results.

--During most games, too, Derek King would be filing Livestat reports from a laptop. (By the way, none of the flaws of Livestat are due to Derek.) Also, Ralph MacDonald would be chasing down balls that were fouled out of play; today it was Will Leibner, Gordon Chadwick, and Brad Atkins who took on that job.

--Last, but the farthest thing from least, Jeff Mueller and Matt Jack kept up a steady line of chatter and got the rest of the dugout going whenever the noise level flagged. As best I can tell, these two guys never sat down or got quiet. Ever.

Chatter--let's call it The Art of Chatter--will be the subject of my next post.

4.28.07 The prose of Livestat

Mike Nelson — Tue, 01 May 2007 05:52:18 GMT

Years ago a writer named Oliver Jensen recast Lincoln's Gettyburg Address in the gaseous verbiage of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation" became "I haven't checked these figures, but eighty-seven years ago, I think it was, a number of individuals organized a government set-up in this country, I believe it covered certain eastern areas, with this idea they were following up, based on a sort of national independence arrangement." You get the idea.

Livestat prose is to baseball writing as Jensen's parody of Ike is to the Gettysburg Address. The difference is that Jensen actually wrote the words he satirically attributed to Eisenhower. No human hand writes Livestat prose. Instead, it is what's generated automatically when the scorekeeper types in commands for things like "walk," "single," and "hit by pitch."

Livestat, of course, is the program that Rhodes (and many other schools) use to chronicle games on line as they unfold on the field. Every Rhodes baseball parent, sibling, friend, and fan knows what the Livestat screen looks like: the blue-shaded inning-by-inning score on top, bracketed on the left by an icon of a baseball player and on the right by an icon of a softball player. Everyone has experienced the anxiety of waiting for the "Last play" entry to be updated during an especially tense game. (Remember all four contests at Oglethorpe in March, nail biters to a one?) And how neat is it to see the box score change to reflect every plate appearance? No sooner does "Matt Jack tripled to right center, 2 RBI; Will Leibner scored; Zach Sherman scored" register under "Last play" than an at bat, a hit, and two RBIs are added to Matt's line in the box score, along with a run scored for Will and one for Zach.

All of this is seriously cool. But back to Livestat prose, the running play by play description of the game. Here, for example, is what Livestat says happened in the bottom of the fourth inning of today's first-round game against Southwestern:

"Killary walked. Andy Boucher singled to right field; Killary advanced to third. Drew Hubbard grounded out to 2b, RBI; Andy Boucher advanced to second; Killary scored. J.R. Bizzell singled to left field, advanced to second on the throw, RBI; Andy Boucher scored. Mason Mosby hit by pitch. Richard Hurd singled to right field, RBI; Mason Mosby advanced to third; J.R. Bizzell scored. Vanaman [no first name for some reason] flied to rf, SF, RBI; Mason Mosby scored. Matt Beesley struck out swinging."

Now I'm no Grantland Rice (or Abraham Lincoln for that matter), but what I saw in the bottom of the fourth was a lot more interesting than that:

"Third baseman Daniel Killary walked to start the inning. With second baseman Andy Boucher at the plate, Killary broke for second and was called out on the throw from the catcher. Coach Jeff Cleanthes protested to the umpire who made the call, who then reversed it after consulting with one of his colleagues. Boucher blooped a single to right, sending Killary from second to third. With men on the corners and nobody out, center fielder Drew Hubbard brought Killary home with a ground ball to second. Shortstop John Robert Bizzell bounced a single over the third baseman's head, then took second when the left fielder made an unsuccessful attempt to nip Boucher at the plate. Right fielder Mason Mosby was hit by a pitch, putting men on first and second with one out. Left fielder Richard Hurd lined an opposite-field single to right; Bizzell stumbled rounding third but still managed to beat the throw home and score the Lynx's third run of the inning. First baseman Daniel Vanaman hit a long fly ball to right, scoring Mosby on a sacrifice fly when the right fielder caught the ball in foul territory. Catcher Matt Beesley, who hit an RBI single in the first inning, fanned. At the end of the four-run fourth inning, Rhodes led 8-2, having scored its eight runs on eight singles while leaving only three men on base."

Enough about Livestat. How about Rhodes's ace starter Robert Flanagan winning a record twelfth game of the season after battling through six innings without his best stuff against a hard-hitting Southwestern team? Flanagan threw 130 pitches but managed to hold the Pirates to two runs. When Southwestern came back later in the game, reliever Charles Simmons won some battles of his own. In the eighth inning, for example, Simmons threw thirty-five pitches while holding the Bucs scoreless--how often does that happen? Rhodes won the game 8-6.