April 20, 2012  

"Moving Day" is here

Week 9 of the college baseball season is here and for some these are the “moving days” of spring. With five more weeks of action left to go before the regular season ends, these next few weekends see the conference and national leader boards shift like the leader board at Augusta on Saturday. For Big Ten teams, midweek games begin to blur with final assignments due before the all-coveted “dead week” of school cast the omen of the approaching final exams. Things begin to get hectic as some student-athletes fight for A’s in the classroom while others fight for the academic eligibility to play, not to mention any names. For the Boilermaker Dreamteam we took this opportunity to extend our success on the field to a record of 29-5, good for second best in the country… did I fail to mention a spoiler alert… as we squared off against Ball State in a midweek game before taking on the Fighting Illini and last year’s Big Ten Champs of Illinois.

Wednesday action featured us traveling to Muncie, Indiana, to square off against the Cardinals of Ball State in a midweek affair that featured enough highlights from the Dreamteam to fill David Letterman’s Top 10 late night list. As usual “The Pack” took an easing into the game approach with only 3-2 lead entering into the sixth inning. Then, “by the beard of Zeus”, the floodgates opened with a 12-run rally in the sixth that featured a two-run shot from Angelo “Hawks Nest” Cianfrocco and David “Honey Badger” Miller, breaking the power outage for “The Pack” that had lasted since March 28.

The weekend brought in the defending Big Ten Champs in Illinois for a three-game set. Friday was a solid performance all around for the Dreamteam as we defeated the Illini with a score of 3-0. “The Staff” led by “Diamond” Joe Haase, Blake “The Snake” Mascarello, and Nick “StrikeMaker” Wittgren combine for our fourth shutout of the season.

Saturday saw rain and forced us to enjoy the great pastime of America’s pastime, tarp pulling. Nothing brings more joy to a college baseball player than to arrive at the park only to pull the tarp that keeps the diamond playable during rain. There are a few essentials to a tarp pull, 1) Freshmen (as they do all of the work), 2) Sweats/Sweatshirt (not to keep you warm but to keep your buddy from wiping his muddy hands all over your white uniform), 3) Two pairs of shoes and socks (because the first pair will be so wet that you will want to amputate your own feet by the end of the day/game if you don’t change them), 4) Your head on a swivel (as most practical jokes get played during these hours when insanity sets in).

Tarp pull aside, a doubleheader on Sunday would decide the outcome of the series. We proved up to the challenge, winning both games on Sunday with a combined score of 9-4, giving Coach Schreiber his 408th victory as head coach for the Boilermakers, besting Coach Dave Alexander for the all-time record.

Another successful week for the Dreamteam proved that at this rate there was a good change of finishing above .500 for the season, that’s pretty good. The coming week will feature a night game amidst the Chicago skyline at University of Illinois-Chicago before flying to Nebraska to square off against the Huskies, proving that winning will get you everything… except the punctual completion of a new field.

Thanks for reading,

Cal Gunter and David Miller

(photos courtesy of Purdue Media Relations Office)