B.J.'s Boys Head West

While taking in the Eastern Connecticut State vs. Keene St. NCAA Div. III championship baseball game at Harwich this past Sunday, I couldn't help but notice a distinguished looking little guy in the stands, clad in full Eastern Conn. regalia, bright blue and red satin coaches'. jacket and official cap, watching the game intently. He must be a parent, or perhaps a grandparent. I approached him and asked him if he had a kid on the team.

     "No," he said, "they are all my boys. I drive the team bus." B.J. Pantoja has been driving the bus for the Warriors for seven years, but he has been a fan of ECSU baseball for more than 30 years. "I've known these coaches since they were players", he said pointing to a couple of of coaches who looked as old as me. ( I went to college during the Nixon and Ford administrations). B.J. gave me the lowdown on the Warriors. "Eastern is a well-coached team that knows how to win big games." His assessment proved accurate, as we watched starting pitcher Shawn Gilbraid overcome a shaky start to gut out six tough innings on short rest for the win as the ECSU hitters pounded Keene pitching for an 18-3 win and a trip to Wisconsin for the Div.III World Series.

     Neither an alumnus nor a player parent, B.J. is a guy who fell in love with a local team and has remained loyal for many years. " I fly with the team when we take our preseason trip to California. I never miss a game. I moved to Danbury a few years ago, so I drive 90 miles to the home games now." Will he be making the trip to Wisconsin?, I asked as we watched his beloved Warriors form the traditional pigpile on the mound after the last out. He paused as if to say, you must be kidding, as a wide smile crossed his face, "oh yeah."
      ECSU shortstop Melvin Castillo,named the tournament' s Most Outstanding Player, is also looking forward to the trip." It'll be exciting. We just have to do what we did here. Take one game at a time, play as a team and never give up." A familiar phrasing, of course, but one that has worked for many champions.

     For every champion, there is a very disappointed and defeated opponent. On Sunday, some of the Keene St. fans and team allowed their disappointment to get the better of them before the game was finished. In the top of the seventh,with Eastern Conn. leading 9-3,one out and runners on second and third,the Warriors executed the suicide squeeze play to push their lead to 10-3. A rumbling of anger,disapproval and a sprinkling of invective, some of it profane, cascaded from the Keene stands and bench. The Keene St. pitching coach may have been the worst offender, dropping numerous f-bombs. The Keene people felt Eastern Conn was "showing up"their team, "piling on" and running up the score. When, two batters later, an Eastern Conn.
baserunner stole second, the vocal protest and profanity grew. Third base umpire Tim Carey did a good job here, sternly warning the Keene bench and one fan in particular to "zip it". Carey went face to face with the Keene pitching coach, letting the coach have his say while letting him know enough was enough. The inning then concluded as it seemed the hopes of Keene state also concluded.
      This is what puzzles me. When you accuse the other team of running up the score and showing you up , you are essentially admitting that you are beaten. The score was 9-3 , with three innings (!) left when Eastern pulled the supposedly offensive squeeze play. A six run lead with three innings left? What in the world makes that insurmountable against a tiring pitcher with less than his best stuff? The suicide squeeze is an agressive move, but how else does one win a championship than by being agressive when the game is on the line?
When Eastern Conn. next came to the plate in the eighth, the perfunctory and predictable happened. The Keene St. pitcher hit the first Eastern batter. Home plate umpire Steve Koneski let both sides know that no more of this would be tolerated. When Melvin Castillo followed with a two run homer to make it 13-3, the Eastern fans couldn't help but cheer wildly, while the Keene St. fans now resigned themselves quietly to their fate.

     I asked an ECAC official after the game what he thought of the "controversial" squeeze play. " As a baseball man, I'm very sensitive to a team showing up another ." He pointed out that these teams are league opponents, who know each other very well and have played each other six times over the previous fifteen days,so emotions are bound to run high.

     I am not a "baseball man", only a fan, so perhaps this is why I don't understand a hypersensitivity to being "shown up" by an opponent. As an athlete and coach, I have been on the wrong side of a lopsided score more than my share of times and I can say that very, very seldom have I ever felt that an opponent was trying to run up the score or deliberately tried to embarass me or my team. Taking a bad beating almost always means simply that the other team played a much better game than you did on that day.
      There is an unspoken, almost universal covenant among those in the coaching profession not to "show up" their opponent as the winners all know they could be the one on the short end next time. Very seldom is this covenant transgressed. Eastern Conn's head coach Bill Holowaty certainly didn't think it was he who crossed the line.
"In all my years of coaching, I have never once told a pitcher to throw at a hitter," he bristled after the game." Heck, I'm just trying to win a championship. What is a six run lead the way this game is played with aluminum bats? I've seen six runs disappear in the blink of an eye."
Coach Holowaty clearly preferred to speak about his team's attitude, intensity and approach to the game, and rightly so. They are deserving champions and they won with honor, not by "showing up" the other team. The 18-3 final score was merely a function of a tired and worn-down Keene St. pitching staff.
       As B.J. and his boys head out to represent New England in Wisconsin, I'll be rooting for them.