Notes, Quotes and Slants
-----
Pirate
Notebook No. 145
Sunday, September 28, 2003
By Denny O'Brien
Staff Writer and Columnist |
 |
Fall ball opens with Omaha on
the mind
©2003 Bonesville.net
When Randy Mazey looked back
on his first season as head baseball coach at East Carolina — a year marked
with disappointment when measured by recent ECU standards — he saw no reason
to get caught up in pessimism. After all, the Pirates did manage to collect
their fifth-consecutive NCAA tournament bid, a streak that places the ECU
baseball program among the nation's elite.
On the other hand,
while the Pirates skipper wasn't moping, he wasn't jumping with joy,
either. The fact is, Mazey expects much better than the 33-25-1
regular season finish the Bucs produced last season — and will demand more
from his team during fall practice.
That's the standard
Keith LeClair set over
the previous four seasons, and it's one Mazey has all intentions of
maintaining.
“These people around here expect to win,”
Mazey said last spring. “If the pressure wasn’t put on me by the fans and
the media and everybody like that, I’d put it on myself, anyhow.
“We know we’re going to win here. We know
we’re going to be successful. We know we’re going to achieve our goals —
it’s just a matter of time until that happens.
“With the new stadium coming in a couple of
years, I really believe the pinnacle of this program is going to come two to
three years after that stadium is built, after we’ve had a couple of years
to recruit to the new stadium. We’re going to be able to attract the best
players in the nation once that happens.”
East Carolina's accomplishments on the
baseball diamond are somewhat astounding when you consider the facility it
long has called home. Harrington Field, though quaint and intimate, pales in comparison to the facilities in which
most programs of ECU's caliber play. In many ways, it more closely resembles
a glorified high school park than the
home of a perennial NCAA postseason contender.
The metal bleachers behind home plate are
outdated and no longer provide the sufficient amount of seats to accommodate
overflow crowds. That isn't an issue for the self-proclaimed good-time ECU
bunch that happily resides in the 'Jungle', the wooded area behind the left
field wall, which, for years, has provided a strong home-field advantage.
When the new stadium is unveiled in the
2005, fans will be happy to find the Jungle preserved, and there should be
plenty of action there to keep them busy.
“The new stadium is going to be conducive
to bringing in guys who can hit the ball out of the park,” Mazey said.
“We’re going to try and focus our efforts on that.
"I’ve
never done that before. I’ve always recruited guys who can run a little bit,
but it’s going to be interesting to see how we can bring some guys in here
who can pepper the ‘Jungle’ so to speak.”
Though the long-range revenue potential of
the new stadium is certainly a catalyst for its construction — money always
is a driving force with facilities expansion — it is not what motivated the
capital campaign. When LeClair guided the Pirates to NCAA No. 1 seeds in '99
and '00, but the team was forced to travel for regional play, it sent a
clear message that it was time for East Carolina to pump major bucks into
its burgeoning baseball program.
The Pirates finally got their chance to
host in '01, but had to do so 30 miles away. The new stadium will prevent
that from occurring in the future, and that is one of several ingredients
Mazey says is needed for the program to reach its ultimate goal — a trip to
Omaha for the College World Series.
“You need experience,” he said. “You don’t
see young, talented teams in Omaha. You see older, more experienced teams
that have been there.
“The one thing that helps us is we play a
great schedule and we play in some hostile atmospheres, which you have to do
to get to Omaha. The last time I was there, there was only one team in the
field of eight that didn’t host its Super Regional. Ironically, that was
Tennessee. We won that Super Regional on the road (in Kinston).
“But in order to get there, you’ve got to
host. It’s hard to get there on the road, playing in those atmospheres.
That’s why that stadium is going to be so important.”
There is plenty of evidence to support that
statement. The host team has advanced to the Super Regionals in three of
East Carolina's five-consecutive regional appearances. On three of those
occasions, the Pirates were a No. 1 seed.
That isn't to suggest that Mazey is
overlooking the most important ingredient — talent — something he says he
has to increase to better position the Pirates for an Omaha run. The past
two seasons have revealed the need to focus recruiting efforts on offense,
where the Bucs have struggled with consistency.
"I really thought coming out of fall
practice we were going to be a pretty good offensive team," Mazey said,
referring to last season's autumn drills. "We've shown flashes of it but we
haven't been very consistent offensively. We tried a lot of different
lineups early and used a lot of guys."
East Carolina was batting a paltry .271
entering NCAA play last spring, with just four regulars — Darryl Lawhorn
(.326), Jamie Paige (.306), Jake Smith (.301), and Ryan Norwood (.300) —
above the .300 mark. All four are back this year.
The Pirates did, however, post some pretty
decent power numbers, blasting 60 home runs, third-best in Conference USA.
Lawhorn and Norwood tied for the team lead in home runs and RBIs (13 HR, 43
RBI), while Smith, a true freshman catcher from Greensboro, emerged as a
future all-star after belting ten homers and 26 RBIs in just 143 at bats.
The Pirates faired much better on the mound
last year, posting a respectable 4.10 earned run average — third best in the
league — which is quite an accomplishment considering the loss of two
weekend starters from the '02 season. The Pirates will face a similar
transition this year with five seniors moving on, though Mazey thinks he
more than accounted for that in the early signing period.
"We're very excited about the group of
young men we've signed for the 2004 season," Mazey said. "We know that
we're going to lose some very talented pitchers and were able to get some of
the best pitchers in the state. It's a very talented group that we're
expecting big things from in the coming years."
Mazey expects immediate help from Carter
Harrell, a transfer from Louisburg College who played his freshman season at
North Carolina, where he compiled an 8-4 record with a 3.88 ERA and 65
strikeouts in 58 innings. East Carolina also received signatures from John
Emmert, ranked the state's top left-handed pitcher by Baseball America,
and Mike Flye from Greenville Rose High, who also is rated among the
nation's top prep players.
Other notable signees include Drew Costanzo
— another Louisburg transfer — who batted .392 with 12 HRs and 66 RBIs last
season, and southpaw pitcher Dustin Sasser, a Goldsboro native who tallied
94 Ks in 58.1 innings last season.
All totaled, the Pirates inked seven
in-state players, including three from east of I-95.
“The reason that baseball in Eastern North
Carolina is so good is the feeder programs,” Mazey said. “These kids when
they’re 8, 10, 12, 13-years old, they’ve got great coaches and great
opportunities to play a lot.
“That’s what makes the high school and
legion programs so good — they’ve got great players to choose from because
they’ve played so much when they were younger. You can go around the country
and look at the hotbeds of talent and that’s the common denominator — the
feeder programs. That’s what drives Greenville.”
And it is Mazey's vision of Omaha, which
was first introduced by LeClair, that drives East Carolina. It's a dream
that became a reality for the Pirates skipper in 2001, when, as an assistant
at Tennessee, he set foot on the hallowed grounds of Rosenblatt Stadium
after the Volunteers inched past the Pirates in the Kinston Super Regional.
“It’s an unbelievable atmosphere,” Mazey
said. “I’ve had a lot of people tell me — administrators and fans, people
who have been to bowl games and Final Fours — they tell that the atmosphere
in Omaha is better than all of them.
“I believe it. It’s hard-pressed for me to
visualize any college atmosphere being as good as that one out there. It’s
an experience you’ll never forget.”
It's also an experience he plans to relive.
Send an e-mail message to Denny O'Brien.
Click here to dig into Denny O'Brien's Bonesville
archives.
02/23/2007 01:53:37 AM |