A love letter to college baseball
It's Opening Day across college baseball and here's a primer on its undeniable allure
Pitchers and catchers reported to spring training this week. Exhibition baseball games begin in a couple weeks. We’re roughly six weeks from the start of the Major League Baseball season.
If you just can’t wait that long, and have a strong desire to watch baseball games that matter, let me remind you that today is Opening Night across the country in college baseball.
I’ll be on the mic doing play-by-play for the University of Nevada baseball team for roughly one-third of the season -- until the Voice of the Wolf Pack, John Ramey, finishes with men’s basketball, and I begin my primary job with the Albuquerque Isotopes (Rockies Triple-A affiliate).
I always have a blast calling college baseball games. If you haven’t been to a game recently, or don’t normally pay attention until the College World Series in June, here’s a love letter to what makes college baseball awesome.
The best way to describe the difference between college baseball and professional baseball is what happens after a batter is hit by a pitch.
In pro ball, the hitter is upset, glares at the pitcher, tosses his bat aside in anger, and slowly walks to first base while making it very clear that he’s very mad.
In college baseball, the hitter sprint to first base and all his teammates cheer wildly, because it’s a baserunner and the start of a rally.
Oh yeah, before I go any further, let’s discuss terminology.
Most people use “the major leagues” or “the minors” to differentiate levels of professional baseball. Not in college. They just say the all-encompassing “pro ball” to describe getting paid to play baseball, regardless of your level of play and the size of your paycheck.
I’m fully on-board with the “pro ball” expression and constantly try to spread the gospel.
The fans are into it
College baseball might not share the popularity of football or basketball on campus, but the fans who do show up are there to watch a game and become an integral part of the game.
One of the best atmospheres is Texas A&M, where they created what’s best known as the “ball five” chant. After a pitcher walks a batter on four pitches, they chant “ball five” until the next pitch is delivered. If that pitch is a ball, they chant “ball six” until the next pitch. Then chant “ball seven” and so on and on, until the pitcher finally throws a strike.
Here's a clip from the 2016 playoffs, and credit the announcers for laying out completely to just let the crowd tell the story.
What’s a Friday Night Starter?
College baseball people take the title “Friday Night Starter” very serious. It’s awesome.
The best pitcher always starts game one of the weekend series. Always.
In pro ball, it’s a luck of the draw if the aces go ever head-to-head against each other, considering most teams employ a five-man rotation, they have different off-day schedules and strategies for keeping their starters fresh.
Not in college. The aces are the Friday Night Starters, so you know the weekend starts with your best against their best. These are the rules. Everyone follows them.
Dreamy Fields that are … clean
Some of the college baseball backdrops are spectacular. Here’s a link of 11 of the most stunning fields in college baseball.
Below is a picture of Point Loma College in San Diego. I remember going here as a freshman at San Diego State for Opening Day in 1992 with my friend Garrett Overheiser. We couldn’t believe our eyes that the field was right on the Pacific Ocean.
Our buddy from Olmeca Hall, Benji Grigsby, started for the Aztecs. Second baseman Pat Mummy was also in our dorms, along with a few other players. There was maybe 20 people at the game. Back in the dorms afterward, Benji laughed at how much noise Garrett and I made that day. 1
Dugouts are clean after the game. Seriously. One of my pet peeves in pro ball is how disgusting the dugouts are after games, filled with sunflower seeds, empty cups, tobacco juice, and more trash. Japanese players frequently remark about this when they come to the States.
In college baseball, the players keep the dugouts cleaner than their dorm rooms. They pickup everything after the game ends. Dugouts are clean. It’s a sense of pride.
There was a famous moment from the 2019 College World Series, where after Vanderbilt clinched the title, one of the players, Stephen Scott, departed the celebration to make sure the dugout was spotless. A photo of him went viral on Twitter.
"I was a little embarrassed when that came out. Mainly because I wasn't the only one in the dugout that time and I've never been the only one in the dugout cleaning," Scott said. "That's one of our team standards - to keep the dugout clean. I need to thank my parents you know. They're the one's that instilled that in me from a young age and learning to clean-up the dugouts in West Raleigh where I played rec baseball, Saint Mary Magdalene, Cardinal Gibbons just reinforcing that. And finally, at Vanderbilt."
Depending on the college and their budget, players not in the lineup are usually heavily involved in preparing the field before and after games. I’ve seen multiple teams where the closer fine tunes the mound before the game, gets the final out, then gives the mound some TLC before leaving the field.
You’d be surprised at how many grounds keepers in pro ball played college baseball.
Length of season
If you think MLB plays too many games, college baseball is for you. It’s usually four games a week, a three-game weekend series and a midweek non-conference game, a total of 56 games before the postseason.
Unlike in pro ball, you’re not saving your players for a six-month marathon of 162 games. They’re young and still get plenty of rest. The best position players might play every inning of every game.
I’ve seen a catcher go all 18 innings of a doubleheader one day, then catch a day game the next day, or 27 innings in about 27 hours.
I enjoy the pitching strategy involved when you only play four games a week too.
In pro ball, when it’s 6-7 games a week, you have starters, sometimes an opener, a bulk guy, middle inning relievers, lefty specialists, setup relievers, and a closer. In college, I once saw a coach bring in his “closer” in the fifth inning because the game was on the line. The “closer” pitched the rest of the game.
The coaches are … trying to actually win every game
Look, I love Minor League Baseball, all of the charms of hot prospects and veterans making comebacks, and there is a much-welcomed recent trend of emphasizing winning as a part of player development. Amen. But the priority in the minors will always be developing players.
The best example of this is strategy. I remember broadcasting a Triple-A game once with a longtime college baseball coach. A hitter had a couple extra-base hits and the longtime coach remarked they should pitch around him.
I reminded the coach this is pro ball, pitchers have to learn how to get the best hitters out, if they’re ever going to reach the majors. They can’t intentionally walk their way to the majors. They gotta figure it out because the best hitter on a minor league team might only bat 7th in the majors, and those are the guys you really need to get out.
In college, the coaches job is to win. In a season of 56 games, every game matters. You’re not going to throw the white flag early in a game, especially because the aluminum bat ensures that no lead is safe.
That said, college coaches are much more responsible about not abusing pitchers anymore. When I covered college baseball for The Daily Aztec in the mid-1990s, it was routine to see pitchers exceed 130 pitches in a start. I once saw a pitcher on UNLV throw 182 pitches over nine innings. I triple-checked my math. The abuse was borderline criminal.
In 1990, the A’s drafted this stud collegiate pitcher named Kirk Dressendorfer from Texas. I saw his stats and was pumped, convinced he was the next A’s ace. He reached the majors, but only briefly, and was plagued by arm injuries. I looked back at his day-by-day outings in college and realized what happened to him. He was routinely the Friday Night Starter and the Saturday Night Closer and sometimes the Sunday Afternoon Closer.
Those days are thankfully gone.
Length of games and style
Yes, they have a Pitch Clock in college baseball. It’s 20 seconds at all times. You think it’s made a big different in the majors? You ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen a college baseball game with the Pitch Clock. Those 4-hour baseball games are long gone. Most are under three hours now.
Yes, most of the coaches still call all the pitches. But not all of them. And their “Pitch Com” is a watch the pitchers wear. The communication is super fast and nobody accuses anyone of stealing signs. Update: most teams use the Pitch Com in their caps and batters have a speaker in their helmet to tell them to bunt or steal.
Yes, they still bunt a lot in college baseball. But, no, they don’t bunt nearly as often as they did in the 20th century.
A lot of newer college coaches have backgrounds in pro ball. (They switched because the pay is better and the hours are better in college than the minors.) They’ve brought over the philosophy of not giving away outs and playing for big innings.
Final pings and thoughts
If you’re used to the crack of the bat, yes, I’ll admit that “ping” takes some getting used to. I’m grown to like the charm of it. It’s a reminder that is not pro ball.
Other elements of college baseball will make you appreciate pro ball more as well. Like grounders in the hole on the left side of the infield. It’s a hit like 99% of the time in college. Very few shortstops have the range to get to a ball in the hole, and the arm strength to make a throw to first base for an out. The pros make it look easy. It’s not.
Tickets are usually super cheap. You can sit really close to the field. Or go sit next to a scout — they’re the ones with radar guns behind home plate, usually wearing sunglasses, a hat, and Lululemon golf pants — and talk some ball.
Finally, a lot of college teams have elaborate BBQ food setups and the smoke drifts onto the field, adding a mystical vibe to the game.
Give college baseball a chance. Trust me, you’ll love it.
I wasn’t sure where to include this story, but it’s awesome and wanted it somewhere. In the 1980s, San Diego State baseball coach Jim Dietz was trying to entice fans to attend games. He was known for calling the fraternities and saying, “there’s a full keg waiting at Ragger’s Rail if you want to watch some baseball today.” Multiple people told me this story was true, including Dietz himself.