The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Men play softball — with mixed results
STORRS — Jordan Hawkins called his shot each time he stepped to the plate Wednesday morning, pointing toward left-center field. When he finally connected for a home run in the fourth inning of this strangely entertaining yet entirely messy softball experiment, he posed and saluted before rounding the bases.
At home plate, Hawkins was mobbed by the rest of the Bombers, who held it together better than the Boomers for an 18-10 victory as the UConn men’s basketball team split up and came together by taking on a new sport at Burrill Family Field.
“That felt amazing,” Hawkins, a freshman guard, said. “I’m not going to lie, that felt better than hitting a game-winning shot.”
Two batters later, senior forward Tyrese Martin belted one, too, launching the ball into the thick air of a heat wave and well over the outfield wall, another highlight on the most light
hearted summer day.
“Some people are baseball players and some have never swung a bat in their life,” Martin said. “Great time, though.”
There were at least a dozen swings and misses, and a handful of strikeouts, in this slow-pitch game. Errors were plentiful, but not recorded. Some of the players — basketball players, lest anyone forget — did not know how to properly wear a glove or how to hold a bat. Members of the UConn softball team were in attendance, seemingly delighted if not damaged by the spectator experience.
Teams were drafted Tuesday, with seniors Martin and R.J. Cole selecting for the Bombers.
“Me and my man Tyrese Martin are like Rob Pelinka and Danny Ainge,” Cole said of the well-known NBA executives. “We just needed athletes. We had people who could get us on base, and we had two who could get us a home run. [The Boomers] were talking. They said we were going to have a bad team. Even this morning, it was, ‘Ya’ll going to lose.’ Look what happened.”
Seniors Isaiah Whaley and Tyler Polley drafted for the Boomers.
“I have to get some stuff off my chest,” Whaley said, smiling, as he emerged from the dugout after the game. “People told me they played baseball [since] they were like 5 years old, and I think people need to get in the gym, work on their games. [The Bombers] got a lot of calls on their side that I didn’t like, but I’m proud of my guys. They fought. I didn’t like some of my guys’ energy.”
Cole was laughing in the background.
“This is brutal,” Whaley said. “This one hurts. I don’t like certain people. There are certain people I wanted to really beat, and when it doesn’t happen it really [stings].”
Summer Wednesdays for the Huskies are days of leisure activities. Wasn’t this softball gathering just about camaraderie?
“No,” Whaley said, still smiling with Cole hovering. “It created divisions. I already didn’t like some people.
Now I don’t like them even more. It’s all good, though. I’ll see them on the basketball court.”
All of these comments were made entirely in jest. With hot dogs and tubs of popcorn to snack on — and one swinging bunt at a time — the Bombers in blue and the Boomers in gray danced and joked their way around the scorching hot turf for an hour. The national anthem was played before the game with players lining the infield, followed by Michael Buffer’s “Let’s Get Ready To Rumble.”
“Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages,” began the greeting to a crowd of, oh, a dozen, by public address announcer Dave Kaplan, who runs UConn’s video services. Music blared as each player stepped to the plate.
Or within the general vicinity.
Adama Sanogo batted third in the Boomers’ lineup. When he was announced in the first inning to “Tunnel Vision” by Kodak Black, he grabbed a bat and stood several feet in front of the plate. Told to reposition himself, Sanogo then stood well behind the batter’s box. He finally dug in where he needed to, swung and missed — and started running to first base.
“My first time ever to play,” said Sanogo, a sophomore from Bamako, Mali. “It was good. If we play again, I think we’re going to win.”
As a softball player, Sanogo is “a really good basketball player, an extremely good basketball player,” teammate Andre Jackson said.
Jackson, a sophomore from Amsterdam, N.Y., showed a good glove in the outfield.
“I wanted to win,” he said. “It was a little demoralizing at the end. It was a fun experience and I enjoyed it. Matt Garry … Babe Ruth.”
Garry, a senior walk-on from Southington playing for the Boomers, hit several moonshot home runs in batting practice — and one during the game — over the right-field wall and toward Morrone Stadium, swinging as if his chances to enter a basketball game in the 2021-22 season depended on it.
“Maybe baseball can be my thing,” Garry joked with teammates as they left the field. “I don’t know.”
Assistant coach Tom Moore held intrasquad softball games when he was coach at Quinnipiac, and Louisville did the same when assistant Luke Murray worked there. The idea came up recently in Storrs and so there were the Huskies Wednesday, having left the intensity of the gym for the playfulness of a nearby field in oppressive heat.
Freshman guard Rahsool Diggins of the Bombers took out trainer James Doran at second base. Assistant coach Murray, the Bombers’ shortstop, bloodied his left knee while sliding for a ball. Moore, playing first base for the Boomers, screamed “move in” when director of player development Taliek Brown came to bat. Brown then hit a two-RBI single that helped the Bombers to a 7-3 lead in the second inning.
Standing as a runner on third base, coach Dan Hurley looked at the Boomers dugout and said, “You guys have bad culture.” Hurley, playfully, chided players, argued with umps and taunted the opposition. He later said, “You guys are melting down,” to the Boomers. Of his own teammate, associate head coach/ left fielder Kimani Young, Hurley said, “A lot of mental mistakes.”
Jalen Gaffney, the junior guard from Columbus, N.J., was the No. 1 overall pick in Tuesday’s draft.
“I don’t know why,” he said.
Gaffney’s best contribution was to, with help from Diggins, dump a bucket of ice water over Hawkins after the game. The Huskies then gathered in center field for a team picture.
“We won [Tuesday] during the draft,” Hurley said of the Bombers. “When we saw the people Isaiah and Tyler were picking, I went to bed knowing the outcome.”
Moore, one of the Boomers’ better players, said of his team’s difficulties: “We compounded a lack of fielding with an egregious lack of hitting. We had too many weak spots in our lineup, and in the field. But our attitude was great.”