San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
An uphill fight for Stanford baseball
When the Stanford administration announced in July it was eliminating 11 sports from the athletic department, the collective reaction across the Bay Area went something like, “What?” It didn’t make a bit of sense to anyone beyond those misguided souls who deemed the cutbacks essential to the school’s wellbeing.
That’s sort of how it felt at the College World Series on Saturday in Omaha, Neb., where the Stanford baseball team slipped entirely out of character and took a discouraging 104 loss to North Carolina State. Jittery and mistakeprone, the Cardinal hardly resembled the club that ranked among the nation’s best defensive units and steamrolled Texas Tech in last week’s Super Regional.
Now it’s suddendeath time for the Cardinal, moving on to an elimination game Monday. In the realm of second chances, coach David Esquer can only hope his team fares as well as the university did.
On a gorgeous afternoon, with fans welcoming back this traditionrich event after losing it to the pandemic last year, Stanford took the field with its ace, Brendan Beck, on the mound. He wasn’t at his best by any means, but that wouldn’t be the primary issue. Esquer had mentioned in his Friday news conference that “I have nothing but confidence they’re going to play loose and free,” and in that sense, their performance was a major letdown.
When Wolfpack leadoff hitter Austin Murr stole second in the first inning, a good throw by catcher Kody Huff would have had him; instead, it was offline to the shortstop side of the bag. Jonny Butler followed with a homer over the rightfield fence, and the Wolfpack had a quick 20 lead.
Huff made another wild throw in the second inning, fielding Vojtech Mensik’s slow roller but onehopping first baseman Nick Brueser and allowing Mensik to reach second. He wound up scoring on Tyler McDonough’s single to make it 30.
Beck needed his teammates’ support after giving up Devonte Brown’s solo homer in the fourth, but Tim Tawa, who made just one error at second
base all season, misplayed Mensik’s sharp grounder with nobody out. Later that inning, on an errant Beck pitch that trickled only a few feet away from Huff, the runners on first and second pulled what amounted to a double steal on sheer hustle — and both scored on a single by Butler.
With Stanford about to bat in the bottom of the fourth, trailing 60, Esquer gathered his team for a quick dugout meeting. His words seemed to have an effect, as Tawa led off the inning with his 12th homer of the year. But too much damage had been done, and Beck — despite striking out 10 batters in his 52⁄3 innings — took a discouraging loss.
“Didn’t keep the ball in the yard, first inning. Not a good way to start a game, before our offense had a chance to even go to work,” Beck said in a very brief postgame Zoom session. “I settled down a little bit, got into the sixth, trying to give our offense a chance ... just didn’t go our way today.”
Esquer was more direct about the defensive letdowns, which included Tawa making another error during the Wolfpack’s fourrun ninth. He also gave credit to North Carolina State, a redhot club that reached the CWS by upsetting Arkansas, the No. 1 national seed heading into the tournament, in its Super Regional. “We made some mistakes that were very unusual for us, and it seemed like every mistake we made, they capitalized on,” Esquer said. “Sometimes a team comes in and just doesn’t play like themselves — I think we were that team today. But our team is resilient, and they’re not gonna let up. I think it was a lesson today that Brendan Beck just can’t do it all by himself.”
So it’s on to the loser’s bracket for the Cardinal, now in comeback mode, and that’s a familiar story — for the team and the entire athletic department.
Nobody has much good to say about 2020, but for Stanford, it was the combination of a strangely vapid start of the season (511) and then having it wiped out entirely by the pandemic. That had everyone starting from scratch this year, and “I think we have a great camaraderie amongst our players,” Esquer said Friday. “Everything thrown at this club they’ve accepted, embraced, responded.”
On a larger scale, the university administration managed to create a fullscale, avoidable disaster by eliminating 11 sports responsible for 20 NCAA titles and 27 Olympic medals. A complete reversal was announced last month, but it was a terrible embarrassment for a school that has long set the national standard in allaround athletic excellence.
There was a significant loss of faith throughout the programs, with the cost of transfers and diminished recruiting. And yet, somehow, the athletic department emerged stronger than ever. The baseball team is making its first College World Series appearance since 2008. The women’s basketball team won the NCAA championship with a thrilling, inspired performance.
And here’s the most stunning bit of evidence: As the 202021 school year came to a close, Stanford had conference titles in men’s soccer, men’s tennis, men’s and women’s cross country, women’s lacrosse, field hockey, men’s water polo and sailing. Feelings hurt, inept administration exposed, but the overall reputation? Intact and thriving.
Sounds like a worthy challenge for a baseball team in search of redemption.