By LOU PAVLOVICH, JR.
Editor/Collegiate Baseball

COLLEGE STATION, Tex. — Hustle is one of the most important elements in the game of baseball.

However, way too many players walk to their positions defensively or slowly jog and do the same coming back to the dugout. Many don’t hustle during games either.

This lack of respect for the game causes the blood to boil with coaches who strive for hustle.

There is no coach in college baseball who treasures hustle more than new Texas A&M skipper Jim Schlossnagle.

He has enjoyed tremendous success during his 20-year career as a head coach, including the last 18 seasons at Texas Christian University.

He guided the Horned Frogs to five College World Series.

Over his 20 seasons, Schlossnagle has amassed an 811-393 (.674) mark.

He has been named National Coach of The Year two times.

Let’s say a fly ball is hit down the right field line with the rightfielder, second baseman and first baseman converging on it. 

After the play, each of these fielders sprints back to their normal defensive positions when the play is over if it was less than three outs.

On every ground ball to an infielder, the TCU catcher sprints from home plate to back up first. Once the play is over, with less than three outs, he takes off for home in an all-out sprint.

And that includes games in the searing heat when temperatures are close to 100 and 90 percent humidity.

His teams hustle on the off the field with tremendous intensity.

None of this is false hustle.

It simply is the way baseball is played under Schlossnagle, one of the top skippers in the business who has seen the value of hustle up close.

“If you see us play a game, then you have also seen us practice because that’s the way we do it every day,” said Schlossnagle.

“That’s been a staple of our program during my years at TCU. We believe that the two things you can control are your attitude and effort.

“One thing I tell my players is that I refuse to coach your effort. That better be a given to play the game with energy.

“We believe whether you are winning or losing, you can always play hard. Sometimes when things aren’t going well for you, you can create something positive by just playing the game with energy.

“That’s part of hustling on and off the field. We don’t allow our pitchers to walk on and off the field whether they are coming in the game or out of the game. They are expected to sprint to the mound and back to the dugout after the inning is over.”

Schlossnagle said that every throw must be backed up by defensive players.

“When a play is to be made, everybody has a responsibility for backing up. So our guys sprint to those positions.

“Then we sprint back to our positions and throw the ball around after outs. I don’t think that’s too much to ask during the course of a baseball game when there normally is a lot of standing around.”

To read more of this in-depth article on hustle, purchase the Sept. 3, 2021 issue of Collegiate Baseball or subscribe by CLICKING HERE. Schlossnagle explains how hustle is taught in his system as well as backing up every type of play, pickoffs by pitchers and catchers with the intent of getting outs and why great hustling catchers are essential.

WICHITA, Kan. — The Santa Barbara Foresters captured their ninth National Baseball Congress World Series with a 14-2 win over Lonestar Baseball of Texas.

The Foresters, who won 21 straight games to end the summer, rolled through the NBC World Series with a 5-0 record and outscored opponents, 52-11.

Santa Barbara was dominating in all facets of the game as the Foresters led the tournament in ERA (1.50), team batting average (.350) and fielding percentage (.976). They also swiped 19 bases to lead the tournament.

The Foresters defended their national title from a year ago, and it marked the second time in history Santa Barbara has gone back-to-back with another in 2011 and 2012.

For a team this dominant, it may come as a surprise that Santa Barbara began the season with a 15-7 record and losses in four of six games at one point.

Veteran Manager Bill Pintard had a meeting with the team, and the Foresters never lost the rest of the summer as they rolled to a 36-7 overall record.

The organization now has titles in 2006, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2021.   

Santa Barbara starter Ben Abram (redshirt sophomore at Oklahoma) capped off one of the finest pitching seasons ever for a Forester, earning his seventh win with five innings of one-run ball in the title game.

Another Foresters’ pitcher, Justin Eckhardt (redshirt freshman at Texas), was named the MVP of the tournament thanks to his 12 scoreless innings and two wins.

In the fifth inning, the Foresters sent 12 men to the plate and pushed across 6 runs with seven hits. They added four runs in the latter innings.

The Foresters had remarkable talent on offense as they had five different players hit home runs during the tournament in Seth Stephenson (Tennessee), Dylan Campbell (Texas), Andrew Kachel (Fresno State), Zach Leach (Arkansas) and Steve Zobac (California).

To read about 33 more summer collegiate league champions, purchase the Sept. 3, 2021 edition of Collegiate Baseball or subscribe by CLICKING HERE.

By LOU PAVLOVICH, JR.
Editor/Collegiate Baseball

TUCSON, Ariz. — Over the course of covering college baseball the last 48 years, I have come across some of the most unique people you could ever imagine.

Here are four of my favorites.

Pitcher Jason Haynie
South Carolina
Ever hear of a pitcher who performs a fire-breathing as well as fire-eating act?

From 1993-1996, Jason Haynie of the University of South Carolina  came on the scene and was not only an incredible pitcher for the Gamecocks but a diverse entertainer who also juggled and performed sleight of hand.

His fire act always brought down the house which he performed at numerous hotels.

“Fire eating is when you take a stick on fire and bring it inside your mouth to put out the flame,” explained Haynie during the 1994 interview with Collegiate Baseball.

“Fire breathing is different. You take charcoal lighter fluid and pour it in your mouth. You have a torch in front of your mouth and spit out the lighter fluid as far as you can. The flames have erupted outward as far as 10 feet with a huge ball of fire.”

Haynie, who stressed people should not try fire eating or breathing unless they are well trained, said that butane is the fuel of choice when fire eating.

“The reason you use butane is that the fuel is the only thing that burns. I usually pour butane on a wire hanger wrapped with gauze and tied on with dental floss. I light it on fire, and then touch my tongue with the butane-coated gauze. My tongue is momentarily on fire, but it goes out very quickly. Before the butane burns off my tongue, another torch is lit by my tongue. People come away impressed with part of the act.

Haynie said his mouth was never coated with anything special to prevent the fire from scorching it.

His fire act was extremely dangerous to perform.

“You should never breathe in while you are fire eating because you might damage your lungs. The butane may run down your throat into your lungs, and then you would be in trouble.”

He injured himself while a photographer was shooting him and two other players for the back cover of the 1994 South Carolina media guide.

“I was fire breathing and spit out lighter fluid as usual into a torch of fire. This big ball of fire came out.

“But because it was a windy day, my left eye lash caught on fire.”

To read more of this story about three other incredible baseball players, purchase the Sept. 3, 2021 edition or subscribe by CLICKING HERE. The trio of baseball players include David Stevens (Wickenburg H.S., AZ) who played the game with no legs, Jamie Bluma (Wichita St.) who was the wildest free spirit the game ever saw who once licked bugs off the grill of the team bus and Bryant Winslow (Wichita St.) who played at the College World Series with a broken leg.

By LOU PAVLOVICH, JR.
Editor/Collegiate Baseball

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — The NCAA Baseball Rules Committee proposed the use of one-way electronic communication devices for the purpose of calling pitches and plays.

It was then approved by the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel.

The rule goes into effect for the 2022 season.

Examples of what could be implemented next season include teams utilizing electronic display boards from dugouts that show a numerical code to call pitches and offensive/defensive plays.

Teams also are allowed to use a one-way, in-ear communication device that would be limited for use from a person in the dugout to the catcher.

Several conferences, including the Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Pac-12, Southeastern and Sun Belt, experimented with these devices in 2021.

Experimentation with one-way wireless communication from a coach in the dugout to the catcher has been taking place since 2018 by Southeastern Conference teams.

The coach tells the catcher what pitch to throw and what location.

However, the jury is out on how helpful this technology will be for college baseball with time-honored pitch calling systems just as effective and a lot less expensive.

History Of Calling Pitches
For decades, pitching coaches have signaled in pitch calls to catchers by touching parts of their head or body.

Unfortunately, some signs have been picked by opposing players or coaches which allowed hitters to know what pitches were coming.

In the Fall of 2004, the game changed forever when Head Coach Boomer Walker and Pitching Coach David Carter of College of Southern Idaho devised an ingenious plan that would scuttle any hope an opponent had for stealing signs with pitch calling from the dugout.

Walker said that both he and Carter came up with the idea of having their catcher wear a quarterback wrist band with a clear, acetate panel which housed a small code sheet that could translate locations and pitch selections. The small sheet also had codes for pitchouts, pickoffs

Walker said he was surprised how much time this system cut off games compared to the old system of hand signals touching parts of the body.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if 30 minutes a game were cut off. We really liked this system and thought about expanding it to other parts of the game such as offense and defense.”

Getting More Sophisticated
As word spread in college baseball in 2004 about the new, uncrackable system for relaying pitches to catchers, different computer programmers become involved.

Brian Bancroft, former computer guru for the Texas A&M athletics department, wrote a program in Microsoft Access which regenerated the numbers so that an infinite number of 3-number combinations (0-5) could be used.

“I worked with Jim Lawler (legendary pitching coach at the time with the Aggies) on the program,” said Bancroft, who holds two degrees in electrical and computer engineering and has worked at Lockheed Martin and the NASA space shuttle program with navigation systems.

Ultimate Sign System
The ultimate quarterback wrist band system had its birth in 2006.

It is now called the Own The Zone Sports wristband sign system.

After the coach signals in the pitch from the dugout with three numbers, the catcher looks at his wristband to see which pitch he has been asked to throw. Then he relays the sign to the pitcher.

Numerous national championships have been won on all levels of college baseball and softball with this time-honored system which also includes numeric codes for offense and defense.

Currently, over 750 colleges, universities and junior colleges use Own The Zone software along with thousands of high schools, travel teams and clubs.

The brains behind this system are former Western Oregon University baseball players Liam Woodard and Bryce Gardinier.

“Bryce is a computer software guy for his day job,” said Woodard.

“One day back in 2006, I wondered out loud if he could write a computer program that could do everything we wanted. He gave it a whirl and came up with the general concept. We worked with Dan Hubbs and David Esquer at the University of California and the coaches at Oregon State University, among others. We slowly refined it to where it is today.”

It has been an efficient way to call pitches for years with no delay in games.

For more information on this system, go on the internet to: www.ownthezonesports.com

To read more of this article, purchase the Sept. 3, 2021 edition of Collegiate Baseball or subscribe by CLICKING HERE. The rest of the story explains how Iowa Western Head Coach Marc Rardin took pitch calling to another level in 2020 by having pitchers and catchers receive signs from a coach in the dugout after this was approved by the NCAA Rules Committee. Since no additional signs to the pitcher from the catcher were necessary, it allowed his pitchers to throw at a faster pace than ever before. How he implemented the system and the success his pitchers had with it is enlightening.

By LOU PAVLOVICH, JR.
Editor/Collegiate Baseball

TUCSON, Ariz. — The 20-Second Action Rule in NCAA baseball is allowing games to be played at a faster clip.

The NCAA Baseball Rules Committee approved the 20-Second Action rule starting with the 2020 baseball season.

For the first time in college baseball history, a 20-second time clock was utilized in games with runners on base, as well as nobody on base.

As part of the rule, each team was allowed three offensive and six defensive conferences per game, no more than three of which may include a coach.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic stopped much of the 2020 season, and no College World Series was held on any level of college baseball, not enough games were played to find out if the rule cut significant time off games.

Therefore, the 2021 season was the first to see how well the 20-Second Action rule worked to reduce the length of games.

Collegiate Baseball received an Excel spreadsheet from NCAA Statistics that had the length of games for each contest during the entire 2021 NCAA Div. I season.

We were only interested in 9 and 7-inning games.

So that is all we focused on for consistency and not any weather-shortened games or extra-inning contests.

The average 9-inning length of games for 2021 was 2:57 which featured 5,554 entries in the spreadsheet. 

The average 7-inning length of games was 2:21 which included 1,081 entries.

The NCAA has not tracked the average time of NCAA Div. I games throughout seasons until now.

During the recent NCAA Div. I College World Series, the average time of 9-inning games was 3:11. This factored in 15 games that were 9-innings. Another game went 12 innings which wasn’t included.

The 2021 event was one of only four College World Series that averaged 3:11 or lower in the last 14 years.

It is interesting to note that six games were played under three hours. It is only the fourth time in the last 13 College World Series that six or more games during a Series were played under three hours.

The shortest game time was 2:28 in game six as N.C. State beat Vanderbilt, 1-0.

Game In Good Spot
Head Coach Tim Corbin of Vanderbilt, chairman of the 7-member Pace of Play Committee by the American Baseball Coaches Association which began in December of 2016, feels college baseball is moving in the right direction.

“It is important that we don’t tamper with the natural movements and playing procedures of the game,” said Corbin.

“Everyone is very aware of the 20-second clock. Everyone wants the game to move with a faster pace but without taking away from the game.

“As a whole, the game is a little faster. Taking away visits to the mound by defensive players and coaches helps to some degree as well as visits between coaches and players on offense.

“From a consumer’s perspective, if we can roll out games that are played between two and three hours, that is more advantageous to getting good crowds, especially in February and March since most of the country is dealing with cold weather. You still have basketball going on as well.”

To read more of this story, purchase the Sept. 3, 2021 edition of Collegiate Baseball or subscribe by CLICKING HERE. Vanderbilt’s Tim Corbin delves more deeply into this topic and talks about why the 20-second game clock has caused issues and has not been enforced consistently in college baseball — even at the 2021 College World Series. The story also explains what the actual time of game action is in contests and what the goal has been of the 7-member Pace of Play Committee to reduce the length of games, plus much more.