Marietta College Baseball Updates
with John Wharff III
May 09, 2008
The Marietta College Pioneers have advanced to the Championship Game of the Ohio Athletic Conference Tournament. With a Thursday 5-2 win over Otterbein, and this morning's 8-4 victory over Heidelberg, the Pioneers get to sit back and wait for 2 teams to be eliminated this afternoon. The tournament is being hosted by #1 seed Heidelberg in Pleasant Valley. Saturday's championship game is scheduled for noon, and will be heard on WMOA and right here at wmoa1490.com
March 28 4:15pm
This weekend, the Pioneers will travel for four games. The Pioneers will play Capital University for an OAC double-header in Chillicothe Saturday afternoon starting at 1:00pm. Sunday, the Pioneers will travel back to Chillicothe to take on Allegheny College in a non-conference double-header. The Allegheny game was originally scheduled for a single game at Don Schaley Stadium....... welcome to the scheduling chaos we know as spring in Southeast Ohio!
--Dan Castelli
March 23 9:30a
It wasn't pretty, but I like the outcome. The Pioneers sweep Heidlberg in an Easter Sunday DH at Don Schaly Stadium winning 3-2, and 10-6. TJ Knowlton improves to 3-0 with the game 1 victory. Dom Winters stroked a homerun to start the come from behind victory. Justin Merryman continued hitting the ball well in both games, and picked up the save in game 2.
Busy week ahead... Wed. home vs. pre-season #1 Wooster at 5p, off to Delaware, OH and a 3p game on Thurs. vs. Ohio Weslyan, and a DH slated at Chillicothe on Saturday vs. Capital.
March 20, 7:20am
The Marietta College Pioneers baseball game scheduled for this afternoon at Transylvania, KY has been postponed. No make up date has been set at this time.
March 18, 2:15 pm
Just got the following from the Marietta College Sports Information office......
Marietta College baseball and softball announce schedule changes
Lady Pioneers will host Denison Wednesday, while Etta Express' trip to Transylvania is pushed back to Thursday
March 18, 2008
MARIETTA, Ohio — The first schedule alterations of the spring have come. Marietta College softball is now scheduled to host Denison University on Wednesday (March 19) afternoon. First pitch of the doubleheader, originally slated for Granville, will take place at 3:30 p.m.
The Marietta baseball team will not travel to Lexington, Ky., for a JV/Varsity doubleheader with Transylvania on Wednesday (March 19). The Pioneers are tenatively scheduled to play a varsity game at Transylvania on Thursday (March 20) at 3 p.m.
Visit http://pioneers.marietta.edu throughout the spring for information on the Pioneers, including schedule changes.
And, as always, stay tuned to WMOA and www.wmoa1490.com to follow the pioneers.
March 15...
2-9 coming out of Texas.
"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."
The Marietta College Baseball team picked up a lot of experience in Texas.
March 14, 3:33p
Ouch. One game in the books here in Fort Worth. With two undefeated pitchers going against each other I didn't expect 30 runs and 27 hits, but that's what we got, and the Pionners drop to 2-8 losing 20-10 to Texas Weslyan. Our best outcome will be bookend wins on the week. Game 2 is coming up. Stay tuned, and Go Pios!
March 14, 9:30a
Hey Pioneers Dads, if you make this trip to Fort Worth in the future I found a must-stop. Sure there is The Stockyards, and Billy Bob’s and The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas where Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK, but I found another place that isn’t on any map, internet site or billboard. I googled downtown barbershop because …well… I have a little time before 1st pitch and Bradley has been razzing me. I’m easily manipulated. Here is what I found…
When I first moved downtown I'd asked around for barber shops and Shelton's always came up, I've been going there for a while now. While I'm kicking back waiting for my turn in the chair I sometimes think that if you flipped the calendar back two or three decades people would be carrying on the same conversations. I've noticed while walking around downtown, most folks are the typical walking past on the sidewalk courteous, a nod or a hello back, rarely anything more, but you sit a bunch of people down in an old fashion barber shop and there are no strangers.
Shelton Given's Barber Shop 512 Main St # 112 Fort Worth, TX
So I walk out of the hotel, stroll up the quiet Main Street of Fort Worth that was alive with activity at 1am the night before...roll into what appears to be the entrance to a 50 story office building and wham... think Coming to America barbershop scene. There is a chair open. Two black gentleman barbers and one black gentleman who is a shoeshine guy just shooting the bull. $13 haircut. I don't know what it looks like, but it was worth $20 just to sit there and listen to those guys. 3 people waiting for a chair when I left. One conversation, "my cousin won that scratch off lottery ...75 thousand dollars and some boy says can we put your name on the wall in here and let folks know you won, and he said Hell no! People will be climbin' up my tree lookin' for some of that kinda money. Ooh wee 75 Thousand don't know what I'd do... Vegas? Yeh maybe Vegas...(big laugh) I don't have to worry about that though, plus "the man" would get half of it, and it would take the other half in gas (big Laugh), guess I'd be stuck in Vegas...I been in worse places. You want any off the top here son?"
Friday March 14
Off to the “Cow town” of Fort Worth. If you wonder where that term came from, it is used affectionately here. Fort Worth is a beautiful place, and there is something endearing to me about the approach to the city when you can see the sky scrapers in the horizon and the silhouette of a longhorn steer in the foreground. We did the drive from Dallas to Abilene in the dark on Sunday, so it’s nice to roll that 3 hours East in the daylight. This has to be the only place where your dog could run away from home and you could see it for 3 days. We met former Pioneer pitcher Jeff Cook (1991) in Fort Worth to golf at his club on the baseball off day. Jeff is a great guy, and hosted the Pioneers at Billy Bob’s in ’06 in what would have been a prelude to The National Championship season. Etta Express color commentator Mark Bradley likes to use the phrase “this ain’t my first rodeo Wharffy” , well that was his first rodeo in ’06 appropriately at a place called Billy Bob’s. Drove by the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium under construction (OMG!!), it will be a city within a city. Word from Abilene was that there was a lot of baseball on Thursday in terms of practice, weight room workouts etc. Doubleheader today at another great site LaGrave Field here in Fort Worth our opponent will be Texas Weslyan University. I'm thinking we should see Knowlton on the hill. So far he has our only Texas victory, I expect to see him in game 1, and then some platoon pitching in game 2. Let’s get two on getaway day!
Thursday, March 13
I don’t know what happened yesterday, but I’m certain I saw The Marietta College baseball team get beat 17-1 by Southwestern University and then get beat 14-4 by McMurray University. Game 1 we were never in, but game 2 we were up 4-1 going into the 6th inning when the wheels fell off. As the Pioneers will stay here in Abilene today, it will be practice, practice, practice. In fact Brewer cancelled our golf match this morning so he could continue to scratch his head over this Abilene part of this Texas swing. Pioneers win the opener and then lose 4 straight. In 3 of those games they led by a combined run total of 17 runs. Here are the bright spots Merryman is hitting over .500, Pinconky found his bat as well and also Dom Winters, Brennan Cribbins and couple others had decent at bats. TJ Knowlton had the lone victory in Abilene and it was a complete game gem. Jason Baumler looked good though 5 yesterday, but the middle relief and some bad fielding did in the Pioneers. My personal reflection on this is that the Pioneers are a good team that by virtue of this week … got better. It might be hard to see in the box score, but once the pitching gets into a regular rotation the Pioneers will meet fan expectations. And when the tournaments roll around in mid-May this team will say “I’m glad we played those teams in Texas.”
Off to Fort Worth, let’s get 2!
3/12 9:26a
Sunny and a high of 77 degrees here today in Abilene, as long as everything stays on track schedule-wise we should get 2 games in. We will play Southwestern University out of Georgetown Texas at 1pm EST and McMurray on their own field at 4pm EST.
I'm amazed sometimes who is listening to our broadcast especially in the late hours of a game that seems to be in hand. In the late innings last night in reference to the UT Dallas stud catcher Grant Friddle who was coming to the plate I said, “The reason this Friddle kid walks with such a swagger is that when he was little his Mom changed the words to Hey Diddle Friddle … and he thought the whole rhyme was about him.” Well guess who e-mailed me this morning?
My son, Grant Friddell is the catcher for UT Dallas. My wife and I were lucky enough to find your broadcast of the game last night. I would just like to let you know that we enjoyed listening to you and Mark announce the game (even though we could tell who you were pulling for).
We wish UT Dallas had a local station that would do broadcasts of the games. Thanks to you and Mark and I hope the Marietta College fans know what a good thing they have in your station.
Pete & Phyliss Friddell
Sugar Land, TX
I love the internet. Good luck to The Comets of UT Dallas now that they’ve had their way with us.
Let’s get two today Etta Express!
3/12
A very different day yesterday for the radio guys ….. after our 6:15 AM central time report on Tuesday, we left early for Abilene Country Club for 18 holes of fun in the sun. However, in the 9th fairway (amazingly Wharffy’s drive was in the middle of the fairway), we received a call from Dan May, Marietta College’s Sports Information Director that our “2 o’clock” game was being moved up to “High Noon.” So we finished #9 at Abilene Country Club (Wharffy with a 9, Bradley with a par 4), paid the smallish bets (Wharffy pays, Bradley collects), and moved on to the AWESOME field at Abilene Christian University. The ‘Etta Express was being challenged by relatively newcomer University of Texas at Tyler (ranked #5 in D-III). Leading 9-1 after 5 innings, the Pioneers saw the potent bats of Texas-Tyler erupt for 7 runs in the 6th, then a grand slam in the 8th, to lose 12-9 in “come from ahead” fashion. We had a late lunch at a Tex-Mex in Abilene (do as the locals do), then moved on to a local shopkeeper’s establishment in downtown Abilene to coordinate economic development, and then headed to McMurry University to play University of Texas at Dallas. Justin Merryman slugged a 3-run homerun in the first to plate the Pioneers to a 3-0 lead. Through 3 innings, the MC pinstripers led 6-0. But the powerful bats of UT-Dallas came to life in the 4th inning with ….. another grand slam by the opponents. Then they took the lead for good. Eventually our Pioneers succumbed to the talented Comets of UT-Dallas 10-7. Both games lasted longer than 3 hours. After the 2nd game of the split doubleheader, the radio guys spent time driving around the town trying to familiarize Wharffy to the highways and streets of Abilene, TX, as today the banker heads back to the mid-Ohio valley to be a part of board meetings on Thursday. Needless to say, it has been a great 5 days of traveling across the various states of the Confederacy, where the weather is warm and cold drinks can be hard to find. The ‘Etta Express is a talented group that is still looking for an identity, and the young Pioneers will surely come together as a team to storm through the OAC like a fast-moving thunderstorm across the hardscrabble plains of west central Texas. The coaches work hard to help our players grow as baseball players and young men. We thank them for making the last few days a great time to be a part of continuing growth of a GROUP of hard workers into a TEAM of champions. Have fun, enjoy our time together, and be a great teammate. It’s the most anyone can ask and the best anyone can do. - Bradley
Tuesday March 11, 2008 @ 11:17am
We just got word that the Marietta College vs Texas-Tyler game today has been bumped back to it's original start time of 1pm EDST. We had better get used to it..... conditions are ripe for a lot of schedule changes on this year's spring trip.
- (Dan Castelli....left at home in Marietta)
Tuesday March 11, 2008
While the rest of the world is blogging about Elliott Spitzer this morning I thought I would blog about a different kind of snake... a real one with teeth sharper than Spitzer’s. Not quite as poisonous to society in general but deadly nonetheless. If you think it’s a bad week to be a snake in Washington DC try slithering around Sweetwater Texas! More than 3500 pounds of snakes were brought in and plenty of visitors for the 50th anniversary of the World’s Largest Rattlesnake Round-Up. Quick facts… One guy brought in 916 pounds of snakes including one that was 69 ½ inches (Yikes!). When the bushes move here on the hard scrabble plains of Texas, you don’t look for a cute little rabbit. Oh, did I mention the snake-eating contest, the one for the Miss Snake Charmer Pageant contestants? That’s right…girls eating snakes. Britnee Wilke, bless her snake-eating heart, was the winner. Now this is a girl worth writing about, great family, excellent grades, a good appetite, a real charmer. Game time today for a doubleheader is 3p EST. I won’t be chasing any homeruns over the fence at Hardin Simmons Field but I hope the Pioneers can continue to rattle their opponents here in Texas.
Tuesday 3/11 Midnight
Tuesday's game one time is now at 3pm EST... instead of 1pm. 2nd game should still be at 7pm EST.
Great win tonight for the Etta Express. A complete game victory when we needed it most from TJ Knowlton. We had McMurray students rooting for our Pioneers as these rowdy fans tend to get behind any team playing against their cross town rival Hardin Simmons Cowboys. Good clean loud fun ... and it's always nice when they're on your side. Justin Merryman had a game-breaking 3 run double to left centerfield, and 4 RBI on the night. Nice win, nice night, nice field.
Monday 3/10 12:51p
We just got word from the Marietta College Sports Information Director that today's Pioneers/Hardin-Simmons game has been pushed back due to some rough field conditions. The game will now air at 8:00 tonight on WMOA and right here at wmoa1490.com and will now be played at McMurray College. I'm jealous... the Abilene, TX forecast calls for cloudy skies today with a high in the low 60s. Tuesday's forecast is for sunshine and a high near 70. - (Dan Castelli....left at home in Marietta)
Monday 3/10 8:35a
We met Chris DeJeet in Memphis, a really cool guy. He’s the father of Kristian DeJeet who played for the Pioneers last year and is rehabbing a knee this year. Although he lives in the Pittsburgh area, Mr. DeJeet flies airplanes for FedEx from its main (huge) hub in Memphis, he dropped us at the airport yesterday. Sweet flight to Dallas. Much better I’m sure than being on the team bus after that loss. Also thanks to Chris Wharff who rolled back home from Memphis and Matt and Dorinda Mnich who put us up in Columbus on Friday and shoveled us out on Saturday. I will try to snap a few pics as we go here.
Dallas to Memphis is about 3 hours and last night a little longer because of a big rain storm. It was great when it was approaching because you could see the dramatic lightning bolts out on the Texas plains. Tough driving when it hit us, but we made it to our hotel before the “really big stuff” hit. Quarter – size hail battered the hotel window for about a ½ hour. Our friend Cros back home who is a weather guru would have love the storm approaching. Right now it’s off to the golf course. Game time today 5pm EST. The Pioneers will face the Hardin-Simmons Cowboys. These are good baseball teams. I’m pretty sure we will be as well… eventually.
Sunday March 9, 4pm Memphis, TN
One more game in the books, not pretty but, in the books…let me pass this thing to Bradley because as disappointed as Coach Brewer is about the loss, I’m equally disappointed in the fact that I was in Nashville Tennessee and never went to The Opryland Hotel, The Bluebird Café or Tootsie’s, and then I’m in Memphis and never make it to Graceland, The Peabody Hotel or Charley’s Rendezvous.
Wharff
Sunny in Memphis and Rhodes College campus was stunning – and the only campus I have ever seen to have an 8 foot tall fence around THE ENTIRE PERIMTER of the 50+ acre campus (gives new meaning to keeping students on campus to study). The buildings are all built with rock from the same quarry, adding to the elegance of the day. The baseball was not as elegant. An early error allowed 2 Lynx runs in the bottom of the 1st, and 2 more runs scored with 2 outs again in the bottom of the 2nd. Our Pioneers responded with 1 in the visitor’s half of the 4th inning and plated 4 runs in a high-powered 7th inning, but Rhodes took the 7th inning stretch as a time to get their offensive attack going again, and plated 5 runs to seal the deal. We reached the airport in Memphis with plenty of time to make it to Dallas-Fort Worth … then Abilene. My only regret is not forcing Wharffy to drive by Graceland and see where The King held court. There’s always next year.
Sunday March 9
Low and behold we drive 13 hours, wake up, grab a cup of coffee and a paper and the local, The Tennessean features Hocking Hills on their travel page. Off to Memphis.
Saturday March 8th at Noon… Columbus Ohio.
We really did try to bail the airline out…but they would have none of it. Policy defies reality in this situation. Currently our 2:30 Saturday flight to Memphis is cancelled, which has us rolling into Plan B or C. Let me set the stage, because … this is a blog, and I think this is what bloggers do. The broadcasters itinerary was to fly from Columbus to Chicago to Memphis … do the game vs. Rhodes College jump on a plane to Dallas and drive to Abilene. Easy enough if there isn’t 15 inches of snow in Columbus. There is, I’m looking at it right now. Please understand we knew this was coming and called our airline and offered to rent a car to Memphis (at our expense)and pick our flight up there. They said, if we miss our flight in Columbus it would cost us approximately $800 additional dollars to pick it up later.
We in turn argued..."but it's going to be canceled...we're not changing it, we just are not going to be on it." That doesn't matter sir there needs to be a change order. "we are still paying for it, but we just won't be in the seats, in fact you can give our seats to someone else who will be canceled off another flight." Sir I under but you still have to pay etc., etc," Their answer was adamant, if you don't get on your flight in Columbus it will be cancelled throughout...if you want to change where you get on, it will cost $800. (American Airlines bad policy, not a very nice girl on the phone). However, now that our flight is cancelled our only and best option is to drive to Memphis, imagine that. The only difference is that our flight is officially cancelled so now we can pick up our flight at its 3rd leg without additional cost. American Airlines thinks this a great idea now. Enough of that...he game must go on… enter big brother Chris who we will pick –up in Marietta and drive the 10 ½ hour trek to Memphis. Oh and SID Dan May who is also stranded here in Columbus. We will see you on the radio. For now, I must go because we need to find an open road to Marietta from Columbus as there is a level 3 Snow Emergency. Level 3, level sshmee...
1:14am (CST)
We made it to Nashville, TN probably about 2 or 2 ½ hours from Memphis. We’ll do the rest in the morning. I have been driving since noon, but it’s amazing how easy it can be when the company is good . Mark Bradley co-pilot, Chris Wharff and Dan May in the back seat. Roads were very bad from Columbus to Marietta, just plain old bad through West Virginia and cleared up nicely at the Kentucky border. Game time for tomorrow has been pushed to 1pm Memphis time which is 2p Marietta time. It was originally scheduled for 11a, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed. By the way… the daylight savings time just rolled into effect, but since we’re still on Eastern time, I think we break even on that, our watches will stay the same and actually be right for now.
Monday 3-03-08
The season is officially underway in terms of real games that count in the books. Having said that, I never really feel like the season has started until I see The Etta Express in their "Pinstripes", it is a rite of Spring and does more for me than flowers blooming or birds chirping. This past weekend in Demorest, Georgia the 2008 Marietta College baseball Pioneers dropped 2 games to a very good Piedmont Lion (10-2) team and picked up their 1st victory of the season over Suwanee "The University of the South". My initial thoughts are that The Pioneers are a much better team than the one that represented this Region in The Division 3 National Championship tournament last May.
After day 1 Coach Brian Brewer was as dissappointed in the win as he was in the loss, pointing to a lack of "situational hitting" (ie: key hits with players in scoring position, or moving runners over with no outs). That being said, The Pioneers found themselves leading 5-0 over Piedmont on Sunday, and it was their opponent who pounded out over a dozen hits and had nothing to show for it. The Pioneer pitching could not keep them at bay however and the host team rallied for a 6-5 victory. It was sweet revenge for a team that was swept by Marietta last year.
My broadcast partner Mark Bradley said before the games on Saturday, "as Tony Piconkey goes so will go this team." His words held pretty true, as Piconkey (0-8) didn't pick up where he left off last year and the team went 1-2 on the weekend. Last year Piconkey was the triple crown batting leader with an average of .365, 9 homeruns and 34 RBI. I would expect that will make an about face over the next 2 weeks, in fact if I had a farm I would probably bet it.
Here are the high points from the weekend. Merryman is solid. On the mound and in the batter's box. He took the loss on Day 1, but pitched well. Take away a 5 run 7th inning and the game is very different. A play here, a play there, you know how it goes...it's a game of inches. Merryman joins Fresman Sean Mayley (sorry if I spelled it wrong, but we really don't have to spell in radio) with 3 RBI a piece. Mayley and Cameron Cimino had big homeruns, and Mayley also stroked a triple and pitched on two different occassions. He hit the batter with the final pitch on Sunday to push in the winning run, but that mistake was well-overshadowed by his positive contributions to the team. Sophomore Nick Springer is a sweet swinger with power, we have put him in the Clydesdale division in terms of running the bases, but his bat could make up for that. Last years Fresmman Danny Jones, is now Sophomore Dan Jones, he had a couple of base hits and he is as good a defensive catcher as we will see this year. He is fun to watch, and so are these Pioneers!
Pitching-wise, I like what I see. Merryman (0-1) and T.J. Knowlton (1-0) should make a solid 1-2. We saw good stuff from a lefty transfer from Rio Grande named Chris Stewart, Nathan Eschbaugh got some good work in as well as Jason Baumler, Mayley, and Mark Jackson. With 8 games in 6 days next week, we should get a better feel for these guys as well as a look at Tyler Penwell, Joe Pitrone and some others.
We will be in Memphis with the team on Sunday. We will also make a stop at Graceland on Saturday afternoon because we can and Elvis is still The King! We also understand that there is a tailor in the Peabody Hotel who made the first and last suit for Elvis... the gentleman is 93, and that is a hand I would like to shake!
See you on the radio!
February 12, 2008
Here we go! It seems right around this high school basketball tournament time, I start hearing the crack of the bat, the slap of leather and smelling fresh cut grass. I rarely recall coming into a Marietta College baseball season when there wasn’t optimism. If I was to note one time, it would have been following an extremely cold trip to the DelMarVa region (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia) and starting the season 0-3. Of course the National Championship ( # 4), would come at the end of that 2006 season. Coach Brewer looked at me during the 3rd inning of game 2 with his teeth chattering and said, “we’re never coming back here again.” My response as I recall was, “We drove 8 hours to get here Coach, we could have been in Atlanta!”
So it’s off to Atlanta (or thereabouts) to kick off this 2008 season. Game 1 is March 1, followed by 2 more in the town of Demorest, Ga. at Piedmont College. Somehow Memphis, TN jumped on the schedule as well this year, and the Div 3 school Rhodes College will host the Pioneers on Sunday the 9th of March. Interestingly, last night I was reading a John Grisham book called Playing For Pizza and one of the characters had played football at Rhodes College. That was the 2nd time I’d heard of the college. Monday March 10th through the 12th 6 games will be played in Abilene, TX and the Etta Express will round out their Spring trip in Fort Worth, TX. I feel like I should throw a cowboy hat in the air after I say Fort Worth, TX!
My broadcast partner Mark Bradley will be making the Georgia, Tennessee, Texas swing with me for the most part, and he is fired up as well. This circuitous Spring baseball adventure with the Pioneers I’m sure will conjure some memories of his playing days at Ohio University. Traveling from town to town, picking up games along the way, is the way his OU teams used to do it, and many teams still do. It makes it tough on the broadcasters that choose to fly, but I like it. I like Marietta College baseball because it’s so real. I like it because the boys play to win, and practice to get better. I like it because they show up at the field, pull bats, gloves and balls out of a bag and start playing and don’t stop until the game is over. At the end of the week their uniforms are dirty because they've played too many games to have time to clean them. I like it when they smile after they get a mouthful of dirt at home plate. I like it because people show up to watch just for a couple of minutes and end up staying until the end. That’s baseball. Bring it on!
"Anything less would not have been worthy of me. Anything more would not have been possible."
- Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski
jwharff@wmoa1490.com
