JANELLE STRAWSBURG
Staff Writer
The Pepperdine alumni baseball game is a time when the old dogs face off against the new pups in a battle of pride, honor and bragging rights. It’s a time for those past players to reconnect with old friends and time for the new squad to show off their skills and build anticipation for the coming season.
Every year like clockwork, the alumni game is the sign that baseball season is just around the corner. But not this year. This year it wasn’t junior second baseman Denny Duron trash talking former Waves second baseman David Uribes, and it wasn’t junior pitcher Brett Hunter bringing the heat against former teammate Luke Salas. In fact, no members of the 2008 Waves roster were allowed to suit up to take part of the timeless duel Saturday at Eddy D. Field Stadium.
Instead, thanks to new NCAA rules, alumni faced off against alumni, and a classic meeting came and went with no current players taking the field. The reason? Starting this year, the NCAA is instituting a uniform start date for all baseball programs around the country. That date is the Friday that falls 13 weeks before the selection of the 64-team NCAA tournament field, which takes place each year on Memorial Day. For 2008, that means the Waves will play their first game Friday, nearly three weeks later than they did last season when they opened against UNLV. In the NCAA’s opinion, the alumni game, was as an official competition, in which current players competing would be a violation of the new mandated start date.
It is a shorter season, yet the same amount of games are still scheduled, which means, an already full week for the Waves, just got a little more packed. Last year, three to four games were played weekly when the team was not on the road — a three-game weekend series and an occasional Tuesday afternoon game. Baseball fans can expect to pencil many more games into the planner for this season as the Waves schedule will now include Wednesday games.
For Head Coach Steve Rodriguez the biggest issue is the burden the new schedule will place on his players.
“I’m not going to lie, it is going to take a toll academically because they are going to be very tired,” he said. “The last thing you want to do after a doubleheader or a four-game weekend is to go and study. So it is going to take a toll, but you know we got to fight through it because everybody else has to.”
More games a week also means more pitching is necessary, but fortunately for the Waves, the coaches anticipated the move by the NCAA.
“Luckily, we recruited a lot of pitchers knowing this was going to be an issue this year so everybody, whether they like it or not, is going to have to pitch in some capacity,” Rodriguez said. “Because of safety reasons we don’t want guys running out there for long pitch counts so everybody is going to have to pitch a little bit.”
According to Rodriguez, the new mandated schedule has been in NCAA talk for the past couple of years. Even back in 2006 the NCAA Baseball Issues Committee was pushing for a later start date in order to promote equity for both Northern and Southern schools as well as, in their opinion, reduce the amount of class missed by student athletes.
However, for programs such as Pepperdine’s that don’t have the benefit of lights for night games, the new schedule will require more missed classes as well as more time spent traveling for players. Rodriguez and the athletics department work to make sure their players spend as much time in the classroom as possible, but this new schedule will make classroom schedules harder to accommodate.
“We have priority registration so our guys have devised their schedules to where they won’t miss as much class, and the professors here are great in working with our athletes,” Rodriguez said.
Academic Support Coordinator Kimberlee Rodriguez knows the unique situation baseball players face compared to other gym sports.
“I know what it is like to sit down and say humanities is only offered at this time on these days and sorry you have competition so you are going to have to miss,” she said. “I think the hard part is that we have to accommodate our rivals’ scheduled game times and we have to accommodate our scheduled day times, and that puts an extra burden on our players.”
Senior Don Brown, a business major taking Policy class this semester, which is known as a difficult course, has an upbeat perspective on the situation.
“Academically it is going to be a little tough but the guys coming back are used to it and the new guys I think will make good adjustments, because for the most part we are pretty good students,” he said. “Personally, Policy is going to be rough whether I go every day or not. But all us seniors, we have been through the whole song and dance a couple times so I think we’ll be OK.”
The start date, as well as a new rule forcing transfers to sit out a year, was imposed by the NCAA because of fears concerning the low graduation rates for baseball programs around the country. However, according to Rodriguez, the Major League Baseball draft, as well as a restricted view of only counting first-year scholarship athletes, affect the numbers.
“So if I have a kid who comes in and walks on and graduates, he doesn’t count for my graduation rate,” Rodriguez said. “And then there is the kid who comes in on scholarship, and they get drafted, they don’t count either.
“If you have a successful baseball program, you are going to have guys that get drafted. The problem that we see is that it makes the university and baseball look poorly because of it.”
Senior infielder Matt Aidem, who transferred from UC Santa Barbara after his freshman season, believes the new transfer rules will ultimately end up hurting baseball programs — programs already burdened by only receiving 11.7 scholarships to distribute among a team ranging from 30 to 40 athletes.
“In my case, Santa Barbara just wasn’t a good fit. This rule would have forced me to stay in a place where I just didn’t fit in,” he said. “It makes the decision that much more important that you know where you want to go. It is going to hurt universities like ours, where it costs 40 grand a year to go here, and that is a big commitment, especially if you know that you have to stay there for four years regardless of the situation. Sure it might boost graduation rates, but I think the decision to graduate comes from the individual.”
For athletes and the university alike, putting in lights down at the stadium will help assist players in keeping up with the rigorous standards of Pepperdine academics.
“It is better for us, if I had to be at the field at 4 instead of 11, I can get all my classes in all day, I’d have more time to do things and scheduling issues wouldn’t be much of a problem,” Aidem said. “Plus we could get some practices in playing under the lights, because playing under the lights is way different than just playing during the day.”
Lights also would contribute to more regional bids for the program, which gives home field advantage during tournament time.
“If you look at any premier program in the country they have lights on their stadium and ours does not,” freshman Jeffrey Wright said. “How can you expect to be a premier program when you can’t even legally host a super regional?”
The Waves’ first game of the season will be down at Eddy D. Field at 1p.m. on Friday against Wake Forest. And while it won’t be under the glow of lights, for Aidem and the rest of the team, nothing compares to opening day.
“Everybody is just really excited,” he said. “We haven’t been used to not playing this long. Every day goes by and the more and more you want to stop facing your teammates and you want to face some real competition. We are pretty fired up. This is what you work for all year.”
02-21-2008