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Dirtbags Back to Dirtbags of Olde
by Bob Keisser, Long Beach Press-Telegram
May 16, 2007
No sure first-round draft picks. Or second, fifth, eighth, maybe even
10th.
No sure All-Americans. No conference pitcher or player of the year.
No pitcher with more than seven wins.
Thirty-three dirty hats.
No egos.
One team.
For those who remember the seminal era of Dirtbags baseball, born in 1989
and nurtured to the highest national status of any current Long Beach
State team, these are words that bring warm and fuzzy feelings to the
heart, cause chests to puff and dreams to develop.
Long before the Dirtbags became a staple of the first round of the amateur
draft and a feeder of Major League shortstops and pitchers, they were
the scruffy band of baseball players whose status symbols were grass stains,
meticulous bunts and an attitude the warriors in "The 300" would
respect.
Those Dirtbags are back.
The 2007 season has been a rebirth. Devoid of personality (and a postseason
berth) last season and clearly having drifted from quantity of spirit
to several quality high-end players, the current team has recaptured that
which made the program what it is.
With a 21-2 rout of Loyola Tuesday, they are 35-14 on the season and ranked
as high as 11th nationally. They are 13-2 in Big West and poised to win
the first league title since 2003 and earn a chance to host a regional.
They have won 13 straight and 21 of their last 24, and eight different
pitchers have a win in those 21 wins.
This team has reclaimed its hold on small ball. It has meshed 15 newcomers
with the returning nucleus to give Mike Weathers a deep roster that he
has manipulated well, giving 19 or more starts to 13 position players.
Troy Buckley has molded a pitching staff that lost its Nos. 1 and 2 starters
to injuries and is looking at the final two weeks of the season with up
to 10 options on any weekend.
There's been 12 wins in the team's last at-bat, six wins in extra innings,
and only one bad patch, that 1-6 run around the Fullerton nonconference
series in which the team played as if the fielders were wearing boxing
gloves, not baseball gloves. Most impressively, they've done this while
going 12-10 in 22 games against ranked teams - of teams in the Baseball
America Top 25, Texas A&M and Clemson are the closest with played
14 each - with potentially six more before the season ends.
In the run of 21 of their last 24, they have gotten wins from eight different
pitchers. They've scored eight runs or more in 11 of the 13 games in the
streak, and the team is hitting .296 and could top the .300 barrier for
the first time since the 2002 team hit .323.
"It's a credit to the returning players who told me how they felt
after not making the postseason last year - Danny Espinosa, Brandon Godfrey,
Robert Perry, Matt Cline, Allen Woods - and that they wouldn't let it
happen again," Weathers said.
"And they backed it up. When the school year began, they met their
new teammates and began working on changing things. I appreciate it so
much because it shows they believed in what we were doing."
Second baseman Matt Cline epitomizes this shift. He's the most Dirtbag-like
player, someone whose intensity and focus is always sharp. He's become
a team leader on and off the field, hitting a team-high .345.
"We just compete more," Cline said. "It started in the
fall. We just didn't want it (missing the postseason) happening again.
I guess we're like the old Dirtbags, but I wasn't around then."
"They (the upper classmen) made everyone stick together, too, at
times when we were dealing with injuries and didn't hit well early while
we were playing such a tough schedule," Weathers, won earned his
500th career win Tuesday, said. "You couldn't tell by looking at
any of them that they were any different game-to-game."
Those injuries included one to No. 2 starter Manny McElroy, who made two
starts and then missed two months (rib injury); center fielder Chris Nelson,
who broke a hamate bone and couldn't grip a bat well until late April;
shortstop Espinosa, who missed six games; first baseman Godfrey, who missed
three weeks with a broken wrist; and No. 1 starter Vance Worley, who missed
six weeks with a tender elbow.
The massaging of the pitching staff has been most impressive. Shane Peterson
was slated to be the full-time designated hitter but wound up starting
because of injuries. Transfers Dustin Rasco and David Roberts and freshman
Adam Wilk stepped up to fill key bridge roles to closer Bryan Shaw.
"It's way different than what we've had, but we knew going in it
would be like this," Weathers said. "Troy (Buckley) has done
his best coaching job with this pitching staff because of the injuries
and having to develop so many new pitchers.
"It's really been a matter of having small successes, using pitchers
for a hitter here, a hitter there, and getting them used to these roles.
There was really no other way for us to do it."
If any one player has been key, it's Andrew Liebel. The junior began the
season as the set-up man from the starters to Shaw and quickly showed
the kind of endurance and spirit to be a rare leader as a pitcher.
He made 10 appearances of three innings or more before joining the rotation
three weeks ago. The Dirtbags are 11-2 in the 13 games in which he went
three innings or more.
Despite all this, praise has been slow in coming nationally. Baseball
America still has them ranked 18th behind other teams that have tailed
off the last few weeks. The streak, they say, came against the soft part
of the schedule, forgetting that the Dirtbags went 12-5 in their first
17, and only two games were against unranked teams.
But maybe this is the way it should be. The entire Dirtbag reputation
was born on embracing an underdog mentality. It carried the program to
the College World Series in 1989, 1991, 1993 and 1998.
The 1998 team compares best to 2007 It was clearly a "team,"
led by a slew of good hitters and inspirational players like catcher Bryan
Kennedy and Mike Gallo.
"We're used to turning the cheek," Weathers said. In this year's
case, they're back to being the cheeky Dirtbag teams of old.
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