Long Beach State University Athletics
Weathers, Team USA Keep Quite a Pace
7/7/2007 12:00:00 AM | General
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Weathers, Team USA Keeping up Quite a Pace DURHAM. N.C. - In a game the other evening, Mike Weathers, the Long Beach State coach and skipper of the U.S. national baseball team, ordered up a bunt. The third base coach, Mark Scalf, an assistant at UNC Wilmington, flashed the sign ... and the hitter, Jordy Mercer, flashed back what amounted to a "Huh?" Turns out Mercer, an infielder/ pitcher from Oklahoma State, hadn't bunted all season - in more than 160 plate appearances! No matter. What Weathers needed to know was that Mercer could bunt if needed. And if his hitters could hit and his pitchers could pitch ... and if someone brought the bats and balls, the uniforms are clean and the postgame spread would arrive on time. For three weeks it's been like that for Weathers, who met his team for the first time June 18, in Pittsfield, Mass. They played a game the next night - and won - played five more games in New England, then flew to North Carolina a week ago for a series of international games against Chinese Taipei and Japan, and Tuesday it's off to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the 2007 Pan American Games. Good luck and, oh, remember, this is the Grand Old Game and we're the
U.S. of A, so, you'd better win - even if Cuba has won nine "Pressure? Sure I feel it," Weathers said with a chuckle before a game over the weekend against the Japanese at Durham Bulls Athletic Park, the swank new home of Durham's Triple-A International League team. "The expectations are to win, and my expectations are high," he said, noting the U.S. won 10 of its first 14 games in its tuneup tour with two games remaining against Japan this afternoon and Monday. "I want to win it. I want people to remember this team, to think about this team. "We've got a good staff, and we've got the best college players out there." Actually, it's the best freshmen and sophomore college players. Even then Weathers had little say-so as to which ones were selected for the U.S. team, a drastic departure from the selection process of past years, or even how other national teams are selected. "I had one vote," he said, and all he had to go on were statistics and the word of his colleagues from around the country. Most of his players he'd never seen play. Weathers knows how it used to be. He played on the 1970 national team, when he was at Chapman, and he was an assistant coach on the 2003 team which won the silver medal at the Pan Am Games. Those years there were extensive tryouts which lasted a week or two, then, finally, a team was put together. It's still that way for a number of other U.S. national teams, most notably the water polo and soccer teams, which are together year round. Even softball gets its team together once a month. Not so for baseball, which now relies on a committee from USA Baseball that includes the current coaching staff. It was early June when the U.S. national baseball team was put together, and the 22-man roster (with two reserves) was finalized June 11 - a week before Weathers so much as shook hands with his players for the first time. That's caused some head scratching already. One of Weathers' reserves is Mike Minor, a left-handed pitcher from Vanderbilt, who's 3-0 with a 0.75 ERA in the handful of games the U.S. team has played. The only way he can be activated for the Pan Am Games is if someone gets hurt. So, perhaps you're thinking Weathers is doing some head scratching of his own these days? Hardly. "You want to coach like you coach in school," said Weathers, who's 225-131 with five NCAA Regional appearances and two Super Regional appearances in his six seasons running the Dirtbags. "But I have to ask myself, 'What can I do in this short amount of time, not knowing what these guys can do?' The thing is, these are the best players in the country. Some of these guys are going to be millionaires after next year's (major-league amateur) draft." Among his players are: Arizona State's Brett Wallace, the Pac-10 Player of the Year; Vanderbilt third baseman Pedro Alvarez, a two-time first-team All- American; Rice right-hander Ryan Berry, 2007 national Freshman Pitcher of the Year; UC Riverside right-hander Joe Kelly, 2007 Big West Freshman of the Year; University of San Diego left-hander Josh Romanski, a second-team All-American; Virginia right-hander Jacob Thompson, a first-team All-American; and Dirtbags shortstop Danny espinosa, the 2006 Big West Freshman of the Year. "We've got a ton of talent," said espinosa, who admittedly was having a little trouble adjusting to the wood bat (he had just two hits his first 28 at-bats). "And the best thing, we get along so well. We really seemed to have meshed, right away, too. We'll be fine. There's not a lot of pressure." Not yet, perhaps. But Weathers has a pretty good idea what's ahead. "It's such an honor to wear the U.S. red, white and blue," he said, tapping the U.S. logo on the front of his polo shirt. "Maybe it's being old-fashioned, but I'm proud ... and proud to be playing (teams from) these other countries, some that don't like us and some that look up to us." In all, Weathers and his U.S. national team will have traveled nearly 9,000 miles and played on three continents - there's also a tournament in The Netherlands - before wrapping it up in mid-August, just in time for him to get back to Long Beach State and the start of the Dirtbags' fall practice. First, though, there's the Pan American Games in Rio. Maybe by the time Weathers takes out the lineup card for the Pan Am opener Saturday at Cidade do Rock Sport Complex against the Dominican Republic he'll at least know how to spell his players' names. He's still learning. But at least he now knows about Jordy Mercer. Yeah, Mercer got the bunt down just fine. |
