On the same day Hofstra University named 56-year-old Joe Mihalich its new men’s basketball coach, the school’s baseball team took a bus to Queens and beat St. John’s 4-2 in a non-conference game.
Hofstra deserved the win. They were far more aggressive on the base paths and made a few big plays on defense to kill rallies.
This game was a make-up date after the originally scheduled March 12th meeting between the two teams was postponed because of rain.
Hofstra and St. John’s have played each other about once a season since 1956. The Johnnies have dominated the all-time series, winning 56 of the 65 meetings going in. Johnnies head coach Ed Blankmeyer (in his 18th season) had never lost to Hofstra at home before Wednesday.
Blankmeyer’s St. John’s teams have made the NCAA tournament in all but two of the last nine seasons. This season is a rebuilding year. At 13-20 overall and 3-6 in the Big East, it’s unlikely the Johnnies will play postseason baseball beyond the conference tournament. Even that is in question. A top eight finish in the Big East is necessary to make the conference tourney. The Johnnies currently sit ninth. With ten freshmen pitchers on the team and a .267 team batting average, it’ll be tough getting an at-large berth in baseball’s big dance given the difficulty of the remaining conference schedule.
Next year will see the Big East’s launch as a newly-realigned entity without football but with what could be a still strong baseball league. The seven Catholic schools best known for basketball have split off and have added Butler, Xavier and Creighton to the mix. While Marquette and DePaul from the Catholic 7 don’t participate in Big East baseball, the three newbies all have legitimate programs. The conference is still looking for a commissioner.
Chaos associated with the Big East’s numerous member changes the last few years makes the non-conference bus-ride rivalries that St. John’s enjoys with the likes of Hofstra, Columbia and Princeton all the more important.
Hofstra is a member of the Colonial Athletic Association. The history of that league will make your head spin and like most college conferences at the moment, it’s still in a state of flux. Hofstra’s baseball team has never made the NCAA tournament. The Colonial is composed of several southern schools which poses a disadvantage for a school up north, but Hofstra seems to be pointed in the right direction under their second-year head coach John Russo.
Attendance for the game Wednesday at Jack Kaiser Stadium was announced at 124. Admission is free for non-conference contests. According to the weather application on my phone, the first pitch temperature was 78 degrees. About half-way through the game, a front moved through and the mercury dropped off the shelf. It was 61 degrees when they played the ninth. As I waited for the bus on Union Turnpike after the game, I shivered as a chilly wind blew, ending a three-day run of beautiful warm weather in the big city.
St. John’s freshman southpaw starter Matt Clancy (pictured above) pitched a solid six innings, giving up one unearned run. A permanent tattoo on his glove arm appeared to say “Revel in the Chaos.”
The coach’s son freshman Ty Blankmeyer came on as a pinch-runner for the Johnnies in the bottom of the ninth. Before you knew it, he was quickly back on the bench. Blankmeyer got caught off first base when his teammate Danny Bethea lined out sharply to the second baseman with nobody out. I was sitting just off the first base bag and can say with some certainty that the first base ump blew the call. Hofstra first baseman Jared “Hammer” Hammer had his foot in the vicinity of the base but didn’t actually touch it. Hammer had made an incredible diving catch on a hot grounder down the line the previous inning and appears to be the Pride’s spiritual leader.
For a nice day that turned suddenly cold, it was nice being at a ballpark where two universities with lots of area kids play a good brand of baseball.
-With a round in the books, I’ll take Rickie Fowler to win his first major at Augusta on Sunday.
