Diary

Tom
Mieczkowski

Past Entries

April 26, 2004

If you look at the schedule it would seem that last week was a pretty easy one for the Emory baseball Eagles. The schedule showed one game on Tuesday against LaGrange and then a weekend series with North Carolina Wesleyan; a nice break from our usual four- or five-game weeks that wear us out.

The one thing we didn't know was that each game was going to be a hard-fought battle. On Tuesday Will "Yes, winning is still all I do" Carr threw a gem against a strong hitting LaGrange team. Will was so spectacular on the mound that the coaches let him go all nine.

The team gave up four runs and it seemed as if we were going to fall one short until Justin Gordon singled to lead off the ninth. Before you knew it, Adam Schorr hit a line shot up the middle to score Josh Barrett and give us the 5-4 win. Because of his complete-game win, Will Carr tied the Emory season win record with 11.

Will also accomplished another special feat this week when he turned 21 years old. That night, many members of the team, including Emory baseball legend Kyle Foster, got together to celebrate with Will. Even though Thursday night was full of fireworks, it was Saturday that really stole the show.

Senior Day at Chappell Park was, in a word, memorable. Parents and fans filled the stands to cheer on the seniors one last time at our beautiful field. N.C. Wesleyan is a team known for their back-to-back national championships in the 1990s, but we didn't let that intimidate our game.

Inspired by Senior Day festivities and Ryan Lumsden's 20th birthday, the team was ready to play. Senior Brye Adler made his first start of the season and threw six innings that included four perfect innings to begin the game. After Brye's perfecto was broken up, it was senior Lane Cooper's hose from left field to gun a runner down at the plate that really got the crowd going. Lane also followed that up with a single and an RBI.

Senior Adam Schorr drove in his 100th career RBI in the midst of his three-hit barrage. However, the curtain call came in the bottom of the sixth inning when senior Paul Myslinski dropped a bomb over the right field wall for his first collegiate home run.

In the seventh, senior Steve Zaychik came in and threw three scoreless innings to shut down the game. What an amazing Senior Day for our team. Hopefully, the old guys can carry us in the post-season and put the team in the hunt for a national title.

Sunday was a different story. Will Carr got off to a slow start and so did our offense. Although we were down only a couple runs, we came up with big plays that kept us within reach. As the game went on, our bats and Will's arm began to wake up. After two N.C. Wesleyan players were ejected for talking back to the umpire the game belonged to us.

Will threw seven strong innings before Danny Kaufman and Keith Meizler threw scoreless innings to earn Keith a save and get Will his 12th win on the season, a new Emory record. Keith earned his ninth save of the year tying the Emory season record. Congrats are in order for both them as well as the rest of the team for its 40th win of the season.

Last week proved to be a bit more challenging than many of us thought it would be. However, after fighting to win all three games, it will be even worse to have to fight to pass three finals this coming week. The team is about to receive a much-needed break and our next game will be at North Georgia on Friday, May 7th. Then it is off to the NCAA regional tournament.

Tom Mieczkowski is a sophomore from West Chester, Pa. He would love to answer e-mail questions from Emory recruits and fans.