Baseball team remains optimistic despite losses and cancelled games

By Hugh Kerins
Transcript Correspondent

The Bishops baseball team has gotten off to a decent start this season with a 6-5 record overall, but they look to improve quickly.

The team was supposed to have three preseason games before traveling to Port Charlotte, Fla., but the weather did not permit it. While in Port Charlotte, the Bishops posted a 4-3 record, with one win each over Baldwin-Wallace and Wheaton and two wins against Mount St. Joseph in a double-header. But the team suffered losses at the hands of Marietta, Montclair State and Mount St. Joseph, who avenged their earlier losses.

After coming back to Ohio, the team had to cancel or postpone five different games.
Senior shortstop, Zach Bott, said the team tries to stay positive when their games are cancelled, but it is difficult.

“It gets frustrating,” Bott said. “We put in all this work over the course of the week, and then comes game day and we can’t play because of the weather.”

But in the four games that the Bishops have been able to play, they have gone 2-2 at home. Sophomore pitcher Paul Priddy said the team is still learning and growing.

“We are getting our legs under us,” Priddy said. “We have had a decent start. As a young team we have a lot of potential and I think are really going to do great things as the year progresses.”

On March 29 the Battling Bishops hosted Case-Western Reserve for a double-header at Littick Field. During the first game, junior outfielder Sean Vollenweider drove in the game-winning run in the bottom of the ninth; senior first baseman Ben Steele had already hit a two-run home run to give the Bishops the lead. OWU won the first game 6 to 5.

The second game of the non-conference double header was a different story for the Bishops. Even with Steele crushing a three-run homer and Vollenweider collecting three hits, the Bishops failed to match Case Western’s outstanding fourth inning, in which they scored eight runs.

Case Western’s 10-5 win left a split day, with one win for each team.

“They were a really good team,” Steele said. “Their pitchers were phenomenal. And at the end of the day we got the best of them one game and they got us the next time.”

The Battling Bishops will be back in action on Wednesday, April 3, against Otterbein at Littick Field at 4 p.m.