Odds & Ends of MU Baseball History

A few scraps and nuggets from the history pages at our old website:

■ 1926: From the front page of The Columbia Daily Tribune, April 15, 1926, an incredible description of a city buzzing with excitement and activity upon the start of a new MU Baseball season. Wouldn't it be great to see this kind of hoopla surrounding the start of a new season in 2009?

With much of the pomp and panoply which attends the opening of big league baseball, the University of Missouri team, coached by Jack Crangle, will go into action for the first time this season on their home lot at 3:20 o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Following an opening day parade about the field by players led by the university band, Mayor Emmett McDonell will pitch the first ball across the plate, or somewhere thereabouts. With prospects for one of the best teams the Tigers have ever had, baseball is expected to make further progress this year back to the high position which it enjoyed here before the war. With more than 2,000 season tickets in the hands of students and Columbians, record attendance is expected.

■ 1975: A comment in the Columbia Daily Tribune, March 26, 1975, about a newly organized group:

The Diamond Darlings are an addition to the 1975 MU Baseball team. They are batpeople, known in previous times as batgirls. They bring the bats back to the dugout, hand the baseballs to the home plate umpire, pass out programs and when it is cold, they wish their uniforms provided more protection from the elements.

■ 1976: The 1976 Mizzou team, coached by Gene McArtor played the longest season in MU baseball history. Whereas in 1975 they played a total of 37 games, and had scheduled an average of 31 games per season for the previous 10 years, the '76 squad played a total of 68 games between March 6th and June 1st.

The MU schedule was padded on both ends. In March, they played 13 games in 9 days down in Lakeland, Florida, compiling a 10-3 record before many northern teams had begun their season. The season was also extended at the end, when they played an extra five games in the first ever Big 8 Tournament on the way to the Big 8 Championship, then played three additional games in the Midwest Regional of the NCAA Tournament.

Even without those extra 21 contests, though, the remaining 47 games would still have represented a significant expansion of the schedule. This was representative of the general NCAA philosophy at the time. A longer schedule was believed to prepare college players for post-season play, which was becoming more and more important.

On April 6, 1976, The Columbia Daily Tribune had a write-up of a lively Tiger victory, entitled "Tigers speak loudly and carry big sticks in defeating Oshkosh":

In the fifth inning, Oshkosh (0-5) got successive home runs from Dorian Boyland and Mike Wesling, as the margin grew to 7-0. And then the noise began. One vocal jab after another carried from the Oshkosh dugout to the opposite sideline. After losing three straight games to Missouri in two days, one by the discomfitting score of 17-0, the Oshkosh players couldn't resist an opportunity to rub their opponents' noses a little deeper into the dirt. Although there's no way to gauge its exact effect, bench jockeying certainly played a part in what turned out to be an 11-7 Missouri victory.

"We woke them up, there's no doubt about it," said Oshkosh coach Russ Tiedemann. "We should have just let sleeping dogs lie."

Suddenly, Missouri players were perched at the top steps of the dugout, alternately encouraging their own and taunting the enemy. It didn't take long before they had convinced the Wisconsin team that words can speak as loudly as
actions.

In the fifth inning, Goedtke gave up four runs and was replaced by Tom Frederick, who on Sunday had suffered the ignominy of allowing 13 runs in less than three innings. To make sure Frederick remembered, the Tigers ever so gently reminded him of it. Again and again.

It was about this time that Frederick threw his first pitch to Mark Thiel, a pitch that ended up some 400 feet from home plate and brought MU within one run.

The Tiger bench jockeys have gained a reputation for being ahead of their class. In
a game last month in Florida against Michigan, the players taunts reportedly angered their opponent.

"The Michigan coach couldn't believe it," said freshman pitcher Jeff Cornell. "I guess in the Big 10 they don't do it, but it's accepted policy in the Big 8."