Baseball
Initiated in 1877, the baseball team was Yankee Conference champions in 1952, 1957, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1978, 1979 and 1980, and Atlantic 10 champions in 1980, 1994, 1995 and 1996. They reached the NCAA tournament in 1954, 1955, 1956, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1978, 1995, and 1996, and the College World Series in 1954 and 1969.
The team, since the termination of many men's teams (including football and baseball) in 1996 at Boston University, has become the fourth team (in addition to the traditional Boston College, Harvard, and Northeastern) in the baseball version of the Beanpot tournament held at Fenway Park. The baseball team plays its home games at Earl Lorden Field.
UMass has had 17 players later reach the major leagues. The best known are starting pitcher Mike Flanagan, relief pitcher Jeff Reardon, shortstop Gary DiSarcina, and relief pitcher Ron Villone.
Read more about this topic: UMass Minutemen
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating mysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are.”
—Thomas Boswell, U.S. sports journalist. “The Church of Baseball,” Baseball: An Illustrated History, ed. Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf (1994)
“It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“One of the baseball-team owners approached me and said: “If you become baseball commissioner, you’re going to have to deal with 28 big egos,” and I said, “For me, that’s a 72% reduction.””
—George Mitchell (b. 1933)