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:
“I don’t like comparisons with football. Baseball is an entirely different game. You can watch a tight, well-played football game, but it isn’t exciting if half the stadium is empty. The violence on the field must bounce off a lot of people. But you can go to a ball park on a quiet Tuesday afternoon with only a few thousand people in the place and thoroughly enjoy a one-sided game. Baseball has an aesthetic, intellectual appeal found in no other team sport.”
—Bowie Kuhn (b. 1926)
“Compared to football, baseball is almost an Oriental game, minimizing individual stardom, requiring a wide range of aggressive and defensive skills, and filled with long periods of inaction and irresolution. It has no time limitations. Football, on the other hand, has immediate goals, resolution on every single play, and a lot of violence—itself a highlight. It has clearly distinguishable hierarchies: heroes and drones.”
—Jerry Mander, U.S. advertising executive, author. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, ch. 15, Morrow (1978)
“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)