Baseball
Main article: Kansas State Wildcats baseball See also: 2010 Kansas State Wildcats baseball teamKansas State's baseball team began play in 1897. The Wildcats earned what is believed to be the school's first varsity championship in 1907 under coach Mike Ahearn. The Wildcats went on to win a Missouri Valley Conference championship in 1928 and Big Six Conference championships in 1930 and 1933.
Other milestones in the team's history include Earl Woods, the father of golfer Tiger Woods, becoming the first African-American baseball player in the Big Seven Conference in 1952, as well as all-time coaching wins leader Mike Clark winning the Big Eight Coach of the Year award in 1990.
The Wildcats have not traditionally been competitive on the national scale, but in 2009 the team made its first appearance in the NCAA Tournament. Kansas State has qualified four times for the Big 12 Conference tournament since its formation in 1996. The most recent appearance came in 2009. The Wildcats also earned a berth in the Big 12 Conference tournament in 2002, 2007, and 2008. In 2008, Hill led the Wildcats all the way to the championship game against Texas, eventually falling 15–7, just one win shy of their first tournament championship.
Hill's teams have also earned the school's first national rankings in the USA Today/ESPN Coach's Poll in the 2009 and 2010 seasons. The Wildcats call Tointon Family Stadium home.
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Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“The salary cap ... will be accepted about the time the 13 original states restore the monarchy.”
—Tom Reich, U.S. baseball agent. New York Times, p. 16B (August 11, 1994)
“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)
“The talk shows are stuffed full of sufferers who have regained their health—congressmen who suffered through a serious spell of boozing and skirt-chasing, White House aides who were stricken cruelly with overweening ambition, movie stars and baseball players who came down with acute cases of wanting to trash hotel rooms while under the influence of recreational drugs. Most of them have found God, or at least a publisher.”
—Calvin Trillin (b. 1935)