Every year, the culmination of collegiate baseball takes place in Omaha, Nebraska, where the final eight teams from a starting field of 64 battle it out for baseball supremacy in the College World Series. It begins May 30, and this year it ended on June 25 as Vanderbilt beat Virginia to win their first ever National Championship.
Among other things, like a lot of fun (even withstanding this year’s home run drought), the College World Series has always been a rite of summer. If the summer solstice is the climactic marker of the beginning of summer, the beginning of baseball is the cultural marker. And all this has one wondering: Why doesn’t Portland State field a competitive baseball program?
The cost of fielding a baseball team is relatively low compared to other programs. To put it in perspective, the cost of football operations is $1,257,567. The cost of men’s tennis is around $50,000. The grand total of our athletic budget is $4,085,108. Baseball’s budget, one can assume, would lean toward that of tennis as opposed to football—an affordable operation. PSU indeed had a baseball program at one point, but it was discontinued in 1998.
Add to the equation the existence of a fully functional, competitive baseball club, and it seems something’s got to give for PSU baseball.
The PSU baseball club began back in 2011. It was founded by Michael Abrams, who envisioned it as eventually blooming into a school-sponsored sport. The same restrictions apply as before—namely, that the funding isn’t as simple as gathering enough solely for a men’s baseball team. In order to fund a men’s baseball team, an equivalent women’s team would also have to be added or a men’s team eliminated because of Title IX scholarship restrictions.
And there is the impasse.
Meanwhile, Oregon State was the top overall seed in the College World Series after winning the Pac 12 with a 24–6 record. Seventeen OSU players are MLB bound.
This includes Michael Conforto, who was selected tenth overall by the New York Mets, and Jace Fry who was selected in the third round by the Chicago White Sox.
The Ducks also fielded a great team this year, finishing 18–12 and nationally ranked at number 20. Besides Oregon and Oregon State, Sacramento State, PSU’s long time interconference rival, won the WAC and played in Omaha. There were also a bevy of smaller schools who fielded competitive teams.
My favorite moment of this year’s CWS: Ro Coleman of Vanderbilt hitting a pinch-hit, walk-off single to send the Ducks home. It was heartbreaking and thrilling, but the real joy came when the 5-feet-5-inch Coleman kept running, past first and into the outfield, to avoid his charging, ready-to-dogpile teammates.
These are the kind of moments that PSU ought to celebrate. Or, without CWS appearances, there should at least be the opportunity to partake in the summertime joy of baseball.
Until then the only thing to do is to continue to work—well, work and play. Or as the PSU baseball club’s Facebook page puts it: “Offseason, what’s that?” Now if we only had a season.
