Bobcats' hole may be dug too deep

by Anthony Castrovince

On a clear day, the Ohio baseball team can see fourth place. Unfortunately, the forecast is calling for gray skies and an uncharacteristically early finish to the team's 2001 season.

After dropping two of four games to the Buffalo Bulls - a second-year team that is new to the Mid-American Conference this season - and falling to 6-9 in conference play, the Bobcats might have as much chance of making next month's MAC Tournament as eight of my friends and I do after a night Uptown.

Losing to Buffalo in anything is like losing to Roseanne in a beauty pageant (and I don't mean the new post-Weight Watchers Roseanne, either).

Losing to Buffalo is the sporting equivalent of calling the police on your own party. It's almost masochistic.

Look, I'm not trying to bash the baseball team. I'm a proud supporter. And I am certainly not calling for the head of coach Joe Carbone. I support my fellow Italians and, besides, Carbone at Bob Wren Stadium is like Santa Claus at the North Pole and Darryl Strawberry in prison. It is just a natural fit.

No, the team's lackluster season cannot be blamed on a single coach, and it has not come from lack of effort and statistical prowess. The Bobcats are second in the MAC with a .329 batting average and 71 home runs - nine shy of the school record. They have scored 350 times this season, and I believe that is four more than Madonna.

OK, so the pitching staff's 6.12 earned run average is not lighting up the Athens sky, but they're facing teams in the MAC, not the '27 Yankees. In fact, Ohio is fifth in the conference in ERA.

So how did the team that was predicted to finish first in the East Division by Collegiate Baseball magazine and third in the East by the league's coaches find itself on the wrong side of the tracks?

Sometimes the struggles have come down to the team doing the wrong things at the wrong time. Against Buffalo, Ohio scored 26 and 23 runs in its two victories and 3 and 1 runs in its two losses. Unfortunately, four-game series aren't decided by cumulative offensive output.

Other times, the team has had worse luck than the Cincinnati Bengals on draft day. Take the final game of the four-game series against Central Michigan last month, for instance. After Ohio dropped the first two games of the series and won the third, the team found itself down 11-10 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and runners at first and third.

First baseman Chuck Lombardy came to bat and hit a line shot that some members of the Ohio team said was one of the hardest-hit shots they had ever seen. Central Michigan first baseman Mike Gates made a ridiculous diving catch that sunk the Bobcats to 1-3.

While that play may not have triggered the team's woes, the difference between 1-3 and 2-2, in terms of confidence, is gargantuan, and things have not gotten much better since.

It would bring great joy to this Bobcat fan's withered eyes to see the team make and take the MAC Tournament, but with only 12 MAC games and less than three weeks remaining in the season, something better change now. Unless Alan Funt steps onto the field and reveals that this has all been a bad episode of "Candid Camera," it seems that no fairy tale ending awaits the Bobcats this season.

Hey, sometimes you're the windshield and sometimes you're the bug. Right now, Ohio is getting squashed.

•- Castrovince is a sophomore journalism major who means no disrespect to Roseanne and Madonna. In fact, he knows them on a first-name basis. Send comments to castrovince@yahoo.com.•