Youth Movement
Walsh also got terrific rookie campaigns from three key contributors in Binkowski, sophomore reliever Derek Lennon and freshman starter John Birtwell.
Binkowski, who saw highly limited action last season as Pete Albers's backup, won control of the starting job and performed admirably, hitting .291 and fielding .995, knocking down more than his fair share of smoking grounders.
Most significant about Binkowski's achievement is the fact that he wasn't supposed to play this season, but rehabbed hard from an anterior cruciate ligament injury and impressed with his more-than-adequate mobility around the bag.
Binkowski also got hot when it counted, homering in the LeMoyne play-in and against Tulane in the Regional.
Lennon, who made the leap from the junior varsity program, became the designated long relief man, finishing 3-1 with a 4.03 ERA in 29 innings of work, allowing the opposition to bat only .223.
And then there was Birtwell, the babyfaced freshman who dazzled all season long, going his first 20 innings without allowing an earned run before succumbing to a virus and missing a month and a half.
The Walpole, Mass., product returned in time to record a win over LeMoyne and seven and one-third five-hit innings in the Crimson's 6-5 win over Nicholls State in an elimination game. Birtwell's impressive array of pitches suggest that he may anchor the staff well into the next millennium.
Wait'll Next Year
And so the 1998 season ended where the last one did, on a Saturday night at a Regional which found the Crimson at the end of its rope and one day shy of the likes of UCLA or LSU.
But if Walsh's club has achieved anything in the past two seasons, it has cleared a space in the inner circle of college baseball for a team from the northeast, one that relies on scrapping runs and playing defense, one that won't go yard as often as its colleagues will, but that will manage to look every bit as professional.
And maybe next time around, with one more quality inning in one more pitcher's arm, or one more base knock in somebody's bat, the Crimson will last to Sunday, as Walsh put it, "where the big boys play."
Twenty-fourth in the nation and indisputably tops in the Northeast? Sounds like where the big boys play to me.