Even out of tournament, baseball team keeps spirits high

By Dylan Hernandez
DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF
[email protected]

There isn’t another place quite like Jackie Robinson
Stadium on the weekend in late May.

By this time of year, the UCLA baseball team is typically
eliminated from NCAA tournament contention and just the die-hards
““ mostly players’ family members ““ show up to the
deserted sandlot, which only they know the location of. They take
seats on the metal bleachers that are now shone upon by the
blinding sun. Around them are a few professional baseball scouts
armed with radar guns, notebooks and bags of sunflower seeds,
closely examining the players one last time before the upcoming
draft.

The taunts of the few obnoxious fans resonate throughout the
stadium and are heard clearly by the players from the opposing
team. The college girls in the stands, many of them wearing
excessively revealing clothing, are in their own secluded world,
speaking their own language and telling jokes only they find
funny.

Hardly anyone participates in the singing of “Take Me
Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch; most
of the fans are more preoccupied with their Big Bruin Bingo
promotional game cards or the announcement that the price of hot
dogs has just been reduced to a dollar.

And in the air, there is the sense that all of this will come to
an end, that one will have to wait another year to be part of the
cult that watches head coach Gary Adams fail to win games while
producing future big leaguers.

This year has been no different.

The parents, the scouts, the girls, the taunts and the hot dogs
are all there. And once more, the Bruins (26-30, 9-12 Pac-10)
appear as if they will be left out of the NCAAs.

Adams’ squad, UCLA’s hidden treasure, has one final
three-game set before it calls it a season. Beginning today, the
Bruins will face No. 21 USC (31-22, 14-7 Pac-10) in a series that
is intriguing despite the glaring disparity in talent between the
two squads.

“It’s special because it will be my last time in a
Bruin uniform,” senior outfielder Adam Berry said. “We
want to go out on a winning note because we have no
postseason.”

Their emotions alone should make the Bruins competitive, as they
have been all season.

“I think they’ve made the most of what they’ve
got,” Adams said. “They’ve been unfortunate, with
the injuries, the bad hops.”

That spirit, Adams said, has been passed on to the coaching
staff.

“There have been years where at this time of the season,
I’ve been dog tired, even in years we’ve gone on to the
NCAAs,” Adams said. “But today, I’ll full of
energy. I’m as enthusiastic as I have been all
year.”

This energy is what Adams said he will miss most about his
current team.

Although they don’t need one, the Bruins will have an
added incentive to play hard this weekend: the Lexus Gauntlet. The
winner of the Gauntlet, a competition between UCLA’s and
USC’s athletic departments, will be decided by this
weekend’s baseball series. If the Bruins can win one or more
of the three games this weekend, UCLA will claim the title that no
one knows or cares about.

When it is all over at the end of this weekend, Adams will
probably apologize to the school newspaper’s beat writers for
all of the losses they had to sit through, though there is no need
to.

Adams will bid farewell to the seniors, along with the select
couple of juniors that are drafted, while preparing to watch some
high school summer ball to find his next crop of players. He will
have time to watch more of the Major Leagues, an institution that
should forever feel indebted to him, for he has developed more of
its employees than any other coach in the country.

And the boys of spring will be gone.

But only temporarily.