Hard to say. Dave Keilitz is, understandably, noncommittal when it comes to that nearly unanswerable question.
Suffice to say, the 1984 Central Michigan baseball team, Keilitz's last in his 14-year reign as CMU's baseball coach, was as special as they come.
"You see an extremely good team, and most of those possess all four (traits): talent, mental makeup, leadership and great teammates," said Keilitz, an All-American as a player at CMU in the early 1960s who coached the program from 1971-84. "That '84 team – and probably all of those teams of that period of that run that we had – possessed all of those characteristics.
"Those guys were really an outstanding group. We did not have what you would call a weak position on that team. It was a pretty young team, but they all stepped up. If somebody was struggling a little bit there were other guys that were there to pick them up."
Sparking Something Special
The '84 Chippewas were indeed special, winning the first of five-consecutive Mid-American Conference championships. Keilitz gave way to his long-time assistant, Dean Kreiner, after the '84 season, but the program didn't miss a beat. In the 11-season period from 1980-90, CMU won eight MAC crowns and earned eight bids to the NCAA Tournament.
In 1984, CMU achieved a rarity for a northern-based program as it was selected to host an NCAA Regional.
"That was really a great honor for our baseball program," said Keilitz, who that year was named the NCAA Regional Coach of the Year for the second time and the MAC Coach of the Year for the fourth and final time. "To be selected by the NCAA as one of only eight regions in the country because you're looking at places like Miami (Fla.), Florida State, LSU, Texas, Arizona State, Southern Cal, and for us to have that opportunity was a real credit to our baseball program."
The '84 Chippewas earned it. The offense was led by MAC batting champion Greg Lotzar and league home-run king Doug Fisher, and the pitching staff was headlined by a solid core of veterans including Jay Phillion, Dave Minnema, Kevin Tapani, Bob Cavanaugh and Eric Wilson.
CMU finished 20-8 in league play and 41-17 overall. The 41 wins were, at the time, the second most in program history. At least a dozen members of that squad were drafted by major league teams.
Potent Lineup
Best friends and roommates Jeff Spicuzzi and Mike Mervenne were the corner outfielders on that team, Spicuzzi in left and Mervenne in right. In center was the speedy Lotzar, who still ranks fourth in program history with 85 stolen bases.
"Mike and I could have probably just sat down and let Greg cover everything," said Spicuzzi, who was a senior co-captain along with David Schooltz. "That's how fast he was."
Both Spicuzzi and Mervenne earned All-MAC honors (as did Lotzar, second baseman Bill Morway and Phillion), a feat made all the more remarkable by the fact that they batted in the Nos. 6 and 7 slots in the lineup.
That's indicative of how potent the '84 Chippewas were at the plate.
"That's because we were getting watermelons," Spicuzzi said, using baseball parlance for hittable pitches. "(Opponents) tried to muscle through the bottom of our lineup. We had Lotzar and Morway and (Dan) Cronkright and Doug Fisher hitting in front of us; that tends to make you a better hitter.
"I wouldn't have pitched to the top of our lineup either."
The Staff: Deep, Talented, Seasoned
The pitching staff, said Cronkright, who played third base, was "very seasoned and very deep. We had five or six pitchers that were pretty darned good; they all played pro ball. That helped us a lot."
The Chippewas began the season with their customary southern trip and plenty of question marks. While the roster included several veterans, few had filled everyday roles in previous seasons. CMU could not have started better, beating the likes of Oklahoma, Michigan State, Michigan and Maine, a mid-80s baseball power, on the trip. Both Michigan and Maine were coming off appearances in the College World Series.
"We beat some really good teams in a 10-day time period, and that really gave us quite the boost of confidence and we just kept rolling all spring," Cronkright said.
An Emotional Announcement
A defining moment, Keilitz said, came midway through the season, when the Chippewas were set to depart Mount Pleasant for Muncie, Ind. for a four-game series with Ball State. On the morning of the scheduled departure, Keilitz called a team meeting to deliver the news to his players that the '84 season would be his last in charge of the program. He had agreed to succeed the retiring Ted Kjolhede as the university's athletic director.
"That was quite an emotional event for Dave," Cronkright said. "He put an awful of time into that program and built that program, not only from a baseball standpoint, but growing young men too. It was quite an emotional thing for all of us."
Perhaps inspired by the news that the legendary Keilitz's days in the dugout were numbered, the Chippewas ran roughshod over the Cardinals, sweeping the four games by a combined 54-7 score.
"I've often thought that if I was able to tell the guys at the beginning of the year that I was leaving, we might have gone undefeated," Keilitz said.
On to the Tournament
The Chippewas wrapped up the conference crown, amazingly, with six games remaining. There was no league tournament in those days, so the Chippewas had plenty of time to reflect and to prepare for the NCAA Mideast Regional at old Theunissen Stadium, which was located just off Preston Street and east of Finch Fieldhouse. Today, the university's Health Professions Building and its College of Medicine sit on the site.
The Chippewas opened the four-team, double-elimination regional with a 4-2 loss to Indiana State before coming back to beat Temple, 15-10, and then Indiana State, 4-0. That set up a showdown with Michigan, which was unbeaten in the regional. The Chippewas would need back-to-back wins over the Big Ten-champion Wolverines in order to advance for the first time to the College World Series in Omaha, Neb.
It wasn't to be. The Wolverines, who featured future Hall of Famer Barry Larkin along with future All-Star Chris Sabo, scored two runs in the ninth inning to overcome a one-run deficit and win, 4-3.
It ended one of the most remarkable and memorable seasons in the storied program's history. The Chippewas finished 18th in the final national poll, an extraordinary accomplishment for a northern-based team.
"Baseball is a very dynamic game," Cronkright said. "You can be ahead and then one minute later, the game's over, and that's basically what happened in that game. The unity of that team showed itself even in a heartbreaking loss. That wasn't an easy thing to go through, especially for (Keilitz), being his last game. But we did, we moved on, and the next year we got back after it."
It was a "major, major disappointment," Keilitz said. "One of my greatest hopes was to see a CMU baseball team play in Omaha at the College World Series and certainly every coach, one of their desires is to get a team to Omaha for the World Series.
"I thought we had chances along the way, the '72 team, the '77 team, the '81 team, the '84 team, and several of those teams that (Kreiner) coached (1985-98), I thought those were all teams that had a chance to make it to Omaha; we just always came up a game short. That's one thing that I certainly strived for and wanted as a coach and as an AD and now as a fan."
Good Numbers, Great Memories
Still, decades separated from that '84 season, the numbers tell the story and the memories add the spice.
Fisher set a then-program season records with 13 home runs, 30 extra-base hits, and 52 runs; and the Chippewas set then-program records with 528 hits, 392 runs, 349 RBIs, 68 home runs, and a .533 slugging percentage. Lotzar and Morway earned NCAA All-Region honors and six players and coaches from the '84 squad – Keilitz, Kreiner, Tapani, Lotzar, Fisher and Cronkright – are enshrined in the Central Michigan University Marcy Weston Athletics Hall of Fame.
"From a chemistry perspective, that team was close," Spicuzzi said. "The friendships really never change. The guys still keep in touch and that was a long time ago. To think that I met these guys in 1980 and now we're at 40 years. I was proud to have been a CMU player, and I still am today."
Keilitz organizes and presides over a reunion every 10 years for each of his league-championship teams. The '84 team is no different.
"I think the attendance at those speaks volumes of what people think of Dave Keilitz," said Cronkright, a Midland native who has worked at Dow Chemical for 31 years and is now a global sourcing manager. "People fly in from all over the place to make sure we say thanks and we show him respect. For me personally, Dave is definitely a lifetime mentor. We chat once a month, once every other month, we check in on each other. We don't have dinner with each other as much as we should. It's a unique relationship that a lot of us experienced on that '84 team; yeah, he was our coach but he's also our friend."
Said Spicuzzi, who works as the IT director at Lippert Components in suburban Detroit: "(Keilitz) set a tone that he expected us to win. We understood what he had done as a player, and so from a player's perspective, when your coach can not only talk it, but he demonstrated it. He was an All-American. There was instant credibility from him. And as a coach he ran a very professional program. Everything from practice to pregame to how we went on the road. And the players, I think, reflected his commitment to winning.
"You just wanted to be successful for him, and when he announced that (1984) was going to be his last year … you just wanted to honor him with a great season."
It's a reciprocal relationship for Keilitz, who served as CMU's athletic director until 1994, is enshrined in the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame and remains one of the most respected figures in CMU history and in the game of college baseball.
"As you look back, not so much at the team winning the championship, but the guys that we had on the team," Keilitz said. "It is such a feeling of pride to see not necessarily what they accomplished as student-athletes at Central Michigan, but what they've done with their lives since that time. It's really special. And I tell them, 'As proud as I was of you guys when you won a championship and played for us back in the '80s, I'm even more proud of you today of what you've become as husbands, fathers, professionals, leaders in your community.' That's really special."
"that" - Google News
June 09, 2020 at 03:23AM
https://ift.tt/37bGwRe
1984 CMU Baseball: 'That's Really Special' - Central Michigan University Chippewas
"that" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3d8Dlvv
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar