In addition to cramming our fielding drills onto a single basketball court, we had to lower our only batting cage and raise all of the basketball hoops with an industrial drill before every practice. There wasn’t an indoor track, so we ran laps through the gym’s open doors, down the lobby hallway and back through the gym. We finished our conditioning by sprinting up and down the steep bleacher steps.
Today’s players get to take fungoes on a field house floor that’s the size of three basketball courts. They can hit year-round in one of the Rec Center’s two batting cages, and they can run actual laps on the Harrison Dillard indoor track. They still have to hit those bleacher steps after practice, though!
The coaches chose Kidd as a first-team outfielder, and Kreisher was chosen as the first-team first baseman. Kidd finished the regular season fourth in the OAC with a .413 batting average and led the conference with six triples and 23 stolen bases. Kreisher topped the league leaders with a school-record 58 runs batted in, was second with 10 home runs and committed just one error in 324 fielding chances.
Kidd and Kreisher were second-team picks in 2007 and 2008.
Fredericks’ 5–2 conference record, which included a win over OAC champion Heidelberg University, earned him an honorable mention from the coaches. He was one of only three pitchers on the conference leaders board who didn’t surrender a home run this season. His teammate, junior pitcher Justin Novak, was one of the other two.
Kidd, a pre-med major with a 3.83 grade point average was named to the first team for the second straight season. Brisky, who has a 3.64 GPA in B-W’s MBA program, and Fredericks, who has a 3.93 GPA in accounting, made the second team.
Kidd broke hall of fame center fielder Erik Young’s 20-year-old career scoring record of 136 runs in the third inning when he scrambled home from third base on a catcher’s throwing error. Four innings later, he nabbed the season record by legging out a triple and scoring on a wild pitch. It was his 48th trip across home plate this year, moving him past the previous record holder, All–Mideast Region designated hitter Paul Farrah, who crossed the plate 47 times in 1988.
The two-out, two-run triple that put Kidd in position to pass Farrah tied the single-season triples record of five set by hall of fame pitcher Pat George in 1976 and matched by All–Mideast Region outfielder Pete Rowe in 2002.
Kreisher broke the record in his first at bat of the day with a two-run bomb to right-center field that soared over the flag poles at Don Schaly Stadium. After rounding the bases, he crossed home plate as his own 52nd RBI of the season and stepped past the previous mark set by All–Mideast Region first baseman Pat Shannon, who knocked in 50 runs in 2002.
The Ohio Athletic Conference RBI leader padded his new record with four more ribbies by smacking a couple of doubles in game two and belting another two-run homer in his last at bat of the afternoon.
He also had 17 putouts in the doubleheader, extending the career fielding record he set earlier this season to 923.
The Yellow Jackets trailed Malone by two runs with two outs in the bottom of the seventh inning when Kidd drove in pinch runner Ben Stoper from first base with the 12th triple of his career. The record-breaking three-bagger put the tying run 90 feet from the plate, but the Jackets couldn’t bring it home before their last out, and they lost 13-12.
The record that Kidd eclipsed yesterday had been held for 20 years by another great center fielder, Erik Young ’89, who hustled out 11 three-base hits during his hall of fame career.
Kidd had already set one new record this year when he was hit by a pitch for the 20th time in his career during the Jackets’ spring trip to Winter Haven, Fla. Now, with four triples on the season, he’s just one shy of setting another one. The speedy leadoff hitter is also on the verge of breaking the career record for runs scored, and he’s closing in on the marks for hits, singles and stolen bases.
Stoper, who was three for five in the game and scored a pair of runs, singled and stole second base in each of his first three at bats. He tied the record in the sixth inning with another scamper for second after reaching base on a fielder’s choice. It was his seventh stolen base in seven tries this season.
B-W’s single-game stolen base record was set in 1991 when All-OAC outfielder Jim Anderson ’92 broke an OAC postseason record by swiping four bases in one of the Jackets’ conference tournament games.
The Academic All-OAC team recognizes the league’s top scholar-athletes. Its roster is made up of outstanding starters and key reserves who have at least a 3.25 cumulative grade point average. Roster spots are awarded by a committee of faculty representatives from each of the ten conference schools.
The faculty reps honored five Yellow Jackets with first team selections: Second baseman Nate Luken, a senior criminal justice major who graduated with a 3.86 GPA and went on to law school at Ohio State University to pursue a career as a criminal prosecutor; shortstop Nick Radca, a senior exercise science major who finished school with a 3.52 GPA and recently took a job helping the Lake Erie Crushers Frontier League baseball team with their strength and conditioning program; junior pitcher Brandon Fredericks, who entered his senior year with a 3.90 GPA in business administration; junior right fielder Mike Brisky, who completed his first year of work on a master’s degree in business administration with a 3.72 GPA; and junior center fielder Cody Kidd, a pre-med and biology major who carried a 3.79 GPA at the end of last season.
Junior pitcher Jim Jaskowak, a business administration and accounting major with a 3.57 GPA, was selected for honorable mention.
