YSU’s baseball team rises from underdog to top dog

All who revel in rooting for the underdog can’t help but marvel at the amazing rise of the Youngstown State University baseball team from last-place also-rans to Horizon League top dogs in the incredible championship season of 2014.

We shout out hearty hoorays to the Penguin baseball squad for earning the league championship for only the second time in its history and for winning its first NCAA tournament game for the first time in its history last week. Team members slammed in respect and honor to themselves, their coaches, their university and their community. Their hard-hitting play also caps a superlative season of spring sports for the university that ended with YSU catching an unprecedented four Horizon League championships.

For baseball coach Steve Gillispie and his players, 2014 truly shines as a storybook season. Their story, however, most closely resembles that of “The Little Engine that Could.” Just as the little engine that “thought it could, thought it could” carry a hulking train over a steep mountain, the YSU baseball team used hard work, ambition and talent to carry it over innumerable obstacles into title territory.

Even the most diehard fans of the team would acknowledge that during the bulk of the regular season, the Penguins’ play proved mediocre at best. The team entered Horizon League tournament with the worst record in the league with more than twice as many losses than wins.

If anything, however, that dark-horse status fired up the team with the vim, vigor and dash to get the real job done. And despite predictions that the team would lose not only its first game but fail in the losers’ bracket as well, the Penguins came out of left field to sweep the tournament, whacking in wins against top seeds Wright State and Valparaiso.

As Vindicator Sports Writer Kevin Connelly reported, senior pitcher Patrick O’Brien knew the lack of belief in the team by the public was no secret, and he was happy to help turn it around.

“It was tough in the beginning ... eventually, near the end of the season, you just kind of want to start fresh with a 0-0 record. But then we got hot, and I think the Valparaiso games heading into the tournament are where it turned for me. We got hot and everyone came together,” O’Brien said.

Most Valuable Player

Senior infielder Phil Lipari, aptly selected as Most Valuable Player of the Horizon tourney, concurred. “We kept the confidence up, and we got hot and started playing the best baseball of our lives. You know a lot of the teams weren’t expecting that from us,” Lipari said.

Nor would many have believed that YSU could go on to win any games when advancing to the NCAA tournament in Bloomington, Ind., last weekend. But those indomitable Penguins again proved the naysayers wrong in defeating Indiana State 5-2 Saturday, before losing to the perennial powerhouse Stanford University squad Sunday.

That loss and elimination from the national tournament, however, do little to steal the thunder and electricity the team created for the university and the Mahoning Valley. Coupled with Horizon League championships this spring from the women’s tennis team and the men’s and women’s track teams, YSU athletes have set the bar very high for their successors.

The net result of this spring’s quadruple whammy of championships is unbridled campuswide pride, a fitting welcome mat as incoming president Jim Tressel — no stranger to championship college teams himself — begins his leadership over the athletic and academic reputation of YSU.