Stanford Is a Contender in Baseball Again

With a practice set to begin within the hour, members of this baseball team one by one approached the coach, each sheepishly asking to be excused.

A term paper NEEDED finishing, a review section MUST be attended, a computer science project HAD TO be completed, legal briefs NEEDED to be read.

“I can tell when it’s midterms because their attention span is zilch,” the coach said with a shrug. “They’re worrying about ‘I’ve got to get a paper done, I’ve got a midterm,’ this and that.”

This scene usually associated with an intramural or club team happens to occur pretty often on the Stanford baseball team, where the student and the athlete have been molded into one heck of a program.

The Cardinal has won two of the last three national championships (1987 and 1988) and are poised to contend for a third. Already a winner of its fifth Pac-10 Southern Division title in eight years with a 24-6 conference mark, the Cardinal has won 49 of 59 games this season going into the final weekend.

“Of all the teams I’ve had, at this stage, this has been the most successful,” said Mark Marquess, the coach who has gotten used to practicing with less than a full squad in his 14 years in charge.

“But like everything else we’re going to be evaluated at the end,” Marquess said. “You could have the best team ever and if you don’t play well at the right time people forget about it.”

Dust may be settling on the trophies in the trophy case at Sunken Diamond, Stanford’s home field, but the same can’t be said for the school record book.

By season’s end, the Cardinal will have broken at least 10 individual and another half dozen team records while racking up the most regular-season victories in school history. Two stand out, a 15-game conference winning streak and a 37-game hitting streak by freshman centerfielder Jeff Hammonds.

The seeds that blossumed into this perennial national championship contender were planted in the early ‘80s, said Jeff Ballard of the Baltimore Orioles, who graduated from Stanford in 1985.

“After I left I could see the players that they were starting to bring in were even a better quality than what we had when I was first there. I really thought they would win the World Series pretty soon,” said Ballard, who was the American League’s winningest left-handed pitcher last year.

Stanford played in its first College World Series in 1982, Ballard’s freshman year, and made it back two more times before Ballard graduated in 1985. Each trip contributed to the national championships two and three years later.

“The first time you go it’s hard to get the breaks you need (to win),” Ballard said. “But if you go there enough it starts to become a normal thing to be there and then you’re able to perform and clutch up and do the right things.”

Not only must Stanford baseball players do the right things between the white lines, when they step back into the classroom they must compete against one of the nation’s most accomplished student bodies.

“The thing about here is if you think you’re pretty good just check your roommate or somebody else in your class who has a higher SAT or you sit next to Janet Evans and she’s got all those gold medals,” Marquess said. “I’m so darn proud of the fact the guys are able to do both.”

Doing both demands discipline and putting things into perspective.

“It was hard at times to get through some classes and there were a lot of times I didn’t think I was going to pass,” said Ballard, who figured he had one third the time of a regular student to devote to his studies.

“One way or another you FIND a way to get your work done.”

Inspite of all of that, Stanford has attracted plenty of players who have gone on to succeed in the major leagues, including pitcher Jim Lonborg, who won the 1967 Cy Young Award while with the Boston Red Sox, and catcher Bob Boone, who has the major league record for most game games at his position.

Others in the majors today who played at Stanford include: Texas infielder Steve Buechele, Montreal outfielder Mike Aldrete and Chicago White Sox pitcher Jack McDowell.

The goal of playing in the majors is just as common at Stanford as at any other university.

“As smart as these guys are, they all believe they will be major league players someday,” Marquess said. “Because that’s been their dream.”

These big league dreams are tested almost every day by big-time competition. Three of the six teams in the Pac-10 Southern Division -- nicknamed the Six Pack -- are ranked in the top 10 nationally. Arizona State is second and Southern Cal sixth in this week’s Baseball America poll.

“I wasn’t sure we could do it,” Marquess said, reflecting back more than a decade to the genesis of the Six Pack. “I felt ... that maybe every four or five years we’d get a special group of guys here and we could challenge for a championship -- Pac-10 not a national championship.”

Winning back-to-back College World Series -- accomplished only twice before -- was out of the question.

“The thing about the national championship was that people said it couldn’t be done, that you couldn’t maintain that high of academics and win a national championship,” Marquess said. “It just couldn’t be done.”

The Cardinal has won 23 of its last 26 games this season and is a definite contender for another. That would ease the painful ending of last season when the team practiced for a week after going 30-28 only to be left out post-season play.

“Last year when we didn’t make the playoffs for the first time in nine years I had to say, ‘This is not easy to do, the league that we’re in and the limitations that we have. We’ve accomplished something here.’ ” Marquess said. “... I took it for granted. ... I didn’t have to motivate them when we came back in the fall.”

Leading Stanford back into the regional playoffs that begin next weekend is right fielder Paul Carey, who spurned the Detroit Tigers to play this season at Stanford and has tied the Pac-10 record for career home runs (53).

Hammonds, the Cardinal leadoff hitter, has a .358 average with 40 stolen bases. Second baseman Tim Griffin has 72 RBIs with 77 hits, including a team-leading 19 home runs.

Sophomore first baseman David McCarty is hitting .347 with 12 home runs and 57 RBIs. The catcher, sophomore Troy Tallman, has hit .342 with five home runs over the last 25 games.

Pitching?

Stan Spencer and Mike Mussina, Stanford’s one-two punch of starting pitching, have combined for a 23-4 record and a 2.91 ERA.

“We’ve got a little bit of speed. We’ve got power. We’ve got pitching and we’ve got defense,” Marquess. “That’s a pretty good combination. You don’t always have that. ...

Talent has a lot to do with Stanford’s succesas, but so does its practice regimen.

“After talking with a lot of players from other programs, I don’t think a lot of programs put in the amount of time and effort that Stanford puts into what they do in practice,” Ballard said. “... The easiest thing there is playing the games.”

That figures. The games may be the only time when this program can count on having a full squad.