One win. Three losses.
This looks very familiar; where have I seen it before?
Oh, yeah, its the same way the Billiken baseball team started out last year en route to a dismal 19-32 season.
After dropping all three games over the weekend at the Northwestern State Tournament, Saint Louis University bounced back Wednesday to edge Indiana State. However, after viewing part of Wednesday’s win, I’m not willing to write the Billikens off quite yet. Maybe it’s not the same team that struggled through all of last year. They have six seniors returning, all with starting roles and a pitching staff that set a school record in strikeouts last year. However, they’re still lacking a major key in overall success. The Billiken baseball team still lacks the support of the University or the students.
In recent years, Saint Louis University athletics has stepped up its reputation on a national level. The Billiken’s soccer team is consistently ranked as one of the top 25 teams in the nation. The men’s basketball team has been to the postseason three of the last four years, including its thrilling Cinderella story from last year’s Conference USA title run.
But what about the baseball program? In seven of the last 11 seasons, the Billikens have won at least 20 games a season. However, these are not 30-games seasons. Last year the Billikens played 51 games; this year they are scheduled to play 55 games. Unfortunately, this means, unlike college basketball, that 20 wins will not earn you an at- large bid to the College World Series.
In the last three years, the Bills have only been able to muster 19 wins a season. In fact, in Bob Hughes’s tenure as Billiken’s head coach, he has won only 226 games, while losing 397. Along with one tie, Hughes has a 36 percent winning percentage through 13 seasons, and the first four games this season.
However, Hughes’s career at SLU cannot be measured just in wins and losses. He has had 11 players go on to play professional baseball. Even more important than that, SLU has won Conference USA’s Sport Academic award five times, which is given to the baseball team with the highest GPA in the conference. So while the Billikens may not be succeeding on the field, they are doing well in the classroom, which may be one reason Hughes has stuck around as long as he has.
What I want to know is how can the program be turned around? What has to
happen in order for the Billiken baseball team to be successful? I would think the first step in building a baseball powerhouse, or at least a team that can be taken seriously, is to have the University make some sort of effort to show that it cares.
The soccer team gets a nice stadium with ample seating. The basketball team plays in a major arena downtown and practices in another well equipped gym. The baseball team’s home field could be outdone by some high schools. And I remember there being more seats for spectators at my Little League games than there are at the Billiken’s field.
Even worse though, is the fact that most of these seats are empty. Most of the baseball crowd is made up of parents coming to watch their boys play. It seems to me that a major reason for them being empty is the fact that the University makes either very little or no attempt to market this team. While I’ve seen promotions for men’s and women’s soccer, basketball and volleyball, I’ve never seen any sort of advertisement or promotional event for the baseball team. How can students come to the game if they don’t hear about it?
There is the potential to turn the baseball program into a respectable one. We are in the best sports city in America, according to The Sporting News and one of the biggest reasons for that is St. Louis’s love for baseball. If we can draw an 12,000 people to a college basketball game, and the Cardinals attendance can reach over 40,000, there is no reason we should not be able to attract a few hundred to the SLU baseball games.
Imagine how that could help in the signing of recruits. St. Louis is a hotbed for high
school baseball talent, yet SLU is rarely even an afterthought in a talented high school senior’s mind. I’m sure it has to be tough to have a top high school baseball player show up to watch a game, only to see that he’s one of 40 people there, most of them parents.
Try looking at it as an investment. You build a nice ballfield, you promote the team across the city as a Cardinal’s alternative. You garner interest across the city, and before you know it, people start to talk about Billikens baseball.
No, SLU Billiken baseball does not have a great history behind it. But maybe this year is the turning point. Maybe this is the year college baseball historians will look back to as the first step taken on a road to a winning tradition at SLU. Remember, great teams are not conjured out of thin air; they are built through hard work and dedication. I just hope the University and the students will be there to support the team as they attempt to build a college baseball dynasty.
