The Journey: Kansas State

Junior Sam Sivilotti and sophomore Greg Blohowiak, members of the UWM baseball team, will be blogging all season long on the UWM website. This is their fifth entry.

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Toto, We’re not in Kansas anymore...

Another weekend, another 12-hour bus ride. As the reality of playing baseball every weekend is finally setting in, with many people starting to get into a routine with school and their homework, we yet again stepped foot on the Lamers bus. Taking a similar route as last weekend, we picked up the fellas at the park and ride and began our trek to Manhattan, Kansas. We were scheduled to play a series versus Kansas State (#25) with one game on Friday, two on Saturday and another one on Sunday. But due to anticipation of horrible cold and snowy weather on Saturday, we bumped up a game to Friday so we would play a doubleheader. A little different from what is normal, however we were going to approach this weekend like any other, aiming to win games while continuing to get better in the process.

The long bus ride was full of movies, with a photo slideshow from Arkansas and a couple minutes of laughs at the end to begin. With a request for the best of Will Farrell from SNL quickly on the table we popped that in and continued with the laughs. Following a couple hours of movies we were in the thick of the March Madness tournament updates. With many teams going down to the wire and some upsets (thanks Georgetown...) it was no doubt people were itching for any updates available.

Before we knew it we made a stop at a Urbandale, Iowa, Happy Joes pizza buffet to absolutely destroy the establishment, for food of course. We have enjoyed this pizza buffet in the past, however it came only a couple hours before a game versus Iowa, therefore stuffing our faces was not such a good idea. This time though was different, with four hours on a bus ahead of us we could afford to mash out the countless number of delicious pizzas without worry. While in Happy Joes Panther Baseball prize machine victor (AP #1 for winning things) Paul Hoenecke was at it once again. Taking five dollars worth of tokens straight to his favorite ticket game, Speed Demon. Before all was said and done Paul had won around 2500 tickets and redeemed them for a number of stuffed animals and other miscellaneous items.

With all the pizza in our stomachs and our bodies on the bus we continued on toward Kansas, only to arrive at our Holiday Inn hotel on campus shortly before 11 pm. We unpacked and got situated in our rooms and laid to rest, to wake up and play a couple games versus the Wildcats of Kansas State.

The morning started off rough, without a free continental breakfast, many of us went to the nearby gas station to pick up the necessary energy supplements and food for the morning. We then boarded the bus and starting on the one mile trek to the field, only to go around the block three times before we figured out where to park the bus to let us out. Thanks to the problem solving skills of our bus driver and picking up a Kansas State rep, we pulled up and continued toward the dugout.

The usual occurred, with batting practice and infield as well as the national anthem, we then proceeded toward the first pitch. Taking the rubber for us was Kyle Schmidt, usual game one starter, however we once again were at the plate to begin. A quick start, junior Cole Kraft laced a double past the diving first basemen. After a sacrifice bunt by Shaun Wegner the KSU pitcher then struck out Hoenecke and Long to end the threat. Kansas State started off strong, putting up three runs in the bottom of the 1st, getting runs on a leadoff double, a couple off end of the bat, two-strike, only-off-metal-bat kind of hits and a error fielding a bunt, that inning ended with a unconventional double play by Doug Dekoning (caught a ball and throwing behind the runner who was stealing to double him off). The next inning we were limited to only three batters, with KSU tacking on another run. The score was 4-0 after two innings and didn’t see a change the rest of the game.

With temperatures dipping and the swirling wind picking up runs on this day were very hard to come by. With the baseball “gods” not in our corner for game one, we saw many hard hit balls fielded by luck (Ben Long hit a liner in the gap, only to be snagged by the wind and caught by the right fielder below his knees, when he didn't even expect it) or because they were hit right at someone. That is baseball I suppose, many hard hits at people, and many handle-shots that fall in between people. That was the case as well as some pretty good pitching on either side of things, Schmidt had a rough first two innings before settling in and only allowing four runs. Also their pitcher did well, nibbling away at the corners while receiving some iffy strike-three calls. To note, Senior Bob Stone came in the bottom of the 8th inning working a run free frame.

We saw the first game end with a 4-0 score and some promise, promise that we play another game shortly following. After a brief meeting in right field we grabbed our in-between game food and got ready for the 2nd game, hoping to pull out a win versus a very good Kansas State team.

With game two on the horizon, the weather began to drastically change. Normally in Wisconsin we are used to 20-degree weather in March, but when we prepared to leave for Kansas we expected at least something a little warmer. As pregame sprints and throwing finished, the temperature dropped to 25 and snow flurries began to fall. Chad Pierce toed the rubber, and yet again, gave us another quality start. Pierce went eight innings and scattered three hits on top of seven strikeouts. Chad gave a great effort and put us in a position to win the game. The first run of the game came in the fifth when Tim Patzman laced a double down the left field line. Unfortunately, the double was erased when Dan Buccholz grounded into a fielder’s choice but as Patzman remained in a run down, Buchy advanced to second. Doug Dekoning then came up and hit a single that plated Buccholz giving us a 1-0 lead.

The score would remain the same as K-State kept us off balance all game, only surrendering five hits. We had a chance to extend our lead in the eighth but after a one-out single by Nino Guerrero followed by a double Sam Sivilotti, we had runners on second and third with one out. Cole Kraft then was intentionally walked, but back-to-back strikeouts ended our threat. Kansas State then plated an unearned run in the eighth to tie the game. We then went down one, two, three in the top of the ninth. The Wildcats were then able to put the go ahead run on base with one out in the bottom half of the ninth with a single through the left side. An infield single followed, and runners were on first and second with still only one down. We then got an out to bring the game right down to the wire. Two down, two runners on…Unfortunately Kansas State prevailed. A single through the left side scored the game winning run from second.

After a brief post game talk, we gathered our things and boarded the bus. We got back to the hotel and tried to get warm. As the night passed on the snow continued, and the weekend series began to look a little bleak. We went to bed unsure of the Saturday game status. 9:10 AM, next morning, all players are notified that the weekend series was cancelled and we are going home. The “pack-up” process was extremely surprising as most of us had imagined that we would at least try to preserve one game from the series. Twelve hours on the bus ride passed by with movies, funny conversations, music and sleep. We got back to Milwaukee around 10 pm. We took the rest of the weekend to get healthy and prepare to turn our play around at Northern Illinois the following Wednesday.