Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/135208
BASEBALL PSU falls to Spartans in season finale Penn State's up-and-down 2013 season ended on May 18 with a 21 loss to Michigan State at Medlar Field at Lubrano Park. The Nittany Lions finished with a 14-36 overall record, including a 4-20 mark in the Big Ten. Outfielder James Coates was a unanimous selection to the Big Ten All-Freshman team. Coates played in all 50 games, started 49 and finished with a .392 on-base percentage and a .295 batting average. He ended the year on a seven-game hitting streak and a 12game reached-base streak. Senior second basemen Luis Montesinos was a Big Ten Sportsmanship Award honoree after completing 172 games for Penn State in his career. SOFTBALL Nittany Lions go 1-1 at Big Ten tourney Eleventh-seeded Penn State upset fifth-seeded Illinois in the opening round of the Big Ten tournament in May but fell to thirdseeded Minnesota, 4-0, in the quarterfinals at Nebraska. The Nittany Lions finished their season at 16-34, including a 5-17 conference mark. Senior outfielder Cassidy Bell was named to the National Fastpitch Coaches Association All-Great Lakes Region first team after a season in which she batted a school-record .456. She also broke single-season PSU records with 20 home runs, 55 runs and 42 walks while posting a 1.007 slugging percentage and a .591 on-base percentage. • The Penn State women's softball club finished third at its national championship tournament recently in Atlanta. The team went 25-4 this season, and its finish at nationals was its best ever. PRATO CONTINUED FROM 55 active members and $2 for allied membership. A month later, Barnes was elected president. Bedenk declined any official position, but while he did not serve as vice president or secretary-treasurer, he continued to be a behind-the-scenes force in the neophyte organization. With the help of Rickey and other executives in major league baseball, the new coaches association was able to sponsor an all-star college game at Boston's Fenway Park in June 1946. The group then convinced the NCAA to sponsor an official championship playoff, and the first tournament was held in the spring of 1947. Kalamazoo, Mich., was the site of the championship series and featured just two teams in a three-game playoff. California won the first championship with a two-game sweep of Yale, with a meager total of 1,896 fans in attendance. The next year, Kalamazoo also hosted the championship series, and Southern Cal beat Yale, two games to one. In 1949 the championship series expanded to four teams, and the games were moved to Wichita, Kan. Texas went undefeated in three games to win the title. Businessmen in Omaha then convinced the coaches to move the championship series to their city. With a revised format of eight teams in a double-elimination structure, the 1950 series drew a total atten- dance of 17,805, but that was enough for the coaches association to decide on Omaha as the permanent home for the championship series. The series actually lost money in 10 of its first 12 years in Omaha and didn't officially become known as the College World Series until the late 1960s. In 1987 the format was altered again, with the eight teams divided into two four-team double-elimination brackets and the winners of those brackets meeting in a single championship game. That has remained the format ever since, and the College World Series now attracts upwards of 25,000 fans each year. Before Bedenk's death in 1978, the archives staff at Penn State's Pattee Library asked him to describe in writing his involvement in the formation of the coaches' organization – now known as the American Baseball Coaches Association – and the College World Series. His succinct reply, hastily scrawled at the bottom of the archives inquiry, tells a lot about the kind of humble man he was: "E.D. Barnes and I organized the association behind closed door before it was made public. – F. Joe Bedenk." Surely, those immortal words are worthy of a plaque somewhere in Lubrano Park to honor the forgotten all-time best baseball coach in Penn State history and the man who helped start the College World Series.