Facing great pitchers in the past

O

orangecat

1,000+ Posts
All of this talk about a great TCU pitching staff got me thinking. I'm really into our history, but my memory seems to be fading pretty fast.

I'm pretty sure I was there in the mid 1980s when we blew away Bobby Witt from OU.(Central Regional?) He came in very highly regarded, All-American. I think we had something like a 7-0 lead on him in the 5th inning.

I wasn't there, but I seem to remember watching on TV when we beat up Ben McDonald from LSU.

More recently, I watched on TV as we beat that pitcher from Stanford, the one with the girlfriend, who had that memorable saying, something having to do with "getting it up on the mound"
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Nothing to do with facing pitching, but also, the OSU memory, the fight, and Curt Crippner facing Incavigila, Curt did a really good job on Pete, I think Pete went 1-4 or 2-4 which was really good.

That one single Pete hit right up the middle, man I wish I had a radar gun on that one!! Seemed like it was going about twice as fast as it came to the plate.

Oh no, I just remembered, and I was definitely there for this one. That little(I mean maybe 5 foot 8 or 9) lefthander from Pepperdine, or was it Cal-State Fullerton, who beat us in the Central Regional. I'm leaning toward Pepperdine about 80%.

I don't think he threw a legit fastball the entire game, but he pitched 9 innings against us, allowed about 1 run, we were frustrated the entire game.

I kind of miss the 6 team Central Regional. Now you wanna talk baseball up to your eyeballs. Can't remember for sure, but I think there were 3 games in one day for the first two, maybe even three days.

One year I bought two passes for the entire tourney, took different friends to different games, sat right in the sun on about the 3rd row. I wondered why I was able to get such good seats, it was pretty obivous it was because of being in the sun for the entire day. And I was, it was probably one of the best weekends ever!

Everybody else who remembers beating a great pitcher, let's hear your memories.
 
that game when we lost to the little left-hander. I remember that was a game in which Jose went to the center field camera platform, and started waving that big Texas flag, to get us cheering again. He really got us excited, we were dead silent before that.

Now, I'm really curious. I wonder what happened to that little left-hander? Was that just a bump in the road for him, or was that one of the best moments of his life. I wonder what his name is?
 
Recalling last year, I think my proudest moment came during College World Series bracket play when we chased ASU's ace, Mike Leake, who had an extremely low ERA (around 1.32, I think) and an unbeaten record (I think).

We had fallen behind early, 6-0, but then exploded for six runs in the top of the fourth en route to a 10-6 victory. In the process, we also rocked the Sun Devils' top stopper, Mitchell Lambson, a feat we would repeat a few days later in the bracket championship game.

Lambson's record on the year prior to facing the Longhorns was 9-3. After? 9-5.
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Given Mike Leake's stats at ASU and his start with the Reds, you could argue that the '09 Longhorns were the best offense he's faced in the past 2 years. (In 10 MLB starts, he's given up < 3 earned runs in 9/10 starts.) As far as Lambson, I couldn't understand why he was so successful. Watching him pitch, it doesn't look like he could break a pane of glass. I'd much rather face a guy like that than Leake or Josh Spence.
 
That little left hander from Fullerton is now making major leaguers look bad on a regular basis. His name is Ricky Romero and in his 2nd full season with the Jays he's posted the following line:

85.1 IP W/L 5-2 3.06 ERA 86 K's

He also had a near no-no broken up in the 8th I believe.

Mike Leake has proved to be no slouch either. He's already tearing up the bigs just one year removed from facing us in the CWS:

73 IP W/L 5-0 2.22 ERA
 
okay, so I know that it's not Ricky Romero I'm thinking about, it's a guy much older.

The game I'm referring to was in Austin, a championship game of a Central Regional. The more I think about it, the more I think he was from Pepperdine.

I was at the game, lived in Austin, old enough to go to the games by myself, so it had to be between 81 and 92. ( moved from Austin in 92).
 
if the fullerton guy was from the cws final in 1986, that was eddie delzer... stood 5'8, threw maybe 80mph...he was our version of Steve Labay basically....we couldn't hit delzer to save our life, not sure if we threw swindell or someone else....but delzer stole the show.

he never made it to aaa, but shut us down...that one hurt....also, that was augie's team, he didn't tell delzer he was starting until an hr before the game....reason, delzer got very nervuos before big games....figured if he gave delzer the news the nite before he wouldn't perform...worked....dammit
 
stats linked below, for the guy that throttled us in 1986...just goes to show, the sun really does shine on every dog's *** some days. The kid had some good late breaking stuff, i do remember that much....kid had heart.
The Link
 
and...it was 1984, not 86...shoulda known, that was the yr we all thought we were gonna have back to back titles....almost.
 
The one I remember the most is how we lit up Alex Fernandez early during his one (freshman) year at Miami in the late 80's. Seems like we crushed them that day winning by double digits.

IIRC, we faced them again in Omaha later that year. Fernandez was like 15-1 (only loss to us) and we lit him up again winning by double digits again.

Maybe someone can verify those numbers for me.
 
Vandy's ace was Jeremy Sowers, who was a top 10 pick earlier that week. We lit his *** up and our 1st round pick and ace that year, JP Howell, was dominant if I remember correctly. That was a fun series.
 
We did rough up Abbott, which prompted a series of politically incorrect comments from the Bunch.
 
UNO & Wally the Whip Whitehurst.
ESPN put that on as part of the College Baseball Sunday night game. It was a big deal back in the 80's.
Texas won & I got Whitehurst autograph before the game. The crowd was electric that night!
 
Purke - TCU 2010 super regional - 4.3 innings, 7 hits, 5 runs, 2 HR's Oh wait, that hasn't happened yet...YET!
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Just noticed this guy has been shelled hard and yanked within 4 innings more than 3 times. Also gives up lotta hits and most importantly the final total runs scored is high for the other team majority of his starts. It's just TCU scores 10 plus alot. Not this weekend. Game 1 is ours, I'm telling you Purke will get shelled and yanked within 5 frames...6 at the very most...but he will give up 5+ runs.
It's coming
 
Fernandez and Big Ben really stand out to me. Of course, I was in college then, so makes sense.

Can't wait for tomorrow
 
A lot of people won't remember him, but we lost to Greg Brummett of Wichita State in the 1989 Finals. Brummett won 18 games that year, 43 for his career, and he was MVP of the CWS that year. Which still chaps my ***, by the way. We lost only one game in that CWS and lost the damn tournament. I think they changed the format after that.
 
I dont think they changed the format until Texas beat S Carolina in '02?? otherwise, the championship game was a one game, winner-take-all, is that correct??
 
I did some checking; it was pure double elimination through 1987, then switched to a one game winner take all format until 2003, when it was switched to a best of three series.

I loved that 1989 team. Dressendorfer and Scotty Bryant were badasses.
 
Co-MVPs of the 1969 College World Series won by Arizona State.

Larry Gura, ASU and Burt Hooten, UT. Head to head in the first game of the series, UT and Hooten 4 - ASU and Gura 0.
 
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