2007 NAIA World Series

Mediocre through much of the season, Ohio club rediscovered the fun of game in winning East Coast Super Regional
By Dale Grummert

On a recent Sunday evening in Ohio, Walsh University baseball players ate dinner at their coach’s home, played Wiffle ball with his 8-year-old son, and basically took their minds off a dismal season.

Three weeks and six postseason victories later, the season isn’t so dismal. The Cavaliers, in fact, have to be considered one of the unlikeliest teams ever to qualify for the NAIA World Series.

They’ve never won a regional title before, let alone a super regional, or gained a World Series berth. Nobody on their roster has hit more than four home runs this season. And their record is 28-28.

“I was stunned to see the difference in how we played during the season and how we played in these regional tournaments,” said Walsh sports information director Jim Clark, who announces minor-league baseball in the Cleveland Indians system. “I just couldn’t believe it.”

Their coach thinks something happened that evening he invited his players to his home.

After dinner, Tim Mead’s young son Jake hauled his Wiffle ball equipment to the backyard, hoping the guests would follow. One by one, they did. They organized a game, batting left-handed and making sure Jake always hit leadoff. Other children in the neighborhood showed up. Volleyball and kickball games broke out. Soon there were 50 kids in the backyard and the Cavaliers were “having a blast,” Mead said.

Two days later, before they played top-seeded Mt. Vernon Nazarene in the first game of the regional tournament, Mead told his players, “My challenge to you is to go out and have as much fun as you did playing Wiffle ball in my backyard.”

The Cavaliers won 3-1, ending a seven-game losing streak and touching off a six-game waltz through the postseason.

Fun wasn’t the only theme. The Cavs also played with intelligence, stressing situational hitting, sharp defense and accurate pitching. They try to force opponents into mistakes by, for example, hitting line drives and grounders. “We’re not interested in fly balls,” Mead said.

In the first round of the Series today, the Cavs will start Andy Schon (pronounced “shone”), a senior right-hander who in the postseason has struck out 24 and walked one.

The Cavs’ top-hitting regular, Mark Kelly, epitomizes the team’s upstart spirit, a freshman who began the season as a fourth-string center fielder and is now the leadoff batter. He doesn’t steal a ton of bases, but he hits .390 and runs the paths craftily.

Walsh, a school of 2,500 students located at North Canton, Ohio, bills itself as a “Catholic university of distinction,” and it won an NAIA Division II men’s basketball title two years ago. Baseball isn’t a high priority, netting the equivalent of perhaps three scholarships a year.

But continuity is in the Cavs’ favor. Mead, a Walsh graduate, has coached the baseball team for 24 years and the soccer team for 26 - “a weird combination,” he admitted.

He said he’s not taking anything for granted in his first World Series appearance. He’s not hoarding pitchers, or looking beyond the present inning. And he knows the Cavaliers’ role here.

“Every tournament has to have at least one Cinderella,” he said. “We’re hoping to find that shoe and see what we can do.”