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(Baseball) McKinney Marshals ready for rally
By Andrew Snyder, Staff Writer
The McKinney Marshals of the Texas Collegiate League had a difficult start to their season, evidenced by their record of 4-14 at the end of June.
The team showed initial promise by notching a marathon win over the Brazos Valley Bombers on opening night. That win saw Nico Taylor, a McKinney native, drive in the winning run in the 16th inning; but that has been the Marshals’ sole at home win.
Assistant head coach Adam Yates is hoping the team’s tough times will stay in June.
“I would attribute [the turnaround] to our guy’s continued hard work and their understanding that you have to work through adversity,” Yates said. “Everyone has kept it together and kept their head up during the slump.”
The Marshals know what to expect form their opponents now, as the TCL’s 2009 season has only five participating teams: the Marshals, Bombers, Coppell Copperheads, East Texas PumpJacks and Victoria Generals. Every name on the TCL’s collective roster is associated with a college, and the stomping grounds of Marshals’ players include such notables as Florida (Riley Cooper), Arkansas (Mike Bolsinger) and Oklahoma (Tyler Ogle).
“It provides a place for college athletes to play throughout the summer,” said Mike Maack, Prestonwood head baseball coach and former Plano Blue Sox head coach. “Some kids don’t play much in college and others are starters. There’s a good mix of the two, and each gets the chance to really hone their skills and work on what they need to work on.”
The TCL has only been around since 2004, making it by far the junior to collegiate-based organizations such as the Cape Cod Baseball League, considered the nation’s premiere, and the Alaskan Baseball League. Yates, a McKinney High alum, was on the first Marshals team, and younger brother Garrett, of McKinney North, is currently on the roster. Rounding out the Marshals’ list of area athletes are former Allen players Cody Gambill and Jake Luce, McKinney natives Matthew Lackie and Andy Lalumandier and Plano’s Nick Thomas.
The purpose of the TCL and similar leagues, besides business and community interests, is to prepare players for the major and minor leagues. The rapid-fire schedule of the season, which often sees teams playing five to seven games a week, introduces athletes to the pace of play expected at the next level. That’s where most players have the ambition to end up, and the first TCL athlete to realize this major goal was Mark Lowe, who now pitches for the Seattle Mariners.
Another way the TCL tries to prepare athletes for advancement is the use of wooden bats, which replace the aluminum ones used in high school and college. But as a pitcher, Lowe never made much use of that knowledge.
“When you’ve got to play ball with wood,” Maack said, “it’s completely different from aluminum, where the sweet spot is the entire bat. With wood you have to find the spot.”
The Marshals entered the season with few retuning players, and inexperience with more precise batting left the team without a strong offense. That cost the Marshals close games; the team has repeatedly dropped one-runners.
“If you think about it,” Yates said, “there are a lot of freshmen, a lot of red-shirt freshman, on the team who haven’t played a lot at college, and coming right into wooden bats for the summer league is completely different.”
Standouts on the Marshals roster are focused around the pitching staff with Thomas, Taylor Massey, Dan Gentzler and Thomas Rooke combining to give depth to the bullpen. The low ERA of the bunch heading into Friday’s slate of games belonged to Massey’s 0.44 in 20.2 innings pitched. Massey has only given up a single earned run thus far.
Highlights on the hitting front are less numerous, but J. B. Brown and Jay Morris n with respective averages of .400 and .338 n are leading the way on the hopeful turnaround. To continue their recent winning streak, the team will be looking for similar contributions from a roster full of players. Yates thinks there is still time to put the Marshals in the mix for another TCL title to match those the team earned in 2006 and ’08.
“I strongly believe that right now,” he said. “Our record doesn’t indicate the talent on this team. If we can have a good month of July, I think we could be playing for a championship.”
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