Play (base)ball!

[newshound]

Rice, TCU and Baylor can ... and play it well!

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Talkin' CU, CSU baseball
By Terry Frei
Denver Post Staff Columnist

The NCAA Division I baseball playoffs begin today at various sites around the country.

Neither the University of Colorado nor Colorado State is in the field - and for good reason.

The CU athletic department dropped baseball in 1980. The ax fell at CSU in 1992.

In the Big 12 Conference, only CU and Iowa State don't have baseball programs. In the Mountain West, the list on nonbaseball schools also is short - CSU and Wyoming.

The athletic departments should bring back baseball in Boulder and Fort Collins.

The positives, especially in intangible terms of alumni goodwill and in giving Colorado prep products a chance to attend the state's two best-known public schools and play NCAA baseball, outweigh the negatives.

"It's embarrassing to me that we're in a conference like the Big 12 and we don't have a baseball team," Colorado's best-known baseball-playing alum, Denver native John "Bad Dude" Stearns, said Thursday from his home in Port St. Lucie, Fla.

The former Mets catcher, 53, is an instructor in the organization, but retains his affection for and ties to Colorado. John and his brother Rick were three-year CU football lettermen, and on the baseball diamond, John led the nation in home runs.

Stearns said about a decade ago he went to then-CU athletic director Bill Marolt with a plan to restore the baseball program. "I made a proposal to raise enough money to endow it," Stearns said. "I never got a response, and that was kind of amazing."

Stearns said he is willing to give it another try, if he gets any encouragement.

"I'd love to bring back baseball and I'd love to be the coach," Stearns said.

That endowment approach is neither impractical nor unprecedented, and budgets for many nonrevenue sports at prominent universities are endowed.

Another former CU catcher, Dennis Cirbo, was the Buffs' last All-American, in 1977.

"It's unconscionable that a Big 12 Conference school with a football program can't afford baseball," said Cirbo, 50, who owns a Denver insurance firm.

Before we go any further, it's necessary to dispense with some myths about college baseball in Colorado.

If everyone who now claims to regularly have attended games at CU and CSU actually had done so, neither school would have gotten away with dropping the sport. The crowds usually were sparse.

Also, it is folly to "blame" Title IX for the axing of baseball. Baseball at CU and CSU was a nonrevenue sport, like golf and gymnastics.

Folks who at least implicitly oppose equal opportunity for men and women in nonrevenue sports on the college level are riding dinosaurs as they enter the discussions.

And you aren't going to get Stearns going on an anti-Title IX rant; his sister, Carla, was one of the top women's softball players in the country at Northern Colorado in the early 1980s. Stearns said his proposal was to add baseball and women's softball at CU.

With all due respect to UNC, which has a solid baseball tradition and a Division I independent program, a gifted high school senior and serious student in this state should have the option of attending CU or CSU and continuing to play baseball.

Cirbo knows about the paucity of choices firsthand: His son, Nick, was a star catcher at Heritage High School before attending the University of San Francisco on a baseball scholarship. (He also had an appointment to the Air Force Academy, where he could have played for the Falcons' struggling program.)

"My son not having an opportunity to play at CU is upsetting, but that's only part of it," Cirbo said. "I've just never understood why we can't get baseball back up there."

In his first few weeks as CU's athletic director, Mike Bohn's public stance has been that CU needs to get a grip on its deficit and get the 17 current programs on solid footing before looking to add sports. At CSU, athletic director Mark Driscoll takes the same position. That's responsible pragmatism.

But there's just something distasteful and even disgustingly small-time about the lack of chances for Colorado high school graduates to play a traditional and popular sport at the NCAA, not club, level.

CSU has a women's softball program; CU doesn't. Driscoll said Thursday that before the Rams could bring back baseball, they almost certainly would have to add women's soccer first, a sport CU does have.

CSU and CU should have baseball and softball, and Bohn and Driscoll should make that goal a priority.

And, yes, the resumption of the programs should come with accompanying pledges from all who have made this a popular bandwagon: Show up for the games this time.

[EastStang]

Speaking of baseball, will my Nationals and Jon Patterson get past Rogers and the Rangers tonight? I never expected them to take two from the Angels. After Grandpa Robinson took a run at the Angels manager, there is a lot of buzz in the Nation's capital.