Club Baseball: DePaul Blue Demons defeat Columbia Renegades 14-1

The DePaul club baseball team, in its inaugural season, has gotten off to a strong start. Since  dropping their opening game against Northern Illinois University, the Blue Demons have won their past four games, all coming against the Columbia College Renegades.

On Saturday, DePaul took advantage of Columbia’s shaky pitching and fielding woes on their way to a 14-1 victory over the Renegades, the first game of their doubleheader.

DePaul quickly jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first inning, with Columbia starting pitcher Luke Warnken struggling to maintain consistency and locate his pitches. From that point on, the Blue Demons dominated, scoring another 10 runs on 11 total hits.

Meanwhile, DePaul starting pitcher Nolan Meehan showed great command, allowing only one earned run over five innings, striking out six. Meehan also contributed with the bat, getting two hits and driving in three runs.

“We just take it one pitch at a time, I guess,” said Meehan after their first game against Columbia. “We’re pretty rag-tag as it is, and we don’t have much in coaching, we can basically do whatever we want.”

With a lack of a distinct coaching philosophy, DePaul simply adjusted to Columbia’s poor pitching by swinging away, driving in plenty of runs throughout the game, which was called in five innings because of mercy rule.

When asked about specific plays the team made during the game, Meehan couldn’t recall anything that really stood out to him.

“I can’t even remember, it was really a blur, scored a lot of runs.”

At the receiving end of this onslaught of hits was the Renegade infielders, who not only often made questionable decisions throwing out runners, but were continuously forced to play well-hit grounders. Mackinley Salk, Columbia outfielder and team president, was disappointed not only with their five errors, but with their effort in general.

“It was piss-poor on our part, we need to go out there and actually play baseball,” said Salk. Though Columbia struggled, they were severely underhanded from the start, as they normally have over double the amount of players they did on Saturday.

“Today’s really, really rough because we have nine guys here, usually we come to the field with about 20 guys, and we’ve got enough for any situation that happens,” said Salk. “When I had to take the starting pitcher out, I had to shuffle everything around.”

The team absences were mainly due to finals rapidly approaching for Columbia, with players devoting their time to schoolwork instead of baseball.

“We’ve got finals coming up and people have got film shoots, stuff like that, and since these kids aren’t on scholarship, you know, not scholarship athletes, school comes first, and we preach that,” said Salk.

Warnken, a freshman, still has plenty of time to gain experience and become acclimated to the college-level game. Saturday was simply a day for him to forget.

“I just couldn’t locate my pitches. When I did finally locate it, they were just making good hits,” said Warnken after the game. “Today’s a day where you just don’t have your stuff and tip your hat to the other team and say, ‘You got me,’ and you just gotta get over it.”

“All season long and last season we’ve been preaching the same thing, and that’s flushing,” said Salk. “Any mistake you make, it’s over, that’s it. It’s done. This is a game of amnesia, and you need to have it.”

For DePaul infielder Steve Friedberg, who scored twice and drove in three runs, Saturday’s win over Columbia was a testament to their hard work practicing over the past few weeks.

“Us as a team, hitting the ball more frequently has helped us,” said Freidberg. “Obviously spending more time practicing over the past two weeks has helped us out. Our president Kevin Crittenden has gotten on us.

“Recently we’ve seen a lot of live pitching, so I think live pitching helps, the in-game situations help.”

With only one game against Purdue remaining on their schedule (5/7), the Blue Demons will look to build upon their successes thus far and finish the season on a high note.

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