University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Blogging the Plate with Kevin Coker
2/15/2006 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
During the 2006 Southern Miss Baseball season, redshirt-senior catcher Kevin Coker will sit down with Southern Miss Media Relations Graduate Assistant Joe Trahan to give Golden Eagle fans his perspective on baseball and life as the season progresses.
February 15, 2006: Fourth blog entry with thoughts on opening day versus Nicholls State (2/15 at 3 p.m. at Pete Taylor Park) and supporting the athletic family at Southern Miss.
It's game time. We had last minute preparations on Tuesday, and had our last intrasquads this past week. We're getting ready to play ball and are fine tuning everything. We're tired of playing each other, and we're ready to play against another team. Having to call balls and strikes against each other has led to a lot of verbal fighting between our teammates when we were playing against each other. There aren't any heated debates, but I always get mad if I see a ball that's called a strike by one of my teammates or by an umpire in general. Everyone gets mad, but I'm probably the worst out of all of us. However, everybody's competitive and always wants things to go the way they think things should go. As the catcher who calls the balls and strikes, I don't want to be dirty to my fellow position players, but I also want to give my pitcher the pitches that I think he deserves. I have made some mistakes on calls on accident against some of our guys. You can ask Coach Burroughs about it: he says I have a big strike zone and if I call a ball, you can be rest assured that it's a ball.
We're interested to see what we can do out on the field. We have new guys that have never played before, but we also have one guy who is going to be one of the all-time greats in Southern Miss history in Cliff Russum. He's off of one year's rest, and it's going to be fun to see what he does on the mound for the first time back. I think that there's going to be a lot of positive energy for him out there. It's unreal to think that he hasn't even touched the field in a year. With all of his patience over the past year, his character is going to shine out on the mound on game day.
Nicholls State is going to throw a "lefty" (Justin Breaux), so what Coach Palmer is going to do against left hand pitchers is to play more right hand hitters. So the lineup is probably going to be Trey Sutton leading off and Bo Davis behind him. After that, it doesn't matter if it's a righty, lefty or if he throws from both sides of the plate or from the top of his head, Marc Maddox is going to hit in the three hole. Trey Cuevas is going to hit fourth, because he has the most raw power. I think I'll hit fifth, Jody Blount will hit sixth, seventh will probably be Drew Carson, eighth will be Luke Adkins, who is a left-handed hitter that will hit at the lower half of the lineup against left-handed pitching and will probably lead off against right handers. At the ninth spot and at shortstop, Brian Dozier will be the starter at that position because Chris Matesich, who was last year's starter, isn't back to 100 percent yet. Now against right handers, Coach will switch it up with Luke moving to the top of the lineup, Sutton moving to number two, Bo moving down a little, and (junior college transfer) Toddric Johnson playing in center field against "righties." Coach Palmer says we'll probably do this the first month to see who's hitting well. After the first month, things start to flatten out and you begin to find out who your best nine are and you stick to it, to a certain extent. There are going to be some guys who only play against right hand pitching or left hand pitching.
The good thing about this team is that everyone knows their role. I know my job is to hit for average, handle the hit and runs and bunt when I have to. Whereas, Marc and Cuevas know that they have to hit more home runs and drive in more runs. Dozier knows that his job is to field ground balls, and hitting is a bonus. If he fields every ground ball, he can hit .100 this year, and if he wouldn't make an error, Coach Palmer wouldn't care. This goes the same for the bullpen. We have Cliff starting tomorrow, but at the same time you want to use some other arms for the game.
Everybody wants to be a part of that first game. That's why I'm glad I'm a position player and not a pitcher because the chances of four guys coming in to pitch in the game are not good unless we're losing the game, and we don't want to be losing. So that's why I'm happy to be in there the whole game as a position player instead of having to wait my turn to pitch. Overall, we just hope that we get a good start from Cliff, put a few runs on the board, and go from there.
I feel confident about all of our freshmen that are going to see a lot of time this season. Luke is a hitting machine, and on the other side, Dozier is a defensive mastermind; he's (MLB shortstop) Rey Ordonez at shortstop. I'm not saying he can't hit, because he can hit great, as well as Luke can play great defense, but Luke's bat overshadows his defense and Dozier's glove overshadows his bat; they're just that good on either side of the ball. Michael Ewing is another freshman who has a lot of pop who hit three home runs during intrasquad spring ball. He's going to supply plenty of power.
Some of our new guys are going to be really good as well. (Junior college transfer) Scott Massey is going to be starting against Wichita State this weekend. He is a transfer from Tennessee-Martin and Scott and I have become good friends. He's been hanging out with me, Marc and Cliff a lot and he's a good guy who I think is going to do some positive things for us this year.
As a team, a lot of us went to the men's basketball game this past weekend against UTEP and by the way, the officiating was horrible! We love our basketball team and love to support them. We see the basketball players on campus and they tell us that they can't wait until baseball season to start so they can come watch us play. I saw (forward) Jason Forte the other night and I said, "Great game the other night; way to hit your free throws." He thanked me and told me that he couldn't wait to come watch some baseball. It's cool to watch other sports. Of course, everybody's going to go watch football, and everybody has to watch football! The football players come to watch us play too. We saw (quarterback) Dustin Almond at the basketball game, and we were shouting stuff back in forth in the coliseum. He's excited about baseball like we were excited about football when it was here.
When I first got here as a freshman, there was some separation between the football players, basketball players and us. We didn't congregate that much, but over the years things have changed. We're on a first name basis with a lot of other student athletes on campus, and we all go see each other play. We love to support them, and we know that they're going to support us too.
I don't think he knows this, but I played against (guard) Jarekus Singleton in high school and had to guard him. After he scored 15-20 points in the first half, I was about sick of him! He's a good player. My high school (Warren Central) went to a game before we played each other to scout out his school (Clinton), and my coach told me that he was the guy I had to guard. Believe me; I said my prayers that night before I played him! He and Mike Cashion went to school together at Clinton, and they're buddies. Our basketball team has come so far. I love to watch them play because they play hard, they play defense and they get into your face. Every time I watch them, they're playing against a seven footer, and we don't have a seven footer to match up against them! So we have Forte down there, at 6'5, muscling down there with them, or (Forward) David Cornwell who gets down there as well, and is a fun player to watch too.
The reason why I talk about this is because when we go to other events, we go as a team. As a matter of fact, Trey Sutton sends out a text message to the whole team the day of the game that says "basketball game: 7 p.m. tonight." He's excited about it, so he reminds us about it. The basketball players will walk towards us at the end of the game, win lose or draw, point up to us and say "thank you for coming; we see you and we appreciate it and we'll be there for you." It's a family here at Southern Miss, and I'm not saying that any particular sport did that, but every sport recruits good people and all of the coaches from Coach Palmer to Coach Eustachy to Coach Bower and all the coaches at this school do a good job of disciplining their players. Playing at a school like this makes it tough to have to leave in a few months. I'm going to hate not being a part of this next year. No matter if I hit 700 home runs this year, I can't come back and play next year. This is my last first game, as Cliff and I were talking about the other day; it's our last home opener. It's cool that he's pitching on this day, and I hope that all of the fans come out and I hope we win.
