One-run games becoming routine for USC
Opening Day didn’t start routinely for South Carolina senior pitcher Michael Roth.
He woke up at 7:30 a.m. nervous after having a bad dream, and when he got to Carolina Stadium he wasn’t sure if the uniforms would have names and numbers on the back, which would have forced the Gamecocks to wear their batting practice tops.
But when all was said and done, the Gamecocks would leave the field in their regular uniforms, with names and numbers that had been stitched on at the last minute, and with a 2-1 win over VMI that seemed perfectly routine for South Carolina.
“We always have a bunch of close games, right?” said centerfielder Evan Marzilli. “It was good to see that we could win in a close game today, but it was only the first game.”
Marzilli led off the eighth inning in a 1-1 game and a new pitcher on the mound, hoping to sway the close game in the Gamecocks’ favor. He had singled in his first two appearances, but flew out to left in the sixth inning.
“I just went up there to see what the infielders were going to play,” Marzilli said of his last at-bat. “If they were playing me back, I was going to [bunt] – that was my original intention, but the key there is just getting on base and getting that run across.”
Once Marzilli was on base, right fielder Adam Matthews laid down a sacrifice bunt to move him to second. First baseman Christian Walker popped up to the first baseman, bringing third baseman LB Dantzler to the plate with two outs.
“At the beginning, I was sitting fastball, wanting to see if he would leave something in I could pull for a base hit,” Dantzler said. “I took a fastball that I probably should have hit and swung at a changeup. I got down 0-2 and I was just battling – trying to use my hands and use the whole field. Then I got a hit up the middle.”
Marzilli came around third and easily beat the throw to home to give the Gamecocks their first and last lead of the game. For USC coach Ray Tanner, the close games have become normal, as college baseball makes it challenging to have high-scoring outings.
“Since the bat changed a couple years ago, it’s difficult unless some team plays real poor or pitches very poorly, you have a chance to win,” Tanner said. “You may be down 5-2 or 6-3, but you’re still in it. I think that’s the difference. We’ve been in a lot of these and I told the players after the game, ‘You’re going to be in a lot more.’ That’s just the way it is in college baseball today and you do have to pitch and play defense and play with tremendous awareness and don’t make mental mistakes.”
While the defense for the Gamecocks was able to hold up, keeping VMI to its one-run earned in the second, the infield saw several miscues, including a drop by Dantzler to allow a runner on first, a ball skipping past Vergason on the following play, and an error on a throw by shortstop Joey Pankake in the fourth.
“There’s 8,000 plus out there so everybody’s a little nervous,” Dantzler said. “After about the fourth inning, after everybody had kind of made a few plays, we started getting settled in.”
And while it took the Gamecocks some time to feel comfortable after an Opening Day that started abnormally, it ended as many other games have ended for South Carolina, as USC played 15 one-run games last season. Furthermore, it may have begun with USC winning a different type of close battle.
“Like anything else in this business, we were coming down to the wire getting our gear,” Tanner said. “We were ready to go and some things happened… I said, ‘Hey, we’ll wear [batting practice] jerseys, so what?’ What does it matter? We’ve been practicing in them. But they were clutch getting us dressed up so we looked OK.”