Category: University of Illinois Baseball

Those of you who are Illini fans might be interested in the Hot Stove Banquet which is co-sponsored by the University of Illinois Baseball team and the Fighting Illini Dugout Club. The keynote speaker is White Sox Executive Advisor to GM Rollie Hemond.

Head Coach Dan Hartleb really talked this up during our interview with him in our last podcast and seems very excited about it. He said proceeds from this will go to help the baseball program.

Details on the Banquet and getting tickets can be found at the Fighting Illini website.

Kudos to a reader of the blog who pays a lot of attention to the transaction logs. He noticed that two days ago, former Illini star Dusty Bensko signed with the Windy City Thunderbolts of the Frontier League. Here is the roster for the Thunderbolts team.

In 2005, his senior year, Bensko led the Illini in homeruns with 15 and rbis with 57 while hitting .317.

Good luck Dusty!

The University of Illinois baseball team got a boost when Casey Crosby signed a letter of intent with them. Crosby, a pitcher from Elburn, IL, was ranked #1 in the state by the Truth Prep Baseball Report.

“I’m extremely excited by the addition of Casey Crosby to our 2007 recruiting class,” Hartleb said. “Casey is ranked by many publications as the No. 1 player in the state of Illinois, bringing great athleticism as well as a much-needed left-handed arm to our pitching staff. He also has the physical and mental abilities to be an impact player early in his career.

This is big for the Illini who lost some starting pitchers (including Brian Blomquist) to graduation last year. Crosby will join the team in the fall semester of 2007.

Crosby went 2-1 with a 1.40 ERA in his junior year and hit .405. His brother Patrick has been drafted by the Yankees. He’s a tall fellow. He’s 6’4″.

Other Illini news: Chicago White Sox Executive Advisor to the General Manager Roland Hemond has been slated to be the keynote speaker at the 2007 Hot Stove Banquet sponsored by the U of I Baseball team.

Got a chance to catch some good Illini action over the weekend. And no, I don’t mean the Illinois/Iowa football game. I did watch that on TV. Ugh.

i did catch a couple games of the Illini baseball Blue-Orange series. For those not familiar, it is essentially a split squad scrimmage. But watching them play and hearing them in the dugout, this was no practice game. They took it very seriously.

I sought out Shawn Roof who I corresponded with over the summer. He recognized me once I handed him my card and we had a nice chat. He thinks the team looks good for 07 and despite the loss of key pitchers to graduation, the pitching staff are developing some good arms.

Lars Davis was the catcher for the Orange team. For the Blue team, the backstop was a freshman Joe Mercurio. Mercurio has a good arm and hustles behind the plate when the need arises (there were a few wild pitches and he wasted no time getting them).

My favorite moment? When what looked like a pitch in the dirt bounced up, caught Mercurio in the neck. He seemed stunned for a moment but had the wherewithal to throw the runner out at second.

On his way back to the dugout, he said to his teammates, “The f–ing ball got me in the neck!”. A minute later, he came out of the dugout and came up to me (sitting pretty much by myself near the dugout) and said “Hey, sorry man”. I guess he didn’t want to offend.

However, Lars Davis will most likely be the starting catcher for the Illini come spring. He had a good season last year hitting .307.

If you want to see some photos, the Fighting Illini site has some good photos posted.

Softball
After Friday’s Blue-Orange game, the family and I headed over to Eichelberger Field to watch some women’s softball. Boy, that was some treat.

First, who was standing next to us but current Philadelphia Force and former Illini Jenna Hall. Hall recently was named to the all-NPF team. It looks like she’s doing some support work for the Illini. I encouraged my six-year old girl to get her autograph. Later that night, she and I went to the Philadelphia Force’s website so she knows exactly who this woman is.

The Illini were on their game Friday night. Parkland may be a community college but if I remember last year, they have a tough softball team. Angelina Mexicano hit her third homer in as many games.

One of the more stranger plays of the game, Molly Lawhead, up to bat squared to bunt. She connected and the ball hit the ground and rolled about 3 inches. The Parkland catcher’s throw was wide and went into right field. Another bad throw back into the infield and Lawhead was safe at home.

Final score: Illinois 3 Parkland 0

Heads up for baseball fans in the Champaign-Urbana area! The Illini baseball team will be playing its annual Blue and Orange Series for the next few days.

Scheduled times are:

Friday, Sept. 22 – 4:15 p.m.
Saturday, Sept. 23 – one hour after the end of the football game
Sunday, Sept. 24 – 11 a.m.
Monday, Sept. 25 – 4:15 p.m.
Tuesday, Sept. 26 – 4:15 p.m.

I’ll be there for at least a few of them.

Mike Rohde

The University of Illinois baseball players have begun a blog of sorts. The best way to find them is to go to the U of I baseball page and find the entries from there.

At the very least, we can find out what going on with the team. Jake Toohey writes that the guys are happy to be back using aluminum bats after using wood bats over the summer.

In his writeup, Mike Rohde tells us management is empahazing the importance of good fielding skills among the pitchers.

Stay tuned…

I got an email from a reader inquiring of the goings-on of former Illini Dusty Bensko. The writer noted that Dusty was cut from Independent League and wondered if this was the end of the road for his career.

After a bit of searching, I found that Bensko will be joining the Parkland College Cobras as a coach. Parkland is a community college based in Champaign, Illinois and is in the Collegiate Conference of Central Illinois. Most popular alumini of Parkland is pitcher Jose Acevedo.

Does this spell the end of any chance of Bensko making the bigs? I guess only he can answer that question but I know there are players who have jumped to the majors after taking a year to coach at a lower level. There’s one in particular whose name I just can’t remember who was brought up this year that fits that kind of scenario.

Whatever happens, good luck Dusty and good luck Cobras!!