OMAHA, Neb. — To register a hit, the ball doesn’t always have to be hit on a frozen rope. For the Michigan baseball team, this has been evident all season. Winning games while hitting bloopers and losing while hitting sharp line drives has been a part of the up-and-down season it’s had. But against Illinois, it had its peaks without hitting the ball particularly hard.
In fact, the Wolverines’ hitters had plenty of luck on their side. While eight hits seems serviceable enough, several of them came on awkward plays.
Take freshman first baseman Collin Priest’s double, for example. An extremely high chopper down the first base line, the ball bounced right off the edge of the dirt, flew well over the head of the Fighting Illini’s first baseman and landed in an awkward position for the right fielder to make a play. The normally slow-footed Priest trotted over to second base without any issues.
An awkward play with an awkward bounce, Priest’s double was anything but routine. But in a sport like baseball, weird things happen, and Michigan coach Tracy Smith isn’t shy about acknowledging that.
“That’s the beauty of our sport,” Smith said May 10. “ … You can do everything right and get a negative result.”
And while Smith’s words are from earlier this season, the sentiment still holds true. Throughout the season, plenty of hard-hit contact has been caught, as opposing outfielders scooped up tough grounders or robbed home runs. But Friday, needing run support to back up junior right-hander Will Rogers’ gem on the mound, the Wolverines threw up additional tallies on the scoreboard in peculiar fashion. Despite weak or awkward contact, it doesn’t mean the batter is shooed in for an out.
In the third inning, graduate right fielder Stephen Hrustich had one of these strange plays which became responsible for an RBI. Winding and dealing, Illinois left-hander Regan Hall gave Hrustich the exact pitch he was looking for: a middle-middle slider clocking in at 81 miles-per-hour. Swinging, Hrustich just missed making solid contact. Dropping his head and trudging towards first base, it should’ve been a routine pop out.
But it wasn’t.
As the ball hung in the air, the Illini second baseman and right fielder converged to make the catch. But instead, the two couldn’t get to the ball in time as it carried into a relatively shallow part of right field. As the ball dropped between the two fielders and rolled out of their reach, Hrustich picked his head up and marched into second with a double.
After time was called, Hrustich celebrated by swinging an imaginary bat. But not because he had his second hit of the ball game — because sophomore first baseman Mitch Voit came in to score.
“Anybody who knows me knows I like to keep it pretty light on and off the field,” Hrustich said Friday. “So just knowing that, going through my process and just trying to replicate what I want to do over and over again. I mean, if I hit the ball hard and they catch it, I can’t do anything about it. I’m just trying to control what I can control really, and that’s just doing my job or hitting a ball hard.”
The night prior against Penn State, both Hrustich and Priest did exactly that — controlling what they could. Both had their fair share of solid contact, but combined for only one base hit. In particular, Priest mashed several balls deep into the outfield that would’ve been home runs if not for strong winds pushing toward home plate. But that’s just baseball, the gusts of wind are out of anyone’s control.
So for a team that’s experienced the ebbs and flows that are common throughout a baseball season, the Wolverines are no stranger to fighting through it. But that doesn’t mean they won’t take some good fortune.
While luck hasn’t always been in Michigan’s favor, it certainly was Friday. Picking a four-leaf clover from a patch full of weeds, the Wolverines came out on top due in part to a little bit of luck.