Baseball in October. The World Series is what pops into most people’s minds; but you’d be surprised to know there are games going on at NIU’s Ralph McKinzie Field.

The NIU baseball team participates in its fall league, which constitutes scrimmage games where it splits off into Team Red and Team Black. While scrimmage games generally are looked at as monotonous, they are actually not only a way to view the newcomers to NIU (especially the new head coach Ed Mathey), but to see baseball at its purest form.

Friday, thanks to Mathey’s generous invitation, I was able to be the first base coach for Team Red. Through this I got to see firsthand guys already giving it their all and vying for starting positions – even though the season doesn’t start until March. With a new coach, every moment on the field is important.

When a team gets a new skipper, it is thought by many that the team will need time to get used to him and buy into his system. That the first year is sort of a “rebuilding year.”

Then you also have to add into the equation that the Huskies lost two key players, Noel Danielson and Pat Kerrigan, who led the team in several offensive categories last season. NIU also will lose Kerrigan’s and Danielson’s leadership ability.

Right away you’re thinking that the chances of them putting together a winning season are slim to none. This is because most people tend to look at a team on paper, and are either ready to dismiss them right away or hand them a trophy of some sort.

All you have to do, though, is look at this year’s major league baseball playoffs and see how untrue this theory is.

This year’s World Series will be between the Anaheim Angels and the San Francisco Giants, the two wild-card teams. Not the big, bad Yankees and Mr. Moneybags George Steinbrenner, or the defending champion Arizona Diamondbacks and their larger-than-life hurlers, Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling.

This is why the game is played on the field. You never know what’s going to happen. Look at players like Adam Kennedy. The guy hits seven home runs all year, platoons with Benji Gil, and then sends the Twins packing by hitting three home runs in one game.

Baseball is great that way, as new heroes are born all the time before our eyes. Right now when most people are thinking football, future heroes could be playing each other in NIU’s backyard. These guys are beating out infield singles and diving for fly balls nearly five months before the first game of the 2003 season.

With players like that and underdogs like the Angels proving that you can’t take anything for granted, one can’t help but find a place in their hearts for our national pastime.