If there’s any place that knows what an epic baseball drought is like, it’s Chicago.
The University of Chicago, that is.
Remember the White Sox’ 87-year World Series drought? How quaint. And the Cubs’ 108-year drought? OK, a bit longer.
But behold the Chicago Maroons, people. While you weren’t watching — fine, I wasn’t either — a Hyde Park little-engine-that-could got its season on track, got hotter than the grill at the Valois cafeteria on 53rd Street and won its first conference championship in 113 big ones.
The last one, in 1913, was so long ago, the Maroons were in the Big Ten. They’ve downsized just a tad since then, but they’ll carry their University Athletic Association crown into the school’s second NCAA Division III tournament ever. It’s no minor feat.
“It is a very big deal,” coach Kevin Tyrrell said.
On Monday, the team gathered in a meeting room to watch a stream of the NCAA selection show and learned it’s bound for Washington, Pennsylvania, for a four-team, double-elimination regional hosted by Washington & Jefferson that starts Friday. Hosting games wasn’t ever going to happen for the Maroons because, for one thing, their home field has no lights. They can commiserate with the 1984 Cubs about that.
But every championship team has its own story, as I was reminded last week after receiving an email about the Maroons’ success and — rather than ignoring it in this big-fish sports town — dropping in on a practice. The Maroons’ story is better than most.
On April 5, they dropped both games of a doubleheader against Brandeis to fall to 11-12 overall and 4-4 in the UAA. The NCAA Tournament had been the goal from the start, but now Tyrrell was telling his players heading into a series against Case Western Reserve in Cleveland they might have to win all 17 of their remaining games to have any chance to make it into the 64-team field. Then, in the first game at Case, the Maroons scored six runs in the first inning and still led by three entering the bottom of the ninth, when, one strike from victory, Case plated three on a bases-loaded triple. Case then walked it off on a wild pitch.
Talk about a gut punch.
Sixteen games later, though, wouldn’t you know it? The Maroons have yet to lose again. They won the last three at Case, swept Emory in four, swept New York University in four and went 5-0 in non-conference action. As unlikely as it was, they’ve rewritten the whole deal.
A sterling senior class has done the heaviest lifting. Against Emory at home, catcher Erik Rindner drove a home run over the fence in left, tying the school’s career record for dingers and RBI on the same mighty swing. Later in that game, outfielder Braden Jirovec broke the record for stolen bases. In a non-league game against IIT at Rate Field, Rindner drove in his record run. And in separate home games against NYU, Rindner bashed his record homer and Jirovec broke the record for hits.
A few innings after Jirovec’s milestone swing, the Maroons clinched a conference title more than a century in the making. As players dogpiled in the infield, senior ace John Butka snuck behind Tyrrell and dumped a cooler of water on his skipper.
“I shed a lot of tears that day,” Tyrrell said.
Butka, from St. Louis, is the UAA’s pitcher of the year. Rindner, from Potomac, Maryland, is its position player of the year. Along with fellow all-UAA first-teamer Jirovec, infielder Jack Sharp and utility man Michael Gladden, they sat in a semi-circle outside their dugout and charmed a visiting columnist due mainly to their obvious friendship, which was evident in how many times they mentioned fellow senior Brady Miller, a key infielder who happened to have somewhere else to be.
As comfortable together as a hand in a well-worn glove, these fellas, on and off the field.
“We’re playing some of the best baseball in the country,” Rindner said, “and I don’t think any team wants to see us in a regional or wants to play us right now, and I wouldn’t want to play us, either. I think we’re all pretty confident and expecting good things, and playing meaningful baseball is the best thing in the world.”
UAA teams have made it as far as the Division III College World Series final round, but no team from the conference has won the whole shebang since the tournament started in 1979. Also — mostly unrelated — no U of C player has appeared in a major league game since pitcher Art Lopatka in 1946, though Cubs great Ernie Banks did take classes at the school.
These seniors are getting ready to play the last ballgames of their careers, of that there is no doubt. Each of the Maroon five I interviewed already has a “real” job lined up. Rindner will be in Virginia doing consulting work in risk and financial advisory. Buitka will go into commercial banking in St. Louis. Gladden and Sharp will work in private equity in Chicago and Dallas, respectively, as Jirovec enters the world of strategy consulting.
“Baseball is temporary,” Rindner said. “Our academics and our brains are forever. If we can use baseball to get us into a great school and get a great education, and have some of the best friends in the world doing it, it’s one of the coolest opportunities we could have had.”
The senior six — Miller included — live in two apartments on the same block, three in one and three in the other, maybe 100 paces apart. They cook for one another, go to Sox and Cubs games together, trudge off the ballfield with dirt in their socks together. Does it get better than that?
It’s going to end soon, no matter how far the Maroons go.
“It’ll definitely be sad,” Gladden said. “All good things have to come to an end at some point. I’m sure we’ve all been aware of the fact that our days are numbered. Whether we flame out early in the tournament, or whether we make a deep run, either way, just trying to look around and enjoy it while it lasts. It’s so special being a part of this team.”
