Thursday, May 7, 1998
Offensive showcase highlights win
BASEBALL: Two players hit two homers to earn team one more
victory
By Vytas Mazeika
Daily Bruin Staff
UCLA senior outfielder Eric Byrnes felt good Wednesday night –
especially considering the Bruins (24-30) defeated UC Santa Barbara
16-4.
He felt so good that he was ‘swinging for the fences’ – a
baseball phrase meaning he tried really, really, really hard to hit
a home run.
Byrnes, in his last ever home game as a Bruin, hit the ball very
hard during his first two at bats. The problem was both times he
hit harmless fly balls. In his third at bat (and fourth swing),
Byrnes reached base on an infield single – hardly the desired
result.
Byrnes went on to steal his 29th base of the season, but the
home run in the last home game as a Bruin was still missing. Then,
in the bottom of the fifth, Byrnes came to the plate with two men
on base. The count had reached three balls and no strikes when
Byrnes smashed a ball deep down the left field line.
The ball went foul, and when Byrnes stared at the mammoth shot
that just barely sailed foul, something made him mad. So when the
next pitch came right down the middle, Byrnes ripped the ball to
center field for a three-run homer.
"I hit the ball foul (in the fifth inning) and I think some guy
in the (UCSB) dugout was saying ‘Quit looking at it. It’s a foul
ball.’ I’m all looking at it and so it pissed me off," Byrnes said.
"So the next one I said ‘Bring whatever you got. I guarantee you
I’m hitting this one out.’ And so I did, so I was pumped about
that."
Was Byrnes quest for a home run the perfect way for a Bruin to
leave UCLA? Maybe junior Eric Valent came up with a better
good-bye.
Valent, a possible first-round pick in the upcoming Major League
Baseball Amateur draft, hit his 28th and 29th home runs of the
season in his first two at bats. Valent is now second in the nation
in home runs with three games left.
Valent, who went five-for-five to raise his average to .356, was
hoping to be the one Bruin who broke out with a three homer
game.
"I’ve never hit three in a game before – no one has (on this
team)," Valent said. "We’ve joked about it all year. If someone had
two home runs we’d be saying ‘Is he going to be the one to get the
third.’ We did that with everyone that had two home runs."
Valent wasn’t the only one who had a chance to hit three homers
for the night. Freshman shortstop Chase Utley hit two home runs in
his first three at-bats. Then in his fourth at-bat he failed to
deliver.
But Utley will still have a chance next year to reach the three
home run in a game mark. Seniors and departing juniors on the UCLA
squad must come to terms with the fact that their tenure is only
three games away from a sudden end.
"It hasn’t hit me yet," Valent said. "It’ll probably hit me
maybe after the season is over."
"It hasn’t hit me yet," senior second baseman Nick Theodorou
said. "I think next year when everyone else is playing here but I’m
not, it’ll hit me more."
"It hasn’t really sunk in because it’s not the last game,"
senior Cassidy Olson said. "But you couldn’t have gone out in a
better way as a team."