Hlas: Hawkeye baseball has become smash hit

IOWA CITY - This is how it had been going for the Iowa Hawkeyes baseball team this season:

Iowa junior pitcher Blake Hickman, in the fifth of what would be his seven scoreless innings, was struck in the back Saturday by a line drive hit by Northwestern's Zach Jones. The ball caromed in the air to Hawkeye second baseman Jake Mangler, who caught it for an out and then threw to first base to double up a straying Wildcat baserunner.

It's best to be lucky and

good.

The play wasn't cause for joy at Banks Field at that moment, however, because Hickman was crumpled in pain. But he eventually stood up and got back on the mound, only to be told the smash off his body had been converted into an inning-ending double play.

'It's funny,” Hickman said, 'because I was laying there, I looked up and saw three outs (on the scoreboard). It was like ‘Maybe they got it wrong.' It was a double play? Sweet. Maybe this needs to happen a little bit more.”

Several major-league scouts were here to watch Hickman (6-1) and his 95 mph fastball. Five hours after he was done pitching, he said he had a bruised triceps muscle.

'It sucks right now,” he said. 'At the time, I felt fine. ... Nothing was going to take me out of that game.”

In the second game, Northwestern led Iowa 4-1 going into the bottom of the ninth inning at 7:14 p.m. when the game was delayed because of lightning and rain.

The delay lasted until 10:19 as the doubleheader stretched past nine hours long. After play resumed, Wildcat reliever Grant Peikert retired Iowa in order. It took five minutes.

The weekend weather forecast for Iowa City made playing two games on Saturday a safer bet than getting in single games on both Saturday and Sunday.

'In hindsight,” Iowa Coach Rick Heller said, 'I'd have rolled the dice and seen what tomorrow brings.”

Northwestern probably didn't protest being done with the series on Saturday, since that meant its streak of playing 37 straight games away from home ended one day early. The school's ballpark is being renovated, and won't host its first game of the season until Tuesday.

It hasn't just rained good stuff for the Hawkeyes so far in the Big Ten season, it has poured. Iowa is 10-2 in the league, a half-game behind first-place Illinois. This is a Hawkeyes program that finished higher than seventh in the conference standings once in the previous seven seasons.

The Hawkeyes scored three runs in the bottom of the ninth here Friday night to pull out a 4-3 win over Northwestern before a crowd of 1,588. The stands were close to full for the first game of Saturday's twin bill, and the gathering was 1,961.

That hasn't been seen at this ballpark 'since I've been here,” said Iowa Athletic Director Gary Barta, who came to work here in 2006.

'I felt like all along if we gave people a reason to come out here, they would,” Heller said.

'I felt like if we got decent weather and put a good product on the field, and won some games and played some good consistent baseball, that people would come out and support us. They have, and it was great to see how they came today.”

You wouldn't have had much problem counting crowds with your eyes just a couple years ago. But winning is a powerful agent of change. Iowa had a nice first season under coach Rick Heller last year, going 30-23 overall and reaching the Big Ten tournament. This season, the Hawkeyes are in a most unfamiliar place: The national rankings.

There are all sorts of college baseball rankings, and Iowa is in six sets of them. They're 14th according to Collegiate Baseball Newspaper, 24th in the USA TODAY coaches' poll.

Iowa hasn't won a regular-season conference baseball championship since 1990, an exact quarter-century. That was also the last time the Hawkeyes appeared in an NCAA tourney.

There's a lot of regular-season left, but the Hawkeyes seem headed to the NCAAs if their pitching and defense continues to perform at a similar rate as through the first 36 games.

Iowa doesn't have the league's most-dynamic offense, but the team is fourth in team ERA and first in fielding percentage. Hawkeye senior center fielder Eric Toole made a diving catch in Friday's win that was so good it was No. 3 on ESPN SportsCenter's top 10 plays of the day.

An Iowa baseball highlight on SportsCenter? That has to be the first one of those in the last 25 years, too.

'I just think it's going to continue to get better,” said Heller. 'What I wanted was the people who hadn't come out in a long time to start coming back because I felt like if they did, they'd see it was a lot of fun and I think we play a good style of baseball.

'I just think it's going to continue to grow. At least that's the plan.”

Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@thegazette.com

Facebook: 'Mike Hlas - The Gazette”

Twitter: @Hlas