Baldwin Wallace lines up its offense perfectly

CEDAR RAPIDS - They were lined up next to the first-base dugout, about as neatly and orderly as you could possibly imagine.

Every aluminum bat the Baldwin Wallace University baseball team brought with them from Berea, Ohio, to the NCAA Division III College World Series was pulled out pregame Friday afternoon at Veterans Memorial Stadium and, well, neatly and orderly lined up.

On purpose, courtesy of senior reserve catcher D.J. Doria.

“He is solely in charge of organizing and bringing the bats to life,” Baldwin Wallace’s Luke Vonderhaar said, after the Yellow Jackets outscored Endicott (Mass.) in a first-round game. “He does the line, he does it right. And he’s rolling right now.”

Just get them out into the sun, right, boys?

“Exactly. Warm them up,” said Baldwin Wallace’s Andrew Parker.

“I think there’s some sort of incantation there, too,” Vonderhaar said. “He blesses them.”

Baseball dudes are so superstitious ...

After Baldwin Wallace put together 17 hits here, at least one from each guy in the starting lineup, you’d better believe Doria will be lining up those Eastons, Louisville Sluggers, Maruccis, etc., in meticulous fashion again tomorrow afternoon when BW plays a winner’s bracket game against top-seeded Johns Hopkins (45-5).

Johns Hopkins overcame eight errors, rallying for two runs in the seventh and six in the eighth to win Friday’s opener, Misericordia (Mass.), 10-5. Baldwin Wallace (37-10) is the eight-team field’s No. 5 seed, beating fourth-seeded Endicott (45-8) in a huge game for the third time in two years.

The teams were paired in last year’s super regionals, with BW sweeping two games to get to the CWS. Just so happened they were matched again here.

“Endicott is a very well coached team,” said Baldwin Wallace Coach Brian Harrison. “We were a little familiar with them ... You win with pitching, defense baserunning, and our guy on the mound was special today.”

That’d be Garrett Miller, who went 7 1/3 innings, a long start that is so crucial in a big tournament like this one. Miller said he developed a blister in about the fourth inning, which forced him to ditch his slider, yet he persevered.

Baldwin Wallace broke open a 4-3 game with eight big runs in the fourth. Parker and Vonderhaar had home runs in the game, combining for five hits and six RBIs.

“Every hit just adds to the next guy’s confidence,” Vonderhaar said. “The next guy up gets more confidence, the next guy even more. That’s what happened. When we’re locked into our approach, hitting strikes hard, I think we’re pretty dangerous up and down the lineup.”

Two more World Series games were played late Friday night. The double-elimination tournament runs into next week.

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