TOPEKA — Emporia State’s players quickly packed up their things in silence, a silence that was broken by pitching coach John Martin sharing with the team his feelings on what had just taken place.
The cleaned-up gist of Martin’s message: This wasn’t Emporia State baseball.
Losing 11-1 by run rule to rival Washburn not only ruined the ninth-ranked Hornets chance at a sweep, it also ruined the day, which had started with a 10-6 win in Game One.
“We came here to win two,” coach Bob Fornelli said. “We didn’t come here to split, and not only did we split, we got embarrassed.”
Between games on Monday, a rainstorm delayed the start of Game Two. The Hornets filled that time with a short mock football game, and they even brought out a broom.
As Fornelli said, that was the intention — to complete the sweep. Instead, the Hornets played a mistake-prone brand of baseball that did not resemble the product they usually put on the field. They had three errors, and the ESU pitchers walked six Ichabods, plunked two others and also had a balk.
“Errors, hit batters, all that little stuff adds up,” Fornelli said. “... Didn’t compete. Didn’t do the right things, and when you don’t do that stuff and somebody’s hungry to beat you, then they’re going to beat you.”
Everything started to go wrong when Matt Raabe’s routine grounder went right between ESU third baseman Kevin Wempe’s legs to start the second inning. Raabe eventually came around to score on Cole Moore’s balk.
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