BSB: 20 YEAR LATER...BUD POLIQUIN HIGHLIGHTS LE MOYNE'S NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP RUN OF 1989

How long can the pain of a single pitch last? For Matt Sames, at least 20 years.
by Bud Poliquin/The Post-Standard's sports columnist
Saturday June 20, 2009

Syracuse, N.Y. -- It's been 20 years now since he tossed the pitch that he's cursed into the middle of his adulthood. Twenty years, and Matt Sames swears that the memory of if still jolts him out of his sleep on those nights when the baseball gods choose to have their fun.

"I threw," he confessed in a telephone call on Friday afternoon, "a really bad curveball."

And when he did, 20 springs ago at Municipal Stadium in Waterbury, Conn., an Arkansas Razorback named Troy Eklund lofted it into the wind blowing out to left field and it carried . . . and it carried . . . and it carried. And when it landed, it did so with a thud that was heard, if only metaphorically, all the way back in Central New York.

"It was a wind-blown fly ball," said Sames. "That's all it was. I thought we were going to have a play at the plate. But the wind was gusting at about a thousand miles per hour and it blew the thing over the fence. And, well, I still can't believe it."

He was on the mound that late-May afternoon in 1989 for the Le Moyne College Dolphins, who were in their first year of Division I competition and had played only 34 games, mostly against the likes of Oswego State and Utica, Mansfield and Ithaca, Binghamton and Kutztown State.

But that unremarkable pedigree had not mattered. Le Moyne, the little school from the snowy town known more for basketball, had wended itself to this grand moment.

Specifically, to the seventh inning of the NCAA Tournament's Northeast Regional title affair where the score was tied 2-2 and where a berth in the College World Series awaited the winner -- the powerful Razorbacks, who were 49-14 and a college baseball colossus . . . or the Dolphins, who were

The 1989 Le Moyne College Baseball team reached the NCAA Regional Final and fell to Arkansas one game short of the College World Series in their first season in Division I.

playing in what their coach, Dick Rockwell, later described as "those awful green-and-gold clown uniforms, those damn mismatched Champion discount things."

It was Arkansas, which had won the Southwest Conference crown, vs. Le Moyne, which had lost in the regular season to the likes of Coastal Carolina, Niagara and Siena.

With a trip to Omaha on the line.

Astounding.

"We could play," said Sames, then a junior right-hander out of Plattsburgh. "And we were on an incredible run. But it was still a David-and-Goliath kind of scenario."

And there was Goliath, with the bases loaded and with Eklund stepping in against Sames, Le Moyne's No. 2 starter whose arm, diminished by a kind of biceps tendintis, felt pretty much like a bad tooth. The pain, however, was not nearly enough to nudge Matt from the mound. Not anytime in route to Waterbury . . . and certainly not in that seventh inning.

"I had a pretty decent changeup, a pretty decent slider and an OK two-seam fastball," Sames said. "And I had a 'show-me' curveball. I had four pitches and I threw my worst one. You know, there's that old sports adage. 'If you're going to lose, lose with your best pitch.' Well, we lost on my worst pitch. And I'll never forget it."

Simply, that curveball hung out of Matt's weary arm. That's what it did. It hung not unlike a grapefruit on a belt-high branch. And Eklund's bat found enough of it. And the wind blew. And the ball carried. And just like that, after the floater of a grand slam had completed its lazy arc, 2-2 became 6-2. And the six runs held up in Arkansas' eventual 6-5 triumph, which ended the Dolphins' dream.

And here we are, 20 years later -- with the 2009 College World Series not coincidentally heading for its climax -- and Matt Sames continues to shake his head.

"I think about that game . . . a lot," he said. "I think about that grand slam . . . a lot. Way too much, probably."

Now, it must be submitted that Sames, an Albany-area businessman, spoke on Friday with a light voice. He remains bothered by what took place in Waterbury back in '89, sure. That's the athlete's prerogative. But the man is hardly haunted. There are far more troublesome matters in life than a lost baseball game and, sadly, Matt and his wife, Lori, know this far better than most.

After all, the youngest of their three daughters, five-year old Hannah, has been stricken with a terminal disease called Giant Axonal Neuropathy, which attacks the nervous system. So, as you can see by visiting HannahsHopeFund.org -- and please do visit, because maybe you can help -- Matt Sames has issues that nullify any serious mourning of long-ago home runs.

And, anyway, Matt and his Dolphins accomplished something fairly terrific 20 springs ago, and it's become even more staggering with the passage of time. Remember, itty-bitty Le Moyne defeated awesome Arkansas 7-5 in the opener of the Northeast Regional. And it came back from a 14-0 deficit to knock off powerful Pennsylvania 18-16 in 12 innings. And it eliminated amazing Arizona State 4-2 on the very day it sent the Quakers home.

And, yeah, along the way those unknown Dolphins opened eyes.

"Norm DeBriyn, the Arkansas coach, came up to me before the games," recalled Rockwell, "and he said to me, 'Rock, no disrespect, but I tried to get a scouting report on your team and nobody's ever heard of you. So, tell me, how good are you?'

"And I said, 'We're not very good, but we can beat you in one game. If you're going to hold a pitcher back, don't. Because we'll beat you.' And we beat them. We put them in the losers' bracket. They battled back, though, and beat us in the finals. Just a wind-blown grand slam beat us. That's all. If not for that, we'd have been there. In Omaha."

Imagine that.

Matt Sames does. All the time.