When a team faces the boiling waters of adversity, it can react two ways:

1. It can turn on itself, and slowly implode – losing the ability to care about wins and losses.

2. It can skyrocket, and become infinitely stronger – a loss only breeds fuel for an everlasting desire to win.

Our last couple of weeks was riddled with adversity. Every game seemed to manifest itself in the latter innings as carbon copies of the game before it. We seemed to hit rock bottom, the beginnings of implosion reared its ugly face and crawled beneath our skin like an infestation of ticks over infield grass.

We dealt with adversity on all ranks. The players seemed to divide themselves into two species, mammals that pitched – and simians that hit and played the field. The two kinds cohabitated, but harmony was hidden beneath the lack of base-hit food. It seemed as though baseball diamonds had become fish-tanks of controlled fate. Although 9 guys stepped out and played their hearts out, it seemed like their was an unseen carrying capacity of victory – and whether the cards were in our favor or not, somehow the house always won.

If related to poker – we were the returning northeastern kings of gamble. We gambled on base-paths; we gambled on the mound with 0-2 fastballs. Slingers would stand rigid in their challenges, eyeing down opposing hitters like a western standoff. Last years base stealers returned, but most attempts at running burglary would end in non-favored calls or tagged arrests. With all the odds against us, not just our matches gunning whole-heartedly for us – but forces of nature, unseen energies raked off the drying home-plate dirt, we were in the midst of smite from on-looking gods of baseball.

With this spirit in mind - readers can delve into the dismal mood of our team. Traveling semi-locally to C.W. Post, we embarked on our next 5-game series. Post would take 4 games from us, half of which we were leading in the latter part of the game. On a Saturday slated to play a double-header – Post managed to sweep the day. The most insane thing about both games – was they were won at the hands of a single player. The same guy walked us off twice, and both times – from an identical double in left-center.

We all were frozen - our minds static and delusional. Our feet became heavy beneath us, our thoughts clouded with misery. The cost of our sweat and hard work was hardly enough to walk away with defeat anyway. But, like all adversity-ridden teams – we won the 5^th game by 4-hit shutout, 2-0.

Baseball is truly mysterious. One of our starters Gabriel Duran said it to point, “It happens.” Not only was it happening to us in a torturous frequency – but also it was consistently happening with outer-worldly like tendency. We had guys getting illness unable to play, back problems plaguing kids that shouldn’t happen until elder years. Arm problems to guys that were essential. But most importantly – our spirit began to fade worryingly.

We cruised into our next series against Mercy – who we have had unrivaled success against in the past with optimism. After dropping the first game to them, our slightly upped persona still lingering on us from our last win began to lose its luster. But – bouncing back, we won the next 2 games. Duran threw a no-hitter in the first game, with 10 K’s. This is Duran’s second no-hitter; the kid is honestly just a spectacle to watch. Mercy’s pitching was much better than its previous years – as our hitters seemed to struggle against them. But – even with scrapped leads in late innings, our pitching failed to tame their bats as well. Mercy would take the series 3-2, and the Dowling program would find a new respect for their program. They seemed to be playing a better brand of baseball – and it was clear they were always playing to win; I can appreciate that kind of heart.

Our season wasn’t stacking up to what we all dreamed it out to be. We were a returning dominant force locked within a tungsten cage of mediocrity.

Boxes of pizza fed our depression, we sat in vans eating and merrymaking in the face of defeat. The baseball gods sat above, drinking and laughing at our faults – waiting for us to falter, even slightly. Surely they thought, we would crumble and give up. But we seemed to reject their curse with some kind of resistance. We laughed back up at them – and thanked them for their trials. We were the Dowling demy-gods, all things aligned against us. When a sub goes rock bottom, the only way is back up. Our coaches, like generals – prepared for war against the mischievous gods.

Bullpens manifested torpedoes; cage-time and batting practice created fuel for squarely hit baseballs. We headed into the STAC series at full potential, wings on our back for better outcomes.

Something was different in the dugout. Even though the game clock-worked between the lines still, the dugout was filthy with good-spirit. We were all, tired of losing. Tired of being punished. We were angry at the clouds, angry with ourselves. So we came together instead, banded like a Spartan phalanx – one guy protecting the other. In failure, and in success – like some crooked team marriage.

We lost some close games to STAC early on, dropping the first three and losing the series. Their pitching proved too elusive. Again, adversity laughed at us. But again, we laughed back. We took the next 2 games by force, the first one extended into 12 nail-bitten innings, and the second an outright hitting display.

We’ve had some consistent performers at the plate, led by Frank Intagliata. Frank seems to carry much of the weight of the position players – as a senior leader. Every weekend, whether Frank is seeing the ball well or not, he always finds a way to scrap a hit and start a rally. He begins something contagious, along with senior Daniel Pembroke by swings of their bats. Slowly, this infects the rest of the order who follows along with hits. Eddie Squeri, our ace shortstop makes mind-bending plays in the hole, his lightning hands threaten Zeus himself. The problem was, and seemed to be, the harmony of these players.

Whether Frank was hitting and Dan was not, Squeri was hitting and Frank was not, they were pistons of a V9 engine off-timed and out of tune. An off key piano plays, but not prettily. In the last two games of the STAC series, that engine received a mechanic, and pistons began to fire visibly in symphony. It was a beautiful thing to see back-to-back triples from Pembroke and Tufano. Our cleats began to crater the hard rubber of home plate with straight-lined etchings. We took the last 2 games of the series with a feeling of quite simply, ‘we’re back’.

Confidence replaced misery. Wins replaced losses. The Gods are frightened by our mental toughness, our ability to persevere. We felt like rats in some mad experiment for a long time – but we’ve found the cheese, and we chewed our way out of the labyrinth.

A thanks is in store for our more than worthy ECC adversaries. All our opponents deserve the wins they’ve received. Every game has concluded, exactly the way it was supposed to. Adversity was exactly the ingredient our club was missing. Not just a small dose, but also an uncanny amount of it. The oven just sounded off, our ready meals are good to serve.

We head into a series against Molloy now. We are a new team – battle-tested, combat scarred – animals.

In an everlasting 5 game series with Queens College – we would take 4 out of the 5 games. Hailing from the farmlands of eastern Long Island – we turned ourselves from kings of the vineyards to Golden Lions of the urban jungle that is the borough of Queens.

Duran put on a show striking out 15 hitters in his start. The curious part however, was his temperament during the exhibition. Mechanically, it is surely a good thing to appear free and easy in your delivery, but Duran looked suspicious. He almost looked too free and easy, borderline careless. Obviously he wasn’t careless, as he threw an emerald out there. He looked at peace. His motion drifted through space and time seamlessly, and the ball jolted off his fingertips as a product of his universal alignment.

Our bats began to show some life during this series; we started putting some more balls in the gaps and started executing better. One of our freshmen, Sean Craig gave himself a name by consistently performing as our DH, not to mention his robotic speed.

Streets greeted the edges of Queens home field on all sides, and parking was rare as oil. On our first trip we left not only with fatigue, but with three fashionably yellow parking tickets that a policeman must have forgotten on our three white traveling vans. We were nice enough to return those tickets, on behalf of our program enveloped and with some cash royalties. We appreciate the NYPD!

Although Queens has made drastic improvements to their playing surface over the years, I was still disappointed to see the lack of a bullpen for the visiting team. As I searched for one, sure as dirt I would find one, I found only what looked to be the remnants of some dried up Sahara. It looked like a salt basin, flat without shape, covered in sand, with a slab of cratered rubber at the middle. As if a helicopter flew over an equatorial desert to survey for obscurities, a two-dimension photo was taken from above, and thus created the lack of a mound we were summoned to warm-up on.

Regardless of lackluster bullpens, we would stroll through with 4 new conference wins on our belt, and looked towards the next weekend with our ECC rivals, C.W. Post.

For the city-slicker passerby’s that adorned the Q.C campus, Golden Lions ran rampant over the next to seedling grass that surfaced post-winter, scratching at the door, hungry and hunting in alpha-male prides, we looked to rip doubles and did it. Night came, and the Hyenas never showed.

The smooth hum from a hair buzzer surfed through the stagnant air of the Dowling dormitories. Passage of time could be measured by the clipped hair follicles that fell like leaves over dirty towels. Our annual Floridian trip dawned upon our season – and the weird haircuts sold the obnoxious proof.

Most of the guys chose to get signed into the dorms the night before we had to leave because we were scheduled to depart at 4 AM – sleep was rare, and most of us pulled all-nighters… huddled in makeshift living rooms arguing over hitters that could pitch and pitchers that could hit.

We were a crew of navy blue zombies wandering JFK airport at 545 AM. We were on zero sleep, and dragged our feet in fogged dazes dragging 40-pound baseball bags behind us. To a man without sleep – the constant commands from TSA employees and the strobes from security checkpoints poise as small monsters with teeth made from gold badges and open mouths that eat laptops and carry on bags, both in separate bins.

As we hit the leather chairs within the fuselage, I finally welcomed sleep – and began to dream quite literally among the clouds and turbulence.

We rode the magic carpet from a snow ridden north to a sun struck south – we filtered into a trio of rented vans and fit inside like a human and luggage jigsaw puzzle. As we drifted in and out of being lost and found we eventually stopped in at an IHOP, and several stomachaches later – we left for practice.

Didn’t take long for us to get sunburned either, so this rapid progression of events was a lot for us to handle. Upon arriving at our residence inn, we sat in the chairs of a square lobby. Justin Brooks almost immediately fell asleep in an uncomfortable recliner, that didn’t recline at all. He quarried himself into the fetal position, with ice still cooling his arm – and fell into a deep slumber, twitching all the way. We took turns throwing small objects at him, cheerios, peanuts, adjectives, and ‘hegh’s’. Andrew Varela kept us all entertained as we waited to receive room keys with near perfect impersonations that he is famous for, hopefully videos to follow.

We woke up to subtle drumbeats against the resident windows – transparent droplets collectively halting us from playing. We re-planned the day and the apex of our rained out excursion turned out being a team trip to a local Publix, a couple of us headed straight to the magazine racks and started comparing all the cover models to kids on our roster – Tim Comiskey was an old man holding a trophy Mahi on saltwater magazine, for example.

The next day we were scribed to play Adelphi, arguably our northeastern rivals – considering our long history of competition. The game was a western shootout on the dusty streets of a ghost town. Gabby, the high plains drifter conquistador squared up against Adelphi’s ace, Keith Couch. Couch would not recline shutting us down inning by inning with silver bullets and shotgun sliders gauged by scouts on looking. Gabby would answer back every inning with marksmen caliber fastballs complemented by flanking sliders sprinkled in paprika from Caribbean islands.

The Floridian sky faded from a dark blue to Vegas gold, and from gilded horizon to an orange sunset. The fading light silhouetted the position players to shadow people as the field lamps triggered from the aesthetic scene. All the colors of the teams aligned against each other, a symphony of athleticism.

Eventually, both aces belts eventually ran out of ammo, and choice relievers were called in. The game would end shortly after, as a run would be given up in the bottom of the 9^th breaking the 1-1 tie. I wouldn’t have it any other way – our games have always been exhibitions, and on either side – infinitely entertaining. Adelphi would win 2-1.

We were bummed out; our chance to make a statement had slipped through our fingers. However, early in the season – redemption is always another set of 9 innings away.

Albero was set to start against another good club, Southern Connecticut. He side-armed his way through their lineup virtually unscathed. Slick moving fastballs like ginsu knives. Bending deuces like Colorado rivers, we walked away with a win.

Feeling pretty good we strolled into the second game of the day verse Nyack. Justin Brooks got the start and would appear as a master artisan whittling away a masterpiece. The book became bloodied with ink as our hitters stormed around the bases like a Normandy invasion. I did not like this, as I was assigned to booking duties and complex happenings were rampant. But regardless – we took 2 double-U’s on the day.

Monday was our off day – and we were drunk in good spirits coming off a flawless day of baseball headed into another nice day. Most of the team went off to watch the Marlins play off in Jupiter – and I’d talk all about that if I had attended. Instead, I braved the waters of Lake Ida accompanied by my father and a fishing guide – and set hooks all day into populations of Largemouth Bass. I would rejoin the team later, now sporting the unique fishermen tan that closely resembles that of a raccoon.

Rolling into Tuesday we prepared to face off against the patriotic colors of UMass Lowell. Our stomachs filled with Jimmy subs and sponge-like pizza, our time in Florida ticked like the shoulder high reeds in left field. An unfortunate event unfolded – some say it was planned, others say an accident – the debate has ripped a schism since. Us pitchers were having our casual pre-game catches as our starter for game-1; Mark Rutledge strolled back towards the dugout, perhaps thinking of international flight patterns or new releases of sunglasses. Meanwhile, Chris Mendoza called for a change-up on the right field line. The changeup rolled off his callused fingertips prematurely it seemed, as it soared over the glove of his partner like a wild bird swooping down with sharpened talons straight to the back right shoulder of Rutledge. Although Mark wasn’t seriously injured – the mark of the thrown ball raised its stamp on a crucial muscle that bruised badly, and Rutledge was unable to start. In a debate of fate our head coach signaled the very man who released the ball into his first collegiate start.

The irony would befall us in more misfortune, and without much discussion at all – it is better said in simply… we had to wear the mark in turn of 2 loses to the sharp looking ball club of UMass Lowell. They hit, they pitched, and they fielded the hell out of it – and they clearly wanted it more then us.

Disappointed, we filed into the showers like commanded Lemmings, but the cold water and soap wouldn’t be enough to wash off the day. All we could do was look forward to going home, and starting our conference season with a bang. Frustration followed us everywhere after the double-header. It was like we were parched desert wanderers shadowed by a flock of buzzards and inevitable death. We wound up at a Denny’s where we would wait over 3 hours to get served. Had the team received physicals post-meals, nobody would clear with such extreme blood pressure.

Our camaraderie held us together. Glued by an unseen force of team chemistry and talent. Like a catalyst for short-term memory loss – we soon forgot the mishaps and tunnelvisioned our way to our next match up with Queens College.

As the tough rubber of our airliner shook hands with the New York runway tarmac, we gathered our intentions – and feared for our next opponent in contention.

More blogs to follow in the coming of days:

Stay tuned for video links, photos and contagious good vibes radiating from this bloggage.

Readers, I believe in you.

Collectively, we contracted insomnia from the depths of our minds. We were children staying up for Santa on Christmas Eve, we were the wrongfully accused awaiting their sentences. This was the entity that veiled us in our various beds as we laid awake on the eve of our seasons debut; on the would be Saturday, graced with a bluebird sky and dotted with streaks of cirrus cloud spectators.

You tell yourself not to change anything, to stay on the path you’ve been on, but once you substitute your cotton t-shirt practice gear with the smooth polyester fibers of your uniform, everything changes. Whether the change arise in your breakfast, when you swap your usual wrap with a hungry man hero, or emptying your bag just to reorganize it. The human response to prevalent anticipation is constant occupation, indeed. And that’s where my curiosity lies, inside the mind of the athlete on the edge of his/her season, morphing the misplaced butterflies inside their stomachs back into their cocoons to larvae into focused energy and tenacious competitiveness; aptly nicknamed, “the bloom,” the reversal of the butterflies.

Music radiated from beyond the glass borders of my truck as I cruised the middle-lane on Sunrise highway, the petty argument of it being too early to blast music never agreed with me, especially on game days. I had been planning ahead for opening day, frequenting local “7-11’s” and considering the snacking options. A lot of college pitchers I imagine do the same, we know that the hours of shagging the fair and foul balls from our hitters requires conversation and cookies, my personal favorite, Entenmanns original recipe to specify, and check the date for freshness.

All three game days of our opening season painted an undisturbed splash of solar rays upon the turf, like the politics of a dictatorship, warmth unchallenged. It was a refreshing change to the seemingly endless amount of cancellations we faced in the proposed start to our late February games.

We were scheduled to play New Haven on Saturday in a double-header bout, and Southern New Hampshire on Sunday, the two days mirror imaged each other in an unfortunate symmetry.

Gabby would start the first game of the year for us, and he would prove his publicized dominance through 5 innings, letting up a lone infield hit that came off the bat more like a good bunt. We had one explosive inning and put up 5 runs, and that would be enough for us. Gabby came out in the fifth and I closed the game out, I try not to mention myself in this blog much, but when the rhythm of the game calls to do so, I must.

Intagliata led off the year with three triples, quite the oddity. If David Bowie was in attendance I believe he would protest this freak act of baseball nature, or write a compelling song about it. Either way, I’d worship his genius; keep it up uncle Frankie.

We played solid defense behind Gabby and we came out on top in our first match. The win would be credited to an explosive single inning offense, solid pitching and good defense; the recipe for any win of course, spiced up by cayenne triples in the gaps.

Justin Brooks started game 2. This sneaky lefty had to redshirt last year due to the menace of Tommy John, and was surely anxious to get back on the rubber. We were all looking forward to seeing him throw again. Brooks would not disappoint inducing the majority of New Haven hitters into timely double plays and groundballs. Some costly mistakes allowed New Haven to put up 3 runs, and we would scrap the score to 3-2 in the 9^th, but New Haven took game two and we split the day.

We were disappointed, sure, but what we cannot forget is that we were never the team to put up 13 runs and crush our opponents with offense. We were, and still are, a solid ball club that pitches, executes hits in needed spots and exhibits close to flawless defense. Just because of the credentials we’re coming off of; I fear that we expect to simply dominate over the northeast competition without still investing ourselves completely into every inning. Last year, that’s how we won regionals, and how we won respect and we cannot lose sight of that.

Sunday would be summed up in an equally as odd day. Coach Farrell would put it clearly, “a series of unfortunate events,” as things really were not going in favor of either team. When half of the Gods favor one team, and half the other, I guess the only logical result is to split the day, and split the weekend. In similar fashion, splitting bats as well.

Rutledge started game 1 for us, and with a knee injury and all, he threw extremely well and held a 1-1 tie into the 6^th. As his pitch count ascended and fatigue crept in, I was eventually called in to replace him and recorded myself a win when we scored in the 7^th.

Nick Albero started game two, and the kid was on fire. We appreciated the competitiveness the Southern New Hampshire team graced us with and with perfect timing having a kid like Albero on the mound. His fire for the game is unrivaled, and it shows in his emotional style of pitching. It is on the edge but refined, dirty but lustrous. He cruised through 7 innings hardly touched before he was relieved for his pitch count. We gave up some runs in the late innings and attempted to come back in the 9^th, a mirror image of Saturdays second game. The game would end 3-2.

I ask myself, what kind of outer worldly forces are at work when we have runners in scoring position, Ferguson steps up to the plate and rips a line drive back up the middle and on the follow through of the pitcher, his screaming drive is halted by the flailing cleat of the thrower, that was 2 runs stopped by spikes. Sometimes there are days like that, and I’d rather we get them all done with now.

We broke through the weekend going 2-2 as we headed into Tuesdays game against Dominican, a well-respected program that consistently contends in the regionals. We are undecidedly proud, and undecidedly defeated; being .500 is like being half-insane, when half the things you say are full of lunacy and rhyme. We intend to sway the wins our way in the future match-ups ahead.

Our fifth game of the season went swimmingly against Dominican. Tim Comiskey, our resident grandfather would start the game and record his three groundout bullpen with ease. Chris Mendoza would relieve Tim for his Dowling debut; he threw very well battling his nerves and onlookers against a respectable Dominican offense. He ran into trouble later in the game as the sun descended and the light grew dim. Andrew Smith came in with runners on and recorded 1 out, and I was eventually called in to finish the 9-3 masterpiece.

Our bats seemed to finally come alive. The hitter’s hands firing at the ball like restored pistons on an old muscle car. It was relentless; as we put more runs up per inning then we left zeroes on the board. It was a perfect remedy to our weekend, a nightcap of fermented whisky sweet with times wisdom. We parted ways with Brookhaven to plane off to less synthetic pastures where the grass brags with chlorophyll and not artificial coloring , where the rain actually softens the soil, to Florida.

Beneath the stadium walls of an ancient roman coliseum, there lie the rugged men – the gladiators. They carry many attributes, these power tools of exhibition - with sharpened minds and focused weapons. They must have sat there in cavern-like dormitories, dreaming of glory to be had or their own righteous deaths. But what is thought about when the days of stagnancy prolong? Does the glory fade into the candlelit bunks, or does the ember to perform burn infinite?

The blood was spilled whether rain or shine within the travertine walls. There was no turf to be covered in snow or mud to be raked dry for a double-header. This age old question still holds derivatives in the minds of us Golden Lions, locked up in our Curtin Center cage – holding our adrenaline back as the flurries continued to fall and burden northeast baseball with its cruel off-timed precipitation.

The game of baseball slightly morphs when kept indoors. It’s like a child shoving a plastic triangle through a square, it fits but it just isn’t right. A diamond squeezed into the stale walls of a gymnasium, no fences to be scaled – just suspended mesh nets depriving baseballs of flight, like red-laced white doves with clipped wings.

If the gladiators were kept inside, no heroes would be had – and the cowardice would cruise among them unchecked. Until we step out on the field, our season is held in suspension – like the see through mesh nets that govern us through the winter, and unfortunately too far into this spring.

I miss the earth-born clay being diced beneath my spikes, but for now our turf shoes troop on over synthetic flooring – and we keep the fire burning within us.

Until the selfish resident stranger that is the snow dissipates from our field – we’ll wait, beneath Brookhaven – arising only to win.

Keep an eye on the Golden Lion schedule for the arrival of our season debut, and thanks to my continued readers.