After scoring its first win of the season against Concordia College, the Florida A&M baseball team fell off Saturday. The team met its match against Savannah State University on the Moore-Kittles baseball field and stumbled to a two-point loss. The final score was five to three, with FAMU being the latter.
This is the fourth loss this season. However, regardless of the defeat, the team is ever so optimistic.
Jared Jeffries, a sophomore infielder, said the team is just warming up.
“A lot of things you can’t control,” said Jeffries, 19, from Decatur, Ga. “We just have to keep coming out the next day and make an effort to win. We need to keep working hard every day.”
What started off as a rather uneventful game, because neither FAMU nor Savannah State bothered to contribute any points to the scoreboard, soon became a heated battle during the fifth inning. After FAMU scored a point in the fourth inning, Savannah tied with the Rattlers at the top of the fifth.
The two teams remained tied until the eighth inning when Darryl Evans, 20, a sophomore outfielder from Indiana, came up to bat. After hitting the baseball clean into the air, Evans enabled both Steve Cunningham and Tim Jones to make it to the home plate. This gave the Rattlers a two-point lead over the Tigers.
However, the tables turned during the ninth inning. Brett Pointer, a Savannah State player, scored a homerun, knocking a ball thrown to him by FAMU pitcher Cirilo Manego, clean over the left field wall. This put the team ahead of the Rattlers and practically secured a win.
Robert Lucas, the coach of the FAMU baseball team, said the team’s loss feels just like any other loss.
“We need to play the game like it’s supposed to be played,” Lucas said. “They took care of business and we didn’t take care of ours.”
Drew Cook, 23, team pitcher, agreed with his coach. He said in order for the team to win, it must get back to the fundamentals.
“We need to play baseball how we know how to play it,” said Cook, a senior from Wakulla. “I think Savannah had more determination and more fight. They want the game.”
The game against Savannah State was the home-opening game of the season. Even though FAMU lost, there were still good things to be celebrated.
Both Evans and Corey McFadden, an infielder from Tampa, got two hits a piece, which added to the Rattlers getting more hits than the Tigers. McFadden also contributed the first point for FAMU.
The team’s confidence is still in place, which Jeffries said is indeed a good thing.
“Confidence goes a long way,” he said. “The team is there. We just got to perform.”
The baseball team will play Mercer on Tuesday in Macon, Ga. at 4:00 p.m.