UNI baseball plays final game

[dbackjon]

— Is there room for Jason Summers' smile? The sheer joy on his face as he raced up the first-base line, eye black dripping down his cheeks like chocolate on a sundae?

"I played football in high school and I played baseball, and this has to be one of the greatest feelings I ever had," Summers, Northern Iowa's junior designated hitter, said Saturday after closing the books on the Panthers' baseball program the way they do in the movies — a game-winning, line-drive single to center field in the bottom of the ninth. "I knew, once he stopped running and it was over his head, it was time to celebrate."

It was a time to celebrate. A time to weep. Most at Waterloo Riverfront Stadium managed a little a bit of both. Alums flew in from as far away as Washington, D.C., and Atlanta to tailgate and toast their alma mater. Men's basketball coach Ben Jacobson watched from the third-base stands, a few heads down from Rick Hartzell, the former UNI baseball player-turned-former-athletic-director.

"It's like a funeral," Hartzell said of UNI 3, Bradley 2, the last waltz in the sunshine. "That's what it feels like, exactly."

Is there room for the pain? Last Wednesday, it finally hit him. A ton of bricks dropped straight on his gut. That's when baseball coach Rick Heller called up the UNI sports information department and asked them to start looking for a time capsule, something that would somehow keep Panther baseball alive forever, even when the blasted economy wouldn't.

They'll make space for the usual: signed media guide. A baseball from the Bradley game. A team poster. A disc full of pictures. Heller's final, fateful lineup card.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/articl ... /905170342

[AZGrizFan]

Fuck THAT...dump the football program instead.