EDWARDSVILLE – Alton senior baseball outfielder Robby Taul had a leadoff triple to start the Redbirds season opener in the Prep Baseball Report Metro-East Kickoff Classic game at Roy E. Lee Field at the Simmons Baseball Complex at SIU-Edwardsville on Thursday night.
Unfortunately, it was only one of two hits the Redbirds had as Alton lost to Chatham Glenwood 13-0 in a game called after four-and-a-half innings because of the 10-run rule.
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Still, Taul knows that baseball is a long season, and there are more games ahead to do positive things.
“Yeah, it’s a long season, though,” Taul said in a postgame interview. “You’ve got to work on everything every day, everything is always something to improve on, and today, there’s a lot of stuff to improve on. Weather conditions aren’t there, but they usually aren’t going to be in the Midwest this time of year, and we’ve just got to work through it. Hopefully, we can bounce back tomorrow and hopefully swing the bats a little bit better.”
It’s one of the more beautiful things about baseball. There’s always an opportunity to bounce back and improve during the long season.
“Oh, yeah. It’s not like football; you don’t have to wait a week,” Taul said, “so we’ll be at it tomorrow at Granite City. We’re excited to play. Hopefully, like I said, short memory, and kind of bounce back.”
Taul sees himself as a positive energy kind of player, who’s always encouraging his teammates and keeping things going on an even keel, even when things aren’t going well.
“I’d like to say the energy,” Taul said. “I like to think of myself as kind of making everything on the bright side, never really keeping your head down. It’s a big part of this game, cause once you have that as I said, eight-run inning, everybody forgets that. There are still things to work at, even whenever the score is not in our favor, it’s never really a time to give up and kind of give in. So that’s what I feel like I’m here to do.”
One of Taul’s biggest goals for the 2019 season is to win an IHSA Class 4A regional, something he’s never done in his time with the Redbirds.
“My goal for this season is to win a regional,” Taul said. “I’ve never won a regional in baseball, and that’s probably one of my dreams to do. So we’ll be working at it, all of us.”
For the team, it’s a very simple goal.
“The team? It’s just getting at it,” Taul said. “We’ve got a lot of younger kids that haven’t really had a whole lot of experience at varsity, and just getting repetitions, seeing the harder velocities and harder pitchers and harder balls hit at them, too. Especially with the difference between JV and varsity, it’s a big difference, and I think they’ll do fine, it’s just getting a couple of games to get used to it.”
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