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EDWARDSVILLE – Edwardsville's baseball team got 14 innings in Saturday afternoon at the annual Meet the Tigers intrasquad game at Tom Pile Field despite some chilly and windy weather.
The Tigers, coming off a second-place finish in last year's IHSA Class 4A state tournament, are looking forward to beginning the new season with three games at home this coming weekend. “We were able to play 14 innings and saw a lot of baseball,” said EHS coach Tim Funkhouser. “It's always fun playing our scrimmage and being in our uniforms for the first time; usually, when we play an intrasquad and face live pitchers, we usually start with a 1-1 count. Today, it resembled a more real baseball, starting with a 0-0 count.
“The Midwest Umpires Association comes out and does a great job of training their umpires as well as getting other guys some prep for the season, so we've worked with them; we're very fortunate to have them help us out today. We had a lot of our fans stick around for all 14 innings too.”
Funkhouser was happy with how things went during the day for the Tigers. “For the most part, our pitchers threw strikes and we played pretty sound defensively,” Funkhouser said. “With the wind blowing in, although we didn't score a lot of runs, offensively we still competed pretty well. We've had 35 guys who have been to our practices – really 33 with a couple of basketball guys still coming out – but all those guys have a good understanding of the game and like playing the game.
“We'll continue to evaluate and I can see this being a season, as the season goes on, that guys keep competing for spots and trying to help the team out.”
One good thing about the intrasquad game is that the players gain experience under game conditions and learn what to do in various situations that can come up during a game. “There's a lot of those different nuances that come into (a game), such as baserunning – we had some things we needed to work on (like) rundowns,” Funkhouser said. “When we get into next week, we do rundowns and have a heightened awareness of some of the mistakes we made today, but that's a part of the process of playing and competing anyway.”
Overall, Funkhouser was happy with how the scrimmage went for his team. “We had a good tone,” Funkhouser said. “We're out here competing for four-and-a-half hours, I think, and then we had a pregame for an hour and a half or so. I thought our guys brought energy and that's a good thing.
“I think the depth of our team is that a lot of guys can do different things; I would say overall pitchers throwing strikes and guys making plays on defense (stood out on the day).”
The Tigers open their season at 7 p.m. Thursday against Columbia at Tom Pile Field, followed by a game against Tinley Park at 4 p.m. Friday and New Lenox Lincoln-Way West at 3 p.m. Saturday, both games at Tom Pile.
