Emotions high at end of sweep

Fans in attendance at Red McEwen Field on Sunday saw the USF baseball team complete a three-game sweep of Massachusetts. But after USF coach Eddie Cardieri was tossed from the game, he had to watch from outside of the left-field wall.

The Bulls led 6-4 in the top of the seventh when Cardieri came out of the dugout to make a call to the bullpen. But when he went to the mound he began yelling in home plate umpire Eddie Rundle’s face about some pitches he thought should have been called strikes. The more Cardieri yelled, the angrier he seemed to get.

“I don’t know if I got frustrated as much as I got mad,” Cardieri said.

The field umpires ended having to block Cardieri from Rundle, so he went to home plate and kicked a pile of clay over top of it.

“I think when you get a good job by the umpires, nobody knows they’re there,” Cardieri said. “And when there are confrontations, something is not right.”

Emotions certainly were running high in both dugouts, and it could have been because the game was so close. In the bottom of the fifth inning, with the game tied 3-3 and the bases loaded, Matt McHargue hit a bases-clearing triple to bust the game open for the Bulls.

“Matt (McHargue) is having a good year at the plate and he got himself a good pitch and he drove that ball,” Cardieri said. “At that stage of the game we really needed that.”

McHargue connected on the first pitch he saw and drove it over the center fielder’s head.

“Well I hadn’t been hitting that well, and I always look to get a good pitch to hit, and if the first one is there you might as well hit it. So I swung the bat,” McHargue said. “You know, just hit it where they ain’t.”

In addition to the three-game sweep against UMASS, the Bulls added a victory against Penn and won two of three games against Illinois during the break. However, the Bulls lost starting third baseman Jeff Baisley to a broken foot against Illinois, while also losing middle reliever Tim Mattison for the season because of Tommy John surgery.

Ivany named to Johnny Bench Award watch list

USF catcher Devin Ivany was named to the official watch list for the 2004 Johnny Bench Award watch list Friday. Ivany, who was a semi-finalist for the award in 2003 as a sophomore, was happy to be recognized.

The Johnny Bench National Collegiate Catcher of the Year award is presented each year to the top collegiate catcher. The list will be narrowed to ten semi-finalists on May 20 and finalists for the award are announced June 3.