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HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE: Fuld
and Lowrie love the crowds at Sunken Diamond.
Linda Cicero |
They both grew up watching
Field of Dreams. And they had their own dreams
of playing at a Division I school.
“To be honest, I thought [Stanford] would be
out of my league,” Cardinal center fielder Sam
Fuld says. “So it was pretty flattering when I
started to get recruited.”
Now, he’s known as Slammin’ Sammy Fuld,
a senior who holds the all-time College World Series
hits record with 24. At press time, Stanford’s
lead-off batter had 320 career hits, behind only John
Gall, ’00 (368), and Paul Carey, ’90 (331).
Also making a hefty contribution is sophomore shortstop/second
baseman Jed Lowrie, who was boasting a team-high .388
batting average, .757 slugging percentage, .496 on-base
percentage, 37 RBI—and eight home runs. “It’s
definitely better than last year, when I didn’t
hit any the whole season,” the Oregon native says.
The two players love the college game and the 3,000-person
crowds that turn out to support the Cardinal. At his
Durham, N.H., high school, “I was happy to play
in front of 50 people,” Fuld says. Lowrie can
top that: “My high school field didn’t even
have a fence—just steel bleachers where the parents
of the kids who were playing sat. And maybe a couple
of friends.”
In early April, Stanford was off to a 24-4 start and
ranked first in the nation. “It’s tough
to beat that,” says coach Mark Marquess, ’69.
“But you have to play well at the right time to
get to the World Series.” A trip to Omaha this
June would be the Cardinal’s sixth consecutive
one, a school record.
Fuld is optimistic. “We’re off to as good
a start as we’ve had in my four years here,”
he says. He was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the 24th
round last spring, but opted to return for a fourth
crack at the Series. “It was tough because every
college player’s goal is to get drafted high in
his junior year,” Fuld says. “He was offered
a significant amount of money, but decided to come back
to finish school,” Marquess says, with a grin
of relief.
For his part, Lowrie played summer ball with the Mat-Su
Miners in Palmer, Alaska (population 4,385), then put
himself on a six-day-a-week workout regimen that enabled
him to gain 10 pounds. “I feel like balls I hit
last year that I hit well would go to the warning track,”
he says. “They get out now.”
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