Summer Teammates Reunited

Senior outfielder Jimmy Waters is back with another update about standing up for a friend during a summer league game and facing one of his Jayhawk teammates in the same game.

After a couple up and down weeks, we are excited to begin the new season. The new season of course is the beginning of Big 12 conference play. This gives everyone on the team a fresh start and a chance for us to begin making a push to reach our goal of finishing in the upper half of the conference.  This week weekend we will take on the Oklahoma State Cowboys.  The last time the Cowboys were in Lawrence we were able to sweep them and we hope to do the same this season. It will be a difficult task has the Cowboys boast a pretty stellar pitching staff, but we have been preparing all season to face this type of pitching.

I’ve been personally looking forward to this series because this summer while playing for the Rochester Honkers in the Northwoods League, I was roommates with Mike Strong, who will be starting on the mound Sunday for the Cowboys. Playing 60-some games, traveling, and living together all in one summer with a person you become pretty good friends. A few of my teammates and I went down and visited him in Stillwater for a weekend this fall and it was a pretty fun time and we got to know a bunch of their players.

A funny story this summer happened to Mike and I in Willmar, Minn.  Mike was pitching for us and I was playing left field. It looked like the umpire was squeezing Mike and all the sudden it seemed like no matter where Mike threw the baseball, it was being called a ball.

This was frustrating for me because all the sudden the other team is scoring runs they shouldn’t have. Finally, when the last out was made Mike said something to the umpire and got thrown out. I was running in from left and figured I should probably defend my buddy (might not have been the best decision). So, I defended Mike and said something to the umpire myself.

Well, then I was also kicked out of the game. At the time you are pretty mad about everything that happened, but now I can look back on that day and I’ll remember it forever because it was pretty comical. The other reason I will always remember the three innings that I played because the starting pitcher for Willmar was my Kansas teammate, Wally Marciel. In my first at bat against Wally, he fell behind 2-0 in the count and I knew he would be coming to me with a fastball and I was right and put the ball out of the park for a homerun.

Jimmy Waters had a home run trot
to remember this summer.

I may have “pimped” it a little bit too just because it was Wally on the mound. It was funny because I knew he was mad about it and he would not look at me at all when I was rounding the bases. So when I got thrown out of the game I think Wally was madder than I was because he wanted to face me again and get even, but he never got that opportunity.

The other cool thing for Mike and I is our host family from this summer will be making the trip from Elgin, Minn. to watch us face off this weekend. My host family this summer was great. We became pretty close and really enjoyed each other all summer long. I think it’s pretty cool that they will be able to watch us play against each other this weekend because there was plenty of talk about it this summer at the dinner table on what was going to happen when we faced off. I think it’s an interesting dilemma on who they will be cheering for come Sunday when I’m at the plate facing Mike.

It should be a very fun time for them.