Baseball finds shelter in early months of season

Baseball will face West Chester today after being forced to practice inside because of rain outs. When it comes time for baseball practice, the make-shift nets come out and the batting cages are erected. The pitching machines are wheeled out of the closets, and the foamier-than-AstroTurf floor turns into an infield. The place is the Hollenback Annex, nestled between the ROTC's Hollenback facility and the Rhodes soccer field. The light-blue, aluminum-sided, pre-fabricated building (which encapsulates a training dome) has an expressway on one side of it, train tracks on the other and nothing that resembles the majesty of Penn's finer athletic facilities. Seven other teams -- men and women's soccer, men and women's track, softball and, in severe weather, men and women's lacrosse -- all share the indoor facility. At any northern school -- including today's foe, West Chester, who meets the Quakers at 3 p.m. on Bower Field -- indoor baseball practices come with the territory, especially when practices for spring sports open on February 1. This year, however, the weather has been dismal. According to senior centerfielder Drew Corradini, this is the first year in his career that the squad has been confined to the Annex after returning from its Florida trip. "It's frustrating," Corradini said. "You definitely don't get as much done as you can on the field, especially coming back from Florida, when everybody is rearing to go." The problems range from limited practice time to the suffocation of being indoors. Penn coach Bob Seddon says that the track teams get the facility from 2-6 p.m. everyday and when the inclement weather schedule takes effect, softball and baseball have just two hours -- 5-7 p.m. -- to share it. Since coming back from Florida, the baseball team took Monday off, practiced on Bower Field Tuesday and have been in the Annex ever since. "Obviously, it's a little tougher to simulate game situations," senior pitcher Travis Arbogast said. "At the same time, we get to work more on our fundamentals. It's crazy -- balls are flying all over the place -- but there's nothing you can really do about it." When senior Ed Kimlin quit the team at the beginning of the week, a giant monkey wrench was thrown into the pitching mix that has yet to be sorted out. Four games versus Wagner were rained out, and Tuesday's contest versus St. Joseph's is looking like it might suffer the same fate as well. All that leaves is today's single game against West Chester at 3 p.m. on Bower Field. "We were fortunate to throw off the mound at Bower Field in February," Arbogast said. "It's easier to throw off a dirt mound, and they have make-shift wooden mounds inside. There's definitely some adjustment that needs to be made." Despite all the frustrations and limitations surrounding these indoor practices, it is far better than before the Hollenback Annex was constructed in 1987. "For a number of years, we just had one court in the Hutchinson Gym, and we would try and beg for a second and move the curtain back," Seddon explained. "But then you'd have to leave after an hour, because intramural basketball needed the courts." With 30 baseball players and four coaches in one confined space, Seddon says that extra organization is needed to make the practices productive. "Everyone needs to put in a little extra effort, because it's easy to get a little lackadaisical," Corradini said. Inside, Seddon sets up practice with different stations, which includes batting, fielding and pitching, but excludes fundamentals like tracking fly balls and live pitching. "We needed those games this week to get into the groove," Seddon said. "We haven't played in nine days straight. We're going to do everything in the world to play [against West Chester]." It's not like Penn is alone in all this. Whatever the Quakers endure, so does every other northeast team. Described as a young team by Corradini, the Rams are having pitching problems, going 0-9 thus far this season, including a 12-4 loss to Cornell. The Quakers might not be having pitching problems, but getting their rotation squared away is going to be very tough to do with potentially one single game to be played between now and Saturday's Ivy opener at Columbia. Today, instead of using its traditional non-league, midweek, one-inning-per-pitcher rotation, staff ace Armen Simonian will see four to five innings in preparation for the weekend.

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