The North Carolina baseball team loves to compete and have fun, so this weekend’s Fall World Series was a perfect mixture of both.
“I think the competition is what makes it fun,” junior Kyle Datres said. “We have a good core of guys coming back, but we also have a freshman class with a couple of junior college kids coming in, so we knew nothing was given and you’re going to have to work for everything.”
The fall preseason has been the team’s first chance for players to compete for the starting jobs in the spring, but it’s also been a rare opportunity to poke fun at their opponents.
“You can chirp at your teammates and give them crap here and there,” Datres said with a smile. “It’s all fun and games.”
The fun and games of the fall is driven by a mile system created by head coach Mike Fox to pit the Blue team against the Navy team in a series of competitions on and off the field with miles at stakes.
“Everybody starts off at five miles, and the loser (of the Fall World Series) jumps to 10," Fox said. “Everything we’ve done on and off the field has some competitive component to it, so guys can knock off or add miles in a variety of ways.”
For example, the player with the worst Halloween costume will have a mile added to their total, while players with more walks than strikeouts for the fall will have miles taken away. The competition has lead up to this weekend’s series, the last chance for on-field competition until fielding work resumes closer to the season.
The offseason has also been a chance for the team to begin to gel together. If players end up with a negative amount of miles to run by “death date,” they can choose to subtract miles away from their teammates.
“You’ve got to be all in on this," Fox said, "or you’re going to be running a long time."
