4 SPORTS Page 20 Thursday, May 12, 1983 The Michigan Daily Batsmen blast EMU swJD 44 By JIM DWORMAN YPSILANTI - It's no wonder that Michigan baseball coach Bud Middaugh stresses pitching and defense - he doesn't have to worry about his team's hitting. The Wolverines continued their offensive assault yesterday, pounding out a dozen hits in both 10-6 and 14-2 victories over the Eastern Michigan Hurons. ON TUESDAY, Michigan swept a double header from Wayne State, taking 7-2 and 13-4 decisions. In their last 16 games, the Wolverines have scored a total of 167 runs, an average of 10.4 per outing. Despite the score, yesterday's opener was a close game from start to finish. The lead changed hands three times before Michigan put the game away with a four-run seventh inning. Tied 6-6 going into the stanza, Michigan began its rally when Ken Hayward drew a one-out walk off Eastern's Jeff Ozuch. Jeff Jacobson followed with a single and Fred Erdmann walked to fill the bases. Middaugh then inserted freshman Casey Close to pinch hit for Dan Sygar and the Ohioan delivered. Close ripped a double into the left field corner, scoring two runs and sending Erdmann to third. Both players scored when Rich Bair boun- ced Huron reliever Jason Hansen's second pitch past a drawn-in infield for a single. PITCHER GARY Wayne, who gave up the tying run to Eastern in the sixth, shut out the Hurons in the seventh to earn the victory, his seventh in eight decisions. Wayne had entered the game in relief of starter Dave Kopf and Tim Karazim, who were both ineffective. In the second game, Wolverine starter Scott Kamieniecki walked Eastern's first three batters before finally settling down to throw a four-hitter. The freshman missed the plate with his first 10 pitches and 12 of 13 overall, as Tom Hauck, Ron Goble and Tony DeMarti walked. A double-play grounder by Rob Sepanek, though, allowed Kamieniecki to escape with only one run scored. The hard-throwing righthander then went to the, bullpen with Middaugh and the veteran coach quickly corrected the rookie's wildness. "I WAS RUSHING everything to the plate," said Kamienicki of his rough start. "Coach noticed my arm was ahead of my body. I was pushing the ball instead of throwing it." Kamieniecki went on to walk only two more Hurons the rest of the way - against seven strikeouts - to raise his record to 3-0. Only Sepanek's fourth-inning home run marred the remainder of his performance. "He started to let his arm do the work," said Middaugh of the Detroit Tigers' second-round draft pick. "I was really proud of the adjustment he made." MICHIGAN, meanwhile, did little against Eastern starter Vic Worker. Chris Sabo's first-in- ning triple was the only hit the Wolverines could muster until Barry Larkin drilled a liner into the Huron hurler's face. Worker crumbled to the ground and lay motionless for nearly 30 minutes while trainers and paramedics tended to the righthander. Worker left the stadium in an ambulance but returned after the completion of the contest. Ap- parently, his injury was not serious. His team's hurts, however, were serious. Michigan batters pounded three Eastern relievers for 14 runs the rest of the way. Rich Bair led the Wolverine attack with seven RBIs in the doubleheader. More Baseball, Page 17 R H E MICHIGAN........ 300 102 4-10 12 2 Eastern Michigan. 101 301 0 -6 9 2 MKopf, Karazim (3), Wayne (5) and Bair. EMU: Spratke, Ozuch (0), Hansen (7) And Siefert. WP-Wayne (7-1) LP-Ozuch (3-3) R 10 E MICHIGAN ....... 000 524 3-14 12 0 Eastern Michigan . 100 100 0-2 4 4 M: Kamieniecki and Bair, Froning (7). EMU Worker, Edik (3), Hansen (5, Ozuch (0) and Keller. .WP-Kamieniecki (3-0) LP-Edick (2-5) HR: EMU-Sepanek (8). Larkin spurns Reds... ... spurs Bud's Blue Most of us face difficult decisions when we graduate from high school. Should we go to college? Where should we go to college? Should we get a job, instead? The choices seem endless. But compared to the alternatives that confronted Barry Larkin during his senior year at Cincinnati's Moeller High School, our decisions look simple. You see, opportunity didn't just knock on the Wolverine shor- tstop's door - it knocked his door down. First to come calling were the football coaches, Notre Dame's Gerry Faust and Michigan's Bo Schembechler. Faust, who used to coach Larkin at Moeller and still coaches a Larkin, older brother Michael, for the Fighting Irish, armed himself with some predictable tactics for the recruitment. "When I went to Notre Dame to visit, Coach Faust had my brother take me out and tell me how great it is at Notre Dame and how it's all one big happy family, just like at Moeller," said the former defensive back. "Michael himself told me to play what I wanted to play and go where I wanted to go." From one Larkin to another, that's not bad advice, especially since Barry was thinking baseball and not at Notre Dame. "I wanted to go to a bigger school with a better baseball program," said Larkin. Sorry, Bo Next was Bo, but Larkin likewise said no. Apparently, he realized that there's not much room for 5-11, 175 pounders on the gridiron. "I don't think I have enough size to play football," he said. "Maybe I do. But my heart's in baseball." To the delight of the baseball world, Larkin followed his heart and not his brother, who one year earlier chose football over baseball. ("If Michael didn't play football he would have got drafted in baseball," said Barry. "He was a great center fielder and he hit the ball asmile.") As football took a back seat in Barry's life, the front seat became an airplane seat. Larkin visited Texas, USC, Arizona State and Miami (Fla.), four of the most prestigious baseball colleges in the country, before finally deciding to play for coach Bud Middaugh's Michigan Wolverines. Turning his back on the Rolls Royces of college baseball was no easy decision but Larkin had his reasons - an education and Middaugh. "Texas may be number one in the nation but I've got an education, a good coach and good friends," the .356 hitter said. Education first, $$$ later Of course, the BIG decision remained: whether or not to attend Michigan at all. Larkin surely would be an early-round selection in the professional baseball draft, and a little money usually goes a long way towards making one forget about text books. Complicating mat- ters was the fact that the Cincinnati Reds, his hometown team, went for Larkin with the first pick of the draft's second round, the 27th pick overall.To put things in per- spective, Jim Paciorek, holder of almost every Michigan batting record and 1982's Big Ten Player-of- the-Year, wasn't chosen until the eighth round of the . same draft. In fact, last year's Wolverine shortstop, Tony Evans, was picked by the Reds four rounds after Larkin. Furthermore, the Cincinnati team tempted the 18-year old with a fat contract, including a signing bonus that could pay for several Michigan educations. He turned it down. "It was tough, but I knew and my parents knew that I wasn't ready mentally," Larkin said. "I wasn't ready to live on my own or with a 23- or 24-year old and go out to the bars every night, or whatever they do. All in all, I was set on college." Michigan baseball fans can be thankful for that. Second baseman Jeff Jacobson watches the ball skip into center field in action from yesterday's Wolverine sweep over EMU.