Monday, July 16, 2012 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Monday, July 16, 2012 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com d5 Baseball adds to incoming 2012-13 class Not so simple ALICIA KOVALCHECK E-MAILALICIAATALIMARKO@UMICH.EDU. Michigan's co-Mr.. Baseball will enroll in the fall By COLLEEN THOMAS Daily Sports Editor New Michigan baseball head coach Erik Bakich, known for his excellent recruiting skills, is already mak- ing strides at the NOTEBOOK helm of the Wol- verines' program. On Thursday, it was announced that right-handed pitcher Alex Daar will enroll at Michigan begin- ning in the fall. Daar joins nine other incoming freshmen - including fellow pitch- ers Jake Balicki and Tim Shannon - to help a team that finished at the bottom of the Big Ten standings. Daar was the co-Mr. Baseball in the state of Michigan in 2012, and was selected to the All-State first team and the MSHBCA Dream Team. He attended University Liggett, where he went 28-3 on the mound in his last two seasons, helping the Knights clinch a state championship in 2011 and finish as runners-up in 2012. "We are thrilled to add Alex to this year's recruiting class," Bakich said in a statement released by the Michigan athletic department on Thursday. "He had a tremendous amount of success on the field this year and is very deserving of the Mr. Baseball award. We look forward to his contributions as a pitcher in Maize and Blue." Daar, Balicki and Shannon are just three of the five pitchers that will be added to Michigan's roster in the fall. The Wolverines didn't fare well on the mound in 2012, sitting near the bottom of almost every Big Ten pitching statistics category. FUTURE ACES: Sophomore Trent Szkutnik is making a name for himself in his summer appear- ances. Szkutnik pitched a no-hitter on June 26, as he struck out 14 while walking just two in his appearance for the Dayton Docs. The Temper- ance, Mich. native secured the win as Dayton topped Grand Lake, 10-0. As of July 11, Szkutnik is 3-2 with a 3.10 ERA while striking out 35 batters in 29 innings of work. He was invited to the Great Lakes League All-Star game as a part of the 2012 Great Lakes Summer Col- legiate League North All-Stars. And two other pitchers look to improve their game to help a Wol- verines' staff that had one of the Big Ten's worst ERAs. Senior Ben Ballantine, pitching for the Cotuit Kettleers in the Cape Sophomore Trent Szkutnik was named to the Great Lakes League All-Star team for his summer work with the Dayton Docs. Cod League, and sophomore Matt Ogden, a hurler for Morehead City in the Coastal Plain League, have improved their game, as well. In his June 19 appearance, Bal- lantine went eight innings, giving up just three runs. Ogden fanned seven in his start and has a 2.04 ERA. SILVER SLUGGERS: Junior Michael O'Neill and sophomore Will Drake are picking up right where they left off at the end of the season. O'Neill hit a grand slam in his June 30 appearance with Fal- mouth, accounting for four of the eight runs in the Commodores' 8-2 win. As of July 1, the junior slugger has four home runs and 11 RBIs in the Cape Cod League. Drake, after a fantastic fresh- man campaign that was cut short by injury, is hitting .286 with six RBIs as a Member of the Dayton Does. In addition, senior Patrick Bion- di was named Cape Cod Hitter of the Week on July 8. Biondi boost- ed his batting average with three multi-hit games during the week. He leads in the Cape Cod League with his .404 batting average. In June, state Sen. Bert Johnson (D-Detroit) introduced a bill that would raise Michigan's minimum wage to $10 per hour by 2015. He claimed in a press release that a high- er minimum wage would improve stan- dards of living and stimulate MATTHEW job creation. ZABKA At first glance, this seems to make sense. If all workers who make the current minimum wage of $7.40 per hour instead made $10 per hour, their standards of living would go up. How coulddanybody be against higher standards of living? While Johnson goes on to imply that Republicans' opposition to his bill is hurting working families, the economics of minimum wage is - at least at first glance - coun- terintuitive, and there are sound economic reasons for opposing higher minimum wage. Every introductory econom- ics textbook uses a basic example - typically an employer who is unwilling to hire an employee for a certain wage - which dem- onstrates that minimum wage distorts market equilibriums. In particular, minimum wage increases unemployment. Even worse, those hit hard- est by minimum wage are almost always the poor. Since Java pro- grammers, rocket scientists and professional football players have more lucrative options, they aren't willing to sweep floors for $6 per hour. When minimum wage increases, it is the unskilled work- ers who are left jobless. Most economists follow this standard theory, but to be fair, there are a few scholars who believe that increasing the minimum wage does not increase unemployment. While supporters of minimum wage love to sing the praise of the minority of economists who doubt whether minimum wage increases unemployment, these supporters' actions often singa different tune. Remember the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now, the former collection of community-based organizations and frequent supporter of raising the minimum wage? In the '90s, ACORN filed a court brief seek- ing to exempt itself from a new, higher minimum wage that stated, "The more that ACORN must pay each individual outreach worker - either because of minimum wage or overtime requirements - the fewer outreach workers it will be able to hire." So ACORN support- ed minimum wage - as long as it didn't have to paytheir workers the minimum wage. The minimum wage increases unemployment. More recently, the last national minimum wage increase applied to all U.S. states and territories - except for a special exception for the tiny island territory of Ameri- can Samoa, 40 percent of whose workforce worked in the tuna canning industry. Some specu- late that since the tuna canneries' firms were based in then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's (D- Calif.) district, she inserted the special provision to avoid what she knew would lead to a less com- petitive tuna industry. When the press pointed out this exception, an embarrassed Pelosi asked Con- gress to include Samoa in the mini- mum wage increase. Whether the former speaker was responsible for the attempted kickback may never be known, but the effect that a higher minimum wage is having on the no longer exempt American Samoa is cer- tain. In 2010, Chicken of the Sea closed its canning facility and dis- placed more than 2,000 workers, a whopping 3 percent of American Samoa's population. In one of its last acts, the 2010 Congress - over- whelmingly filled with representa- tives who have loudly supported a higher minimum wage - quietly voted 386-5 to delay any further minimum wage increase for Amer- ican Samoa. Both economic theory and real- life observations suggest that rais- ing the minimum wage increases unemployment, but it's hard to fault policy makers like Johnson for seeking to increase the minimum wage when that's what his constit- uents want. So it's important for citizens to be either informedvot- ers or uninformed non-voters. Matthew Zabka can be reached at mzbka@umich.edu . Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewZabka. .4 X11 N 1 b{t 2 ;, T x ty A . HEATHER BURCHAM I Through maize-colored glasses. Affordable Student. Co-op Housing 2 4 and 8 Month Contracts on North and Central Campus All utilities, High-speed Internet Homemade Meals Shared Work, Shared Fun 4 Leadership opportunities U Single/Double rooms Parking available WWW.ICC.COOP -4(9INFO@ICC.COOP The Inter-Cooperative Coundil 337 El William St., Ann Arbor, Mi 48104 Phone: (734) 662-4414 (extOO) Big Ten, Pac-12 call off agreement By COLLEEN THOMAS Daily Sports Editor The Big Ten and Pac-12 sched- uling agreement that was planned to begin in 2017 was called off on Friday. Scheduling issues involving a few Pac-12 teams hindered the collaboration, which included a 12-game round-robin football schedule, matchups involving other sports and an agreement betweenthe two conferences' tele- vision networks. "We are disappointed to announce today that the Big Ten Pac-12 strategic collaboration announced jointly in December 2011 unfortunately will not be consummated," said'Big Ten com- missioner Jim Delany in a press . release on Friday. "We recently learned from Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott that the complications associated with coordinating a non-conference football schedule for 24 teams across two confer- ences proved to be too difficult. Those complications, among other things, included the Pac-12's nine- game conference schedule and previous non-conference commit- ments." He added: First seen on "A - great effort. was -the game made by both conference staffs to create football schedules that would address the variety of complexities, but in the end, we were just not able to do so. While everyone at the Big Ten is disappointed by the news, we look forward to continuing the historic partnership that we have with the Pac-12 and to working together on other matters in the future." Michigan released its 2014-16 non-conference schedules on June 27, where the Wolverines would play a home-and-home series against Utah in addition to games against Colorado and Oregon State. But the Wolverines will keep its 2014-16 non-conference schedules, keeping the Utes, Buffalo and Bea- vers on their schedule in future years. Since this deal is suspended, the.Big Ten will look to expand its conference schedule from eight to nine games or will reach out to col- laborate with other conferences. Nine Big Ten games would eliminate any discrepancies in naming a conference champion, but a deal with another conference could potentially boost a resume for the future playoff selection committee. From my first football game to my last appearance at the Big House, where I processed across the field in my cap and gown along with thousands of my peers, I've felt a mounting feeling of University of Michi- gan pride. I've recognized the blue blood coursing through my veins with each day spent sitting in class in East Hall or Mason Hall, walking across the Diag and eating lunch at the Union, transforming me into a pure-bred Wolverine. I've never felt so much a part of something greater than myself than when I sat in the stands on April 22, 2012 listening to Dr. Sanjay Gupta give the commencement address. Fast forward about two and a half months as I walk across campus on my way to the bank from my Ker- rytown apartment. The buildings that once appeared mountainous and awe-inspiring now seem a bit aver- age, even flawed. In the quiet heat of summer, the city ofAnn Arbor seems to engulf and overpower the cam- pus, where the campus always seemed to stand pow- erfully above the rest of the city. I feel like an adult returning to her favorite childhood amusement park. In many ways, I remembered it to be bigger and more exciting "back then." I see students in "High School. Class of 2010" t-shirts, relishing their summer campus experience, and I suddenly feel so much older than I did on April 22. I wonder when the maize and blue chapter of my life ended and this new one began. Since graduating, I've felt very conflicted about leaving Michigan in the fall to go to graduate school in Massachusetts. I've been very hesitant to leave this place and the life that I love here in Ann Arbor. Yet, walking past the Diag once more, on my way back to my apartment, I realize that I'm finally a victor. I've conquered this great mountain in my life: a University of Michigan education. Where these buildings and this campus once seemed so huge and daunting - as I stood at the foot of my undergraduate career, looking up -they now seem small andunimpressive asI stand at the summit of the mountain looking down at all that I've accomplished. Now that I've been able to remove my maize-colored glasses, I can pass them on to the next generation of Wolverines so they can also fall in love with the beauty and wonder of the University of Michigan. Finally, it's time to move forward. Heather Burcham is a 2012 University alum. 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