As the 2023 Major League Baseball season nears its finale, perhaps it is only fitting to talk about the Whitewater baseball community. For that, UW-Whitewater club sports baseball team president and second baseman/outfielder Dylan Caruso talked about the team.
Much like both teams participating in the World Series right now, Whitewater’s club baseball team has gone through its ups and downs. Two years ago, both World Series teams had over 100 losses. Two years ago the Whitewater club baseball team went 3-16. However, last year they ended the long and hard fought season as the No. 2 team in the nation, finally running out of steam at the very end, having left everything on the baseball diamond.
“The club as a whole got much better,” Caruso said of the changes in his time with the team. “It was a very different tone we had.”
Not only did the team get runner-up at their own World Series, but they beat some powerhouses along the way.
“We ended up taking second. We lost to Penn State (6-3), but on the way up there we beat Florida State (8-5). We beat Utah State (11-10) which was the defending national champs,” Caruso said.
UW-W knows of its expectations for this year. After its exemplary performance last year, the attitude certainly carried over.
“It comes with another set of pressure from last year,” Caruso added.
Sometimes there are teams that mesh perfectly with each other and work hard to cover each other’s weaknesses or blind spots. They end up being a well-rounded team as a result.
“I think we have a great group of guys that work well together. . . We don’t have many weak spots and that’s what makes us so great,” Caruso said.
Well-rounded teams are able to cover their bases that much more easily. They might not have an insane amount of home runs or stolen bases, but they don’t have many shortcomings either.
“We scrap the runs across and we play good defense and our pitching is really good,” Caruso said of his team’s success so far.
Baseball at the university club level creates some unique situations where those in charge are having to choose between playing one friend over the other even though they themselves are also players. Caruso is all too aware of this.
“I gave the past president props because it gets in your head bad right away,” he said. “It’s really a lot weighing on you all at once.”
There is a dichotomy, not lost on Whitewater, between having a good time as a club team and the winning expectations from last year’s performance.
“At the end of the day, we’re all here to have fun,” Caruso said. “But we all want to make a return to the World Series. . . We’re putting everything we can into getting there again.”
To any student that might be on the fence about whether or not to watch them play, Whitewater club president Caruso has a simple message.
“Come out and watch a game. It’s not that often that you have a DIII team that’s able to compete against these DI talents,” he said. “We’d love to have more people come out and support us. It really fires us up.”
UW-W had a slew of home games against Marquette this weekend, before a few away games against Illinois State next weekend. They play their home games at either the varsity field or, where the majority of their games are played, at the Whitewater high school baseball field.