BOARD OF REGENTS
IOWA STATE DAILY
MARTINO HARMON LETTER
The Board of Regents passed an operations and appropriations request of $12 million to be split among the three regent institutions. MORE ONLINE An independent student newspaper serving Iowa State since 1890.
The senior vice president of student affairs gives his opinion surronding the white supremicist posters appearing around Ames. PAGE 5 TUESDAY 09.26.2017 No. 026 Vol 213
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BASEBALL
A strike to the final season
HANNAH OLSON/ IOWA STATE DAILY The Iowa State baseball program heard halfway through its 2001 season that the sport would be cut from the athletic department. Ever since 2001, there’s been a club baseball team and a hope that baseball will come back as a Division I sport.
BY GARRETT.KROEGER @iowastatedaily.com BRIAN.MOZEY@iowastatedaily.com Head coach Lyle Smith was relaxing at home after the Iowa State baseball team just claimed a crucial series win over the Oklahoma State.
Smith was watching the Sunday night news, until his phone started going off. Ring. Ring. Ring. He got off his chair and walked over to his landline to pick it up. The news he received from that call would, at first, be confusing but at the same time, change Smith’s life on a dime. “I got a call from a columnist from the Ames Tribune,” Smith said. “He started with the line of questioning of ‘How do you feel about (Iowa State) dropping the (baseball) program?’” Smith really had nothing to say to the Ames Tribune columnist. He was scratching his head wondering why the writer was asking about Iowa State dropping the baseball program. That is, until
he received another call a few minutes after he finished up with the reporter. “I received a call from the athletic director that he wanted a meeting with me the next morning to talk about the budget,” Smith said. “He didn’t say anything at that moment. But you can put two and two together and this is not going to be good. So really, I learned of the situation from a sports columnist.” On April 2, 2001, then-Iowa State athletic director Bruce Van De Velde announced that the university would no longer have a baseball program after the 2001 season. The announcement from Van De Velde came a day before the Cyclones were set to take on in-state rival Iowa at home at the midway point of the season. The Iowa State baseball program began in 1892, and it produced major league players like Los Angeles Dodgers infielder Mike Busch and Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Don Wengert. In 109 years, the program held a record of 1,346 wins, 1,412 loses and 17 ties. No other program at
the time who made the Big 12 tournament that year had played more seasons. The decision to cut baseball was a shock to everyone on the team. During that season, players heard rumblings that Iowa State may cut men’s swimming and diving – which it did – but they never thought the university would get rid of America’s pastime. “It was a blow,” said then-senior infielder Rob Conway. “We were blindsided.” Don Green, who played in 1988 and 1989, remembers reading an article in the Des Moines Register about the program getting cut. He dropped the paper and picked it up to read it again. He couldn’t believe what he was reading. Afterwards, there were countless emails sent back and forth between teammates. The next focus was on how to get the program back for the future. “We all supported the 2001 baseball team and we’re shocked by the news,” Green said. “It’s
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