Tulane Fall Baseball a Chance to Get to Know Each Other
After losing key personnel to the Major League Baseball draft and to attrition, the Tulane baseball program added twenty-three new athletes to the fourteen returning players. Fall practice sessions cranked up this month, have included road exhibitions against Ole Miss and Pearl River Community College, and will conclude with the annual Fall Ball World Series the week before the Thanksgiving break.
After serving three seasons at Tulane as assistant coach, recruiting coordinator, and interim head coach, Jay Uhlman now begins his fourth full year at the helm of Green Wave baseball. Here is the first of our two-part exclusive interview with Uhlman.
ON SI Tulane: When you have this kind of turnover, it's almost like starting over again, isn't it?
Uhlman: I think that's the way things are going to be from now on. (However), my initial background in collegiate baseball is junior college baseball, both as a player and as a coach, so that turnover I'm well aware of.
ON SI Tulane: It also makes for an exciting time, in a way, because you have guys that have gone on to major leagues, so it shows that you get athletes here who are outstanding baseball players, but also it proves that Tulane baseball can be a place where you can excel and go on to the major leagues. What does that mean to you?
Uhlman: I think it allows for us to go to the recruiting table with some ammunition, and I think kids coming out of the portal want a few things: they want another chance, they want to be able to develop, they want an opportunity to win, and they want an opportunity to play professional baseball. We have, in the last three years, me being the head coach, this being my fourth as the head coach, that track record has been all those boxes being checked, so I think as we continue down this path and the more success our players can have, we have the ability to recruit the kind of student-athletes that Tulane needs and is a fit for our coaching staff. I think we're going to be able to have the ability to have more of our players as we continue to move forward.
Recruiting to Tulane
ON SI Tulane: Recruiting an athlete to Tulane can be a disadvantage because you have requirements that nobody else has. At the same time, people say, "Hey look those requirements actually help us to get athletes that nobody else will be able to."
Uhlman: There's a little bit of truth to both of those things. I mean for me to be able to recruit to the the institution, the reputation of the degree, our tradition rich baseball program, those are easy sells. I think every program has its drawbacks and its challenges, and for me our challenges are cost of attendance, which is approaching $100,000 a year, and what I would say is us as a institution holding court on (getting) more scholarships. We're still operating with the same amount of scholarships that we've had in the past even though the NCAA said, "Hey baseball you can have thirty-four full rides if you can afford it, or if you want to spend the money to do it." It's still partial (scholarships) for us because we don't have the funding at thirty-four, so we are not a full ride sport. Can we get some in the future? Time will tell, and we need that to continue this program in a upward trajectory.
Starting Anew in the Fall
ON SI Tulane: All right let's look at your squad now. To me, Fall Baseball is actually more fun in some ways than the actual spring baseball because you get to see things that you've never seen before. You get to see players, these 23 newbies, who are coming on board. So tell me a little bit about the excitement of fall baseball.
Uhlman: Yeah it's always a new start. You know, I'm a Dodger fan so I kind of pick on Chicago Cub fans. It's an "every year's our year" kind of thing. (With a) new year there's a new hope, right? "We're going to World Series." So that's kind of that feeling in fall ball to build on that. If you didn't do as well as you wanted to, you have a chance to adapt and change and start anew. You bring a bunch of new personalities in, you lose a bunch of personalities, you've got to kind of figure out what your identity is again....So that's part of the fun of fall ball is figuring out kind of where our midline is, how we can operate at our optimal level, at a balanced level, and then, what's the upside for us? What's the downside? Where are the strengths? Where are the weaknesses?
What to Expect from the Returning Greenies
ON SI Tulane: So let's look the old folks, the long-in-the tooth players who are coming back. Tell me what you think is going to be number one most important for them to do in order to help these twenty-three new guys.
Uhlman: I think it's just kind of leading by example ,and when we're (the coaches) not around (the guys who've been around) just kind of setting the tone of, "Hey, this is what the coaching staff is not going to allow" and "This is what you have a little more freedom in," so I think passing the word of the culture is really important. Culture is what you do every day. It's not a fancy word on a wall.
23 New Players Gets Your Juices Flowing
ON SI Tulane: Having twenty-three new players is a lot. Do you look at it as an opportunity to broaden the spectrum of what you have already, or is it instead your chance to teach?
Uhlman: I think you just nailed it. It's the excitement of let's get our fingers on these guys, and sink our teeth into them, and (see) what makes them tick, and how can we make them better than they were before they got here. As a teacher those are all fun things. And how do we continue to move the other guys that are back, move them forward, but to be able to have that kind of that new energy, that new perspective maybe those guys bring something to the table that we can use moving forward. Then in the Summer they'll go back (home) and talk to their friend. So when we get back in the portal again this summer, if they've had a good experience, regardless of playing time (they'll tell their friends). We try to coach them the same the entire year. It doesn't matter if they've got no innings pitched or 110 innings pitched. We believe in the spirit of and the quality of teaching and making sure that we're doing everything we can to never give up on these guys, to always keep pushing them and always keep coaching them. We don't really know any other way.
Tomorrow, we conclude our two-part interview with Tulane baseball coach Jay Uhlman by looking at the three key aspects of the game, who some of the new guys are, and where he thinks the Green Wave settle into the American Conference rankings.
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.