Baseball is simple.
You hit, you run, you throw. You wear skin-tight pants.
But for the Syracuse University club baseball team, the beginning of this spring season has been anything but easy. A decision by the Club Sport Advisory Board not to allocate the necessary money for the team to join the National Club Baseball Association left them without a league and in a pinch for games.
The process by which club teams receive funding from the school is tricky.
Each January the student-governed advisory board gets funding requests for the upcoming academic year from SU's 35 club sport teams. After examining each team's request, the board makes its own budget request to the Student Association finance board.
SA then takes money from Student Activity Fees and allocates it to the advisory board, which distributes the money to the individual teams. But because the club sports budget is based on activity fees, overall funding can only increase if student enrollment does too.
So when it comes to budgeting, the board's hands are tied. If teams say they need more cash, increased enrollment is their only hope.
According to Club Sports Assistant Director Joseph Lore, the sum of all the club teams' financial requests totaled $149,957 for the 2001-2002 academic year. But the board could only request $72,100 from SA, leaving the majority of club teams with much less money than they’d originally asked to finance their 2001-2002 seasons.
"Baseball is no different than bowling, figure skating or any other club sport," Lore said. "There probably wasn't a single club that got everything it asked for when you look at the whole scope of everything."
The baseball club requested $4,935 from the advisory board for the 2001-2002 year. They were allocated $1,800.
The board gave the squad enough money to pay for umpires and to rent field space for home games. However, the board opted not to provide the team with the $500 it needed to pay the National Club Baseball Association entry fee.
The team listed this entry fee as its third most important priority when making its budget request, Lore said.
The squad played in the league last spring, using money from fund-raisers to pay the entry fee. Team captain and President Tom Huson said he expected the board to fund the entry fee this season, and the squad used the cash generated in this year's fund-raisers to purchase new equipment.
When Huson and the rest of the team learned last November that the school would not pay the league's entry fee, they were left with no money to pay it themselves and not enough time to raise the money before the league's entry fee deadline.
According to Huson, being in the league last year gave the squad a number of guaranteed games against major schools like Pennsylvania State University, Bucknell University and Colgate University, which were also members of the NCBA.
The league also organized a post-season tournament and a NCBA World Series game at the end of the year. NCBA regularly updates player statistics on its Web site, clubbaseball.org.
Huson said playing in the league was worth the $500 the team paid to enter.
"The league just gives us an outline and something to play for at the end of the year," he said. "I know $500 is a lot, but if you have to pay it to get some games scheduled, I don't see any way around it."
But according to Lore, the advisory board felt the league failed to offer enough benefits to the team.
Lore said he contacted the president of the NCBA and discovered the $500 entry fee would only pay for the upkeep of the NCBA Web site, minor fund-raisers and equipment deals.
The board decided the money could be better spent by other club teams.
"Do I want to see our club baseball team be given the opportunity to play in a league world series? Absolutely," Lore said. "But that's 500 student dollars going toward a Web site, some equipment deals and help with fund raising. I had to say no.'"
Even though the team will be without a league or playoffs this spring, the players are trying make the best of the upcoming season.
The 23-man team has been practicing in the Carrier Dome twice a week since the middle of February.
They’ve scrambled to get games scheduled since learning there would be no league to schedule games for them. The season is scheduled to kick off April 7 in a doubleheader against Colgate at P&C Stadium.
"We're taking the whole thing in stride. We're going to go out and enjoy playing baseball," said senior third baseman, Mike Nolan. "And then maybe if we do well, it will show the school we deserve that $500 for the younger guys in the future."
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