The club baseball team lost access to its only batting cage for about a month and a half and may lose access next year after two players were caught trying to steal several duffel bags full of Ducks keychains, stuffed animals, flags and mini Beaver helmets from a University-owned warehouse.
Travis Lee Chock and Peter Richardson Phillips, both 23, pleaded guilty Thursday morning in Lane County Circuit Court to one charge each of second-degree attempted theft. The plea bargain allows the men to each enter a diversion program where they’ll have six months to complete 40 hours of community service.
Eugene police arrested the men for an April 5 attempted theft from a warehouse that formerly belonged to the Joe Romania car dealership east of campus. The building, which is currently storing Ducks and Beavers memorabilia, houses a batting cage facility for the Club Sports baseball and softball teams.
Baseball team co-coordinator Nick Hall, a University junior, said the team was denied access to the facility after the arrests, but Club Sports was able to negotiate with the University to allow the team access on Wednesday and Thursday and on next Monday. The team will compete in Ohio at nationals, which start Wednesday.
“It was really hard because, I mean, since we don’t have any facilities through the University, it was really hard for the players to keep their swing,” he said.
It’s a toss-up whether the team will be able to use the facility next year, he said.
“We feel responsible, and we feel sorry that the team had to suffer for the actions that we did,” said Phillips, a pitcher and shortstop for the team. “We apologize fully to the team, the school, everybody who was involved.”
Eugene Police Department officer Chris White, who arrested the men, said University public safety officers responded to the warehouse’s burglar alarm and Chock and Phillips emerged from behind a stack of boxes. The men told officers that they went into the restricted area, setting off the loud motion-activated alarm, to retrieve a ball that had slipped through the net and rolled through an open door into the warehouse, White said.
Department of Public Safety officer Royce Myers said he and DPS Sgt. Lonnie Ekstrom told the players they could leave after the officers called the coach, who confirmed that the players were using the cage and the person who had escorted them into the building had left.
Later, Myers and Ekstrom stepped around the corner and found two duffel bags full of Ducks and Beavers memorabilia.
About an hour later, White called the men, and they confessed to attempting to steal the memorabilia, Myers said.
“They said they were really sorry about it, and they didn’t want it to reflect on their team,” he said.
On Thursday, Phillips said he and Chock, a third baseman for the team, were using the batting cage, became curious and wandered into the restricted area.
“We were trespassing and that was the only thing that they could charge us with,” he said. “We were putting items back, actually, when they came in. So the officers caught us at the wrong time. The truth is we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” They were arrested on charges of second-degree burglary, a Class C felony, White said.
The men later plea-bargained the charges to Class B misdemeanors.