The smell of the grass.
The sizzling sound of a ball hurled 90 miles-per-hour from a dirt hill located 60-feet-6-inches from home plate.
The unmistakable sound of a ball being launched toward a fence from an aluminum bat.
Each of these elements make baseball enjoyable for fans throughout the Pacific-10 Conference.
Except Oregon fans.
While baseball fans around the Pac-10 prepare to cheer their teams to victory this spring, Duck fans will need to get their fix from a different source.
Duck fans have the option of focusing their attention on the club baseball team, because Oregon is the only Pac-10 school without a varsity baseball program.
The Ducks start their season Saturday in Vancouver, B.C., and junior starting pitcher Jordan Shaw said the team is looking to show people that baseball should be a big part of Oregon athletics.
“It’s on our shoulders to represent Oregon with pride and to show them they made a mistake dropping the (baseball) program,” Shaw said.

The school dropped baseball, along with men’s and women’s gymnastics, in 1981 because of budget problems. After dropping gymnastics, Title IX forced Oregon to drop either wrestling or baseball. It chose the latter.
This leaves the club team to represent the school in baseball. If that doesn’t sound imposing enough, they have other obstacles as well, the most daunting being they have no field to practice on.
The Ducks practice twice a week on the turf field by the Student Recreation Center and spend two days a week taking batting practice in cages. This means they will not see a grounder with any “true” hops, or face any “live” pitching before their season-opening series with Douglas College. Anyone who has ever played baseball knows how hard it is to hit live pitching when you have not practiced against it.
“I haven’t seen a live pitch since Willamette,” said junior shortstop Aaron House, who transferred to Oregon after two years with the Willamette varsity program.
Despite the obstacles, the Ducks feel positive about their upcoming season, as their 27-man roster is deep with pitching. The Ducks are coming off a season in which you could count their victories on one hand. At one point, the team had only nine players available.
“We had guys pitching who weren’t pitchers,” senior student coordinator Kalin Boodman said of the Ducks’ roster problems last season. “We want to keep things a little more professional.”
Three front-runners for the starting rotation are right-handed junior Matt Mensik, left-handed junior Patrick Orr and Shaw. Shaw said this is one of the best pitching staffs he has been associated with, top to bottom.
“We have a really deep staff coming from the left and right sides,” Shaw said. “(We have) a lot of guys who can throw strikes consistently.”
Pitching isn’t the Ducks’ only strength. Offensively and defensively, House is one of the bright spots for the Ducks. House, an all-league shortstop from Clackamas High School, brings experience to the team.
“We have a few guys who can swing it,” House said.
With everything that is going against the Ducks, there are several things going for them. Players who might not have the chance to compete for a varsity program are getting the chance to play the game they love. Also, even if they are the only baseball team at Oregon, the fact is the Ducks are not a varsity program. This means players don’t have the constant pressure of winning that comes with being a varsity sport.
“It’s a bunch of guys who love to play,” Mensik said. “I feel no pressure at all.”
This weekend, being the only baseball team at Oregon can be carried as a sense of pride.
“The last couple weeks we’ve been aching to (play),” Shaw said. “It’s kind of like the countdown to Christmas.”