Wooster won its first Mideast Regional in 1989.

Welcome back to the Scot Rewind, where WoosterAthletics.com is taking a look back at a big win, a monster individual performance, or a significant milestone corresponding with each week of the 2020-2021 academic year. We're sticking with The College of Wooster's baseball team this week and taking a look at the 1989 team.

Wooster's 1989 team played a significant role in helping the Fighting Scots establish a reputation as one of the elite baseball programs in Div. III. Heading into the season, Wooster was already on the radar within the Mideast Region as a program to be reckoned with, yet for the most part, success continued to elude the Scots come the Mideast Regionals. Wooster went 1-2 in each of its previous five regional appearances, including a string of four consecutive years heading into the 1989 tournament at Otterbein College's Rike Field.

Wooster's fate started to trend more positive at the onset of the 1989 Mideast Regional, thanks to a three-spot in the first and second innings. In fact, the Scots scored at least one run in seven of its nine trips to the dish en route to a 16-10 victory over archrival Marietta College. Seven of the Scots' starting nine logged at least two base knocks in the regional opener, with third baseman Cary McConnell (four hits), right fielder Brent Bizyak (two hits, three RBI), and second baseman Matt Sherrieb (three hits, three runs scored, three RBI) giving the Etta Express' pitchers fits all game long.

Next, Sherrieb's three-run blast in the bottom of the sixth inning broke a 1-1 tie against Aurora University, and John Jordan went the distance in Wooster's 10-4 win. That win marked the first time since 1979 where Wooster won multiple games at regionals.

The next day, Wooster punched its ticket to the championship round with a hard-fought 12-10 win over Illinois Wesleyan University. As the game progressed, Bizyak caught the eyes of those in attendance, as he went an electric 6-for-6 with three RBI and two runs scored. In fact, Bizyak was just the second player in program history to have a six-hit game, and no Scot matched that total until the 2005 season, coincidentally, a year in which the Scots made it to the NCAA Div. III Championships.

Getting back to the 1989 game, Rich Danch improved to 6-2 on the year against Illinois Wesleyan and he rebounded from giving up a one-out homer in the bottom of the ninth to record the final two outs to send Wooster to the regional championship round.

The first Div. III "World Series" berth wouldn't come easily, as Marietta emerged from the elimination bracket and edged out Wooster 9-6, setting the stage for a winner-take-all showdown between the region's archrivals. Tim Pettorini turned to Mark Bricker in the decisive game, and the Scots' 6-8 southpaw did his part with five innings of two-hit shutout ball before freshman righty Andy Lott toed the rubber the rest of the way en route to a combined five-hit shutout. Rob Peterson's fourth-inning, two-run round-tripper scored the first two runs, and the Scots tacked on a run in the fifth and sixth innings of an eventual 4-0 win.

While Wooster didn't get a victory at the 1989 Div. III Championships, it was a sign of things to come, as the Scots have gone on to qualify five more times (1994, 1997, 2005, 2009, 2018) with runner-up showings in 1997 and 2009, plus a third-place finish in 2005. 

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