By Will Vandervort.
By Will Vandervort
Daniel Gossett grew up watching Clemson baseball. Since he was eight years old, he always dreamed what it might be like to open the season for his beloved Tigers. He will know what that feels like this afternoon.
Gossett will open the 2013 baseball season for Clemson today as the Tigers host William & Mary this afternoon at Doug Kingsmore Stadium.
“We are going to have a huge crowd here,” the sophomore said. “It is going to be a typical Clemson opening day, there is going to be a pretty good crowd.”
Clemson coach Jack Leggett is no stranger to opening day. This will be his 20th as the head coach at Clemson and his 34th overall. Before that, Leggett experienced many more as a player at the University of Maine.
“It never gets old,” Leggett said. “I’m excited about it and I look forward to it. I think our kids are excited about playing somebody with a different colored uniform on. There is something on the line. We have been practicing a long time for this.”
It is basically a whole new group of Tigers that will run on the field this afternoon before Gossett delivers his first pitch. Centerfielder Thomas Brittle, leftfielder Tyler Slaton, catcher Garrett Boulware, first baseman Jon McGibbon, third baseball Jay Baum and second baseman Jon McGibbon are all names Clemson fans are familiar with, but only Brittle, Baum and McGibbon were full-time starters last year.
The others will join Tyler Krieger (freshman shortstop), Steven Duggar (freshman rightfielder) and transfer Shane Kennedy (designated hitter) as part of Clemson’s new lineup. In all, five of the Tigers’ nine position players are either freshmen or sophomores.
“It’s going to look a good bit different,” said Brittle, the Tigers loan senior in the lineup. “Losing guys like Richie Shaffer, Phil Pohl, Jason Stolz and everybody else who left, we are going to have a lot of new faces around the infield and new faces in the outfield.”
And with losing guys like Shaffer, Pohl, Stolz and Brad Felder, Clemson also loses most of its power. As mentioned before, the Tigers only return eight home runs from last year’s 44.
“We are going to lose a lot more power and it’s going to be a lot more line drives, ground balls and being able to make things happen with our speed,” Brittle said.
That speed will come from Brittle, who led the team last year with 15 swipes in 18 attempts. Wilkerson also brings speed to the table after stealing 10 bases a year ago. But Leggett really likes what guys like Krieger, Duggar and Maleeke Gibson, who will also see time in the outfield this weekend, bring. All three freshmen were recruited to Clemson because of the speed they each have on the base pads.
“We have to play extremely hard and we have to execute and be able to run the bases and utilize our speed because I think that is one of our assets and puts pressure on the other team’s defense,” Leggett said.
In other words, Clemson is going to play a lot of small ball this year.
“I don’t know if we have a guy in the lineup that doesn’t have pretty good speed,” Brittle said. “I think it is definitely to our advantage and we are going to be more aggressive on the bases this year. We should be able to run a little bit more, hit-and-run, bunting and stuff like that, and putting pressure on the defense to make stuff happen.”