A first glance at the Cotter baseball team for the 2019 season, shows a winless team, but as you dig deeper a more interesting story is revealed.

Coming into the season, the Ramblers baseball team had already taken some tough hits with starting shortstop Charlie Reilly being out for the year (ACL) and second baseman Cale Beckman being out for half of it (broken forearm).

Even with the injuries at hand, nobody expected the season to turn out like it did. The team featured only one upperclassman, three year starter Jack Gardner, and other than that, the team was young, very young.

The teams starting lineup includes one senior, four sophomores, three freshman, and one eighth grader. The first half of the season went “really badly” as many players said, but the tide started to turn after starting second baseman and ace Beckman returned to the diamond.

Cale Beckman missed the first seven games of the year, in six of those the team got ten-runned in six innings or less. But then all of a sudden the storms started to clear and the team started to string together hits and started to make the simple plays.

Head coach Don Freeman has stressed all season about “making the simple easy plays’ because those are what will win us the games we need to win. The Ramblers came up short in the next 10 games, coming within 3 runs in four different games.

Now whats next for the Ramblers as they reflect on the winless season? As the Philadelphia 76er’s once repeated a mantra time and time again when they were at the bottom of the league, Trust the Process.

Starting center fielder Connor Yocum said it best, “It’s really easy to look back on the season and think, man that sucked. But there is so much to look forward to with the youth of team as we will be returning 8 starters next year.”

Trusting the Process can be difficult at times, even more so when you come off a difficult season, but there is no need to lose hope. For a team that started most 14, 15, and 16 year olds, the Ramblers had a ton of bright spots.

The biggest of all being the hope for future and the good days to come for Cotter Baseball.

“Most of the kids on the team haven’t even hit puberty yet, so it will fun to see what these guys can do in the coming years when they are fully grown and have all this experience under their belts,” assistant coach Sam French said.

Although the season hasn’t gone as expected, hang in there Rambler fans because there are good days ahead.