Taylor Dugas was drafted in the eighth round of the MLB Draft last year, but rather than take the money, he chose to stick around the Capstone for another shot at Omaha and the College World Series.
The timing was good for Dugas to leave Alabama and go on to the professional level. The Crimson Tide, under his leadership, made it the to the championship game of the 2011 Tallahassee regional and was a few lucky plays away from a Super Regional. A shot at the College World Series in Omaha, Neb., was so close the players could almost taste it.
Dugas decided to come back to the Capstone with Omaha in the crosshairs. Now halfway through the 2012 campaign, the road to Omaha seems to be getting darker and darker, as the Tide has started the Southeastern Conference schedule with a 1-8 record and sit at 9-19 overall.
“Everybody knows we’re struggling a little bit,” third baseman Brett Booth said. “We said from the get-go we were going to go through adversity. We didn’t know it was going to be at the beginning of the season, at the end of the season or the middle, you never know when it’s going to happen.”
The adversity has been plaguing the Tide all season long, and it seems like Alabama is losing ideas for getting out of it.
“We’ve said it all,” head coach Mitch Gaspard said. “You become the shrink, you try everything. In baseball, the mental game is such a big part of what we do.”
The mental part of baseball has been the most disappointing for Alabama this season. Alabama has been unable to keep the winning feeling, winning the game after a win four out of nine times. To make matters worse, Alabama has difficulty getting off of a slide, compiling losing streaks of three games twice and two five-game slides, one of which is still active.
The drive to power through the struggles is not dwindling on this team, as the thought of postseason play remains a big motivator.
“The only way to get through it is to keep going,” Booth said. “Get your head up and realize that we’re good players. We’re a good team. Right now, things aren’t going good, but keep going and sooner or later, things will turn.”
Gaspard added, “You just have to believe everyday that you’re one or two hits away from bursting that bubble. You have to stay positive everyday.”
Gaspard said that it’s tough to stay positive when losses come more often than wins.
“The biggest thing right now is you have to take the record out of it,” Booth said. “You can’t come to the ballpark thinking about what you’ve done in the past, good or bad.”
Despite the difficulty of the task, the Tide knows it has little time left to turn things around.
“Everybody knows that we don’t have time to mess around anymore,” Booth said. “We have to get it turned around now.”
