The Tennessee Volunteers, the No. 1 team in Division-I college baseball, found themselves embroiled in controversy during Friday night's series-opening game against the Vanderbilt Commodores.
Jordan Beck, a junior outfielder and promising draft prospect, hit a solo home run in the first inning to seemingly put the Volunteers up early. There was just one catch. The umpires conferred after the home run and deemed Beck's bat to be illegal after an examination, negating the run and resulting in him being called out instead. Predictably, Volunteers head coach Tony Vitello was displeased with the ruling.
If you're wondering what was going on -- much the way Vitello was -- the answer seems to be as convoluted as you'd expect. The short version is that bats are examined before every series to make sure they meet the NCAA's designations. A sticker is then applied to those bats, allowing the umpires to verify they've cleared said bat for action. Beck's bat, evidently, featured a sticker from another series' testing.
Here's the longer explanation, according to ESPN announcer Chris Burke:
"In pre-series bat testing, a sticker with the logo of the Opposing team is placed on legal bats. There was a sticker on the bat. But it was not an appropriate sticker on the bat. It was a sticker from a midweek game. Therefore the bat was deemed illegal. "
To recap: Beck's bat had been approved and stickered -- just for not for this weekend's series. Presumably, that sticker was from the Volunteers' game on Wednesday against Western Carolina, and neither Beck nor anyone else noticed the difference before he grabbed it and took his first at-bat of the evening.
The Volunteers would still build an early lead, by the way, with first baseman Luc Lipcius delivering a two-run shot in the second inning. Tennessee entered Friday night with an absurd 24-1 record on the season, including a 6-0 mark in SEC play.
