Gazette-Times reporter

No hazing. No intimidation.

No, as pitcher Jorge Reyes said, “Tying people up to poles and stuff” with duct tape or some other adhesive.

Freshmen on the Oregon State baseball team don’t get off scott-free, however. There’s an initiation ceremony for the newbies, and they have some specific duties as a way of paying their dues.

They tote and fetch in practice and on road trips. The new FieldTurf has eliminated most of their groundskeeping and tarping responsibilities but the menial chores that remain are a reality check for recent high school or American Legion stars who are now on the bottom of the Beaver baseball totem pole.

“It’s tough going from a senior in high school, where most of us were captains, to coming here and being the little guys,” acknowledged freshman outfielder Scotty Berke. “But it’s something we all have to go through, it’s all part of being part of the team.

“It’s not mean-spirited. You just go through it, and then you get older and other freshmen will take over your jobs.”

On his first road trip, Berke had to carry the 30-pound ball bucket, the empty water coolers, and other equipment. Reyes carried the medicine kit and fungo bats; fellow freshman Blake Keitzman lugged another water cooler and spare equipment bags.

They’ll resume their porter duties when the Beavers embark on their final extended regular-season road trip, a nine-day sojourn that starts with this morning’s departure for a Saturday-Monday series with Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

They then head south to Tucson for the March 30-April 1 with Arizona that opens the Pacific-10 Conference series.

Associate head coach Dan Spencer calls it a “pecking order,” with freshmen pitcher’s on the bottom rung.

“There’s the spare equipment bag and the pitcher’s ball bag to carry,” he said. “Sometimes one of the coaches isn’t going to the hotel, he’s going to watch a game,” so a freshman carries it back.

“The pitchers do more because they have less to do. They don’t have to hit or run, so they spend some time hauling stuff around, hitting fungoes. That’s just part of the deal and would be the case anywhere.

“Freshmen move the screens for BP. They groom the bullpen mounds. The game mound, they don’t do; (Kevin) Gunderson did that forever because he liked to, and now he’s passed the torch to Eddie Kunz,

“There are kids other than freshmen who have duties on the road. Daniel Turpen is a responsible guy, so he carries the radar gun. But there is a certain pecking order, and there is some delegation.

“If I give something to an older pitcher, he may delegate it to a freshman. I don’t care, as long as it gets from point A to point B. And I’m sure that no one has ever been forced to do something he didn’t want to do.”

Senior outfielder Mike Lissman said today’s players have it easier than he did in 2004.

“Guys like Aaron Mathews were hard-nosed guys, and we had to do a lot more,” he said. “The freshmen have it a lot easier now, that’s for sure, because of how the program has changed.

“We have so much respect for each other. We consider freshmen part of the team right off the bat because a lot of them play right away. But everybody has duties.”

Reyes and Keitzman man the ball buckets during batting practice and make sure the pitcher has a steady supply of baseballs. That way, there’s no interruption and players can get in and out of the cage without an unnecessary delay.

“As much as want to complain, everyone has been through it,” Reyes said. “In high school I was kind of like Darwin Barney is around here, I just showed up to the field and even as a freshman I didn’t have to do much.

“I’ve never had to do any kind of work like this. But everybody has their job; (shagging, etc.) is our job and if that’s what builds a team and makes us strong, even the little things count as far as making a team win.

“Those are little things that can help our program.”

The biggest rite of passage happens off the field. Freshmen went through an initiation ceremony after they returned from winter break that was basically a haircut gone way, way bad.

“We had to shave little patterns in our hair, mohawks and checkerboards,” Berke said. “They shaved a big bald spot in the middle of my head and spiked my hair on the side.

“I eventually shaved it all off because I couldn’t stand how it looked. But it definitely brings us together. The interaction with the older guys helps you feel part of the team, and it’s all in good fun.”

Reyes got a double-doo.

“The top was cut off like a mohawk but they left a Joe Dirt mullet,” he said. “I cut the mullet off and left the straight Mohawk.

“And after I got my mohawk, Darwin has one now, Lissman has one, Koa (Kahalehoe) has one. It’s pretty funny. I consider myself the one who started that.”