The University of Southern California has a baseball team, the Trojans. The USC Trojans are undoubtedly one of the very best college baseball teams to every play the game. Over 95 of the baseball players from the college level who've made it into the Major Leagues played for the USC Trojans. USC has also appeared in 21 College World Series events and has won the most games in the this event as well, 70 in total. The USC Trojans are also one of the oldest college baseball teams. The Trojans played their very first university baseball game in 1889 on the college campus. Unfortunately, the college team lost this game which may account for the fact that there aren't any recorded games until 1892. This time, the University of Southern California Trojans won against the Woodbury Business College by a score of 14-3. The USC Trojans had a total of 20 players on their college baseball squad that year and finished it as an undefeated squad. The very next year the Trojans played 10 games during the college baseball season. However, the USC baseball team appeared to have not played very much over the next four years with only 3 college games being recorded. Between 1898 and 1902, the USC Trojans baseball team suffered one bad season after another. In 1902 this changed with the arrival of pitcher Rube Waddell, one of the stars of college baseball at the time who eventually went on to become a Hall of Fame inductee after playing on 4 different Major League teams. He was, without a doubt, responsible for the upturn in fortune of the Trojans college baseball team. The fortune of the Trojans college baseball team was extremely mixed in the pre-World War 1 years and the team was even abolished for a season during 1913. This was to enable the college to focus on track and field sports. Of course the war years led to a decline in all sports, including baseball, but the Trojans college baseball team was fully re-instated in 1920. The University of Southern Californaia baseball team went from strength to strength and was finally rewarded by becoming a member of a college baseball conference in 1927 and they havent looked back since. |
