1 pitch. Bieser, Gamecocks win game in unusual way

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Liberty U. used ineligible player to lose conference baseball contest, swept

JACKSONVILLE, Ala.  — Chalk this one to baseball’s wild, wild stories.

Steve Bieser and the Jacksonville State Gamecocks won its baseball game Saturday (March 29) against the Liberty Flames via a forfeit after just one pitch.

Liberty forfeited the game after omitting the game’s starting pitcher, Ben Blair, from the roster that was submitted prior to the beginning of the three-game weekend series.

Bieser, the Gamecocks’ second-year head coach, waited for Blair to throw the first pitch, then summoned the umpiring crew together to notify them that Liberty used an ineligible player.

Per Conference USA rules on teams using ineligible players, the Flames forfeited the contest, which was officially recorded as a 9-0 victory for the host Gamecocks.

Liberty described the roster mishap as a “clerical error,” according to Bryson Gordon of The News & Advance newspaper (Anniston Ala.) via Sports Illustrated’s Karl Rasmussen.

“Going into our Friday game, the first thing I do is I want to know what their 27-man roster is so that I can make plans for the series,” Bieser said to the Anniston Star newspaper. “I realized that a guy that they told us that they were going to start was not on the roster. When I saw him out on the mound, I knew that it wasn’t OK to not be on the roster and walk out and throw a first pitch. I wasn’t 100% on the verdict, whether the next pitcher comes in and you keep going or if Conference USA has a rule that it’s an automatic forfeit.”

Bieser, a former Major League Baseball player with the New York Mets and Pittsburgh Pirates (drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies), is a Ste. Genevieve High graduate with family ties to this town. He also is the former head baseball coach of the Missouri Tigers and Southeast Missouri State Redhawks.

Bieser also won two high school state baseball championships as a head coach for the Vianney Golden Griffins in St. Louis as well as the Junior American Legion national championship for Ste. Genevieve Post 150, and he also created the Ste. Genevieve Riverdogs youth baseball program.

He is married to Diahann, and the couple have four children: son Cole, and three daughters Whitley, Briley and Carley.