The University of Central Missouri’s 8th Annual First Pitch Banquet was held at the Jerry M. Hughes Athletics Center on March 23. The First Pitch Banquet is a source of fundraising for UCM baseball. Highlighting this event was keynote speaker and two-time World Series champion, David Eckstein, as well as Houston Astros Owner and Chairman, Jim Crane, was amongst the crowd. While these two names were well-known among the audience, there were many others who helped make this event a success.
“It’s a true team effort, and I’m not just saying that because this is an athletic type of event, but it takes a lot of different people [who are] trying to “For me, the coolest part is seeing [that] their brotherhood and their friendship is still a thing no matter how many years they’ve been graduated, and that’s awesome to me because I’ve met some of my best friends here at the University of Central Missouri.” — Mules redshirt senior Brennen van Breusegen
This First Pitch Banquet Planning Committee’s work, along with the UCM Alumni Foundation, saw a big audience at the Jerry M. Hughes Athletics Center to celebrate and raise money for the Mules Baseball program.
“It’s grown to now be almost 400 people here exclusively to support our baseball program here at UCM,” Jackie Jackson, Associate Vice President for Advancement for the UCM Alumni Foundation, said. “It’s one of the biggest fundraisers for the university, our biggest event fundraiser that we do through the alumni foundation.”
While this event helps out the Mules Baseball program financially, there are many other benefits that this event brings to Mules Baseball players.
“Anytime you have a speaker like that, like David Eckstein, or Reggie Jackson, or Jim Crane, or even Alex Bregman back in the day, was awesome,” Mules redshirt senior Brennen van Breusegen said. “So having a speaker like that and learning and hearing from what they have to say in their experiences around the game of baseball is really awesome.”
These keynote speakers are selected by the First Pitch Planning Committee to provide encouragement, especially for the Mules Baseball players. This year, Eckstein spoke about H.E.A.R.T, that is, hustle, effort, attitude, resilience and teamwork.
“When I think back to David, and this is just a fan side of me coming out, but you look at what David did at Florida, he understands the college mentality,” Snyder said. “He had [success] at Florida and then the success that he had at the major league level of being an All-Star and winning two World Series.”
This year’s First Pitch Banquet served many purposes. Among those were fundraising, recognition of the 5, 10, 25, and 50th-anniversary teams, inducting new members into the Mules Diamond Club, which were, Mike Haynes, Chris Umphres, and Bennett Oliver, and celebrating Mules Baseball as a whole.
“We want to try [to] celebrate our programs as much as we can. This was something that we started about eight years ago, and it was to kick off the start of the season. We’ve transitioned a little bit now that it’s actually in the middle of the season, just from a logistical purpose,” Snyder said. “But it’s to celebrate our baseball program and also to help from a fundraising perspective because we are trying to have the state-of-the-art program.”
This celebration of UCM baseball, both past and present, is something that has caught the eye of van Breusegen.
“I would say first off, for me, it’s seeing the commitment and everybody giving back to the team that made them who they are, [that] made them the person they are, and then seeing teams that had success in the past,” van Breusegen said. “For me, the coolest part is seeing [that] their brotherhood and their friendship is still a thing no matter how many years they’ve been graduated, and that’s awesome to me because I’ve met some of my best friends here at the University of Central Missouri. So seeing the same outcome and the same impact that it had on them is pretty special.”
In the end, one of the goals of the First Pitch Banquet is to support UCM Baseball, and the reward for the people who work behind the scenes is giving back to the people who are center stage in athletics.
“There’s a lot of people that we’re trying to support and we want to make sure that it’s the best possible for them because they’re working their tails off to win as many games on the field,” Snyder said. “So when we can put this type of an event together for them, and again, for all of our programs [we can] support what we can. That’s why we do this job.”
Even with the recent success of the 8th Annual First Pitch Banquet, Snyder and others who work to make this event successful, are looking forward to next year.
“If [anyone wants] to come out to this event in the future, please feel free to reach out,” Snyder said. “This is not [an] invite-only type of event, this is something for the community to support Mules Baseball, and that’s alumni, that’s fans, that’s students, we’ve got a student price too. So it’s not just limited to parents, alumni, and so on and so forth.”
