Corky Simpson: For better or worse, a beating for the ages

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing:

Florida State 37, Ohio State 6!

That’s a rout in football — I’m not sure there’s a word for it in baseball.

A real shellacking at best. A contemptuous, cold-blooded and unsportsmanlike blowout at worst.

It happened, unfortunately, in the NCAA Regional Tournament Sunday on the Florida State field in Tallahassee.

More than the Seminoles’ superiority, the score reflects the need for a mercy rule in college baseball.

I thought there was one.

Certainly there was no mercy in the Florida State dugout. To the delight of their home crowd, the Seminoles scored eight runs in the first inning and nine in the third.

After scoring 11 more in the fifth inning, Florida State led, 32-0.

“There’s never been a lead like that, that I can remember,” Florida State coach Mike Martin said. He must have looked like Sylvester the Cat, caught holding Tweety Bird in his mouth in those old Warner Brothers cartoons.

I’m sure Coach Martin must have felt sorry for the Buckeyes, but sorrier still that he couldn’t put some of those runs in the bank for future use.

The wonder isn’t that Ohio State was beaten so badly in the regional tournament, but that the Buckeyes got that far in the first place. Two days before the Florida State fiasco, they were beaten, 24-8, by Georgia. Ohio State battled back through the losers bracket to face Florida State.

In a sport dominated by pitching, Ohio State had zero. The Buckeyes were plagued by injuries to their top two pitchers and the transfer of two others before the season began.

Which begs repeat of the question — how in the heck did they get to the regionals in the first place?

More than a dozen records were broken in the rout and Ohio State, which prides itself in all things athletic, was humiliated.

But it’s funny how these things go. A team embarrasses an opponent one year, then finds itself getting repaid at some point down the line.

This isn’t to fault Florida State, exactly. After all, most of the blame for the disaster is Ohio State’s. It was up to the Buckeyes to stop Florida State and they did a lousy job of it.

But you have to wonder how good a baseball team can feel after beating someone 37-6.

Reporters at the Tallahassee Democrat were moved that “in the middle of the historical rout, ESPN News and ESPN Radio were breaking into regularly scheduled programming to report the score.”

Such a disaster has to be reported. It’s like some clown eating 100 hot dogs to win a contest, though. He’s gonna pay for it eventually.

“It wasn’t a misprint. It wasn’t a typo. It wasn’t a mistake,” the hometown newspaper sang out joyfully. Well, two out of three isn’t bad. Indeed, it wasn’t a misprint or a typo.

As to whether it was a mistake, we’ll see.

Running up the score always comes back to haunt the victor. That’s just the way it goes.

Maybe not this year, but somewhere in time, Florida State will lose a ball game and believe the gods of baseball are getting even.

And you know what? They will be.

Meanwhile, the eggheads at NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis need to find a way to prevent such abominations on the ball field. I mean, 32-0 after five innings should be enough to say, “Enough already.”

Former Tucson Citizen columnist Corky Simpson writes a weekly commentary for the Green Valley News.