If you can’t score, you can’t win.

This is the case in pretty much every sport you can find. If anyone can find a sport where winning is feasible without creating any points, please let me know, I would love to see it.

Eastern’s baseball team averaged approximately 3.3 runs per game over their first 26 contests, then exploded last weekend to put up 48 runs over two games with Morehead State. That’s 24 runs per game. For those of you who aren’t huge baseball geeks like I am, that’s a lot.

Last weekend, compared to the rest of the season, the Panthers octupled their offensive output. Think about that for a second. I know if I could octuple my homework output for a weekend, I could be halfway into next semester.

On top of the run production, the Panthers hit nine home runs in one game after hitting just eight in their first 26 games. If that isn’t a spike in output, I don’t know what is.

So with the need to score taken care of, the Panthers are sitting tied for second in the Ohio Valley Conference, just a half-game behind Jacksonville State for first.

Just to provide a few more interesting stats on the Panthers long-ball explosion this weekend, they were one home run away from tying the OVC record of 10 homers in a game set by the 2003 Panthers against Eastern Kentucky. Zach Borenstein, who paced the Panthers with his first three homers of the year, tied the school record for homers by one player in one game and was one away from tying the OVC record of four.

But as much as the ability to hit the long-ball in game one said about the Panther offense, perhaps more is said by their ability to put nearly as many tallies on the board without hitting a home run in game two of the double-header.

The Panthers struggled last week against Western Illinois with runners on base, stranding 10 men and scoring none in that contest. They still left ten on base in game two last weekend, so it’s too early to say problem solved. But when you manage to score 23 runs in a game without hitting a homer and hit nine in another, all other offensive problems seem to fly out the window.

Like I said, if you can’t score, you can’t win. But if you score as much as the Panthers did against Morehead State, winning starts to feel like a breeze.

Brad Kupiec can be reached at 81-7944 or bmkupiec@eiu.edu