MOUNT PLEASANT – They haven’t even played their spring college baseball season yet, but three Iowa Wesleyan College baseball players have already signed contracts to play in summer leagues in 2009.
Edder Morales (Jr.-Barquisimeto, Venezuela), Jorge Martinez (Jr.-Tucson, Ariz.) and (Milton Gonzalez (Jr.-Canovanas, Puerto Rico) all recently signed contracts to play summer baseball. Morales will play in the Mountain Collegiate Baseball League based in Colorado and Wyoming, while both Gonzalez and Martinez will play in the Southern Collegiate Baseball League, which features teams in the Carolinas and eastern Tennessee. Both leagues are wooden bat leagues that feature college players playing schedules over the summer months.
Morales, a shortstop, will be playing for the Fort Collins (Colo.) Foxes in the Mountain Collegiate League this summer after signing with the team in September. MCBL teams play a 48-game season over eight weeks in the summer. Morales is currently in his first year with the Tigers after spending two seasons at Cochise College in Douglas, Ariz.
Martinez and Gonzalez will both be playing for the Carolina Thunder, located in Fort Mill, S.C. The Thunder is part of a Southern Collegiate League that plays a 42-game schedule and is considered among the best summer wooden bat leagues in the country.
Both Gonzalez and Martinez, like Morales, are transfers who will play their first season with the Tigers this year before going to their summer leagues. Martinez, a left-handed pitcher, joins Morales in coming to IWC from Cochise, where he was among the Arizona Community College Athletic Conference leaders last year with a 6-4 record. Gonzalez is a transfer from Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, where he started six games last year and finished 1-2 with a 4.65 earned run average.
The 2008 IWC baseball team won its second straight Midwest Collegiate Conference tourney championship last year and made its third straight trip to NAIA regional play. The Tigers lost just five seniors from last year’s team and return five players who received All-Midwest Collegiate Conference recognition last year
For more information regarding the IWC baseball program or any of the Tiger athletic teams, contact sports information director Adam Glatczak (319-385-6306 phone; 319-385-6384 FAX; aglatczak@iwc.edu.
