Cal drops baseball

One of the most shocking days of Michael Lowden's life started with a text message from his baseball coach, telling him to be ready for a meeting. Minutes later, the same instructions arrived in a foreboding e-mail from Cal's athletic department.

The right-handed pitcher knew this couldn't be good news. Still, he never expected this: A room full of sullen student-athletes, all learning at once from the athletic director that their sports were being cut.

"Before (Tuesday) we had no idea," said Lowden, a sophomore pitcher. "This is pretty awful."

In its latest move to cut costs, the University of California, Berkeley, announced plans Tuesday to eliminate four intercollegiate sports, including baseball, and end financial support of its championship men's rugby team.

UC Berkeley's baseball, men's and women's gymnastics, and women's lacrosse teams will no longer represent the university in intercollegiate competition after this academic year, officials said.

"These decisions were difficult and painful," Chancellor Robert Birgeneau told the Associated Press at a campus news conference. "Everyone deeply regrets the human toll these decisions will take."

That includes Lowden, a former Yuba City High ace who called it a "dream come true" when he signed with the Pac-10 baseball team on a partial scholarship. Now he feels like he took a comebacker to the stomach.

"I don't know what to say about it," he said by phone. "It's an awful thing for us — our lives were flipped upside down."

After the top-of-the-morning text from coach David Esquer and the e-mail, Lowden arrived for the meeting led by AD Sandy Barbour. While the official press release regarding the decision was titled "Chancellor announces a new plan for Cal Athletics' future," the meeting where the athletes learned their fate was full of "I'm sorrys and I don't know what to say," from the administration, Lowden said.

As of 9 p.m. Tuesday, Cal's official athletics website had no visible mention of the decision, opting instead to run in-house generated content ranging from a field hockey road trip to a quartet of positive stories about the baseball program on the team's page.

"But there's not much you can say," Lowden said, acknowledging just how clear it was made that this decision is non-negotiable.

The program cuts are part of a broader campaign to reduce UC Berkeley's annual support for intercollegiate athletics from more than $12 million today to about $5 million in 2014. Reducing the number of intercollegiate teams from 29 to 24 will save an estimated $4 million a year and affect 163 of the school's more than 800 student-athletes, as well as 13 full-time coaches.

UC Berkeley administrators said they decided on the cuts after considering a variety of factors, including cost, student diversity, impact on donations and compliance with Title IX, the federal law that requires schools to provide equal opportunities to male and female students in sports and other activities.

Making across-the-board cuts to all programs, rather than eliminating whole teams, would hurt every team's ability to compete, said Barbour. "Clearly, this is a painful outcome after months of deliberation, analysis and the examination of every viable alternative."

The school has fielded a baseball team since 1892. Cal won two national titles — including at the first College World Series, in 1947, in which Colusa High graduate Johnny Ramos played for the Bears — but none since 1957.

Last season, the Bears baseball team was 29-25 and finished sixth in the Pac-10 with a 13-14 record. Lowden was 0-1 with a 6.00 ERA in six innings pitched.

Now, for athletes like Lowden comes the monumental decision: Continue to play the game they love at another school, or continue to receive an education at an institution ranked as one of the best colleges in the country (No. 22) by U.S. News and World Report.

After the teams are eliminated, the Pac-10 school will continue to honor scholarships to the affected students or help them transfer to other schools if they want to pursue their athletic careers, officials said.

"The kids aren't going to want to stick around if they can't play baseball and (Cal) knows that," Yuba College athletic director Rod Beilby said.

Lowden, a 4.2 GPA student at Yuba City High, loves Cal, he said. But he can't say good-bye to baseball yet, and "will definitely be looking into leaving."

That conundrum — compete elsewhere or get a Cal diploma — is what first struck Cal alumnus Dave Chiono when he heard the news. A full-scholarship pitcher with an 11-11 record at Cal in the 1980's, Chiono moved back to Marysville and is now the school's athletic director. Like many, he's saddened.

But as someone who sees how synonymous red ink and athletics are becoming, he's worried this is a harbinger of what's to come.

"I think we're going to see more of this happen," he said. "It's just sad it's hitting the colleges