Cardinal influence on USA national baseball team Cardinal influence on USA national baseball team (June 30, 2004)

Romanczuk picked for second time; Lowrie and Mayberry, Jr. make first appearances

by Rick Eymer

For Stanford junior pitcher Mark Romanczuk, it's just another summer with the United States national baseball team.

For juniors Jed Lowrie and John Mayberry, Jr., it's their first taste of thenational team, which plays nearly every day during the summer.

All three Stanford players earned their spot on the national team roster after participating in a 36-player group at the team trials all last week in Durham.

Romanczuk was 5-0 with an 0.75 ERA for the Americans last year.

Stanford has produced more players (24) for Team USA than any other collegiate program in the nation.

All three players participated for the Americans when Team USA began its schedule with a four-game sweep of Canada at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park between Wednesday and Saturday. Lowrie was 3-for-7 (.429) with a homer, two RBI and a stolen base. Mayberry was 3-for-10 (.300) with an RBI, while Romanczuk picked up one of the team's four victories with three scoreless innings of work.

Lowrie is coming off a collegiate season in which he was a unanimous All-American, Pac-10 Player of the Year and NCAA All-Regional choice. He led Stanford in nearly every offensive category, including batting average (.399, homers (17), RBI (68), runs scored (72), doubles (19), triples (4), total bases (171), slugging percentage (.734), on-base percentage (.505), bases on balls (50), sacrifice flies (5) and multiple RBI games (19).

Lowrie also ranked second on the team with 93 hits and 27 multiple-hit contests, while stealing six bases. Defensively, he made just 10 errors in his 282 defensive chances for a .965 fielding percentage while starting all 60 games at either second base (52) or shortstop (8). He also led the team and ranked fifth in assists with 180.

Romanczuk earned third team All-American honors from Louisville Slugger and was an All-Pac-10 choice, finishing the season with an 11-3 record and a 4.31 ERA. He led the team in wins, strikeouts (94) and innings pitched (108 2-3), and was also the team's co-leader with 17 starts.

Mayberry earned All-Pac-10 honors for the first time in his career. He tied for second on the team in both homers (16) and RBI (62), as well as second in stolen bases (9) and third in slugging percentage (.625). He also led the team and the Pac-10 with 520 putouts and had a .995 fielding percentage.

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