Every year in late June, several weeks after Ohio’s season has ended, coach Joe Carbone can be found holed up in a room in Omaha, Neb. with
seven other veteran college baseball coaches.
For two straight days, the men barricade themselves in the room for upwards of eight hours. When their work is done, they emerge holding a list with the names of First, Second and Third Team All-Americans.
Carbone, the chairman of the NCAA Mideast Region All-American Committee, travels to Omaha every year to catch some of the College World Series and, more importantly, to help decide which players have earned the most prestigious awards in college baseball.
“We fly into Omaha on Thursday, and we sit in this room for two straight days,”
Carbone said with a laugh, “and we just sit in the room. And we eat in the room, we drink in the room. … We don’t sleep in there, but we’re there all day.”
Like Carbone, the chairmen of the other seven regions each coach a team from their region. All eight take their jobs very seriously.
Together, they select the American Baseball Coaches Association/Rawlings All-American Teams, the National College Player and Pitcher of the Year as well as the Rawlings Golden Glove Award winners.
“We’ve got a great bunch of guys on this committee,” Carbone said. “(They’re) very dedicated, very organized. Everybody contributes one way or another to its success. We’re very proud of how this comes out.”
Carbone’s responsibilities for the committee started May 17, when he emailed the coaches of all 40 teams in the Mideast Region, which includes the Big Ten, Horizon League and Mid-American Conference. He first seeks their nominations and then their votes for the NCAA Mideast Region First and Second Teams.
With the help of administrative staffers such as Elaine Goodfellow, Carbone counts the votes and sends the results to the chair of the All-American Committee, Monmouth coach Dean Ehehalt.
The real work starts the Thursday before the College World Series, when the heads of the regions arrive in Omaha to pick the teams from a list compiled by Ehehalt from the first-team all-region selections.
The All-American teams are not decided by popular vote. The coaches come to a consensus by talking, by pouring over stats and by sharing first-hand experience.
“We talk about the guys, and some (coaches) have seen them play,” Carbone said. “And they say good things or bad things about them, whatever they saw. Guys say, ‘This guy’s not an All-American,’ or, ‘This guy is one of the best first basemen I’ve ever seen.’”
When disagreements arise, the coaches take another look at the player in question. If that’s not enough, they place phone calls to coaches who have seen him play in person.
For the most part, though, the coaches don’t clash much because they trust each other’s judgment. In the case of players such as former Bobcat Marc Krauss, a First-Team All-American in 2009, it’s a no-brainer for everyone.
“I said, ‘Marc’s as good a hitter as anyone in the country,’ and that’s all they had to hear,” Carbone said. “I said, ‘move on.’
“(The process) is a little bit unorthodox as things go nowadays.”
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