For Bakich and baseball, a two-way makeover

Days before the opener of his second season on the job, Erik Bakich glanced over at his Terrapin baseball team warming up inside a renovated Bob "Turtle" Smith Stadium. As his players stretched on a new dark green FieldTurf infield, the sun shone down on a recently installed brick backstop and refurbished scoreboard, along with updated signs and logos scattered around the park.

And while the changes have given the stadium an entirely new aesthetic, traces of the past remain. A faded Bermuda grass outfield — one which takes so long to dry that players need to wear plastic bags over their socks after it rains — stands out, offering a reminder that the resurrection of the 46-year-old stadium and the team that calls it home still is not complete.

As Bakich pushes to rebuild his team's facilities, he finds himself similarly reinventing a program that went just 17-39 last season and hasn't made the ACC or NCAA Tournament since 1971.

The team's evolution is far from complete. But after a season in College Park and the signing of a 22-member recruiting class ranked No. 25 in the nation by Baseball America, 2011 could be the year that Bakich's impression on the program starts to show.

"This program has just been striving just to exist and have people notice them, let alone be excellent and win championships," Bakich said. "I think the biggest change is just the expectation to be great. The expectation to be excellent. The expectation that winning championships has been done here in the past, and there's no reason it can't be done here in the future."

Last year's team — like the ones before it — lacked the talent and depth to compete in the ACC, one of the top baseball conferences in the country. But the former Vanderbilt assistant and vaunted recruiter has not only begun to bring in new talent but also change the team's feel and mentality.

"It's night and day. It's apples and oranges. I mean, it's not even close," Bakich said, comparing this team to last year's. "I don't even know if I could explain it, but it's like being in two different leagues. It's literally a 180."

The transformation is due in large part to the influx of newcomers, a group that consists of 13 freshmen and nine junior-college transfers. Three were selected in the 2010 Major League Draft but opted for college, spurning the contract dollars that led some of Bakich's other signees, including shortstop Cito Culver (New York Yankees), to join the professional ranks.

Bakich is "very enthusiastic, very consistent, a lot of energy," said freshman first baseman Tim Kiene, one of the three players drafted. "If he wants something done, he'll get it done, no matter what."

With a host of new faces, only two players from last year's team are expected to start for the Terps, who open their season today with a four-game series at No. 6 Texas. Starting the year against a baseball blueblood is another Bakich fingerprint on his program — he believes in starting the season on the road against quality opponents.

The struggle to put the program in the same conversation as a power like Texas will be a long and daunting one. But according to Bakich, the fact that the team hasn't been nationally relevant in decades won't factor in.

"All these new guys don't care what Maryland's record has been in the past and what the history of the program has been," Bakich said. "They don't care, because they don't have any memories of Maryland being bad in the past. … The guys who do know the history of Maryland baseball are fired up to turn it around, the guys who have been part of Maryland baseball in the past are fed up and have had enough and are ready for it to be turned around, and all the new guys don't know any better, and they're just here to win."

schneider@umdbk.com