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Mike Rabelo, a 2001 draft pick out of the University of Tampa, has picked up significant playing time this season with the Florida Marlins.
Rabelo, who is fourth on UT’s all-time list for being hit by pitches, is hitting .238 through 19 games this season.
The 2001 season ended in the College World Series, as Tampa lost twice and finished seventh nationally.
Rabelo was never an All-American, but did twice place on the second-team All-South Region team. In 2000, he was named to the first-team All-Sunshine State Conference squad. It was his second time on the list, as he was also on the 1999 team.
Rabelo was taken in the 14th round of the 2001 draft by the Detroit Tigers, where he made his first major league appearance. He went to Florida as part of the trade that sent Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera to Detroit.
- Peter Arrabal
I can’t stop smiling.
This is awesome. I simply am laughing and smiling without stopping. The Patriots will forever be known as the team that won 18 games and NO CHAMPIONSHIP.
What goes around comes around. Mr. Belichick, you cheated, you filled your roster with cheaters and scumbags, and you lost your championship.
I coin this term the “permasmile.” I simply cannot stop smiling. It’s like permafrost in the frozen tundra of Green Bay and north. There is no cure for it. But I can’t stop smiling.
Every second since that last Tom Brady pass fell incomplete has been a smile. This is so awesome. I don’t care that the Giants won. I care that the cheating, low grade, scumbag New England Patriots lost the game.
Oh, and of course:
This game proves that, yes, there is a God.
And to quote Tom Brady:
“You mean we’re only gonna score 17 points. Haha, OK”
Riiiiight. Good call, Tom.
- Peter Arrabal
A few years ago, the New England Patriots were the greatest thing in football. A bunch of no-names led by a sixth-round no-name quarterback who won a Super Bowl after the devastating terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
They had great support and became known as a dynasty after winning three of four Super Bowls.
Now, they are a symbol of everything that is wrong about football, even with an undefeated season. Their star safety, Rodney Harrison, was caught using performance enhancing drugs. He was suspended for four games for using human growth hormone.
And they used their draft picks to pick up the most pompous name in the sport — Randy Moss. Then they drafted Brandon Merriweather (Remember when he swung his helmet at the FIU guy in the Miami fight? Classy.)
The faceless players became high-paid celebrities. Adalius Thomas signed a huge free-agent contract to come to the Pats, who also picked up Wes Welker (5 years, $18.1 million) and Donte Stallworth (6 years, $33.1 million).
Then they got caught cheating. Literally cheating. There is no other way to put it. They were operating in violation of league rules and got caught. Their coach lost half a million dollars, their team forfeited a first-round draft pick, and the team was fined a quarter million as well.
And then they began running up the score. 38-14. 52-7. 56-10. This isn’t the NCAA. There aren’t computers deciding who gets to play for the trophy, basing their rankings on margin of victory.
This isn’t a complaint about how every call seemed to go in favor of the Patriots — they didn’t. This isn’t about Tom Brady’s 50-TD record, or anything else. It’s about how far a team has fallen since earning all of the goodwill the league had available.
Cheating player? Check
Cheating coach? Check. (Hey remember when Brady was on the injury list for 14 straight weeks but played every minute a few years ago? Someone should check up on that one)
Media-unfriendly coach? Check
Running up the score in meaningless games? Check
Signing big free-agent contracts? Check.
Becoming the Yankees/Duke of the NFL? Check.
The Colts used to be the worst team in my head. They were everything that was wrong with football. A team that abandoned a city and stole all its records and history. A team mired in futility. A team with a pompous QB who loved personal records. Then they broke the curse, their nice-guy coach finally got the big W, and their now nice-guy QB embraced the public.
It’s a classic example of a team going from everything that is right about the sport, and everything that is absolutely awful and distasteful about the game.
- Peter Arrabal
TAMPA — There won’t be any more significant news coming out of the University of Tampa athletic department by the year end, so here’s part I of the recap of Spartan sports from The Minaret.
Baseball
The baseball team repeated its 2006 glory with an equally impressive National Championship in June 2007. Just a year after having five players drafted by MLB teams, Tampa posted a 53-10 record and knocked off Columbus State University by a score of 7-2.
But the back-to-back championships weren’t enough for this record-setting club. A total of seven players signed with MLB teams, with six being drafted and C Chris Rosenbaum signing a free-agent contract with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. It’s a long road for a young MLB player to make it to the “show,” but it’s not out of the question. Jonathan Holt has serious professional talent, and is a stand-up young man as well. He was the Most Outstanding Player at the championships, and should rise quickly through the ranks of the Cleveland Indians program.
In a blast from the Spartan past, C Mike Rabelo was traded from the Detroit Tigers to the Florida Marlins in the Dontrelle Willis deal. Rabelo played three season from 1999-2001. In 2006, he became the first Spartan to advance to the majors since Tino Martinez. Rabelo was drafted in the 14th round of the 2001 MLB draft.
Volleyball
Despite the return of key players Katelen Dixon, Margeaux Sinibaldi and Danielle Macdonald, the Spartan volleyball team fell short in its title defense. Ranked in the top five for a majority of the season, Tampa lost to Washburn University 3-2 after building a 2-0 lead. The Spartans finished 31-3 on the season.
Four Spartans were named to the AVCA All-America team, a record for the program. Erin Clark and Alisha Green joined Dixon and Sinibaldi on the list. Sinibaldi also set the SSC record for career digs this season, and the All-American award was her second.
Women’s Soccer
It looked like it would be a difficult year after losing a number of key members of the 2006 Final Four team, but Tampa bounced back and showed some real heart late in the season to take the Division II national title. Jocelyn Charette (transfer), Malana Winskas (graduation) and Samantha Robinson (graduation) were all main components of the 2006 success, with Charette scoring 21 goals, Robinson adding 28 assists, and Winskas winning her record fourth-consecutive SSC Defensive Player of the Year award.
Oh yeah, and South Region Coach of the Year Bobby Johnston left the school to take an assistant position at his alma mater, James Madison University in Virginia. The coaching spot wasn’t vacant long, as former assistant Gerry Lucey returned to Tampa after a Final Four appearance with West Chester University.
The team scored 20 fewer goals than 2006 (a 28% decline) and gave up two more this season, but they scored when they counted most: the NCAA tournament.
It helped to have Division II Player of the Year Shannon Aitken on the club. Aitken recorded 14 shutouts and saved nearly 80% of all shots that came her way. Not to mention she did the unthinkable in stopping four penalty kicks in two overtime games in the championship tournament. It’s rare for a men’s team to stop PKs, and even more rare for a woman to do it, statistically.
Aitken, Ashley Flateland, Shelby Kuni, Emily Stack and Courtney Evans all made the All-America team. Flateland left the program after the season to attend JMU.
And in the end….
The championships brought the Tampa total to a total of four over the past two years: 2 baseball, 1 volleyball, 1 women’s soccer. Before the 2006 baseball trophy, Tampa had a total of nine National Championships in its 75 year history.
Check back soon for the rest of the wrap-ups, including the women’s basketball team’s run to the conference championship, the men’s soccer team return to success, and some really strange stories from other Spartan sports.
- Peter Arrabal
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