As a right-handed baseball pitcher, Scott W. Czerwinski '99 won four of his 21 career games in a three-week span in the final month of his junior season to help carrry the Warriors to the 1998 national championship.
The 6-foot-4 inch, 200-pound Somers native is one of only two starting pitchers to win as many as two games for the baseball team in any of its 14 national tournament appearances since 1973. Czerwinski gave up only three earned runs and nine hits (eight singles) in 13 national tournament innings in 1998 at Salem, VA in defeating Wisconsin-Oshkosh, 9-3, in the 1998 tournament opener, and sealing the third of the Warriors’ four NCAA Division III national championships under Bill Holowaty with seven shutout innings in a 16-1 rout of Montclair State University four days later in the national championship.Â
Czerwinski will become the second member of the’98 title team to gain induction, following Scott Chiasson (2012), who closed out six of Czerwinski’s victories in 1998, including all four of his starts in Little East, regional and national tournament play.
In 1998, Czerwinski won a staff-high eight of nine decisions with a 2.97 ERA and 45 strikeouts in a staff-leading 69 2/3 innings. He averaged nearly seven innings a start and limited opposing batters to only 12 extra-base hits and a .232 batting average.
Czerwinski’s 20th career win came in early April of his senior season and made him only the sixth pitcher in program history to attain that milestone, one of only 12 currently in program history. In a career between 1995 and 1999 (injury limited him to 3.0 innings as a freshman in 1995), Czerwinski won 21 and lost seven with a 4.32 ERA and 172 strikeouts in 218.6 innings. He left the program ranked fourth in starts (34), and fifth in innings.
In conference, regional and national competition in 1998, Czerwinski was 4-0 in four starts with a 2.17 ERA and 17 strikeouts in 29.0 innings, and gave up only three extra-base hits (one HR). He pitched at least six innings each time out in that post season and never gave up more than three runs or seven hits in a start. Prior to receiving ample offensive support in two national tournament triumphs, Czerwinski’s effective starting pitching paved the way for slim 3-2 victories in the conference and regional tournaments. He went the first eight innings (his season-highs) both against UMass Dartmouth in the second game of the Little East tournament and in the New England Regional Tournament opener over LEC rival University of Southern Maine.
Through the early going when the national tournament title game against Montclair was still up for grabs, Czerwinski got a strikeout looking to leave the bases loaded in the bottom of the first and an infield ground ball to strand two in the third and preserve the Warriors’ 1-0 lead. He scattered two hits through the first six innings and departed with a four-hit shutout after seven innings.
After avoiding rival Southern Maine during their three-game run through the Little East tournament the previous weekend, the Warriors turned to Czerwinski against the Huskies in the regional opener five days later at the Eastern Baseball Stadium.
Having been credited with the first victory during opening ceremonies of the Eastern Baseball Stadium six weeks earlier, Czerwinski made two third-inning runs stand up in the regional opener against Southern Maine, spinning a seven-hitter with a season-high seven strikeouts in eight innings. While protecting a precarious 3-1 lead, Czerwinski faced the minimum nine batters from the sixth through eighth innings before surrendering his only post-season home run leading off the ninth. In relief, Chiasson needed only ten pitches to end the game.
$website.include("/Hall_of_Fame/bios/czerwinski-video")
Czerwinski rebounded from one of the worst outings of his career (seven earned runs in 3 1/3 innings in a no-decision over Plymouth State April 25) by leading the Warriors to a 13-1 record in the month of May en route to the 1998 national championship. In that final stretch, Czerwinski won his final five starts with a 1.80 ERA and 23 strikeouts in 35 innings.
In his four healthy seasons, Czerwinski helped the Warriors to three NCAA tournament berths, three conference regular-season and one conference tournament title in three years of LEC play, an overall record of 124-53 (70.1 percent) and three-year LEC regular-season mark of 38-6 (86.4 percent).
As a sophomore in 1997, he was named second-team All-New England (6-2, 4.52 ERA) and first-team All-LEC after sharing the conference lead in wins. As a junior in 1998, he topped the conference in winning percentage (88.9). His only loss in 1998 was a 2-0 decision at West Coast power Chapman University in a game where he was touched for only six hits in seven innings. He went on to win his final seven decisions in eight starts.
Czerwinski holds a B.S. Degree in Sport & Leisure Management and has been employed by Billings Sports as a sales representative for the last 16 years. Scott and wife Christy (Pabon) – a former four-year letterwinner and two-year captain in the Eastern softball program – reside in Tolland with their three children.
