HUMOR: Good Will Batting
In "Moneyball," Billy Beane asked, "Do I care how they get on base?" His digit-head sidekick replied, "No, you do not." Well, Earnesty gets on base. But can his ribs last moving to first as he does?
By Drew Gallagher
HUMORIST
In the shadows of Afton Mountain, and tucked into the rolling hills of Staunton, Virginia, lies Mary Baldwin University. The campus is only 58 acres and too geographically confined to support a baseball field, so the university’s baseball team, the Fighting Squirrels, plays its home games 20 miles away at Shifflett Field in Grottoes, Virginia.
Shifflett Field is quaint and unassuming by most college baseball standards. It is a seemingly incongruous setting for one of the finest baseball players to ever hail from the Kingswood subdivision in Spotsylvania County to chase NCAA glory, but that is exactly what shortstop Will Earnesty has before him in this young 2026 season.
Mary Baldwin baseball started competing at the varsity level in 2021 and, to put it kindly, there have been some growing pains along the way. In their first five seasons, the Fighting Squirrels have gone 27-150. The roster features a number of Fredericksburg players including Earnesty, who graduated from Chancellor High School.
Earnesty, who was named Battlefield District Baseball Player of the Year in 2022, has experienced pains of his own as his college baseball career enters his final season. His is a season that already includes an NCAA record and could end in the shattering of one of the Fighting Squirrels’ most hallowed of baseball records.
Mary Baldwin opened the 2026 season on February 14th at Marymount University when Earnesty, batting second, got a little Valentine from Marymount pitcher Jay Wandell who hit Earnesty with a pitch. To make certain that Earnesty did not think this was just a meaningless fling, Wandell hit Earnesty in his second at bat of the season.
After Wandell was removed in the second inning (and Earnesty was the only batter he plunked in his 1.2 innings of work), left-hander Gavin Elliot came on in relief, and, upon seeing Earnesty step into the right-handed batter’s box, plugged Earnesty with a pitch. Three at bats and three hit-by-pitches to open the baseball season.
It is believed, by this humorist at least, that Earnesty may have tied the NCAA record for consecutive hit-by-pitches to start a college baseball season. I believe this mostly because I coached Earnesty at Chancellor and would like to bask in his reflected glory without having to wear a fastball to the ribs.
Sacramento State outfielder Matt Masciangelo started 2024 in a similar fashion to Earnesty when he was hit in his first three at bats in the season opener and then went on to be hit four more times in the second game of a doubleheader but managed not to get hit in his fourth at bat which ended his streak at three. Masciangelo’s accomplishment, or his continued inability to avoid a pitch, made national news. Earnesty would have likely received equal press coverage except he was only hit once more in the nightcap against Marymount for a mere four hit by pitches on opening day.
Earnesty continued his torrid hit-by-pitch pace and was drilled once more in Mary Baldwin’s third game of the season giving him five on the season and the national Division III lead in hit by pitches per game (which is a statistic that is not typically tracked by the NCAA, but it is by the FXBG Advance humor column).
And it is not just on the national level that Earnesty’s legacy is emerging. Earnesty is up to 34 hit-by-pitches for his career and only trails Fighting Squirrels’ legend Michael Robertson in that dubious statistic. Earnesty concedes that when he first committed to Mary Baldwin he did not have history on his mind.
“The record was definitely not something that ever crossed my mind when I went off to play college baseball,” said Earnesty. “The first time I ever really thought about the record was when I got hit four times in our first conference series my freshman year.”
Robertson, who graduated with the unique distinction of being both the Fighting Squirrels all-time hits leader and hit-by-pitch leader, is 15 ahead of Earnesty, but with 38 games remaining on the Mary Baldwin schedule, destiny is warming up in the bullpen and does not seem to have its best control.
“Pitchers always have a lot more to say in how many times I get hit than I do,” he said. “I will say that on my current pace it does look pretty good.”
Earnesty cuts a diminutive figure at the plate, standing 5-9 and weighing 160 pounds according to the university’s media page. He has never shown up an opposing pitcher with a bat flip or a home run trot that could be timed with a sundial, which is partly due to the fact that he has never homered in his college career. In short, he is not the typical candidate for an inordinate amount of bean balls. So what does he attribute his success to?
“Great coaches prepare you for everything and that’s exactly what I had in Coach Gallagher (emphasis is the writer’s),” he said. “When you face a batting practice pitcher as good and as slow as Coach Gallagher (emphasis is still the writer’s) it’s hard to imagine ever getting hit by a pitch let alone having it hurt. That feeling quickly changed once college games started with college pitchers.”
Staunton is no stranger to history. The city features the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and The Frontier Culture Museum where both my children threatened to call Child Protective Services if I spoke to one more costumed historical interpreter in broken German. But when Mary Baldwin ends their regular season against Pfeiffer University on Sunday, April 26th, there could be another icon to stand aside Staunton’s favorite son, Cyrus McCormick.
McCormick changed the course of American agriculture when he invented the first horse-drawn reaper to harvest grain in 1831. Similarly, Will Earnesty has an opportunity to change the course of baseball history in 2026. Destiny awaits, and it’s in the form of only 16 more pitches wandering outside of the strike zone and into the battered and bruised body of baseball’s Will Earnesty.
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