The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

The Student News Site of Macalester College

The Mac Weekly

Base-Ballers

By Kayla Burchuk

Nate Wilson-Traisman (English, Eugene, Ore.), Miles Harlow (Economics, Northhampton, Mass.), Devin English (Psychology, Annapolis, Md.) and Jack Cooper ’11 (Political Science, Alexandria, Va.) make up the abode of 1674 St. Clair Ave. James Murrey, (History, Western Springs, Ill.) is the house’s pet Death Knight. All met as baseball players their freshman years at Macalester.The Mac Weekly: How did you guys meet each other for the first time?

Nate Wilson-Traisman: The freshmen every year on the baseball team, we all meet by the baseball field and the coach introduces everyone and we all meet each other there, and then there’s always a freshman barbeque that the upper classmen hold for us. .You guys hung out before, maybe.

TMW: Jack, how did you meet these guys and end up being the one younger guy in the group?

Jack Cooper: I met these guys all through baseball, also. They were all a year older than me when I got here. .I had a hard time getting stuff together with my fellow Juniors. [all crack up].

Devin English: What do you mean “getting stuff together”?
NWT: Jack pretty much lived at our house last year, so we kind of adopted him this year.

TMW: I heard you guys watch a lot of ESPN in the house. What kinds of sports do you watch?

DE: That’s kind of an understatement. I think it’s on 24 hours a day.
NWT: NFL, college basketball, college football, baseball, college baseball,
DE: NFL, NBA.

NWT: Golf.
JC: Devin watches soccer, too.
James Murrey: He tries to make people watch soccer but.

Miles Harlow: A lot of the time it’s just a fixture in the background, though. This will be a setting for a normal night where we’ll have people over, it will be on mute, but it will be on.

DE: We’ll make random observations about it.

NWT: People are going to be so interested in this. They’re going to be like, “Wow, people actually live like this.” [all laugh]
DE: “The just sit around, and watch sports? What?”

JM: “They own a T.V.? They get cable?”
DE: We actually lead a pretty boring life. We just sit around . and make fun of each other, pretty much.

NWT: Jack makes a lot of money playing poker . he’s one of the top thousand on the site.

DE: .We as a house and James can all unite collectively around hating Minnesota teams.
JM: Twins! Ugh..Joe Mauer, eh?
DE: Justin Morneau, eh? [all laugh]

TMW: What do you guys all hate specifically about Minnesota teams?

All: The fans.
JM: The fans are the worst people on earth. Minnesota sports fans are the absolute worst.

NWT: There was about a three month time period last semester where every time we went out on the weekend Miles would walk around a party and go [Minnesota accent] “Go Gophs, eh?” in this ridiculous accent.

MH: Some people are easy to incite and the fans have an intelligence base where they like to fight, so usually when we’re in numbers we’ll get them riled up.

TMW: Among all the sports players you guys get a really bad rap for being homophobic and sexist. Why is that?

DE: Our predecessors were not the most savory individuals on earth.
JM: It’s a reputation that was given to us.

DE: We definitely inherited it. We definitely didn’t make it for ourselves. I don’t think many people who know us actually see us that way.

MH: There’s definitely been instances that have perpetuated it, but I think that, if you look at any group, any campus group, that they’ll have individuals that aren’t necessarily chosen by the group but may perpetuate stereotypes.

NWT: Anytime that you have. I think other than football team, that we’re probably the biggest team on campus. We have a JV [junior varsity] team, too. Any one person’s actions are going to be imposed upon the entire team, and I think there’s been a lot of cases of that with us, but it’s frustrating.
DE: Not this year, but our first three years for sure, we did our best to show that that reputation really doesn’t embody what the baseball team is. Now this year I think we’ve come to the realization that people are going to think what people are going the think, and there’s nothing we can really do about it, so.

JM: We’ve definitely stopped fighting it.

TMW: What do you think people should know about you that would change that?

MH: I’m a scholar and a gentleman.
DE: I like long walks on the beach.

MH: Every time we have a beverage that has a top on it we keep the tabs and my grandmother gives them to the Shriners Hospital.
DE: He actually does! I’ve seen him black out drunk just collecting hoards and hoards of them.

MH: .we’ve kind of slacked this semester.

TMW: I heard from a source that you guys eat a lot of crap.

DE: Jack!
JM: Jack’s getting scurvy because he’s not eating any vegetables.
DE: .he just refuses to eat vegetables. It’s a complete refusal.
Jack: It’s not! I got lettuce on my Subway yesterday.
DE: Lettuce, iceberg lettuce! .and you complained about it, too.
Jack: Yeah… It took away the flavor. I missed the bacon flavor.
DE: Get that. “The lettuce took away from the bacon flavor.”
JM: You know what he ate today? He had Burger King for lunch and a bacon-and-sausage pizza from Dominoes for dinner.
DE: We actually found out yesterday that jack hasn’t tried most vegetable but he just lumps them into one huge category and says, “No!”. He just likes meat, that’s pretty much it.

TMW: Have all of you guys been in a long-distance relationship at some point since you’ve all been living at this house? How does that affect life here, pining for these absent women?

MH: At one point Devin, Nate, and I formed “The Coalition of the Cock Block.” [all laugh].

DE: It was actually the “The Fellowship of the Cock Block”, which basically meant that when we got super drunk we, uh.

MH: We’d look out for each other. We’d make sure that nobody was getting too cozy with anybody of the opposite sex.
DE: Or in some people’s case, people getting too cozy with them.

TMW: Oh, so you guys were cock-blocking each other? I thought you meant just that you would get angry and take it out on other people.

DE: No. That would be hilarious, though!
JM: We need to do that from now on!
MH: Watch out if you see us at a party.

TMW: Besides baseball, or hanging out in baseball culture, what have been other really big forces in your Macalester careers?

MH: Scholarly pursuit.
DE: [all laugh] What the fuck are you talking about?
NWT: Miles does more homework than anyone I know, so he’s not really kidding.

DE: It’s [Economics] the hardest major.

TMW: Nate, something that I wouldn’t have guessed about you, being a baseball player, is that you went to Waldorf School growing up?

NWT: It was an experience for sure. My sister and I both went from kindergarten to eighth grade, and my mom actually is the business manager at the Eugene Waldorf School in Eugene, Oregon.
DE: .That’s exactly why his name is Shiloh.
JM: we came up with nicknames for each other that reflect our personalities, so he’s “Shiloh.”

TMW: Why is Nate named Shiloh?

JM: He’s a peace-loving, friendly hippie.
DE: He wears lot of tie-dye shirts.

NWT: I only have two.

DE: . and he loves the Grateful Dead.
NWT: I do love the Grateful Dead.

TMW: So what are other people’s nicknames?

NWT: Jack is “Barry.” [all crack up]. . I don’t know . something about the hair and the general.

DE: He just likes meat. He’s a meat and cheese guy.
NWT: Devin is “Sylvester.” What did James end up being?
DE: “Brock”.
JM: Brock? We decided that was bad.

DE: That’s not bad.
NWT: We decided on “Brock” for James and then he decided it was bad.
DE: Ha ha, “Brock”!
JM: You’re Sylvester the molester! .why Brock? It doesn’t even make sense.

TMW: What about Miles?

MH: Big daddy.

TMW: What music do you guys all like to l
isten to?

JM: Rap, or Jack likes Little Wayne.

DE: James loves Rammstein, loves them!
NWT: Devin only likes Dave Mathews Band and Mason Jennings. [all laugh] For all of freshman and sophomore year the only music Devin had on his iTunes was Mason Jennings and Dave Mathews Band.
JM: I’d go into our room and he’d be napping with Mason Jennings on every single day.

DE: It’s not true!
NWT: It took him three years to start liking hip-hop, but he likes it now.
JM: I think the unifying type of music would definitely be hip-hop. Not Little Wayne, but.

NWT: I’m the only one who likes the Grateful Dead.

TMW: Do you guys want more Macalester students to come to your games?

All: Yeah.

DE: Of course.
JM: Heckling the other team is something I think Macalester students would enjoy.
NWT: Let’s put it this way: all the stereotypes that people have towards the baseball team at Macalester, which are generally untrue . I’m gonna go ahead and generalize and do what all the Macalester students do, and say that the teams we play are probably more deserving of those labels than we are, so why not take a chance to come yell at ’em, right? And then you can come watch us.

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