By

Last spring, the Macalester baseball team won the MIAC Championship for the first time in 61 years. The team was led on offense by a quartet that will take the field together this spring for the final time. The cast of characters– a two-time Jewish All-American, a European beer connoisseur, a published Biology researcher, and an officer candidate in the Minnesota Army National Guard– are united in their ability to torment opposing pitchers and always keep life interesting. Where are you guys from? Mitch Glasser: I’m from Chicago, Illinois. Lincoln Park, more precisely. Graham Brown: I’m from Annandale, Minnesota. A great place to visit. Robert Williams: West Covina, California. Garrett Salzman: Glendale, California. What were your first impressions of each other? Garrett: Mitch and I got along great as freshman year roommates (laughs). Graham: I thought Garrett never left the library. Mitch: And I thought Garrett never left his dorm room. Robert: Graham and I both played football freshman year. I thought he was a very good football player. Graham: Williams ate a lot of Cheetos in my room. Robert: Yup. Oh, and I looked at Garrett as competition. Garrett: I hated every single one of them. Graham: I thought Mitch was weird. He had the most random stuff in his dorm room–a chess book, dried fruit everywhere… Robert: I also thought Mitch was the most irresponsible person I’d ever met. Garrett: I second that. Mitch: But then they met Louie Mondale ’12 (all laugh). You’ve lived with each other in different arrangements at one time or another, but have since split up. So, how was co-habitating? Garrett: I think we should start with last year. Graham and I were pretty big pranksters on the Bob D ’11 and the Robert Williams. Graham: There was a long history of them complaining that the other one wouldn’t flush the toilet, but secretly Garrett and I would go in and put coffee grounds… Garrett: … Or Café Mac brownies… Graham: … In the toilet. Robert: Basically, they were the catalyst for a massacre that happened between me and Bob D one night. I don’t need to say anymore about that. There’s a video. But I really can’t complain. They’re both very clean. Graham: Williams left crusty oatmeal bowls out a lot. He refused to claim them, even though he was the only one who had sprinkles in his oatmeal. It was a dead giveaway. Robert: At least I’m not a pyro. Garrett: We had trouble getting through our Physics homework sometimes. So, we had to… Graham: … Light the counter on fire with rubbing alcohol. I mean, we had to clean it–there’s no other way to do it. Mitch: And Garrett and I got along well as freshman roomies until I tried eating Cheerios at 12:30 in the evening. Garrett: It was like 4:00. Mitch: We’ll say 2:30. And from that point on I gave him Nyquil, so that he wouldn’t wake up when I came back to the room… And then I moved to Dupre 5. Garrett: He was in the doghouse. But now we love each other. You guys have any nicknames on the team? Robert: Garrett’s Gary the Snail. Mitch: We’ve got Graham the Ram. Graham: The Most Feared Hitter in the MIAC, Robert Williams. Self-proclaimed, of course. Garrett: Mitch is Dr. Love. What are you guys majoring in? Mitch: En Psicología y a minor in Religious Studies. Graham: Chemistry. Robert: Baseball, I mean Political Science. Garrett: Biology. What do you guys do when you’re not playing baseball? Robert: I play in the Army. Garrett: We all dabble in the video game world. Graham: I go to St. Kate’s a lot. For class. Garrett: Graham really likes Kagin Dances, too. Mitch: I do a little improv on the side. Any post-grad plans? Garrett: Graham and I are going to move in together and start a family. Graham: We’re going to buy a house and not let Williams in because it will be a house of learned doctors. Mitch: I’m gonna’ babysit. Robert: I’m going to protest outside because that’s a Macalester thing to do. Graham: But seriously, I’m going to play summer baseball back home and do summer research at the U of M like I did last summer. Garrett: I’m going on a Euro trip, and then hopefully, going to med school. Robert: Going to basic training, and then going to grad school in Mankato. Mitch: Umm… I don’t have plans yet. I have a job lined up coaching the White Sox youth camps in Chicago. I’d like to eventually play baseball abroad somewhere, but no immediate plans as of now. I like to live on the fly. How do you guys think you’re viewed on campus? Robert: Better than we were freshman year. Garrett: We’ve got guys like Mitch who have involved themselves in a multitude of activities. They’re much more liked. Robert: We’ve also got friends like you, who have crossed the athlete-hipster divide. Garrett: Pat Murphy has really gotten the baseball team in with the hipster crowd… Graham: I think the big groups of blue jackets look a little ridiculous, to be honest. Mitch: I think everything was going well until we started extending the baseball table into the salad bar. Our relationship took a slight hit from that, but at least we’re eating more veggies. What’s your favorite Mac baseball memory? Mitch: I would say Robert Williams’ home run against St. John’s. Garrett: I think Lou Mondale’s rendition of “Get Low” on the bus ride after we won the conference title. Not only did he get low, but his clothes were also coming off. Graham: I’d say Williams’ home run against St. John’s. Robert: Yeah, I guess my home run. It’s on Youtube (all laugh). Mitch: Another good memory was a rainout we had last year in St. Cloud. While we were waiting for the rain to stop, Louie put on Garrett’s catching gear and took out a glove and a bat, and we started taking slap shots on him. Robert: He stopped all but one. Graham: Another good one was in Arizona. Chase (Kahn) ’14 and I bought foghorns at The Dollar Store and just before our wakeup call, we surrounded Garrett and (Nick) Meerson ’12 in bed and blasted the foghorns screaming “fire!” And Meerson just sprung out of bed screaming. Garrett: He clutched to me. What’s the Spring Break trip like? Mitch: It’s a good time. I mean, we all sleep together… (all laugh) We also get the opportunity to see the makeup of our team for that year, which is exciting. Graham: There’s a lot of IHOP breakfasts. Garrett: It’s kind of a tradition. Well, I don’t know if I’d call it a tradition, but a happening that someone throws up every year from too much buffet food. What kind of baseball legacy do you hope to leave at Macalester? Garrett: Back-to-back conference championships, at the least. It took us 61 years to get the first one, but now we tasted the success and don’t want to give it up. Robert: Nobody says we have to wait another 61. Mitch: This group of senior guys, there’s eight of us total, we want to be able to say that we provided Macalester baseball with the best year in its history. Garrett: You want to be able to leave a program better than you found it, and that’s something we’ve definitely already accomplished, but we want more than that. We just wanna’ win. Graham: And I just wanna’ dance.