MSL Baseball: Recalling the Record-Chasing NCAA Hitting Streaks of Schaumburg’s Abbott, Conant’s Koski
Robin Ventura’s name automatically comes up when a college baseball player goes on a long hitting streak.
Ventura spent the first decade of his solid 16-year Major League Baseball playing career at third base with the White Sox. As a personal aside, I choose not to have what he did as a player clouded by what he didn’t do as a manager.
Ventura was the White Sox No. 1 draft pick in 1987 after he had a 58-game hitting streak at Oklahoma State and won the Dick Howser Trophy (national college baseball player of the year) and Golden Spikes Award (best amateur player in the US). Ventura’s hitting streak remains the longest in NCAA Division I baseball history, with Garrett Wittels of Florida International making the biggest run at it with a Joe DiMaggio-esque 56 games in 2010.
The current 47-game hitting streak by junior center fielder Jonah Cox of surprise College World Series entrant Oral Roberts is tied for third in NCAA D-I history with ex-Cub Phil Stephenson of Wichita State in 1981 and Kenton Parmley of Southeast Missouri State in 2011-12. What Cox is doing this year brings back memories of a couple of Mid-Suburban League stars who took aim at Ventura’s streak. Schaumburg graduate Chuck Abbott hit in 42 games in a row with Austin Peay in 1996, which now ranks seventh all-time, and Conant graduate Kevin Koski hit in 36 consecutive games for Southern Illinois in the 2005-06 seasons.
Abbott, who played seven years in the minors with the Angels and Cleveland, was a Daily Herald All-Area wide receiver in football and shortstop in baseball for the Saxons. His college career got off to a strong start as he hit .338 to earn first-team all-Ohio Valley Conference honors but then he suffered a sophomore slump to .256.
Abbott was looking to bounce back when he singled in the first at-bat of his junior season against Indiana State. He wouldn’t take an “0-for” an answer until the 43rd game of the season. At 36 games he broke the OVC record and tied two-time big-league all-star Hubie Brooks (1978 Arizona State). When he got to 39 he passed big-league catcher Brent Mayne (1988 Cal State-Fullerton).
“It’s gotten a little nerve-wracking,” Abbott told me for a story just before the streak ended that season. “At first I was thinking about it and I really wanted to keep it going. When it got to 30 I figured even if it ended tomorrow, it would still be an accomplishment. I want to keep it going but if it ends I won’t be disappointed.”
Abbott bunted for a hit to extend the streak to 38 games. He reached 42 - which was fourth in NCAA history at the time - with a single against Southern Illinois. In his next game he was thrown out on a close play on a bunt as the streak ended.
He said one of the big keys was “I haven’t put as much pressure on myself as I did sophomore year.” Abbott said there was a questionable call where he beat out an infield hit in the 29th game and there were three times in a six-game stretch where he got a hit in his final at-bat.
The combination of the hitting streak, batting .369 with 23 doubles, 4 homers and 33 RBI, going on an errorless streak of 20-plus games at shortstop and earning first-team all-OVC at Austin Peay got the attention of the Angels as they took him with their second-round pick (No. 55 overall) in 1996. Future big-league catcher Josh Paul, also from the Class of 1993 at Buffalo Grove, was taken eight spots earlier by the White Sox.
“It was a great year all-around and this makes the year even better,” Abbott said for a story after the draft.
Abbott hit .237 in 583 minor league games and got as high as a couple of brief tours at Class AAA (9 games total) for the Angels. He played his final 17 games in 2001 with Cleveland’s AA Akron affiliate but an elbow injury led to his release. He would go on to coach baseball at Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates and he was the head coach at the latter for two years.
Koski was a two-time Herald all-area baseball pick, an all-area football player and a basketball player at Conant before graduating in 2003. The speedy lefty hitter was one of the best defensive outfielders in center to come out of the MSL.
His hitting streak at SIU started in late March 2005 during a sophomore season where he hit .380 and lasted nearly a calendar year since it carried over to the following season. Koski went hitless in his first 3 at-bats of the 2006 season opener against Florida Atlantic before getting a two-out double and single in his last 2 at-bats to extend the streak to 36 games.
“It feels great,” Koski said in a Herald story. “We started shaky but everything fell into place at the end. I was fortunate to get a hit during my at-bat in the seventh.”
His streak would end in his next game when he went 0-for-3. It is the second-longest in Missouri Valley Conference history behind Stephenson.
Koski was a career .319 hitter at SIU and remains tied for second in career hits at 285. He was not drafted and signed with the Frontier League’s Southern Illinois Miners, who were managed by Mike Pinto, and hit .297 as a rookie and .292 in 127 games over three seasons. A severe ankle injury after he landed awkwardly on first base ended his baseball career.
Two great MSL multi-sport athletes..