The voice of USF Athletics, Jim Louk, will routinely put down his radio headset and pick up the pen to share his perspective on the history of USF Athletics.

Louk has been broadcasting games for 27 years and is the resident historian in the Athletics Department hallways so this week he talks to Hall of Fame inductee Ross Gload.

A Visit with Ross Gload

Ross Gload

In more than 40 years of USF Baseball, nobody has hit the ball quite like Ross Gload.

He first appeared on USF's radar when Coach Eddie Cardieri traveled to Long Island to watch him in a high school district game. In recruiting, like so many other things, timing can be everything.

It was to be a brief trip for the Bulls coach. Ross Gload had one baseball game to make an impression and earn an offer by USF.

“He singled sharply between first and second in his first at bat," Cardieri recently recalled. “He homered in his second at bat. He homered in his third at bat and he homered in his fourth at bat. Then he was called in from first base to pitch and got the save. So everything you could want to see from a guy in one game, I saw."

“We had a great talk afterwards," Gload says in recalling that day. “Hitting the three home runs made me think I had a chance to go to college and that USF would be the spot."

54 home runs at USF

After a performance like that, a scholarship offer indeed soon followed. Gload joined the Bulls in 1995 and hit a team record 54 home runs during his USF career.

“He was a quiet leader for us," says Cardieri. “I think he made everyone else better. He led by example. He just went out and did his work every day and played the game the way it should be played. He played the game with respect."

Gload left the Bulls after the 1997 NCAA Tournament, after being selected in the 13th round of the Major League Baseball Draft. While a Bull, he was a member of three NCAA Tournament teams, and in addition to the USF home run record, he also remains USF's all time leader in runs batted in and extra base hits. He was an all-conference selection in each of his three seasons, and was the Conference USA Player of the Year in 1997.

Conference USA Player of the Year

A star throughout college, in the pros he became, in the words of his wife Betsy, “an underdog”.

He endured a tough seven year journey through the minor leagues. His wife, a former USF softball player, recalls just how difficult those years were.

“The minor league lifestyle is brutal,” she says. “He was told no every way you could be told no. For seven years he was told he wasn't good enough. And he never, never quit. He never gave up.”

He broke through briefly with the Cubs, getting 31 at bats in the 2000 season. He would have to wait six more years before he played a full season at the top level of baseball.

“He is consistent beyond anyone I've ever met," Betsy Gload says. “He knows what he wants, he has a plan to get there and he doesn't let up.”

One of two Bulls to earn a World Series ring

That brand of determination and work ethic has led to a successful major league journey that has included stops in Colorado, Chicago (where he won a World Series ring), Kansas City, Miami and now Philadelphia, where he has established himself as one of the game's top pinch hitters.

Gload's USF Hall of Fame induction marks the first selection of a Bulls baseball player to the elite group.

“It's always a team effort. A lot of those guys (teammates) deserve it too. I had a great time while I was at USF."

The call to the Hall of Fame is welcomed by Gload, but he doesn't necessarily find it easy.

“The individual things kind of make me nervous," he says. “They humble me and I'm not that good at them."

If so, that's one of the very few things that Ross Gload isn't good at.

Ross Gload will be inducted in the USF Hall of Fame Friday night with Dan Holcomb, Joe Lewkowicz, Sherry Bedingfield and Kerine Black.

GO BULLS!