BOWLING GREEN — Friday was the day that Gary Haas had feared for years.
The former Bowling Green State University baseball standout helped the Falcons win the Mid-American Conference in 1972, and later became one of the school's most prominent donors — the baseball facility is now called Steller Field at Gary Haas Stadium — and he knew the program's financial situation had grown critical.
But a phone call from university president Rodney Rogers on Friday affirmed the worst-case scenario: Baseball was no more at BGSU.
"It was gut-wrenching, to say the least," Haas said. "I felt like I had just lost a lifelong best friend.