COLUMBIA, Mo. • As Shane Benes cruised into third base on April 18, his father took comfort. Shane, a freshman on Missouri’s baseball team, just smashed his first college hit, a triple to the center-field wall at Taylor Stadium. But Andy Benes wasn’t tracking the ball. He wanted to see Shane’s face.
“Seeing him when he got to third on his first at-bat, on that triple, we saw that big smile,” Andy said. “We’ve been waiting a long time to see that.”
It’s been a sweet spring for Benes after last year’s double dose of dejection.