FAYETTEVILLE — Over the last decade, three times Arkansas baseball players have called their coach by his initials or simply by his last name in the interview room.
Dave Van Horn has always been amused. Chris Oliver and Isaiah Campbell both just called him by his last name. Carson Shaddy called him by his initials.
However, Robert Moore’s reference to the key moment in the Hogs’ 9-3 victory over Gonzaga on Friday provided a first in Van Horn’s 18 years at the helm. The youngest player in the history of Van Horn’s career also became the first to call his coach simply “Dave."
Moore was explaining the conversation with Van Horn in the most exciting at bat in the four-run fifth inning that knocked out Gonzaga ace Mac Lardner. The coach came out of the home dugout at Baum-Walker Stadium to call the 17-year-old Moore out of the batter’s box. He wanted to make sure his signs were making it to the freshman second baseman.
Moore delivered a perfect “slug bunt” for an RBI single as the Gonzaga defense left the shortstop hole open when a wheel play was tipped too soon. It followed back-to-back singles by Casey Opitz and Cole Austin and broke a 1-1 deadlock.
It was the second straight day for Moore to come to the interview room. The mid-term enrollee delivered a two-run double in the 7-5 victory Thursday. His gift of gab delighted his interview room companions Friday, winning pitcher Connor Noland and the hitting star, Opitz.
Opitz and Noland looked at each other and rolled their eyes when Moore called his coach Dave.
To Moore’s credit, he quickly corrected himself and said, “Coach Van Horn said …”
It was too late. Moore probably was roasted by his teammates back in the locker room; probably not so much with Van Horn. The coach does know when to let the fun stuff be fun, especially as the No. 5 Hogs rolled to a 5-0 start to open the season.
The actual conversation between Van Horn and Moore to make sure of the signs ahead of that crucial play is probably more important. Moore squared to bunt on Lardner’s first pitch, out of the strike zone for ball one.
The Gonzaga defense broke too early to provide Van Horn the clue to take the bunt off, but the coach wasn’t sure Moore would be able to handle a complex series of signs for the correct play.
“I knew he could see the signs,” Van Horn said. “I just didn’t think he knows them yet.”
After all, Moore only joined the team in early January. That series of signs hadn’t been shown to him yet in a live situation.
“There are two signs,” Van Horn said. “One is for the bunt, but the other one is for it to turn into a slug bunt if they leave the middle open.”
Boy, did shortstop Ernie Yake leave it open. With the corner infields over committed, the shortstop was practically standing on third base by the time Lardner lifted his front foot out of the stretch.
“They were tipping the wheel,” Moore said. “(Van Horn) said to watch for that and to pull back (from a bunt). If we run that, we fake the pick (off) at second before vacating. I knew it would be a fastball up, because that’s the hardest to bunt.”
Moore added an RBI single in the sixth after an Opitz triple off the top of the wall in right. Opitz added a two-run homer in the seventh to finally provide some separation from the pesky Bulldogs.
Moore’s first two-hit game allowed him to lift his average to .211, noteworthy after a 1-for-12 opening weekend. It wasn’t like there weren’t bright spots in those victories over Eastern Illinois. He scorched some deep drives that were gobbled up by the wind.
Asked if there was any significance to his three hits against Gonzaga, he jokingly said, “Don’t barrel up balls and you get hits."
Moore was short in his answer to that question, but Opitz needled his young teammate earlier when he spoke up quickly (before Moore) when asked to describe the way Lardner fooled the Hogs with a dying change-up over the first three innings.
“I’ll take that one so we won’t be here so long,” Opitz said, then described the way Christian Franklin drove a changeup past Lardner’s ear in the fourth for the first Arkansas run.
“Christian did a good job of adjusting (to the changeup) and got the word out on (how).”
Lardner hit Matt Goodheart to give the Hogs some life in the fourth, advancing to second on Casey Martin’s sacrifice bunt. Franklin’s two-out liner plated him.
There were three more bunts in the fifth inning, two of them for hits. Van Horn said some of that was because of the scouting report.
“The book on Lardner is that he is just an average fielder,” Van Horn said. “We tried to take advantage.”
The Hogs have not used the bunt much the last two years while smacking 186 homers, but they upped their practice time on their bunting skills this past offseason.
“We’ve worked hard on bunting,” Van Horn said. “We spent a lot of time for about two months, in the cage and against machines. Bunting is not easy.”
This Arkansas team will hit plenty of home runs, too.
"We will," Van Horn said, "but the kind of pitching we are going to face this year, we are going to have to be able to bunt, too."
There are other aspects of the game that are not always easy for young players, like saying “Coach Van Horn” in the interview room. It will come in time, just like remembering that a pitcher is going to throw a high fastball in a bunt situation.
Robert Moore is getting a lot of things right early in his Arkansas career. Surely, it will never be “Dave” again.