The 1968 Pacific baseball team re-wrote the Pacific record book, going on a late-season streak that propelled the team to 16 wins in its last 18 games. The 1968 Tigers broke 27 school records and tied another five to cement themselves as one of the best in program history.
The 1968 Tigers set a then-school record for most wins in a season at 32-15, and the team's .681 winning percentage still rates among the best-ever recorded by a Pacific baseball team. The Tigers finished in second place during their first season in the West Coast Athletic Conference with a 14-6 league record.
Included among those records were 32 wins, 331 hits, 13 home runs, 445 total bases, 177 RBIs and 179 walks. Defensively, the team turned 36 double plays while pitching 22 complete games with 363 strikeouts and a 3.21 team ERA.
Quite a few outstanding players emerged during the Tigers' remarkable 1968 season, with five going on to play professional baseball, including two in the major leagues: Steve Franceschi, John Strohmayer, Robbie Sperring, Ralph Manfredi and John Nilmeyer.
Glenn "Rip" Van Winkle established a single-season record with eight triples in 1968 and he still ranks second on the Tigers' all-time triples list with 12. The hard-hitting catcher logged 22 RBIs that year and played in 48 games without an error.
The 1968 Tigers were coached by Dr. Tom Stubbs, a longtime coach and administrator at Pacific who was an individual inductee into the Pacific Athletics Hall of Fame in 1996. Stubbs led the Tiger baseball fortunes from 1964 to 1971 and again from 1973 to 1981, compiling a 410-384 overall record for a .516 winning percentage, the highest of any Tiger baseball coach to manage for more than one season.
