from Ron Darling's The Complete Game: Reflections on Baseball and the Art of Pitching:
Naturally, I wanted to pitch us to a win and move on in the tournament, but mostly I wanted to pitch well. In the back of my mind, I was already thinking this might be the last college game of my career, and more than anything else I wanted to keep my string of complete games intact. I'd started twenty-seven games for Yale--and I'd finished all of them. I wanted to make it twenty-eight for twenty-eight, which I thought would be a pretty cool record. I didn't know how I would do that against this touted St. John's lineup, but I liked my chances.
Also, I knew there'd be a payday coming my way once I declared myself eligible for the amateur draft--and I wanted to make sure I pitched well enough to earn a signing bonus rich enough to pay off my college loans. A baseball career was no sure thing, but a relatively modest signing bonus was certainly within reach, so these were my two personal goals going into this St. John's game: to finish what I started and to impress enough of the scouts in attendance so that I might set off on the next chapter in my life without any debt.
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