Worst. Athletic. Team. Ever.

While playing around tonight with last year's college baseball statistics, I noticed something that had to be a misprint: 2007 Coppin State had team EqA of .106. To put that in perspective, Christian Guzman's offensive (pun intended) 2005 season clocked in at a disturbingly anemic .205.

Again, as a refresher, EqA basically translates in batting average terms -- a .400 season in MLB ranks as one of the top 15 seasons of all time. A .200 season means you'd better be a pitcher. Coppin State's team was on my spreadsheet at .106!?!?!! Roughly speaking, a .106 EqA is what Christian Guzman would hit if he lost an arm, blew out both knees ... and went blind.

So I assumed I'd made an error, looked it up, and holy crap, this team was 0-44 last season. 0 and f'ing 44.

By the numbers:

"Hitting"

• .161 team batting average.
• 7 regulars hitting under .150
  
• .202 team slugging percentage.
  
• 18 shutouts against.
• 3 no-hitters against.
• 4 times scoring 4 runs in a game.
• 0.78 opponents' WHIP.
• 7 times Archie Scott was picked off or caught stealing. Archie reached base 17 times on the season.
  

"Pitching" & "Fielding"

• .445 opponents' batting average.
• .538 opponents' on base percentage.
• .679 opponents' slugging percentage.
• 16.67 team ERA.
• 38 times allowing more than ten runs.
• 6 times allowing more than twenty runs.
  
• 3.30 WHIP.
• 1 player with a sub-10.00 ERA (he only pitched 3.2 innings).
• .908 fielding percentage (this is not good).
• 126/136 opponents stolen bases/attempts.

The scary part of the team batting stats is that Coppin had a player, Harry Williams, who was legitimately good. Harry put up a more-than-respectable .339/.380/.441 line. Unfortunately, he was nicely counterbalanced by Marcus Robin, who started every game and hit .057.

So I was going to write a nasty little piece making fun of this team ... but then I felt something [my girlfriend tells me that what I experienced was "sympathy"]. How awful must it have been to lose -- and to lose like that -- 44 straight times? To have your coach suddenly quit before the season started, taking a number of players with him? To end up with 11 players on the roster, some of whom "hadn't played baseball before"? And to show up every day to take your beating? Sounds like the type of crap Dante would have come up with.

The 2008 Coppin State team is 0-10 on the young season, but is actually scoring runs and playing (semi)competitive games -- last weekend's game at Hofstra ended in a "wild" 9-7 loss. Still, you add those ten losses (and the final-game loss in 2006) to last year's total, and Coppin State is on a 55-game losing streak.

We hereby dub Coppin the official team of CWATCF, and we'll follow them for the remainder of the season as they soldier on in search of that elusive victory. Go Eagles!