Pitcher plots a win

Chess helped UNC's Woodard

OMAHA, NEB. -- As a youngster, North Carolina baseball pitcher Robert Woodard was a chess prodigy of sorts.

Then a second-grader in Charlotte, he took up the game for all the reasons anyone usually pursues chess at such an early age.

"There was this girl I liked who was in the chess class, so I figured, 'OK, I'm going to try that, too,' " Woodard said Saturday.

That was one reason.

Another was that his mom, Susan, put her foot down on little Robert's after-school habit of running out of the house as soon as possible to play ball until dark-thirty.

"At first, she made me take piano lessons, and I can't tell you how much I hated that," Woodard said. "But she said I was going to learn to do something other than going out and play. When I mentioned chess, she went along with it."

As a sixth-grader, Woodard was accomplished enough to win the equivalent of the North Carolina T-ball chess championship. He still plays but no longer in tournaments.

Woodard's challenge today at 7 p.m. in Rosenblatt Stadium will be to help the Tar Heels put the king of ACC baseball -- Clemson -- in a state of check.

The 6-foot-2, 175-pound junior right-hander has been given the starting assignment by UNC coach Mike Fox in a critical College World Series game against the hottest team in amateur baseball.

A 46th-round pick by the St. Louis Cardinals in the recent Major League Baseball draft, Woodard will face Clemson's Stephen Faris, also a junior righty and a 12th-round pick by the San Diego Padres.

Both sides are relatively fortunate to be in the second-round winner's game. Carolina (51-13) had to go 13 innings and cash in a lot of its lucky charms to beat Cal State Fullerton 7-5 in Friday's opener.

Clemson (53-14) was outplayed most of the game by Georgia Tech in Friday's opening game. But in the eighth inning, the Tigers played the dead-man's hand -- aces and eights -- and dodged the ensuing bullet.

They scored eight runs, won 8-4 and emerged as the favorite to win this marathon event.

"Clemson's the hottest team out there," Woodard said. "They've won 25 of their last 26. They are a team without any weaknesses, but that doesn't mean we aren't capable of finding a way."

Much of Woodard's strategy against the Tigers will be based on the moves he learned at those chess boards years ago.

"Chess taught me to think ahead and to maybe make a move here and there that the opponent isn't expecting," he said. "That's sort of the way I pitch. I'll throw any pitch at any time in the count, whether it's a 2-1 changeup or whatever.

"I'm not the hardest thrower, but if I think the right pitch is to throw is an inside fastball when it's a 2-0 count to [Clemson slugger] Tyler Colvin, I'll do it ... maybe that's what the batter isn't looking for."

So far at Carolina, such unconventional thinking has worked well for Woodard. He's 6-1 this season -- 22-3 career with a 2.94 earned-run average -- and has found an important spot in a rotation that includes first-round draft picks Andrew Miller and Daniel Bard.

"All Robert's done all along is just deliver," Fox said.

Against Clemson, there's a chance that Woodard will be in the most pressurized situation in Carolina baseball history.

The winner will have a game lead on the other three teams in the upper bracket of the double-elimination tournament.

"We all know what's at stake," Woodard said. "We've got a lot of work in front of us, but we're where we've talked about being all season."