Feb. 15, 2007
Junior shortstop Brett Lilley is the first Notre Dame baseball player to be featured this season with a video interview, as part of the free Fighting Irish All-Access offerings (link below). Lilley is a leading Academic All-America candidate for the 2007 season – see earlier linked story on the progam’s academic excellence – thanks to his 3.78 cumulative grade-point average that includes 12 A grades and one B-plus while taking an overloaded 13 courses during the 2006 spring and fall semester. Lilley was an all-BIG EAST third baseman during his first two seasons with the Irish but he now is returning to his more natural position, as a former all-state high school shortstop in North Canton, Ohio.
Notre Dame’s baseball tradition spans nearly 120 seasons but the shortstop role was not well-represented by elite players, until an impressive run of talent at the position during the past 20 years. Early 1900s player Bobby Lynch and heavy-hitting 1964 All-American Rich Gonski were possibly the most noteworthy shortstops in the first 85 years of the program, followed in the late 1970s by Rick Pullano before an impressive 20-year span that has produced the likes of Tommy Shields, Pat Pesavento, Craig Counsell, Paul Failla, Brant Ust, Alec Porzel, Matt Macri and Greg Lopez at the shortstop position. Lilley now takes his turn, hoping to add to the program’s legacy in the key defensive role.