Knights Under Lights: Glen Gardner
Glen Gardner has dedicated his life to the Rutgers baseball team for nearly four decades. Inducted into the Rutgers Athletics Hall of Fame in 1997, Gardner represents a model of success anyone affiliated with the Scarlet Knights should aspire to achieve.
Before the legacy, though, came the legend.
Gardner spent his freshman season establishing himself as one of the squad's most reliable batters, recording 70 hits and sporting a batting average of .398 en route to earning ABCA/Baseball America Freshman All-America honors. Rutgers finished the 1986 season with a 28-18 record, good for the fourth 20-win season in program history at the time.
In the Atlantic-10 (A-10) Tournament, the Knights thumped West Virginia 10-3 to secure the conference championship. In the NCAA Tournament, though, Rutgers failed to win a single game.
Expectations were sky-high for a program on the rise in 1987, and thanks to Gardner's continued success, the team enjoyed its most successful season to date. The Knights finished the season with a dominant 36-14-1 record, powered by Gardner's .368 batting average and eight home runs.
Gardner was named to the Collegiate Baseball All-America Third Team for his efforts, and Rutgers advanced to the second round of the A-10 Tournament, where back-to-back losses to the Mountaineers and Massachusetts doomed any hope of a NCAA Tournament bid.
In 1988, the program would take another step toward national relevance behind another stellar season from Gardner.
Gardner, now in his junior season, hit nine homers and led the Knights to a 38-win season, tied for the fifth-most wins in a single year in program history. Rutgers outscored conference opponents 35-16 in a storybook A-10 Tournament run that secured its second conference title in three years and earned the team a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
As the fourth seed in the Northeast region, the Knights bounced top-seeded Clemson in the second round 6-1 and advanced to the semifinals to take on Stanford. Despite its recent stretch of good form, Rutgers failed to capitalize and fell to the Cardinal 8-1.
In Gardner's final season, he hit 22 doubles, which was a single-season program record at the time. His 336 total bases across his career are ninth in program history and were the most at the time.
With his legacy on the Banks secure, Gardner was drafted by the Atlanta Braves in the 59th round of the 1988 MLB Draft after foregoing an original draft selection by the San Diego Padres in 1987.
Gardner spent his first season in the rookie league, where the former Knight notched 81 hits in 256 at-bats for the Pulaski Braves. In 1989, he was promoted to Single-A and scored nearly 70 runs for the Sumter Braves.
The following year, Gardner tallied 127 hits, helping lead the Braves' Single-A affiliate to a 78-win season.
With a promising future ahead of him, no one could have expected the freak accident that would prematurely end his career.
In 1990, Gardner was struck in the eye by a batted ball and was forced to retire. Determined to give back to the game that had given him so much, Gardner accepted an offer in 1991 to become a coach on the Rutgers baseball team. Operating in a multitude of critical roles, Gardner's knack for identifying promising recruits and knowledge of the game helped the Knights become nationally relevant all over again.
During his tenure, the program secured eight NCAA Tournament berths and seven conference championships. Long after his professional career came to an abrupt end, Gardner continued to exemplify excellence and dedication in everything he did.
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