May 17, 2008

Stanford pitcher is the greatest

PENNA IS REWRITING RECORD BOOKS - AND SHE'S ONLY A JUNIOR

By John Reid / Daily News Staff Writer

Whenever Stanford ace Missy Penna takes the mound these days, she breaks another record.

The junior Penna shut out Lehigh 4-0 Friday in a first-round NCAA regional softball game in Amherst, Mass. It was Penna's 17th shutout of the season.

In picking up the complete-game victory, she became the school's single-season record-holder for wins with 35, breaking Dana Sorensen's 2004 total of 34. Penna added to her single-season strikeout mark, fanning 14 batters, including eight in succession, giving her 386 strikeouts in 2008. Her seven innings worked means yet another Stanford record for Penna - innings pitched in a season - for she now has 306 2/3. Sorensen held the old mark of 303 innings, set in '04.

On May 8, Penna broke her own single-game strikeout record with 17 against then-No. 2 Arizona State, snapping the school's single-season strikeout record that same evening. With 82 career victories, Penna is second behind Sorensen's 105 with another year to go. Pending disaster, it would be safe to say that she should own the majority of the pitching records at Stanford by the time she is through.

"I guess that's good," said Penna, who was recently named to the all-Pac-10 first team. "It doesn't really mean anything. Someone can have an awful year and make it to regionals and go from there. I'm hoping our team can continue playing well. Getting to the College World Series is our goal."

The Cardinal (47-12) hasn't been to the Women's College World Series since 2004. The school's other appearance was in 2001. To get to Oklahoma City this season, Stanford would have to win the Amherst Regional, then win a super regional at Texas A&M, should the Aggies win their regional. Stanford would host a super regional if a team besides Texas A&M comes out of College Station this weekend.



"First, we have to get out of the regional," Penna said. "It's never easy. There are three other teams who are going to be out there playing their best. We'll see. If we play our 'A' game, we will crush."

Penna says "We will crush" with a Soviet accent, not unlike Boris Badenov from the old Rocky and Bullwinkel cartoon series. That happens to be the team's motto, also. Penna isn't averse to having a little fun with her teammates. When she forgot her cleats for a game in the Cardinal's first tournament of the season, she had to buy new ones. That earned her the nickname "Slasher," the brand name of the cleats. When Penna is out on the mound, her teammates sometimes chant, "Slasher."

"We have a great group of girls," Penna said. "Every time we get together, we have fun on or off the field. It's fun to win. We're having a good year."



Quite a year

Penna is having more than a good year, sporting a 35-10 win-loss ledger with a 1.07 ERA.

"Penna has been phenomenal through the year for us," Stanford coach John Rittman said. "She has matured from being a thrower to being a very good pitcher. She stays composed and has learned to fight through things if they don't go well for her."

"Penna is a fun pitcher to catch for," Cardinal catcher Rosey Neill said. "She has worked so hard."

Neill calls the pitches for Penna, who rarely shakes her catcher off.

"She'll call me off every now and then," Neill said. "We're usually on the same page. Usually when she calls me off, it's not that she disagrees with the call, it's just that she feels better throwing a different pitch. Her dropball is one of her go-tos. It falls off the table. On a real good day, the ball drops six to eight inches."

"Penna's dropball is her best pitch," Rittman said. "It opens up her riseball, screwball and curve and she can mix in her changeup."

Penna is also an outstanding fielder.

"Penna fields her position real well," Rittman said. "She's like a fifth infielder out there. She has caught a lot of hard-hit ground balls. She's one of the best fielding pitchers that has played at Stanford."

When Penna was a freshman, she got hit by a pitch at Cal and had to miss 10 days of action. That could be one reason that Rittman has let Penna bat only 12 times this season after 287 at-bats her first two seasons, when she collected seven homers.

"With so few pitchers in the lineup, when one gets hurt, it's going to affect the whole team," Penna said. "It's not like baseball where you have 10 pitchers available. Every pitcher that goes down, it's more responsibility for the other pitchers."



Florida prep days

Penna is arguably the greatest softball pitcher to come out of the state of Florida. Playing for Southwest Miami High, she finished with 85 career wins and 1,255 strikeouts, including an astonishing 32 strikeouts in one game. A standout volleyball and basketball player, Penna was a two-time Miami Herald female athlete of the year and a two-time Florida Class 6A pitcher of the year.

Penna came from a family of 10 children, giving her an instant fan club. Her sister, Leanne, plays softball for Columbia University in New York City. Her brother, Robert, played baseball for Barry University in Miami Shores. Penna's father, Robert, wrestled for the University of Florida.

Missy Penna is majoring in civil engineering and hopes to work on bridges some day. One would not be surprised if that bridge is of record scale.



E-mail John Reid at jreid@dailynewsgroup.com.