Ohio State To Donate Baseball Home Opener Gate To Bus Wreck Funds

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) _ Ohio State will donate gate proceeds from Wednesday's baseball home opener to help Bluffton University's baseball team, which had five members killed in a bus wreck earlier

Monday, March 26th 2007, 9:28 pm

By: News On 6

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) _ Ohio State will donate gate proceeds from Wednesday's baseball home opener to help Bluffton University's baseball team, which had five members killed in a bus wreck earlier this month.

The Ohio State athletic department announced Monday that the money will go to benefit the students involved in the crash and their families, and toward building a memorial on the campus in northwest Ohio.

``I've been in the front seat of a bus many times, and it easily could have been me and Ohio State,'' Buckeyes' coach Bob Todd said in a release. ``Anything we can do at all to try and help ease the pain is the right thing to do.''

The Buckeyes play Toledo. The stadium holds 4,500 and tickets range from $2 to $10.

The charter bus was taking the Bluffton team to Florida for spring games when the driver apparently mistook a left-hand freeway exit for the commuter lane in Atlanta, went up the ramp to an overpass and plunged off it back to the highway. The bus driver and his wife were killed along with the five players.

The coach and several players were injured, and one player remains hospitalized in Atlanta.