When Carthage College baseball coach Augie Schmidt IV occasionally took cuts in the batting cage with his players, someone once said there was a distinctive, authoritative crack whenever bat met ball.

The 1982 Golden Spikes Award winner â€" college baseball’s equivalent of the Heisman Trophy â€" was able to produce a sound with his sweet swing even years past his playing days, a sound that most other players simply can’t produce.

A parallel might be made with Brent Moss, who is ending a long absence from football to play for the Racine Raiders. Moss, who was the Most Valuable Player in Wisconsin’s 21-16 victory over UCLA in the January 1994 Rose Bowl and the Big Ten MVP that season, will make his debut for the Raiders some time in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s 7 p.m. North American Football League game against the Hoosier (Ind.) Hurricanes at Horlick Field.

While the 35-year-old Moss is trying to start a new life after some troubled times and hasn’t played since he was with the Madison Mad Dogs of the Professional Indoor Football League in the spring of 2000, it didn’t take long for Raiders coach Jordan Kopac to notice that certain something with the former All-American running back.

"I’ll tell you, I was pleasantly surprised," Kopac said. "He’s very responsive to direction, and literally, it seems that he will do whatever we say. And he had a very nice practice. He ran well, he picked it up quickly, he’s very quick … all those things.

"He stayed right with everybody and that means he had to be practicing someplace else. I thought he would run out of gas about halfway through our conditioning program, which would be normal, and then he would close that gap and so forth. But he was right there at the end with

everybody else."

But that doesn’t mean you should look for Moss circa 1988-94 when he makes his Raiders debut Saturday. Moss will tell you so himself.

"I’m not looking to be a star," he said. "I’m doing it for the love of the game. You’ve got to have a love of the game. I don’t care what level you play."

The last time Moss played at Horlick Field was Nov. 3, 1989, when he rushed for 171 yards and two touchdowns on 32 carries in Park High School’s 34-31 overtime loss to Waukesha South in what was a classic state semifinal.

Moss finished that season with 2,223 yards, which, ironically, are the last four digits of Kopac’s cell phone number. Could this be some cosmic sign of a beautiful relationship in the making?

That remains to be seen. But even if Moss is a shadow of the back who wore No. 31 at Park and No. 33 at Wisconsin, he still feels he will have a great deal to offer.

"I’ll do whatever it takes," he said. "I’m not out there trying to prove anything. I’m just out there trying to win. This isn’t trying to prove, â€óDo I I still have it?’ It’s just the love of it and the competitiveness of it.

"Hopefully, this will bring some excitement back. I hope people will just come out to support the Raiders and cheer us on."