EASTLAKE, Ohio — Welcome to Fantasyland. It will be over eventually for the Cinderella epic of college baseball, either with defeat or a championship, but until then, nobody wants to see the fairy tale end. Except for the opponent who must be the bad guys and play Birmingham-Southern next in the 2024 DIII baseball championship. That’d be Wisconsin-Whitewater on Sunday, by the way.
It has charmed the nation, this team without a school. On Friday, the Panthers lost a tough opener in the 2024 DIII baseball championship, just about the same time their college closed its doors forever. On Saturday, they stayed alive another day with a walk-off homer. They gave up seven unanswered runs, trailed 7-4 in the eighth inning, but survived, anyway. They sent three pinch hitters to the plate and all three delivered. They finished the game with one pinch hitter playing in left, another at shortstop, another at third, and the shortstop catching. Their last batter of the night had a swing so futile on the first pitch, he stepped back, patted his chest in a that’s-on-me gesture, looked over at the dugout and apologized to his coach. Two pitches later, he sent a curveball over the left field wall to beat Randolph-Macon 9-7.
Clearly, magic is afoot. The college back in Alabama might be locked and dark but these guys won’t leave the stage.
“Baseball miracle, right?” said Jackson Webster, the first baseman who hit the winner. “The storybook isn’t finished.”
Birmingham-Southern hits a walk-off home run to stay alive in the Division III College World Series 😲
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter)
On Friday, the school officially shut down. What a story! (🎥 )
Not by a long shot. “It’s a hard pill to swallow. We don’t have anything to go back to so we take the field like we don’t have anything to lose,” Webster continued. “And a team that has nothing to lose is a team that’s hard to beat.”
Division III does not usually get this many TV cameras or computer hits or attention, but the Birmingham-Southern saga is so extraordinary, it's a book that nobody can put down. A team playing literally to keep alive the last vestiges of its school’s existence. “It’s pretty cool having all the cameras around us. It’s really cool, actually,” Webster said. To understand what is going on with a nice little story that has turned into a forest fire on the college baseball landscape, we should spend Saturday in Classic Auto Group Park.
First, walk in the stadium and there’s a souvenir stand with team shirts. But only seven of the eight teams in the bracket are for sale. The Birmingham-Southern stock was gone the first day. “It went quickly, I understand,” says the guy working behind the table.
Go across the road to the parking lot and there's a large group of Panthers fans having a tailgate party — and also something of a wake for the college — many of them wearing shirts that carry the hashtag of the month: NotDoneYet. Amid the drinks and chicken fingers are a torrent of mixed emotions; joy for the moment, but resignation about the inevitable future.
Cole Steadman is there. He was a player on the 2019 national runner-up team from Birmingham-Southern and his brother Eli leads off for these Panthers. Cole, now a commodities trader from Birmingham, drove an RV 11 hours with friends to get here.
“This is all about community," he says. “At the end of the day, they can take the school, they can take the ball, they can take it all, but they can’t take away the community.
“Now they’re just playing for legacy. The school is gone. Literally as of today there’s no more school. It is for something more than a school, I think that’s the thing that really is important.”
Steadman had to be here to see it even if it meant conducting business from his RV. “I had to work remotely. I had to trade this morning. I’m not missing this for the world. I look at this like my own wedding, I’m not going to miss it.”
A lot of parents are in the gathering. There’s Amelia Stephens, who has sent two sons through the Birmingham-Southern program. It’s a baseball mother’s dream to be at such an event to watch her son. But what about witnessing the last gasp of her sons’ alma mater at the same time, knowing there will never be a place they can go back for homecoming? “I keep using the word bittersweet It leaves a hole and a void that shouldn’t be left in the state of Alabama,” she says.
There’s Dawn and Dan Hoover, parents of pitcher Ben.
DIII BRACKET: See the entire DIII baseball championship bracket
“I think we’re all trying to stay excited right now and the other emotions we’re saving for later, whenever our time is done,” Dawn says. “These boys just play because they still want to play, They’re not playing for scholarships or anything like that. They’re just out here because they want to be here. Liberal arts schools are closing across the country and I think that’s going to be a loss.”
Her son is a junior and not sure what comes next. “He told us he wanted to not think about the future but be in the present," she says. "He said he wanted to enjoy every minute with his teammates for the last time.” Lots of Birmingham-Southern parents have heard that from sons.
Dan was a football player at Mississippi State. The SEC is a universe way from this parking lot. “When you’re a DIII player you are here not because you want to move up to another level , you’re not trying to get a deal, you’re trying to play as part of a team. That’s one of the nice things about it. It’s pure. You’re playing it for the right reasons. Some of the selfishness that you see at some of the other levels aren’t here at DIII.”
That, he adds, is what’s so depressing about the loss of a school such as Birmingham-Southern.
There’s Abby Davis, class of 2015, with her father Walt. He’s a Mississippi State alum and ardent Bulldogs fan but she talked him into missing Mississippi State in the Division I regional to drive here. “I told my dad coming over here, I know we’re not going to lose,” she says. “That has kind of been the way of putting outside of my mind that Birmingham-Southern is no more. Once it does come to an end it’s going to be tough. I’ve been emotional pretty much every other day since they announced it was closing. It’ll be happy tears if they win and sad tears when everything is over because Birmingham-Southern is over.”
There’s athletic director Kyndall Waters-McCormack, trying to savor each day this weekend, because eventually tomorrow is going.
“We kind of wish that we had gotten this attention and this publicity before we had to announce closure,” she says. “We’ve always had a great program. We’ve always had the alumni support that we have now, We’ve always had the family support. Here you see we’ve got parents from multiple generations, we’ve got alumni from multiple generations. It’s what Birmingham-Southern has always been about.”
The cloud hanging over this program is impossible to miss, but the moment is too special to let it rain.
“Every once in a while I think about it but I’m trying really hard to live in the moment for these guys and the people around them," she says. “I think it’s really important. We’re not going to have the chance to do it again so why not just soak in every moment, Then after this is over we’ve got time to figure things out.”
She was slightly taken aback by the success of a GoFundMe endeavor that brought in more than $100,000 to make this trip truly first class for the team. “We knew there were people interested we just didn’t know how much they were interested in helping these guys,” she says. “To me I think it’s a reward for their effort, their grit, their determination. It’s not that they need this kind of experience but they’ve been through so much, let’s give them some happy.”
As a member of the senior staff, Waters was in on the strategy sessions when the school was trying to find a way to survive, so she knew what was coming. “I do remember when I heard the words for the very first time. It was in a meeting, and it was crushing, I went home that night and read the statement from the board chair to my family, just giving them a heads up, and I couldn’t get through it.”
There is nothing routine about this story. Check the Birmingham-Southern website, for a school that no longer exists. There’s an invitation to Make Your Last Gift to BSC. A story about 83 former athletes and coaches being included in the last-ever school Hall of Fame induction, since it was now or never. A message to click for additional information on the transfer process. It seems like an exit sign from Birmingham-Southern.
Sitting in the stands is Alyssa Weisberg, wife of head coach Jan. She speaks with a breaking voice.
“I have been very, very emotional over the past few days. Not necessarily because of what’s happening on the baseball field, but the number of alumni that we have here from the baseball program and the friends and family that we have here. This is Jan’s 17th year and he has been building this program all those years and it is so special that win or lose, we’re being able to bring everyone together with us at the end.
UPDATES: Scores, schedule and more of the DIII baseball championship
“There are things that rip my heart out. One of them was before we left Wednesday, I had to run an errand before we went to the airport and when I came back to campus, there was a couple helping an elderly man who looked like he was in his 80s, they were helping him out of the car to go stand in front of the big BSC letters to have his picture made. He was an alum. That man wanted to come back one last time. He probably graduated 60 years ago.”
Her husband has tried to be open and upbeat but she has seen his hours of pain.
“When he’s having to have conversations with players who are saying this might be the end of the road for them and how this has affected them getting to do what they love to do, that’s hard. We just know with this level of baseball, how important it is. And we’re losing more and more opportunities.”
Indeed, many small liberal arts schools are fighting for their lives. Lynchburg also has a team here and just this week announced the college is cutting 12 undergraduate major, 25 minor and five graduate programs, as well as staff and faculty positions. “That’s where we started in 2010,” Alyssa says. “That was the first move to try to move the chess pieces around.”
Jan and Alyssa live on campus not 200 yards from the baseball stadium. They own the home but not the land and it’s going to be surreal when they return, not to mention depressing. At least until he finds another job.
“I will cry every day,” she says. “A college is a living thing., It does have a life to it. It is very lonely when it’s quiet.”
It will be like ripping off a scab every time they walk out their door and see that forlorn diamond, though Alyssa mentions that “there’s no way my husband is going to sit and allow grass to be overgrown. He’ll probably be over there mowing the grass. Now my yard looks like doodoo, but the abandoned baseball field is going to look fabulous.”
The Sigma Chi guys are in the house, standing and offering non-stop support from the front row atop the dugout. The Panthers homer twice in the first inning and take a 4-0 lead, but Randolph-Macon charges back with seven runs, including two on wild pitches in the eighth inning to make it 7-4. Birmingham-Southern answers with three runs in the eighth to tie and wins on Webster’s blast in the ninth — his second homer of the game. The players explode in a frenzied celebration, as do the fans in the stands, including one man waving a sign: Dead College Society. RIPBSC.
Weisberg later admits in his post-game press conference that falling behind 7-4, especially because of wild pitches, certainly carried the whiff of a bad omen. “You just had the feeling of this is how it’s going to end. What this team has been through in particular... with all that we’ve had hanging on our heads, there had to be some thoughts. I’ll admit it happened to me for a brief second in between innings. I started thinking about what am I going to say, am I going to keep it together? And I just told myself stop, just stop.”
Plus, he remembered Thursday night when one of his first recruits, Brooks Webb, spoke to the team. Webb had kept the baseball program mission statement from 17 years ago that had a list of core beliefs. “The last one is all I care about,” he told the players. “We do believe in baseball miracles and great finishes.”
Weisberg marvels at his players’ resilience. Lots of teams feel the burden of not wanting to lose and go home, but what about the team that has no home anymore? That lends an entirely new meaning and weight to the phrase elimination game. “How much more can you go through?” Weisberg says. “At some point you kind of go, I’ve got no more. But I’ll tell you, that tank’s filled up again.”
Alyssa Weisberg already knows what she will say to her husband when the end comes. She looks around at all the past players who are here, and all those who have sent best wishes these recent frantic and stupefying weeks. The Birmingham-Southern baseball family has never seemed larger.
“My refrigerator stays littered with wedding invitations and birth announcements,” she says. “I’ll tell him just how proud I am of him. And he will have around him the evidence of a job well done. His reward will be present.
“He’s said in his interviews he’s welcomed the attention because he knows that these guys are not going to have a place to have a reunion at. They’re not going to have a place to go back to, to show their kids where they played. Our outfield is littered with the dates of all the championship teams, they’re all prominently displayed around the outfield, and they’re not going to have their team up there.”
But the last Birmingham-Southern Panthers keep producing moments that will be impossible to forget, dates on a wall or not. The college is dead. Its baseball team, assigned the sad duty of turning out the lights, has never seemed more alive.
